Web-based CT

Steel Rat · Post by **Steel Rat** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:30 pm

I think Character Tool could be extremely powerful as a web-based applet which could be hosted on a server, where character sheet data could be stored in a central location. With password protected sheets, GMs could grant access to specific players when needed.

brad · Post by **brad** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:46 pm

That's a great idea. How much extra work to make something like that happen?

Steel Rat · Post by **Steel Rat** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:52 pm

No idea. I'm hoping that for CT it wouldn't take nearly as much as it would for MT, not having all the graphics libraries and such. But I don't know enough about Java to tell.

jay · Post by **jay** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:01 am

Sounds good to me. It should only take a little bit to make it work as an applet. There are some other problems that are a bit more difficult to fix unless you plan on allowing CT to write files on the user's file system. If that is a Bad Thing, then it will take quite a bit longer as the database engine would have to be reconfigured. This is something that I want to do someday, but that day is awhile off

Very interesting. Tell me what you want CT to do and the changes you think are needed. I'm guessing it will need to look up character sheets on the main site and allow the user to select them? Let's see how much work there is.

Steel Rat · Post by **Steel Rat** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:31 am

My thinking is that CT would not write anything to the user's system, all information would be stored on the server. Options to export in various formats (XML, HTML...) would be the way the user takes the data elsewhere.

I fully realize this would be a ways off. Just wanted to put the thought out there ;).

If CT eventually takes the form of a campaign manager, then making it web-based would just be the most awesome thing. If people are using computers to play their games, then the web makes their data ultimately portable.

Steel Rat · Post by **Steel Rat** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:32 am

Forgot to mention that I would gladly host any CT applet for development and production.

jay · Post by **jay** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:15 am

CT has an embedded database which saves files on the user's system. These are the biggest problem. You could put them in memory, but I doubt that all of 4e's powers would fit and you could probably forget about running more than one instance in lots of cases. If it is possible to host a H2 database on the server then the data could be accessed from the web I don't know what that would do to performance CT or to the security of the server. Here's the linK http://www.h2database.com/

If all you want to do is keep the character sheets off of the client then there really isn't much of a problem.

Steel Rat · Post by **Steel Rat** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:37 am

jay wrote:CT has an embedded database which saves files on the user's system. These are the biggest problem. You could put them in memory, but I doubt that all of 4e's powers would fit and you could probably forget about running more than one instance in lots of cases. If it is possible to host a H2 database on the server then the data could be accessed from the web I don't know what that would do to performance CT or to the security of the server. Here's the linK http://www.h2database.com/

If all you want to do is keep the character sheets off of the client then there really isn't much of a problem.

Obviously the web version would be different from the standalone CT. So I would suggest using MySQL, since it's so prevalent. keeping anything in memory that isn't immediately being used isn't a good idea, obviously.

I'm probably a bit too naive when it comes to the capability of Java applets, and tend to think more in terms of PHP development.

Having said that, perhaps a PHP version which uses user-uploaded data (XML) could be created. The XML would be imported and stored in the MySql db, and exported back as XML as needed. MT could even have a link directly to the PHP site with appropriate authentication for GMs and players so sheets could be displayed in a mini browser window in MT.

I know, shooting for the sky, lol.