this is probably a better place to post this to save cluttering feature requests.

ive been thinking about a way to further link up this flash banner to the game servers. not something id hold out for, but it could be a fun to way bring site visitors into online games.

ive already set up some xml stuff to query the stats db, but suppose the banner displayed activity from each of the main servers with a 'click to join this server' link as part of the message?

im not sure how the current servers.php works. is there any way i could get a copy of the php code? id guess it's just a query to some kind of server registration data and an http header or two to pass the ip address etc as a download? it could be worth cycling through the official servers one at a time.

and, related, could the game installer be set to associate s3l files automatically with the game? i dont know if there are security issues at all - windows registry stuff.

The server registration details for each server is stored in a database (the same as any other data). It's actualy accessable via a web service :
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/scorched/servers.php

Yeah it should be possible to associate the those files, I'll have a look into it.

ah. handy.

i was thinking, along the lines of site integration considering the way those s3l files could be served up, what d'you think about a custom BB tag?

say you had

[serverlink]name of server here[/serverlink]

and parsed that or some other xml file or something with some client side javascript as part of a forum post and linked it to a download. (or a mod of the php BB code if it was worth it)

it wouldnt be all that necessary if people have static IP's or well maintained servers, but you'd probably need some way to avoid dead links on aging forum posts.

im imagining a server link as part of a tournaments post, and maybe links as part of a signature for people who host their own servers?

you could already do it, i guess, minus the little icon. maybe you could have a news post or a servers forum
e.g.
"I’ve launched a new server with different settings: JOIN THE SERVER HERE"

these settings are:
this this and this

Sounds like a great idea, would be hard to implement.

yeap. but im probably making it way more complicated that it needs to be, talking about parsing xml's.

all youd have to do for a server link like this:

is set up a custom bb code like this:


with replacement html like this:


then you could just use a [server] tag on the forums with:



(i tested). youd probably want to swap out those absolute paths.