So, as you probably all know, Barter.vg went crazy and no longer accepts logins, so new users or logged off existing users can no longer send offers.
I took it upon myself to build a basic trading system on Lestrade's this weekend.
I feared it'd be harder said than done, and of course it is.
Here's what I have that's relatively usable right now (NOT open to any users but me while I'm testing):
- Showing a create offer page to any member, where you can see a list of your matching tradables.
- Said page has checkboxes that you can click to select games. Also has a Submit button to send the list to LT's.
- Insertion of an offer into the database.
Due to a number of architectural issues, this is, err... Pretty much all I've got so far.
What's left to do:
- Allow users to select how many items from which side, like Barter does.
- Setup an expiry system.
- Notifications.
- Accept, decline, fail offer.
I don't think it'll take too long, so it's not unlikely that I can complete a really basic system before tomorrow. (Perhaps without the notifications & expiry, since both are linked and I'd rather do them properly. i.e. I may have an expiry date set, but maybe LT's won't honor it for now.)
However there are a few points that I'd like to ask opinions about.
Here's the first.
How do you feel about storing every item's ratio at the time the offer was sent/edited? Is it of any use? I was thinking, if someone sends an offer with a rare game that was just bundled and the receiver only sees it 2 days later, they might see a much worse ratio than when originally sent, and get offended (yes, I'm wary of easily offended traders). If the site indicates the original ratio (or more likely, the current ratio + the original ratio if it's different by more than 10 or 20%?), they may just consider that "well, too bad for you, your game lost value in the meantime", and decline without getting offended. My only concern with storing ratios is that it takes more database space, and in the long run could make the whole thing a bit slower. I've even made the column the smallest possible size I could get away with (3 bytes), by storing them as 2 twelve-bit numbers (that's about 4000 items max... If you have that many traders with that item in their tradables, it's pretty much infinity to me. Even 300+ is infinity to me.)
If I can remember my other concerns, I'll post them here. Also feel free to post suggestions, but only after I've released an initial version. This whole damn thing is making me very weak right now, and I need to focus.
I took it upon myself to build a basic trading system on Lestrade's this weekend.
I feared it'd be harder said than done, and of course it is.
Here's what I have that's relatively usable right now (NOT open to any users but me while I'm testing):
- Showing a create offer page to any member, where you can see a list of your matching tradables.
- Said page has checkboxes that you can click to select games. Also has a Submit button to send the list to LT's.
- Insertion of an offer into the database.
Due to a number of architectural issues, this is, err... Pretty much all I've got so far.
What's left to do:
- Allow users to select how many items from which side, like Barter does.
- Setup an expiry system.
- Notifications.
- Accept, decline, fail offer.
I don't think it'll take too long, so it's not unlikely that I can complete a really basic system before tomorrow. (Perhaps without the notifications & expiry, since both are linked and I'd rather do them properly. i.e. I may have an expiry date set, but maybe LT's won't honor it for now.)
However there are a few points that I'd like to ask opinions about.
Here's the first.
How do you feel about storing every item's ratio at the time the offer was sent/edited? Is it of any use? I was thinking, if someone sends an offer with a rare game that was just bundled and the receiver only sees it 2 days later, they might see a much worse ratio than when originally sent, and get offended (yes, I'm wary of easily offended traders). If the site indicates the original ratio (or more likely, the current ratio + the original ratio if it's different by more than 10 or 20%?), they may just consider that "well, too bad for you, your game lost value in the meantime", and decline without getting offended. My only concern with storing ratios is that it takes more database space, and in the long run could make the whole thing a bit slower. I've even made the column the smallest possible size I could get away with (3 bytes), by storing them as 2 twelve-bit numbers (that's about 4000 items max... If you have that many traders with that item in their tradables, it's pretty much infinity to me. Even 300+ is infinity to me.)
If I can remember my other concerns, I'll post them here. Also feel free to post suggestions, but only after I've released an initial version. This whole damn thing is making me very weak right now, and I need to focus.
