Nadaka's DiceBox is back

[Nadaka]

I am not sure if this is the best place for this after the forum reorganization... let me know if it belongs elsewhere.

Nadaka's DiceBox (an online dice rolling tool) is back online after a ridiculously prolonged absence. There is still some work for me to do, but it is sufficiently ready for people to take a look at.

DiceBoxWS Info

The biggest new features are complex dice expressions, web service access for use by other programs/websites through ajax or remote reference and dramatically improved search.

Some things that I still need to do before I can call it finished:
Finish implementing group membership: groups are controlled by the users, a groups can be invite only, authorization upon request or free for all. A groups owner can assign members administrative powers allowing them to control group membership, etc.
Provide a nice directions page.
Provide a statistics page: The statistics page will be able to collate data from dicebox usage and create hourly, dayly, weekly, etc reports, most popular groups, most common dice rolls, etc.
More/Better styles available under the preference page.

Let me know what you think, if you have any suggestions, etc.

 

[mgbeach]

Very nice features! One thing I can think of that isn't there is the ability to email a result directly to your DM. Also, it would be really nice if there was an associated notes line with each roll so you could designate it as "Spot Check" or "Longsword Damage" or whatever.

 

[Nadaka]

Very nice features! One thing I can think of that isn't there is the ability to email a result directly to your DM. Also, it would be really nice if there was an associated notes line with each roll so you could designate it as "Spot Check" or "Longsword Damage" or whatever.

The previous DiceBoxDB I had running from 2003 to 2008 had no authentication for comments and in 2007 it became a drop box for spam and other "bad things".

If you are using the web site, you can log in and leave a comment with the roll.

If you are using the web service, once you have signed in, you can go to your profile page to receive an AccessKey that will allow you to save comments through the web service. The AccessKey is weak authentication (a shared secret) and should not be shared.

In the future I may be able to allow unauthenticated comments if I implement CAPTCHA to keep the bots out.

The Comment does not appear in search results, but will appear when you view the roll. In addition to a comment left when making a roll, any authenticated user can respond and leave additional comments.
Example.

Editops, need to use URL to website instead of localhost.

 

[Nadaka]

Quick update...

The new theme is "Blue3d", you might note that with Blue3d the "Valid CSS" link at the bottom of every page does not display. This is because there is an inconsistant implementation of border-radius that is used for fancy round edges.

The site now has a custom favicon on a small white 6sided die with the 6, 4 and 2 faces visible.

Groups are mostly implemented. The group search page does not allow you to set search parameters because most of those parameters are not implemented at this time, but you can still see a list of all groups currently available.

Next on my agenda...
*Reorganize code to make the site easier to mantain and upgrade. I've found that adding groups was difficult because of the "design while writing code" method I used.
*finish up the directions for all existing features.
*Allow a user to subscribe to certain kinds of events through email notification and RSS feeds.
*Make the Black theme less ugly, make a Gray3d theme, any other requested themes.

A little farther down the road...
*make a statistics page with all kinds of nifty stats.
*add a few features to Dice Expressions and then release it under an X11 open source license.

Let me know what you think, and if you encounter any errors, describing exactly what you were doing at the time would be helpful. For a sufficiently serious error i will get an email with the stacktrace, but I generally don't have a way to determine the context of that error.

If you have any requests for features or themes that you wold like to see, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

 

[Nadaka]

Attention Dicebox users: someone has been using the web service access option for the dice box... This is good news to me as it means that someone is likely incorporating the dicebox in their own website.

I have however recieved and error message in my auto-logging system related to this. I've seen one error so far, a duplicate namespace declaration for 'http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace:lang'.

If you have been using the web service and have experienced any issues, any information you provide would be helpful. Are you creating manual SOAP packets? Using the WSDL to create an interface in .NET or PHP? Accessing through the javascript library?

Even if you are not using the web service, your feedback is both welcome and desired. I've not been doing much development on the site in the last few months, but that should change soon.

 

[Nadaka]

Good news. Nadaka's Dicebox is getting a facelift and a new location!

It is still a work in progress but its quite functional.

http://dicebox.org/Dice/Roll for rolling dice from simple to complex.
http://dicebox.org/Dice/Roll/Classic for old fashioned XdY+Z.

And this time I don't have pesky personal drama's to with the ex to force me to abandon all my projects.

Restoring comments are my next priority.