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[pjv2]

[feature request] coordinating GPS based requirements

[Wishi-san]

Interesting. But the whole of unfiction and the unforums are not based around the ilovebees game. This has been going a lot longer than that.

I don't see how it'd be relevant to other games etc. as it's doubtful that another game will have 100s of coords.

And anyhow, we didn't seem to have a problem coordinating ourselves at 100s of phone boxes this time.

[pjv2]

I understand about it not relating to other current games.

This is the first Arg I've played and am certainly no expert on them. I will continue to play after bees because it's been so enjoyable. I love the free form thought that is required and the community involvement. I would specualate that as a larger base of people start to play this type of challenge might become more common.

We defenately had no problem getting people to the first set of coordinates on time and this tool wouldn't be too useful for that. I would envision it's use to relate more to the four points discovered in recipies3.html where we found the points hours before the times.

The only people that really knew about it we're people that solved/looked at the forum immediately. During the day this isn't an option for some players, but if they got an automatic email saying there was a point just published in there area, we could create larger groups in shorter periods of time.

Obviously we could just blast an email to the entire mailing list.

I did some more research and found out that phpBB has a module that allows admins to add fields to the profile so this part is pretty much already built.

Just add a text box for lat, a box for long, a check-box for geographic notifications for each game and a distance drop down(within 10, 25, 50, or 100 miles).

Then the admin just runs a script to find the users with-in range that outputs a text file with email addresses.
The sql looks like this:
SELECT email, lat, long, distance FROM table_name WHERE game_were_searching=True.

The psedo php looks like this:

SET POINT=(DESIRED_LAT, DESIRED_LONG)//WHERE POINT IS A GEOMETRIC FUNCTION
CONNECT TO DB
RUN SELECT
FOR EACH RECORD {
USERPOINT=(RECORD.lat, RECORD.long)
IF FIND_DISTANCE(USERPOINT,POINT)<RECORD.distance
THEN PRINT RECORD.email}

An entirely automated system would be less admin work but this would be fine also.

I could make turn all of the example code into php or asp very easily except for not knowing how to find the gps distance.

[catherwood]

i think the problem is not in the coding -- we have a lot of technical talent around here -- but with the members themselves. Most of the profiles i've seen don't even include a real city! I doubt you could get enough people to publically declare their exact GPS location to make this sort of feature worth the effort. (spoken like the lazy pessimist that i am.)

[colin]

I think it's because this place is a place to talk about games, its not a database of player information.

[pjv2]

Very true about players not wanting to reveal there locations now. I think that is a functionality type of thing now. There is no value to declaring a location. Maybe we could make it a non displaying filed like email.

[pjv2]