So I had a day off after the 24 hour battle and I wanted to make some progress on the IFPA app I’ve been wanting to write. So I have a quick proof of concept and Josh Sharpe was nice enough to give me the go ahead, so I can eventually publish this to app stores. Question is, what features do the pinball players out there want? Right now it just shows top 50, and your profile. Goal is to be able to get most or all of the info from the IFPA website, plus things like:
Get Alerted when my rank changes
see upcoming tournaments near me
star/favorite players to track their progress
Would love to hear what people want. App will be free and open source; Android and iOS
Direct profile links, updates to tournaments I’ve participated in, potentially a QR code that can send my pertinent information to a person registering me for a tournament (name, IFPA #, IFPA rank, etc.).
Quick search for a player. Type in any name and get their player number and current rank. Might save TD’s some time during registration or when submitting results.
Looks neat! In the long run, the ability to toggle between Open and Women’s rankings in the Top 50 or something would be cool. Not sure if you’d want to surface women’s ranking by open points or women’s points (or both).
Also, maybe including the user’s W-L record against other players on each player’s page? That could be fun to highlight.
I wouldn’t say never, but given that data is outside of the IFPA I probably won’t implement this directly. However it’s open source so submit a PR and who knows
MP uses camera access for scanning QR codes and geolocation in a couple of other places. No need for a native app for those APIs (and significantly less work for me)
I would suggest that it shows the overall rankings, but also the Top 50 Around your current ranking.
Most players will be interested in where they stand, and how they are moving up and down within the range around themselves.
Additionally, I would want to be able to input my region like on the ifpa calendar, and have the app show the calendar of events within X miles of my location/selected region.
Lastly, I would want to be able to tag any event in the Ifpa calendar and create some sort of “my tagged custom schedule” so I can create a calendar of upcoming events I wish to attend.