MMORPG Inventory/Sales Tracking Tool (1 Viewer)

DataDoggy

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Hello everyone! A few friends of mine and I have been working on an inventory and sales management tool for a game we play. We're having some difficulty due to our inexperience with Microsoft Access and the unique tracking and inventory distribution we're trying to implement and manage.

To clarify what we're doing: We're playing an MMORPG that has groups consisting of multiple players to attend an event to generate items that can be sold for gold. We'd like to track the group attendance and the items sold for gold, and associate the gold earned with each player as unique player accounts, as well as a total guild bank account. We want to be able to associate the item sales with each event/player in order to track their accumulated donations as well as what they are owed. We're trying to create an accountable and transparent foundation for our guild and its members.

Here is the process in which we'd like to track:

1: Log the players that attends an event.
2: Log the item(s)generated from that event.
3. Log player decision to donate their share to guild bank or keep for themselves (split).
4: Log the sales for guild bank items.

Ideally, we'd like this all to be automated, where the only manually entries would be the steps listed above: Event/Participants, Items, Donate/Split (per player), Sales.

Any support is greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for any consideration!
 

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  • game_inventory_tracker.zip
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Ranman256

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the zip file does not open....invalid.
 

The_Doc_Man

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In general, Access has a steep learning curve after which things can start to fall in place. I am going to make some oblique suggestions to show you WHERE to look for information that will help you. I will suggest some reading topics.

This forum's SEARCH feature is quite decent. Look on the thin ribbon near the top of the page just under the box where it shows your login name. That is like a menu bar. Third from the right, you will see the Search item.

1. From the forum's Search, look for "Normalization" but for a general web search, look for "Database Normalization"

2. From the forum's Search, look for "Inventory" and "Invoicing" or "Invoices"

3. From the forum's Search, look for "Junction Table" and "JOIN Query"

4. From the forum's Search, look for "modeling" or "business model"

The idea is that you need to design a database to hold what you want to track. I will also give you two "guideline" type of rules, which I call the "Old Programmer's Rules."

Rule #1 - If you can't do it on paper, you can't do it in Access. Meaning, if you don't have a good feel for data flow, perhaps with a little diagram showing relationships and data flow for the process, you aren't ready to build anything in Access. It takes some up-front design work to get ready and without that up-front work, you won't go very far.

Think of Access as a power tool like a drill or a power saw. You use these tools to build furniture, but the tools won't do it by themselves. YOU do the building. The tools just bring it together faster. BUT it means you have to know what you want to build because Access won't do it for you.

Rule #2 - Access won't tell you anything you didn't tell it first. Meaning, if you want XYZ as one of your outputs, either XYZ must be an input, or you must have X, Y, and Z as inputs and give Access the formula to compute XYZ from its components. This sometimes means you must work backwards by knowing what you want OUT of Access and then verifying that Access has a way to know that.

Both of these rules probably make you think that it will take a while for the up-front design work. To which my comment is "Yes."
 

DataDoggy

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the zip file does not open....invalid.

Change the file extension to "RAR" and retry, please. Forum doesn't support RAR, but it supports ZIP. I had to change the RAR file format to ZIP, though it opened fine on my PC.

In general, Access has a steep learning curve after which things can start to fall in place. I am going to make some oblique suggestions to show you WHERE to look for information that will help you. I will suggest some reading topics.

This forum's SEARCH feature is quite decent. Look on the thin ribbon near the top of the page just under the box where it shows your login name. That is like a menu bar. Third from the right, you will see the Search item.

1. From the forum's Search, look for "Normalization" but for a general web search, look for "Database Normalization"

2. From the forum's Search, look for "Inventory" and "Invoicing" or "Invoices"

3. From the forum's Search, look for "Junction Table" and "JOIN Query"

4. From the forum's Search, look for "modeling" or "business model"

The idea is that you need to design a database to hold what you want to track. I will also give you two "guideline" type of rules, which I call the "Old Programmer's Rules."

Rule #1 - If you can't do it on paper, you can't do it in Access. Meaning, if you don't have a good feel for data flow, perhaps with a little diagram showing relationships and data flow for the process, you aren't ready to build anything in Access. It takes some up-front design work to get ready and without that up-front work, you won't go very far.

Think of Access as a power tool like a drill or a power saw. You use these tools to build furniture, but the tools won't do it by themselves. YOU do the building. The tools just bring it together faster. BUT it means you have to know what you want to build because Access won't do it for you.

Rule #2 - Access won't tell you anything you didn't tell it first. Meaning, if you want XYZ as one of your outputs, either XYZ must be an input, or you must have X, Y, and Z as inputs and give Access the formula to compute XYZ from its components. This sometimes means you must work backwards by knowing what you want OUT of Access and then verifying that Access has a way to know that.

Both of these rules probably make you think that it will take a while for the up-front design work. To which my comment is "Yes."

Thank you, I will use those search suggestions. Would you be willing to look at the file we've been working on and hint at some flaws or confirm we're on the right track? I appreciate the support.
 

The_Doc_Man

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You are welcome for the suggestions. I look at .PNG files sometimes but I almost never open someone else's database files. An old habit, hard to break, and I came by it the hard and painful way.

Besides, making my suggestions for your files doesn't generally work right in the long run. No other reason than that YOU have been working on the project; YOU know what you want out; YOU know HOW you want it out. I'm an outsider looking in. I don't have the mental image that you have (or at least should have). So my suggestions will be off the mark.

Also, my schedule is not dependable because I have grandpa duty for my youngest grandson, and when he's around, HE uses this computer to the exclusion of everyone else. So when the runt of the litter is playing, I can't easily get to anything. (Yes, we DID spoil him rotten. We're grandparents. It's in our contract.)
 

DataDoggy

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Does anyone have any tips or hints to help towards getting us on the right path? Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you!
 

JHB

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Change the file extension to "RAR" and retry, please. Forum doesn't support RAR, but it supports ZIP. I had to change the RAR file format to ZIP, though it opened fine on my PC.
Have you looked at what The_Doc_Man suggested and if yes, what do you not understand?
Maybe you should start making a real zip file.
The members here are not making the program for you, but helping you if you've a specific problem!
 

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