Thread: Webpage that shows whether Kinship Members are currently in Game!

Is there any way of having a Webpage that could display Live Kin Members showing online and maybe Location and Character?

It is such a pain when friends do not have quick machines and spend 20mins logging in to find no one on.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks
Jason

The only way to do this (in conjunction with Lua scripting) would be using an executable helper application that uploads a player's logged-in character name to a website somewhere. Location isn't available to plugins, yet. It also wouldn't work until the player manually loaded the plugin.

Turbine used to have a Facebook application that published some of this information, but it hasn't worked for nearly a year now.

Your Kinship page in game can show that. Just open the Social panel and then click on Kinship. You may have to change the sort filter, but it is there

Thanks Guys

Fredalas, I don't have the experience to program that sort of API.
I thought perhaps I could call from the webpage using my credentials info regarding the Kinship Login that i can see in game using Lua Script.

Korafa, Yes I know Thanks, but we were trying to make that basic info available out of game so you don't have to login just to check. We would all love to play more than we do but do not have the luxury of time and therefore thought this maybe a better alternative so we make sure we are playing together when we get time.

If anyone else has any Idea's/Help be appreciated.

It's probably simpler to just install and use Xfire. It has a web interface for seeing who in your kin is on line and it uses a launcher app to start the game and track when the game stops running, so it's pretty accurate. It also allows you to get ingame notifications when members log in, etc. (I personally don't use it anymore since my kin doesn't, but when I was in a kin that used it, it was handy).

An other alternative is to get a kin Vent or TeamSpeak server. Then you can simply start Vent or TS and talk with anyone else that's on - makes it easier to form groups or just BS while roaming solo.

Originally Posted by arg0naut

Thanks Guys

Korafa, Yes I know Thanks, but we were trying to make that basic info available out of game so you don't have to login just to check. We would all love to play more than we do but do not have the luxury of time and therefore thought this maybe a better alternative so we make sure we are playing together when we get time.

If anyone else has any Idea's/Help be appreciated.

I see now. That would be a nice thing to see if it could be done.

Originally Posted by arg0naut

Thanks Guys

Fredalas, I don't have the experience to program that sort of API.
I thought perhaps I could call from the webpage using my credentials info regarding the Kinship Login that i can see in game using Lua Script.

Korafa, Yes I know Thanks, but we were trying to make that basic info available out of game so you don't have to login just to check. We would all love to play more than we do but do not have the luxury of time and therefore thought this maybe a better alternative so we make sure we are playing together when we get time.

If anyone else has any Idea's/Help be appreciated.

Like Fredalas said, it would require an external application - if for no other reason than a method to upload the information to a web server. Believe it or not, location data (like actual dev coords) are easily accessible by such an external application - however, getting the currently logged in character name, and have it possible to be verified - is a bit obnoxious - as there's no direct way of getting that from the game's memory, and Lua plugins are exploitable. For instance, if you do something like:

Code:

thePlayer=Turbine.Gameplay.LocalPlayer.GetInstance();
theName = thePlayer:GetName();

That would indeed give you the player's name; however - all someone would have to do is something like so:

Code:

theName="someoneElse";

and the data becomes compromised.

So in theory, it would work like this. Your kin members would have to load up an application, or just one that would sit in the task bar, enter in their login info into the options for that application, and every time they logged in, it would show their account as being online, and could even send their current cordinates - but much like applications such as Vent, it wouldn't show which of their characters were on.

I was looking into this while exploring the idea of a LotRO social networking site, with some kind of "Places"-esque feature, that would allow players to opt-in to show their current in-game location to their friends.

Originally Posted by Korafa

Your Kinship page in game can show that. Just open the Social panel and then click on Kinship. You may have to change the sort filter, but it is there

That is assuming your kinship isn't broken all to you know where and back on MyLotro like mine is.... (ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I even bugged it and the response was that yes it is broken and essentially it would get fixed some day... ok...................)