Hi there, S&I'ers. I've been playing around with data persistence recently and have delved a lot deeper into scripting. One thing I noticed while doing so is that you can only load a player's data if they're in-game.
>>ex. game.Players["Player1"]:LoadString("stringdata")
This is extremely useful in a lot of cases, but it's also pretty limited. In groups, it would be a pretty cool feature if the owner of the place could simply load up any player's data on whim (assuming they have data stored in that place) and use the information given to do things like promote people. Loading any player's data whenever would also allow the owner of the place to track various statistics such as how long players averagely stay and how many KOs they have and whatnot.
My idea is instead of having to have the player in-game to load their data, there should be a new Service called "PlayerDatabase" so that any player's data can be loaded up even if they're not in-game. This service would basically allow you to access any previously stored data.
>>ex. game.PlayerDatabase["Player1"]:LoadString("stringdata")
Using this method, "Player1" doesn't have to be in-game for the owner to see Player1's data. If the owner attempts to load up data from a player but the player doesn't have data stored, it would simply return nil instead of data.
>>ex. print(game.PlayerDatabase["Player2"]:LoadString("stringdata"))
>>output: nil
Over all, this would help groups manage their members at their places easier and allow owners to check statistics from various players whom have visited their places.
FAQ:
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Q: Wouldn't the player feel uncomfortable that their data is being observed whenever they're not there?
A: It's pretty much like if someone checked your profile for your forum posts, place visits, KOs, etc. The player shouldn't feel uncomfortable with this at all.
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Q: For groups, why don't they just ask people to come in at regular times so that the place owner can check their data?
A: The biggest group on ROBLOX has over 100,000 players, and the average ones have 100-500. This method would be extremely inconvenient for both the place owner and the people in the group.
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Q: This is already doable.
A: If it is, *please* PM me. I've been looking for this for a while and have just recently concluded there's no way to do it. That's the only reason I posted this thread.
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If I made a mistake somewhere, I apologize. If you don't agree, please provide a reason.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers,
-Virtualdarks |