Yesterday, I happened upon igoogle, which got me thinking about making some gadgets for it. Using the iigoogle gmail gadget to keep track of some PbP games I'm in gave me an idea for a social networking app to aid in running PbP/PbEM games. You'd have the app open in whatever social networking site you happen to use (facebook, bebo, myspace, okrut, igoogle). It lists the on-line games that you're in, and keeps-track of some stuff like character names, systems, and basic character stats (or just tracking common rolls) to offer a streamlined rolling interface.

Although I could make a js gadget that created random numbers and did everything, unfortunately that would not be able to rule-out cheating. What I've thus decided to do, in the interests of ruling-out cheating, is to create a PHP/MySQL dice server/verifier. As a dice rolling system isn't much without a dice roller, I decided to make that bit first. It's got a web front-end right now, but it's modular so the same dice roller will be used regardless of whether it's being called by a gadget, an app on facebook, or some standalone game running software.

It's still in its infancy, I got the web space and started coding less than 12 hours ago, but I'm quite proud of what the dice roller can do in its current state so I decided to share it with you. It does most (i think all?) of the tricks necessary for SR3 and SR4 dice rolling, and can even be tweaked for house rules.

Here ya go:
http://lilt.free-web-hosting.biz/roll.php
Unfortunately, that free hosting site seems to have disappeared. I'm now hosting it on:
http://this.actually.doesntexist.org/

I'm less interested in bugs right now, there will be lots of them. Right now I'd like some feedback on the syntax I'm using, and if there are any features you'd really like to see that I've not mentioned already.

I decided to add a main page, Lilt's Apps, where I hope to host a number of apps and gadgets linked in to the PHP dice server. I also added a bit of colour, and some google adverts. The ads are to pay for the 'donation' that 'free-web-hosting' ask for in-order to enable PHP Sendmail, amongst other things.

Once it's paid, I'll be able to enable the email dice server side of things, which is probably the most basic form of cheat-proof dice serving.

Also, if anyone has a web server they'd be willing to share, I might be willing to share my code (not yet, it's a shambles!) so that multiple identical dice servers could be on-line using the same interfaces. I could modify apps to let you choose which server you want to use for your game. Although I doubt I'd synchronise databases, it'd have the cunning effect of increasing available bandwidth.

Hi guys. I've now added database and linking capabilities, bringing my dice server somewhat in-line with Invisible Castle (perhaps beyond if you, like me, feel that my interface is better than IC's). Right now it's on-line, working, and fairly functional (particularly with respect to Shadowrun).

I'd like people to give it a try and tell me what they think about the interface, and whether there's anything they'd change. I also want to see how the server does under higher loads, so roll away.

Well, some links:
Unfortunately, the free hosting site I was previously using decided to disappear without warning. I'm now hosting it on:
http://this.actually.doesntexist.org/

• Lilt's Apps - My applets page, will hopefully eventually have a plethora of applets covering many aspects of gaming.
• Lilt's Online Gaming Dice - The basic dice roller, doesn't save the rolls to the database, can be used to get used to figure-out what roll you want to make.
• Lilt's Gaming Dice Server - The dice server, saves the rolls made to the database along with some other information
• Lilt's Gaming Dice Database - The database lookup page. Allows you to search by roll ID, Game, Character, Dice rolled, roll info, or by matching IPs
• Feedback and FAQ. - Somewhere to submit feedback on the dice roller, or ask questions concerning it.

Unfortunately, my free hosting site seems to have vanished without warning. I've put my backups onto another server, here, and made a ba few bug fixes whilst I was at it.