Drupal Talk

This list is partly to inform interested others of my personal Drupal plans this month, partly to get feedback, and partly as a reminder for myself when I see my blog. The order is roughly in order of priority for me. We'll see how it actually pans out...

• Finish writing Drupal Multimedia! (I've finished 10 of 12 chapters, so I'm on the home stretch...)
• Upgrade Embedded Media Field to Drupal 6. (There are several folks working on this, who have been instrumental in current progress.)
• Write the engine for 5 Second Game. (Morbus Iff has jumped on board as a co-developer, helping to ensure the highest quality for this fun project!)
• Expand GetID3 functionality. (Thanks to Rob Loach for his ideas and push to get that going. The next stage of development for this is to create an API to better handle Metatag storage.)
• Make a tutorial for XSPF Playlist + Views recipe. (I just finished writing an awesome tutorial for this in the book, but want to make a video tutorial available, probably for Drupal Dojo.)

There are other projects on the back-burner I'd like to get to as well, such as upgrading some of the other modules I work on, creating official releases, etc. I plan to revise this list next month, and see where things are.

...will be on mobile phones...

EVERY MINUTE 1,000 people around the world sign up for a cellphone. (Found at the NY Times)

I just learned about Singularity, an online web developer's conference schedule for October. Not to be confused with the Singularity, our potential post-human future.

This conference will feature many renowned speakers, such as Tim O'Reilly and developers from CERN, Yahoo, EA, Linden Lab (SL), and other influential organizations.

A quick search on the site for Drupal doesn't show anything. With its focus on a vision of the future of the Web, I think it's important that Drupal be represented there. Any chance we could get Dries to offer to speak? If not him, who else would be a good candidate? Robert Douglass? One of the Lullabots?

Or maybe we could swarm the conference. Drupal is, after all, the future of the Web...

So I have recently implemented and committed RPG Achieve in the RPG module series for Drupal. This allows games to record achievements of players, such as "You have slain 14 dragons", or "You were the first to summit Ploggers Peak". Next in that progression will be RPG Quest, which will allow achievements to be grouped together.

I've begun implementing achievements in Spindowners, an upcoming sci-fi RPG being built with the RPG module. The game's shaping up nicely, and is currently in a closed Alpha. It's nearly ready for an open Alpha, with one character class at least.

Achievements may be defined in the administration pages, or through rulesets. Once defined, you only need to call rpg_achieve_set("achievement_1", $pc) to set the achievement. Each achievement has fine-tuned permissions, so that they may be visible to the player or not, and whether or not a message of achievement is sent, for instance. Obviously, each player character has their own achievements. Once Views 2 is out and RPG is ported to d6, I'll also hook it into the upcoming RPG Views.

Other new changes: I've ripped out the definitions from Rulesets into their own .inc files, for automatic inclusion on import, since those will only be called once. It's easy to limit character classes for user roles, etc., now, with hook_rpg_pc_types. I'm also in the middle of defining a few more useful core objects in Drudge, such as "Shuffled Event Lists" (which spout out occasional messages when appropriate, such as "A hawk cries in the distance," or "A meteor shoots across the night sky"). Along these lines, I've introduced rpg_trigger_all('event_name'), which will call rpg_trigger for all objects in scope.

Scope is another new thing, necessary for events to work properly. Now, when each event is called, the $rpg['scope'] array will hold all objects in scope for that event. By default, that will be the pc, the pc's containing room, and any objects invoked during an action. Other objects may be added or removed manually, but that should be sufficient in most cases.

Next on my plate: the holy grail: a single game page that never reloads, instead reloading just the blocks as needed. This allows for the creation of neato game UI's, battle music, and the ever-popular ad block from hell...

IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY, make a character at Drupal RPG. It's fun! Pointless right now, but you can see what all the fuss is about. Make sure to check out the snowbank for fun things to do...

Aaron Winborn
AaronWinborn.com (my blog)
Drupal RPG (home for the RPG module)
Spindowners (an upcoming sci-fi game built with the RPG module, currently in closed alpha)
Advomatic (my day job, a really cool place to work)

I made an official release for the jQuery Media module. This is a wrapper for the jQuery Media plugin. I have made this a full featured module, an aid for developers and themers. We are using it for the audio clips of Air America Radio.

From its help page:

The jQuery Media plugin will turn links to media into their embedded media equivalents, or into a modal overlay embedding the media when the link is clicked. Installing and configuring the module is only the first step: you must also manually theme the output of links in order to enjoy the benefits of this plugin.

Theming is outside of the scope of this help page. You might look at Drupal's Theme Developer's Guide for more information. However, once you are ready to theme your elements, you only need to add a class and invoke this plugin. For instance, if you have a File Field with a video, simply use something like the following:

You may override the global defaults of this plugin when configuring. Additionally, you may override a global default on a case-by-case basis by including the override in an options array when invoking the plugin. For instance, you might override the background color of players on a specific page with

This will override the defaults of the plugin for every media link on that page, which may in turn override those individually (more on that later).

The full array of global overrides are as follows:

• 'flvplayer' => The path to the Flash Video Player to be used, such as the JW FLV Player or Wimpy Rave.
• 'mp3player' => The path to the MP3 Audio Player to be used, such as the JW FLV Player or Wimpy MP3 Player.
• 'boxtitle' => When using the MediaBox option (the modal overlay), this will be the title displayed on that box after clicking the link.
• 'loadingimage' => When using the MediaBox option, the path to this image will be displayed while loading the media after clicking the link.
• 'media width' => The width the media will be displayed as.
• 'media height' => The height the media will be displayed as.
• 'mediabox width' => The width the MediaBox will be displayed as.
• 'mediabox height' => The height the MediaBox will be displayed as.
• 'autoplay' => If TRUE, then play the media as soon as loading it.
• 'bgcolor' => This will be the background color for the media player, in hexidecimal code (#RRGGBB).
• 'invoke media' => If TRUE, then cause all links with the 'media class' to automatically be turned into embedded media when invoking the plugin.
• 'invoke mediabox' => If TRUE, then cause all links with the 'mediabox class' to automatically display a modal overlay box when clicked.
• 'media class' => The class that will be turned into embedded media on invocation. It uses jQuery CSS notation, so should be something like 'a.media' for links.
• 'mediabox class' => The class that will display a modal overlay box when clicked on invocation. It uses jQuery CSS notation, so should be something like 'a.mediabox' for links.

Finally, you may override a global setting on an individual basis. The customizations here are extensive, and rather than repeating that here, you are directed to the jQuery Media homepage for more information. As an example, you might set the size of a specific file with the following, while leaving any other jquery media links on the page at their default. (Note that we change the class away from the default 'media' in this example. It also assumes we've already invoked it as above.):

Note that by default, the module will add its default overrides inline. However, you may set it to output them to a dynamic javascript file, and may additionally wish to set the defaults to a static js file, once development is complete. You can alter those settings when configuring the module.