Website / In-Game Integration Additions + Improvements

Hi all! I had an idea that I've implemented in the past, and that I thought might be useful to implement here on MeepCraft. Now, as it stands currently the MeepCraft website integrates in part into the game. For instance, the front page notes the number of players online, and (when it's working) the voting system locks into the in-game experience. I've also noticed that there is already a Trello card out there for linking one's forum account to their in-game account. However, I think that we can take this a step further.

I believe that a plugin can be created, a "Meep WebHook" plugin, that can integrate tons of gaming aspects directly into the website. Such a plugin might do the following:

• Determine exactly who is online and what server they are on
• On the website, determine the number of staff who are in-game
• In-game notifications for when watched forum pages are replied to
• In-game chat (and in-game messaging) accessed through the forums
• In-game mailbox accessible through the forums
• In-game accessible through the forums (and easier browsing)
• Countdowns for in-game events
  
• Real-time scoreboards of individuals who have won various minigames or are leading in /jobs stats
• Website ticker tape notifying users on the forums of various emergency server announcements (such as maintenance or downtime)
• Possible in-game chat with Discord using the Discord API (don't know to what extent this is possible)
• Staff could promote/demote through either the forums or in-game
• Bans/tempbans in-game would automatically notify the user on their forum account

The list goes on. Developers: such a thing might be accomplished by implementing a RESTful API on a minecraft plugin that simply executed existing commands under the guise of a particular user in-game (or as the console) and that parsed the return messages. Then, you would just use Xenforo (the forums are Xenforo, right?) add-ons to interface with the RESTful API on the Minecraft side (POST request w/ JSON body tends to work best, in my opinion). Now, such a project would not be a small undertaking, but it might be an interesting thing to implement.

This would benefit the Meep Community by encouraging our in-game members to better utilize the website, and possibly entice older Meepers who lurk on the forums (but don't necessarily play anymore) in to rejoining the game. Furthermore, the addition of real-time in-game data could attract prospective players who happen across the website. Lastly, in a community where the forums are almost as important as the in-game experience, a seamless integration would only benefit the community in the effort to bridge any communication gaps that still exist inside of Meep.

 

I was interested to see how difficult a plugin like this might be if the MeepCraft staff decided to move forward with this, so last night I threw together a small proof-of-concept. Obviously it's not terribly well-documented at all (I only took about an hour on the initial commit). As such, it's also relatively untested, use at your own risk. MeepDevs: you're more than welcome to use and/or modify this code as you wish. I'll be working on it more during the next few days.

calebpower / bukkit-webhook — Bitbucket