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In Part 1, we setup the Player SDK, tried out the test player and created a skeleton widget that can be animated on top of a World of Warcraft in-game video. Now we get into the fun part. We're going to query the WoW Armory, initially with a hardcoded player name so that we have some results that can be styled in the ViewPane. At the end of this post, the view should be functional and show some stats for a hardcoded player. In Part 3 we'll make a configuration pane which will allow an author to configure a player of their choosing.

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armory · in-game videos · MMORPG · Player SDK · widget · World of Warcraft

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Online gaming is huge and watching videos of other players to see how they play and to learn their techniques is a pretty standard activity in the gaming world. In fact, there are YouTube gaming stars like Leeroy Jenkins, Athene and Ming and many more that have in-game videos with millions of views.

What their videos are missing however is the data the gamers crave. Graham, an Overlay.TV developer and a recovering gaming addict tells me that the first thing that people want to know when they are watching an in-game video is what the players’ stats are. So if it’s a World of Warcraft (WoW) in-game video, the viewer would typically find the players’ server and player name in the title or description of the video or sometimes rendered in the video somewhere. Then, they would visit the WoW Armory and search for the players name to see all their stats. Things like the players’ guild name (their “team”), ranking and level, their weapons and a wealth of other information is provided in that portal.

Graham thought that combining this data with the video would make a great widget especially since there’s an xml feed for the data in The Armory. I completely agree. That’s what Overlay.TV is all about; interactive video where relevant information about the video is accessible right from the video. So, what I’m going to do is write a few posts about how you can use the Overlay.TV Player SDK to create a WoW widget for in-game videos. Later on, Graham is going to show you how to give the player a WoW skin. In the end we should have a really cool WoW in-game video player that you can configure to show player stats at various times and locations during playback. And since it will be built upon the player core, you’ll be able to put other widgets in the video as well like live chat so players can talk real time about the action.

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armory · in-game videos · MMORPG · Player SDK · widget · World of Warcraft