I suggest that a status of the vendetta universe could be obtained using a finger server.

For those that go "Huh?" a finger server is an "oldschool" way to identify a server and what's going on there. Several sites still use this, like kernel.org (The True Home of Linux) etc.

I suggest theese finger responses:

@vendetta-online.com : list of available options
players@vendetta-online.com : active player list
news@vendetta-online.com : the last posted news item
version@vendetta-online.com : the current production client version
uptime@vendetta-online.com : the current game uptime

The possibilities I have in mind are:

players@ : get the active players list for scripts without the need to "rape" http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/active.html

news@ : syndication of news and scripts that tell people when news has been posted

version@ : scripts that tells people when the client has been updated

uptime@ : show the overall stability of the game

The old "Finger servers are a security problem" is no longer valid. Several Really Tough finger daemons exist, and the protocol is easy enough to work with to "homebrew" a daemon.

Possible? Desirable?

Cool idea
However, I'd imagine that Plaintext HTTP would be much simpler to access and maintain than adding a protocol that, honestly, nobody really remembers :)

I think people have been asking for something like this for some time.

Yeah, I remember threads like this from 2003 :-)

I like the finger idea. It's only insecure if fingerd actually provides usernames, these days.

yeah, "developer blogs" used to be called .plans.

But seriously, why should we implement this when we can just do the equivalent thing with HTTP? It'd require less effort for effectively the same thing.

higher geek factor? Less bother for your http server?

Well, would you rather have my script slurp the active player list or provide a more bandwidth-friendly version?

I don't mind if it's just a text/plain page on the webiste, but even if my script only updates once every 5 minutes, and only when my Vendetta client is running, 205839 players running it will waste a serious ammount of bandwidth.

I'm just trying to be constructive :)

How about it a1k0n? It shouldn't be much work...?

finger costs more than you want it to today. thing is, it's a lot easier to do intelligent cache control and offload your servers with HTTP -- and anyone who would write a finger interface can write the same interface to HTTP.

on that note, simply due to immersion and a feeling of wonder / amazement, I'd much rather remove the playerlist from any public viewing. you want to know who's on? log on and ask / fly around. the online playerlist is also semi-exploitable in the sense that it makes alt-tracking possible and other tidbits like that.

As well you know, Al. >:P

RSS feeds?

mac users make a widget?

Sissoko

We have one. Check the MacOS X forum.