bzfscron Plug in on Windows

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happyhad
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bzfscron Plug in on Windows

Post by happyhad »

I have a Windows server (2.4.8) running at work for lunch time fun.
I am trying to use the bzfscron plug in.
According to the readme this is the way to use it

-loadplugin bzfscron,/path/to/your/bzfs/crontab

However I don't seem to be able to get it to work in Windows.

-loadplugin "C:\path\bzfscron","C:\somepath\crontab.cfg"
(with variants - no quotes, space instead of comma etc.)

Has anyone got bzfscron to run on Windows?

Thanks!
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macsforme
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Re: bzfscron Plug in on Windows

Post by macsforme »

What is the error? You might need to use the -dd option (give or take one 'd') to see it.
happyhad
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Re: bzfscron Plug in on Windows

Post by happyhad »

I have the command within my .conf file

-loadplugin "C:\Program Files (x86)\BZFlag 2.4.8\bzfscron","C:\Program Files (x86)\BZFlag 2.4.8\bzfscron.cfg"

The error is
===========================
bad argument ","C:\Program"
BZFlag server 2.4.8.20161010-MAINT-Win32VC10-SDL2 (protocol 0221) http://BZFlag.org/
Copyright (c) 1993-2016 Tim Riker
happyhad
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Re: bzfscron Plug in on Windows

Post by happyhad »

I got it to work. I had to put BZFlag in a folder path without spaces and not use quotes.
But that brings me to my next question.
I was trying to use bzfscron to perform a /savemsgs every minute.
It does not seem like that is possible unfortunately.

Thanks for the help though!
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blast
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Re: bzfscron Plug in on Windows

Post by blast »

/savemsgs is a client-side command, not a server command. Sounds like you just want logging, which bzfs can do itself. I tend to use the logDetail plugin for that with the normal bzfs debug info turned off (leave the -d's off).
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happyhad
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Re: bzfscron Plug in on Windows

Post by happyhad »

I guess it would be easier to explain what I am doing.
I am a VB.NET hack. I am sure a good program would write a plug-in for this. But here is what I am doing. It's sad but effective.

I wrote a wrapper program and put in Windows Task Scheduler. Every work day at noon it fires off this program.

This program does the following:
-Kicks off bzfs configured to the game for the day and the log is re-directed to a file (logDetail plugin is on). The game is always a timed 45 minute game (lunch time), although the game played is different each day.
-It then kicks off a client that is configured to be an observer and connects to the game.
-The wrapper program has timers in it which it does the following:
-every 10 seconds it sends keystrokes to the BZ client (/n savemsgs)
-every X seconds it takes a screen shot and writes it to a directory

-It interrogates the saved message file and looks for the string "GAME OVER". When it finds it, it goes into its final phase and does the following:
-Sends keystrokes to the client that hits the Home key, Screenshots. This captures the ammo usage. Unfortunately most users have already exited so not to valuable.
-The wrapper program then takes the log file and message file and complies stats (see the attached file)
-It takes all of this (stats file, logs and screen shots) and puts it on a network folder.

The players head out to this folder and check out the stats. Then we instant message each other a laugh at each other :D

This entire process is automated.

So if you look at the attached file, you can see that you can mine all kinds of data out of the message log. The ammo (home screen) was not entered in the attached file because that has to be manually done.

So if I had a wish list, It would be great to get the message log, the details log and the ammo info for free somehow. That is why I was hoping I could get bzfscron to do that part.

The screen shots are ok, but not really used. Although it is fun to riffle through them and see what the camera catches :D. So if I got the logs somehow, I would skip the client doing screen shots. I know you can do the replay thing, but no one here would watch them so not worth the trouble.

Pretty embarrassing programing by me, but it gets the job done.

Thanks!

Also. I noticed in 2.4.8 there where some changes to savemsgs command. So I will have to tweak my program. I like the -t option as it puts a time on each of the message. This is going to allow me to calculate something I want to get but couldn't before, and that is life span. I want to calculate what your shortest, longest and average lifespan. I would add accolades for those. Also I could possibly add time spans to the graphs.
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