Future of updating?

[Will 4,660]

I've been thinking the last while of how improve sim updating, but I didn't put too much thought into overhauling the entire updating process until @DollarAndADream brought up that affiliate. Since then I've been thinking of the actual 'flow' for how it would work, and I think it has a lot of potential:

 

- User signs into the Portal with their forum login info (same as when you use Google or Facebook to sign into something)

- On the Portal, they select their player to associate it with their account. This would likely then have to be approved by the new 'updaters' which i well mention in a minute. This step would only be required once per career. 

- Once approved, the person would have a TPE balance and ability to submit updates: for each thing they want to claim, they'd just select a type (i.e. media spot, job, ect), enter an amount and a link. 

- Updates would then be reviewed by the new 'updaters' who would just get a list of updates and approve/deny buttons. 

- Once an update is approved, the amount would be added to a persons TPE balance.

- The person could then apply their TPE balance through a simple tool where you would just see your players attributes and be able to increment them. It would be programmed so that you can only increment them if you have enough TPE to make the attribute a whole number - that doesn't matter since partial attributes are always rounded down. Any unapplied TPE left over would essentially just be Banked TPE. 

- The updated attributes would show up on the players player page. An 'Updates' section would also be added to each player page showing a chronological archive of updates to replace update threads. 

- Finally, the simmers would be able to download a file that the server would prepare to take all of the current attributes in the Portal's database and format them to what STHS needs for a ratings update. 

 

It's a lot to add but most of it is pretty straightforward and should be doable. The main challenges are going to be implementing the single-sign on between the Portal and Forum and designing the tool to update your player attributes. There's also some other things to workout such as how to handle the VHLM as right now I don't even support player pages for VHLM players and how to actually create new players in the Portal's database. Currently I run a script manually before each season that looks at all players in the STHS database and either creates them if they don't already exist in the Portal DB or updates them if they do (some general information such as position and team is currently stored). This works fine because no players are created in the VHL sim during the season. VHLM would be a different story, so this update would have to be done daily at least.  

[Banackock 8,045]

Sounds decent man. 

[Beaviss 4,957]

I love this idea adding little graphics similar to the affiliate would really make the updating process a lot funner

[Exlaxchronicles 415]

If this helps to stream line the site better and quicken the PT process I'm all for it.

[Victor 10,940]

Huge if true.

[Beketov 9,025]

This is one of the main things we wanted the portal for so definitely a big step if we can get it working for us.