I rewrote my Node.js twitter listener for the chrome extension, only to find that the pso2_emg_bot had mysteriously stopped posting new EQ's shortly after. A day or two later who ever is managing it posted that it wasn't working well some reason. I figured I might as well make something to either replace or at least complement twitter bot for the chrome extension.

Here's what I have:

Images:
Spoiler!

Before I had everything hard coded into the chrome extension which was a pain in the ass, so I moved everything over to a database, parse the data on the server and have the client grab the appropriate text message and image from the server as necessary.

Spoiler!

This is what I'm adding, and why I didn't do this a lot sooner. I was thinking that with players from all over the world, I'd need to have everyone convert the time to JST and then post the time and date. When I realized is that EQ's always come on the approaching hour, which means I can check the time the tweet was created, see if the text in the tweet matches an appropriate time span for the EQ and adjust the status of the chrome/firefox extensions accordingly.

What I need:
So basically what I need for each tweet are three things:
  • a tag (thinking '#pso2_eq') or some way to screen for appropriate tweets
  • a ship. Ship02, ect with two digits for the ship number
  • an EQ name to check against the database.


For the EQ name I'm thinking it might be easy to have an abbreviated list to go by. "swirl", "falz", "elder", ect. or some single word to differentiate each EQ. A sample tweet would look like:

Quote Originally Posted by PsowKion
Ship01 falz #pso2_eq
Application:
One thing that I'm probably over worried about is that having this on a tag means that anyone, or possibly small group of people could troll the system. At this point something is better than nothing and it's possible to troubleshoot along the way, but is there a certain approach that would be preferable?

There are a few variations I'm considering:
  • A tag and have the EQ set after a certain number of posts
  • have a set of trusted accounts that can set an EQ in one tweet
  • have a web form for certain users to set the EQ
  • (ideally)work with Aida to make a desktop client for the task bar for either everyone, or a group of trusted users
  • Or all of the above and use a combination of methods so that nothing is missed


Feedback:
So thoughts? Ideas? What would be an easy way to post? What abbreviations would works well? Which approach would you prefer? And can someone help me fill in the announcement and effective times for the EQ times in the second image in the spoiler box above?