I’d been getting renewal notice e-mails from my domain name provider for KesslerVanDoom.com for a while now, but I only stumbled upon them when there were 3 days remaining.  It came down to a choice of spending $11 to keep this website alive and functional.  It really came down to a question of whether I wanted to or not.

Looking back at the past year, I realized that the website had very little use to anyone besides myself.  It maybe had a couple visits from friends and had very little development time from me after the initial push.  It’s most substantial benefit was keeping a list of Minecraft modifications that I can easily keep in a OneNote page.  It’s come down to me not having the time or inclination to work on something that had no audience.  This came with another realization that I don’t play video games as fervently as I once had, finding my time filled with work, family and lately, stage theatre.  Being that gaming was the subject matter of the site, it added another nail in the coffin.

I’ve taken a liking the the service Evolve, to replace a number of things such as Ventrilo and Fraps.  I don’t see why it can’t replace what I want out of a social element for remaining gaming as well.

I’ve decided to consolidate my “free” time projects and KVD didn’t make the cut.  I let the domain name expire, and doubt will ever renew.  I believe I’ll spend more time on this site and the Earthdawn Character Generator, as there has been renewed interest at home.  I’m also trying to get the hang of network programming in C#, but what is required is immersion and I’ve only put my toes in the pool.

Significant progress has been made in the area of making a website that actually could have value to my friends and family for the purpose of gaming coordination.  Over the last 3 months in spare moments, I’ve accomplished most of the bullet points I laid out 2 months ago.  This post would serve as an overview of what’s been done since then.

This post is long due to the pictures.  I’d like to say that I do not consider this project complete.  I believe with the coming of Diablo 3 and other games, that this may be a useful tool for coordinating game time with my friends and family.  I have the thought of making this a non-game specific site for those I game with.  The site is specialized in purpose, completely malleable and I look forward to seeing it get some use.

If anyone wants to help, I won’t turn them down, though…

Home page

A fairly standard home page.  I query the Steam and Facebook APIs for the images of my Steam Avatar and Facebook profile picture.  The Facebook icon links to my Facebook profile page.  The Upcoming box on the right will show any proposed gaming that has been entered.  The events are clickable (as will be shown further down), offering information about the event that was clicked on.

Profile Page

This page allows people to enter in a SMS texting address for notifications, or Facebook/Steam IDs for connection to their respective APIs.  As I learn more about Facebook and Valve’s software and what I can do with it, I hope to be able to have interaction with their services.  Texting notifications will be further explored on the Notifications page.

Events Page

This page serves as the entryway to various event actions.  I made the buttons big so those viewing from a mobile device would have an easier time clicking the buttons.  I found it easier anyways.  The buttons are pretty self-explanatory.

Scheduling an Event

This page will allow people to schedule an event for the upcoming 7 days or later, and at any time.  Events are organized by the type that they are.  At the moment I only support Internet Gaming and LAN parties.  If this becomes used, I would like incorporate board gaming, pen & paper RPG, movie nights, or other things.  It really depends on who starts using this, if anyone.  The “Later” and “Other” buttons allows for more glandular control of the event scheduling.  A modal calendar and time selection screen are available when those buttons are clicked.

Event Calendar

This is simply a calendar page that will show the next 30 days events starting from “today”.  The calendar automatically increments the days.  Every event is clickable to show more details.

Event Detail Popup

This picture represents what both the home page and calendar will do when an event is clicked.  It will give you more information for the event, tell you how many people will be attending if they have indicated so, and allow you to RSVP as well.  RSVP-ing or cancelling are both controlled by clicking the button in the lower right corner.  Internet Gaming only shows the attendance, while LAN parties will tell you the location and if it is entered in the system, will give you a link to Google Maps.  Declaring your attendance is in effect as soon as you click the button.

Event Attendance

This page is where you land if you click the “attend” link on the Event Detail Popup.  This page will give you the same information as the pop-up, but will also include a list of anyone who has either said they will attend, or cancelled that declaration  This would have been nice in the raid roster days. 

Event Notifications

Knowing that people aren’t on the Internet all day long, I built an automated notification system that people customize.  A person will click a series of questions in the middle and build the kind of notification they want.  It can be just for LAN parties or just for Internet Games.  It can be for a specific game.  There are two methods of notification at the moment: E-mail and SMS text.  Yes, if an event is scheduled and you have a notification rule to be notified, you will receive a text on your phone.  I have tested this with my brother Josh and my own phone for over a month.  A future goal of mine is to expand the rules as to why one is notified and expand the methods of notification (e.g. RSS, Twitter, etc.).  This is one of the neater things in my mind.  The Summary on the right will explain in “Friendly” terms what rule you are building. 

Email Example

This is simply an example of the email that is sent.  I can add more pizzazz later

Forums

With my experience with First Strike’s forum, this was a breeze to set up.  I know I did a better job this time setting it up.  Forums are a staple of most sites such as these.  I did use the Facebook signon feature that this board supports.  Basically, if you’re signed in on Facebook, you can click a button when registering and it will populate everything the forum needs from Facebook and log you in.  I have to admit, it’s pretty slick.  Sneaky Facebook….

This is the end of the post.  If you made it this far, you might as well go sign up now, if you haven’t already!

It's been a month since I started putting free time into KVD.  I have spent an hour here and hour there adding functionality and tweaking design. Entering events is available now, showing up in the available database and on the screen.  I tried to make it simple, without a lot of text entering  The forum is functional and colored, I think, to something useful.

I still want to add:

• Event notification
• i.e. Person one enters an event for Left 4 Dead 2 on Saturday and Person two who would like to be notified when L4D2 on Saturdays is going to happen gets a text sent to his cell phone or an e-mail or *gasp* a tweet.
• I'm still not really sold on Twitter, but it appears that it's here to stay, at least in the Smithsonian.
• Event RSVP-ing
• The same scenario above except Person 2 wants to communicate that he will indeed be available to shoot zombies with Person 1.
• Calendar page
• An overall look at the month or next 4 weeks of scheduled events.  It seems like calendars like that always end up being pretty hard.  I consider it a personal challenge.
• Facebook Signon integration
• Although I squirm at the idea of using Facebook (read this NY Times opinion article to understand), there is no denying it is commodity of the times.  If Person 2 is signed into Facebook automatically, using the Facebook Connect API, I should be able to translate that into automatic authentication on KVD.
• Steam information availability
• Using Person 1's Steam Community ID, It's easy to retrieve any public information he's allowed, even it's just showing his Steam Name.
• Content Entering and Aggregation
• I would like to extend this to something beyond just a game scheduling agent.  Something like Movies we enjoy, rate them ... or ... collaborative design of our own stories or games.  Or a repository of YouTube videos we enjoy.  Something to move beyond organization of culture and content that is limited to the folder on a local computer.

Some may ask why I feel the need to build this myself.  

First, I enjoy the creation of software.  The act of software design and creation almost feels artistic in a way.

Second, I think there is a benefit to the idea that you personally know who owns the website you are visiting.  To follow that idea, I believe the walled garden approach Facebook has taken with the the personal data people freely give away is bound to come crashing down or even worse becoming so integrated in our society that is not thought of as a problem but as something that people just have to settle for and in the end, accept.  I refuse to be a lemming in that regard.

Last, I haven't found anything like this kind of functionality on the Internet that doesn't come with a price or isn't exactly what I want.

It's just spent time, right?