[New] EMC Market Buy/Sell Portal - Suggestions/Bug Reports

Shoppers:
Are you tired of searching through shop after shop with no chests and no stock? Do you end up just getting it yourself or overpaying for your items simply to get the process over with?

Find out who sell it the cheapest in seconds!

Suppliers:
Do you end up spending too much time finding someone who wants to buy your items? Do you miss out on income because you sell for less?

Find out who pays the most for your items in seconds!

Store Owners:
Don't miss customers who are searching for what you're selling! Adding your shop has never been easier with the bulk add and auto-reader tools!

List your shop and start getting more customers today!

Mall Owners:
Don't miss great deals and the opportunity to attract new customers! Adding your deals has never been easier with the bulk add and auto-reader tools!

List your key items and start getting customers/suppliers today!

There are hundreds of shops in EmpireMinecraft, and this website endeavors to organize all the information into one place! Use it to find what you need, and sell things you don't. Use it to earn money and get what you need for your projects faster and cheaper!

http://www.azoundria.com/emc/market/

The listings are wide open and anyone can contribute knowledge! If you know a good place to buy a certain product please add it. If a listing is wrong, please correct it! If a listed product is out of stock or no longer sold, please remove it. You can also automatically contribute your knowledge from your rupee history with the Auto-Reader tool. Give it a try!

I'll see you on the site! Be sure to drop back and give your thoughts here!

I think Jackbiggin is working on the exact same thing.

yes

Does he have a prototype?

Kind of. Check out his profile page. He has information about it there.

like like

I've checked his out and I feel mine will be different.

My interface will be simple like Google. You type the product you want and it will fill it in. Then you click Buy/Sell. The search bar is an off-to-the-side feature on his site, but will be central to mine.

Secondly, mine will focus on bulk buying/selling, not micro-shops. For example, if you need something for a specific purpose then you place an order for what you need and others will fill it.

If you produce a certain product, you can find people who want to buy it, already in an auction format so you can sell to the highest bidder.

I think making one would be great and I see no reason why we can't have options. Feel free to do i if you think yours will work.

If someone can help me get icons (64x64, 32x32, 16x16) of every item in the game that would be awesome and help me put things together faster.

I have basic html/javascript skills. I can help with some of the stuff if you want.
For icons, try looking in your .minecraft folder or in a vanilla resource pack.

Okay I built a basic prototype which is essentially functional:

http://azoundria.com/emc/market/

I would like to get some feedback on the ease of use. If someone who has a shop could try to list their items that would be great and give some useful feedback. I know that most items are not yet listed.

It's genius, but if it becomes popular enough, "physical" shops will be an outdated thing :\
It's a great tool, though. Very simple, lean, any noob can figure it out.
Quartz blocks were missing from the dropdown menu.
Edit: All the storage blocks are missing, is that deliberate, to condense blocks/minerals into one category?

I have no idea how hard this would be, but I think it could benefit from having the actual sales display some information when opened. For example:
I type "wood" into the box, and I sort by price (which will maybe be too good of a tool)...scroll down and click on "Dark Oak Logs - 2000r - DC - fishmeal." Now, there is a tool of some kind for selecting quantity or bidding (you mentioned auction format, which i kind of like). Also, there should be an optional picture of my sweet stone tower shop and my name in bold letters with "/v fishmeal on smp1." That way the tool is connecting players as much as the market.

Would EMC back you on this? Like if someone does not pay or deliver, will anything be done?

Sorry for so much incoherent typing. Good idea though.

Search bar is good if you are looking for a particular item. I would definately use this.

If someone is interested in browsing for good deals it would be tiresome entering each item individually. It would be helpful to also have drop-down selection boxes for specific categories. For example, select Raw Commodities from one drop down box, Gems and Ores from the next, then Diamonds from the next. With each selection it would narrow the number of results displayed.

Also add field for SMP#. (Edit: I finally found an item to display search results and see that SMP# does display. Does this populate automatically based on the Residence #?)

Edit: Add a FAQ page.

Edit: Add Date Listed (or Updated, or both) field so you know when Qty was last updated by shop owner.

I think the most apparent potential issue is: How do you keep the Amount Available updated? If you are relying on people keeping their listings up-to-date, you will need to have some way to deal with inaccurate listings. The same frustration can occur as happens from trying to find new shops via the /v +shop command and being taken to shops which have not been kept stocked.

I don't see the point in buying/selling by block as it's basically 9 of the commodity. If you are buying/selling a block, you can just list 9 times as many of the item. I don't want users to have to search through diamonds and diamond blocks to find the best deal. So deliberate for now. But I do have a long-term solution.

Items are already sorted by price. I do plan to have generic categories such as 'logs', 'sapling', 'wood', 'leaves', 'stone', 'wool' in case you just want to find the cheapest item in a category. I haven't built that yet, but it is where I'm headed in the future. It would be a quick way to find deals if you aren't picky about the type.

So far the only connection to the game is the residence number on the listing. I plan to add usernames shortly.

I'm trying to understand your point about categories. Can you explain the specific use case where it applies? For example, I usually think someone is shopping for a specific item. What exactly is a 'good deal'? Are you wanting to simultaneously look up the best deals on more than one item?

Yes, the SMP# is automatic. I reverse engineered the res# to populate it.

A FAQ page is good. What questions should I feature?

I will add date listed. Right now entries stay for 48 hours before disappearing. I intend that in the future users can report sold out listings.

My Suggestions:

Set text decoration on the text in forms to none (that way it doesn't look like you're trying to highlight things you aren't going to)

Widen the Buy | Sell toggle buttons -> make it so the colour also changes of the button, so someone will know which they have selected.

copy this icon and make it into a favicon.ico ... then add a favicon link onto your page (so an image shows up in tab)

Change the search queue system so that only the blocks that 'start' with the letter he/she types will be listed... it listing all words that have an a in it... for example (black wool) ... shouldn't be a word that starts with an a... so shouldn't be listed.

make a few if statement with the update and add recordsets to form databases ...

if quantity is void or 0 set it by default to 1

if price is void or 0 set it by default to say free

if res number is less than 0 or say 0-99 or (one of the other res numbers that don't exist) ... have it validate this to make sure the number is between the actual res number amounts (else don't submit it)

if player is void or (if you had access to the database, you could have it check to see if the player has played before - to see if he/she is an actual player) .... but that should be something else that needs validated before submission is allowed.

also - some of the pages may get a bit long - so on bottom right of screen, you may want to add a 'return to top' button

one more thing... on the add your shop page... you could add a check box next to each item... so he/she checks what they want to add, instead of it having to validate each of the 4 boxes to the right of it...

other then these things, it's a good start

Oh, cool! I will use this!

Sounds like you're definitely on the right track.
To answer your original question: yes, I would use it.

Can you show me what you are seeing? I don't see any underline or similar?

Buttons widened. (That was actually configurable.) I don't understand the colour change. You click the appropriate button after you enter your search, so there's no selecting. I could have a select, but I think it would just be an extra click.

That icon is used when there's no icon for the block. I didn't intend it to be a logo. I think I will probably want something more appropriate than a question mark... I have to think on which icon I want to use. Diamonds are totally overused... Gold would be great as it's a market but it isn't a hot item. (In fact, nobody even searched for gold yet.) But yes an icon would be great! I can't decide so I made it randomized.

I thought about this - but how about if I want to find 'wool'? I would type 'w' and not see 'Black Wool' for example... Or I may wish to search for an ore. Ender eyes versus eyes of ender? If I type 'ben' I expect to find 'Workbench'. That's why a partial match is useful. Matches that start with the search query will always show up first and I see no disadvantage to more matches.

For the most part, what I've done is to get a working prototype that people can play around with and test the usability. I know it doesn't validate some of the fields yet. Testing residence numbers can probably only be done through the EMC site itself. Luckily it's easy enough to query who owns what.

All in all, this is stuff that takes a bit of time and I wanted to get things out quickly but obviously it's in the plan.

Suggestion: As Jack's does/will have, it should have some sort of timer and anti-spam to ensure that it's not misused or outdated

Is there an edit button anywhere? What if someone has made a mistake or changed his mind on item type/price/quantity.. how to change it once it has been added to the listing?