Creating an ATM

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently planning on developing a website somewhat similar to SLExchange and other SL ecommerce services. I'm planning on working with a developer who will most likely work in PHP and MySQL. However, they're extremely unfamiliar with SL and it's coding environment. Unfortunately, I am too, which means that between the two of us, we're relatively unsure of how to integrate features of an in-world ATM into our website at large.

I'll give you a basic idea of the functions our ATM will need to have:

- Upon click, it will need to verify the user's state. This will either be:
• No Account
• Confirmation Required
• Fully Registered

- New users (who will need to sign up on the website) will have to verify their password in-world before their account is complete. They do this by clicking on the ATM, and getting prompted for their password. (This is what "Confirmation Required" means.)

- Once users confirm their password, they'll be fully registered members. (This change needs to be reflected on our web server as well.)

- Registered users can do three things: view their balance, add funds, and withdrawal funds. Again, all these changes need to automatically be updated on our site.


I have a few simple questions:
• How difficult would this be for someone to make who has experience programming, but not specifically in SL?
• What programming languages are important for making this kind of interaction work?
• About how much work would a machine like this require?
• Are there any other important issues to consider?

Thanks, and I appreciate any help you may be able to offer.


-Hummus

IIRC there is a free ATM system already available in SL, that you may want to check out for start. Was it Hank Ramos' ? I don't remember for sure

I am not sure how well another site would do but good luck to you on that one. There are already atleast 3 of these services with varrying degrees of success.

As far as difficulty I would consider hiring someone who is familiar with LSL. A networked vending/atm system could get pretty ugly if done wrong. People are pretty unforgiving when it comes to money.

The programming language you use outside of SL is not really all that important as long as it can handle parsing email and communicating via xml-rpc. Wouldn't need email at all if it wasn't for the fact that you can't initiate xml-rpc from within world without hacks. I imagine if the project is supposed to ever go anywhere your existing web developer can probably already manage it in whatever language and tools he is comfortable with.

The amount of work required depends on how you implement it really. This is really where the free atm and some example inworld/outworld scripts would make very good reference for you. If the in world atm is well written then it can actually be pretty simple. It just needs redundant checks to make sure the outworld server knows what money is going where. The vending system is actually going to be the more advanced part of your project I'd guess.


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Blain Candour is a total n00b and everything he tells you should be taken with a huge pile of salt. Especially when he refers to himself in third person!

Too true; to my knowledge nobody has made a reliable ATM without very specific LSL knowledge any probably some detailed technical support from LL.

I also agree that the market appears near saturation, so you are working uphill from the start. Good luck.