By: Evan "ShadowLight" Bangs

A few months ago I remember hearing from Sidewinder of the Orion Faction that Colbourne was working on some sort of personnel management system for the Orion Faction. I found that comment interesting, but didn't think much of it after the conversation. A few days later Colbourne himself approached me and offered me a preview of his new system. I was half expecting a "super roster" of sorts, but I was in for a very pleasant surprise.

Colbourne's personnel system is called "TODD", it is a community management system which is tailor made for a game like Allegiance, but will work great for any other game you can throw at it. TODD is free, it will always be free to non-profit organizations, clubs and squadrons.

One of the most useful features of TODD is the membership feature. It is broken down in to divisions, wings, and ranks. This makes managing roster information for a large squadron based game quite simple. The rosters integrate with the discussion board very well, posts can be posted to a specific wing, squadron or division or posted publicly.

The news posting component is called the "Data Feed". Administrative users can post news using the Data Feed. This is similar to Newspro in the way news is posted and updated.

Another very cool feature of TODD is the Library allowing for the creation of documents and maintenance of those documents. Similar to the Discussion board, posts in the Library can be posted to a particular division or to the public in general. This is really good for training manuals, procedural manuals, general information and anything else you see fit to post.

Any Library document, news posting, roster profile, or anything besides a post in the Discussion Board may have multiple images associated with it. The images can be uploaded using your browsers, making it very easy to attach rank insignias, player pictures and anything else you think you should share with the world.

TODD is very easily modified to your particular tastes. The layout is tailored on a theme system. Colbourne explains it quite well here:

We have a few "canned" themes available for usage, and will be publishing the specifications shortly for users and admins to create their own. Not only does the customization take care of unique fonts and colors, but also the terminology of the system. If you wish your community to refer to "wings" as legions, you will have the ability to customize it.

At the moment TODD's code isn't final. But there will not be any major release numbers, or any required upgrades. Once again, Colbourne explains it here:

Rather, the community system will constantly be evolving and improving, and all communities will enjoy the new functionality as soon as it has been properly tested. The direction of future development efforts is in a large part guided by the San Dominica Community, currently found at http://24.3.27.206/sandom. This is open to any persons interested in helping to shape the future of the TODD project, and we welcome developers, designers, testers, and anyone who has the desire to be a part of the project.

Now here is a little bit about the company behind TODD from Joe "Colbourne" Muharsky:

RealityCheck Studios was founded in July of 1999, with the goal of promoting tools for communications and collaboration. Due to the large amount of hours invested in the TODD project, the San Dominica Community currently serves as the company's homepage. In the near future, a full company page as well as a portal site to all TODD communities will be created. If you are interested in learning more about the TODD project, or wish to run your own community, you can contact me at jmuharsky@icitadel.com.

Prototype images and design information for the next major update of the TODD system are available at http://24.3.27.206/sandom. Aestetically it is greatly improved, as well as many navigational improvements. There are also some added features for better organization and customizability.

The TODD system is definitely something to keep an eye on, stay tuned to Allegiance Vault for coverage of the latest news and information on TODD and it's role in the Allegiance Community.