The comment I see most frequently in the comments for my BoLS posts is that people find it difficult--if not impossible--to find other players in their lcoal vicinity.

There must be a solution available to this thorny issue. It's a big Internet. I know it's out there...somewhere.  

So I'm throwing this out there for discussion:

What system would you like to see for finding local/nearby players?

To my mind, I would love to see a Google Maps-based system that scaled highlighted up to, say, 10 nearby players, where the map scale was determined by the farthest-out player, and then allowed you to zoom as needed. Obviously, the system would need to know each players location (including yours), probably as longitude and latitude.

So what do you guys think? Any developers out there who would have an idea of the feasibility of such a system? Anyone got better ideas to achieve the objective?

Talk me through it. Looking forward to reading your responses.  

There is a player finder alive somewhere, though its not a bit obscure. There was a map fromt he old SG forum. Otherwise search the interest for wargames clubs and other players
Comes down to how much effort you wish to put in, Wargamers are surprisingly lazy in that regard

BoLS should have a player locator anyway, especially now it has its forum. Indeed it would be fairly simple to use the same database from the forum memberships and personal details to fill in a global map.

Hell as I've said before BoLS should also do a php tournament record system in the same way as the EpicUK one, filled in by players themselves, for 40k and the like to store results, armylists etc and generate stats. To date I think only Epic and Bloodbowl have this (with the blood bowl one being a shocking thing of statdom, almost as horrific as the java bowl stats!)

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I think their was an Epic frappr started a while ago.

No idea if it still exists or not.

BoLS should have a player locator anyway, especially now it has its forum. Indeed it would be fairly simple to use the same database from the forum memberships and personal details to fill in a global map.

I feel it would be an opt in box on your account details bit

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If using E-Bay use this link to support Tac Com!
'Abolish red trousers?! Never! Red trousers are France!' – Eugene Etienne, War Minister, 1913
"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."
General Plumer, 191x

If you couln't see a map and instead it brought back a list of the 10 closest with distance then no actual details are revealed and it would be up to the searcher to contact those people on the list to see if they wanted to exchange address details.

e.g.

10 Nearest Epic Players

1/. GR00V3R < 1 mile
2/. The_Real_Chris  6 miles
3/. Mephiston 11 miles
4/. Jeridian > 100 miles

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

There may be some legal problems if internet forums can plaster your name and address for anyone to access without permission.

I'm sure it would be possible to obscure the details. Just have a general area, no specific addresses and have communication via a message system. Allow potential players to supply addresses and other contact information only when they're ready.

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

Should I be offended that you want me to be the furthest Epic player from you,  

Put the greatest competition furtherst away.  

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

I'd love something like this, considering it is nigh impossible to find an opponent that I don't introduce to the game.  Denver is a lonely place for Epic.  Plenty of 40K clubs, but sadly no Epic that I've found.

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Now that's a great idea--technically easier, too, with no map required.

Someone with the know-how would still need to develop an algorithm to figure out the closest players and distances (again, would need longitude and latitude for this)...but suddenly the technical feasibility went way the hell up.  

So who are the canny developer types on these forums?

I'm not sure how it would work outside of the US using postal codes, but in the US all you would really need are ZIP codes instead of longitude and latitude.

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You can do similar in the UK with postcodes.

I think though that this information is held and liscensed out by the royal mail in a system called postzon, whilst it looks to be freely availiable information in the US.

Has anybody tried looking for a lookup of position to city, in which case the nearest city may suffice?

Edit: --------------

Ok so had another brain wave, why not use a third party to calculate latitude and longitude for you eg. google maps

enter an address and the lat/long is in the URL, an example I found is below

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=....ty,+CA&
sll=37.482878,-122.258563&sspn=0.00676,0.008197&ie=UTF8&ll=37.482725,-122.253864&
spn=0.00676,0.008197&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1

The field you want is labeled "ll", and in this case it's:

ll=37.482725,-122.253864

why not set up a system wher when registering it forces you to use google aps in this way and paste in the URL, then extracts the required chunk we'd want.

All that would be required after that is as already mentioned, somebody to come up with some fancy way of mapping distance over a sphere.

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You see a mouse trap? I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge! - Scroobius Pip

Latitude and longitude are preferable for these things because they enable calculations of distance.

I'm pretty sure the Google Maps API allows for the extraction of latitude and longitude from a given address, but--not being a developer myself--I could be very, very wrong.  

Anyone able to confirm/deny?