Manage your NARP efficiently or why I fail at blogging...

It has been some time now since I became a member of destructoid and I never got round to actually writing something on this blog. “Why, WHY!? You fkin #@!-hole” - you ask? I've been busy with important matters:

For you who don't know yet, mistic is having a NARP at the same time there is that PAX thingie. Since mistic is the only person that keeps me gaming once in a while, I wouldn't miss it for the world. Even more, I'll be helping out a lot.

Our first problem was managing everything. Since we both have some background in LAN parties, we immediately thought about using a website to do it for us. We came uppon ALP (stands for Autonomous Lan Party, notice how the word and letter count in the acronym match), a LAN intranet software packet. Software development on this project has halted since 2006 though. But do not fear, some people are working on ALP2. But that's not the matter at hand right now.

We soon noticed that ALP lacked some stuff we really needed to organise a NARP. You don't need more than 4 xbox 360 consoles lying arround, so it is always usefull to keep track off who is bringing one. And it would be even more usefull to see what (rare?) games people will be bringing. Nobody wants his stuff to go lost, so with a list of who is bringing what, we can easily keep track of who has what game at what time.
With all these extra requirements, I started off hacking (finding clever solutions to our problem :p) the old ALP site and I am still doing so as we speak. There is much to be done before it will be 'finished', but I can't wait any longer letter you all know that there will soon be a ALP modified for our needs (NARPed). Below, you will find a complete list of original (the most important) ALP features and what I have added for our console pleasure. (There is also a small TODO.)

'Old' features:
* Tournaments
* Game List (to use in tournaments)
* News
* Food
...

New features:
* Console list
* User consoles. (Mark what consoles you own, which you are bringing)
* Wanted consoles
* Top Console stats

Todo:
* User games. (Mark what games you are bringing)
* News Comments. (Say something about a news post)
* Other wanted Items (Tvs, Projectors, ...)
* Rewrite Install script

Of course, you can all go and see for yourself, the website is always evolving and changing for now. I would ask you NOT to sign up if you are not attending Euro-NARP though, I'll put a demo version online when it's finished. Until then, here are some pretty pics to keep you happy (right click < view image to see it completely)

Manage your own consoles:


List of Top owned / owners / bringers.


Game Administration


Needed consoles and controllers list


If you are interested in using this project, you can always find me on IRC and/or here. Or meet me at the Euro-NARP ofcourse! For people who plan to attend the EuroNARP, you can visit us here: http://euronarp.vstone.eu/

So now you know how it became that I was "failing at blogging" for a while... If there is enough interest in this conversion of ALP to fit our NARPs, be sure to expect more :)