bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

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bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by strayer »

Hiho,

I first wanted to rewrite the frontend of my (not that new) site, but as it seems there's a lack of motivation from my side.
So...for those who didn't know so far...there is another BZFlag stats site out there: http://bzstats.strayer.de

In principle, this site is just a combination of David_V's (aka smalltux) online player stats with league player/team finder and Noddleman's "got stats?".
You may notice that the site isn't fast or well thought out, but it was originally planned to be a proof of concept only. The breakdown of David's site and the increasing request of players for the possibility to find players and/or teams of different leagues caused my publishing it. Unfortunately, my work on rewriting the site got stuck. The table structure behind the site is already revised, but the whole frontend is..erm..still the old one. :o)
So the site isn't as userfriendly, fast and comprehensive (many features aren't implemented) as planned for the final version.

However...for those who were not aware of this site...now you know.

Actually, I call it BZstats, but I know that there already exists a SF project with the same name. I'm not creative, so no other name came in my mind.

For those who are interested in using the data I collect(ed)...I wrote a data export script that should fullfill nearly every kind of request you can think of. Have a look a short documentation site I wrote and contact me if you want to access the data. The kind of allowed requests, available data and the ways it works is explained there. Keep in mind that the database is refreshed in a period of 5min and that my English isn't the best...

Even though the site is more a testing site, many others helped me with it in different ways:
- [dmp] > hosts the site and it's data base now (he spent enough time to let it work on his server, believe me :o)
- menotume > wrote the export script for the web-league code
- league admins > ...for hosting meno's script and allowing to request the data (special thanks to Zongo who had more work with it than the others)
- Skeeve > gave me the javascript code to convert all times into players' local time and caused me to write the data export script
- kierra, SportChick, Chestal > had a look at the site and gave some helpful suggestions (ordered descending by...erm...alphabet ^^)
- server owners > ...for not blocking my script requests ;o)
- all the players I forgot...

That's it so far...have a nice day... :o)
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Post by strayer »

Hiho,

as written before, bzstats.strayer.de was a proof of concept only. During the last months I worked on the "real" BZstats which reached a point where it's useable now. So I replaced the old one (which can still be found at strayer.de/bzstats_old/).

What is different to the concept website?
1) While the concept used a data collection that contained only some statistical data, the new BZstats log nearly everything. That means both collections are not compatible and the new one allows nearly everything you can think of. (Who played when, against which other players, reached a final score of X on server Y, player X sessions, spent X minutes for team Y on server Z, is normally online on XXXday during the Yth hour...)
2) You can login via the global BZFlag login which allows you to create a buddy list (as known from myTLZ) and modify the player and server lists for you.
3) Data of known match servers can be refreshed manually (via special link).
4) The section "BZinfo" contains some more or less informative stuff.
5) There are a few more information about leagues and their players.
6) A more flexible HTML-CSS construct. > XHTML 1.1 and different CSS files
7) An very easy way to add more languages to the site (by including 2 files and changing one line of the code only).

What is planned to be done next?
1) Allow players to change league information and add/change/delete match servers for the leagues they are members of.
2) Allow special players to change other users' permissions (for the web page) and settings (as the max. number of buddies).
3) Add all BZFlag information that are already available at strayer.de now.
4) Add associations between changelog entries, players and SF.net devs.
5) Add relations between the single sites of the section "BZinfo"..means: get these information for a choosen BZFlag release only, if wanted.
6) Add much more player and server stats.
7) Add code to download server maps and to show a radar like image in server stats
...

Additional notes:
1) I know that the sites are not XHTML 1.1 valid, because I'm using the attribute "target" for external links which isn't allowed for "a" tags any longer.
2) The load time of the BZstats sites are sometimes really high. That is the result of many other web pages on this server, crawling bots and database updates (for the data). Finally, I have to admit that bzstats.strayer.de and strayer.de require more server ressources than other websites...blame on me. :o|
3) If you have any questions and don't find and answer in the "FAQs" section or you have suggestions or bug reports...you are welcome to send me an email or PM.


so far so good...
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Post by Travis[HUN] »

Its really-really helpful and nice strayer!!
Much better than the 1st ;);)
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Post by the sorting hat »

I love it!

It's great!
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Post by Green Manalishi »

good job! some of the new features i have seen are pretty cool. :0)
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Post by strayer »

Good to see that you like it...and thx for the feedback. ;o)
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Post by Tanner »

Nice job strayer! Really neat.

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Post by strayer »

From time to time (even when I don't have the time ^^) I feel I should add something new to the section "BZinfo". In most cases it's some kind of information that comes out of the source code files. Therefore I'm writing a code snippet that extracts the needed stuff out of the source files and inserts/updates it in my database. These snippets are executed at least once a day.
Actually, "ChangeLog", "History", "Developers" (in parts), "Flags", "Key Mapping" and "BZFS Options" work in this way.

Now, my question is: Is anybody using that stuff or is interested in something?
I know that some parts are available via the new wiki sites too. The advantage of the wiki is the more of information you get, because all I can deliver is what I get from the source files. But a pro for an automated info collection, my code snippets are doing, is the up-to-date data...which doesn't need a correction when something changes. (Btw, I'm aware that some parts of my BZinfo stuff found it's way into the wiki pages...which is good. ;o)

Further information that would make sense to extract out of the source files, I can think of, are:
- slash commands (client side, server side, server side ban) which are already in the wiki
- default client options settings for graphics etc.
- client (command line) options

So, regarding to the question above...do you think it makes sense to add further stuff like the current information into the section "BZinfo"?
(These code snippets filled somwhat around 1000 lines of code and I try to find out if further lines would be useful or not.)

Thx,
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Post by Ralph »

I'd like to know what some of the stats fields mean. "Strength" for instance. I seem to have a big minus number, which is fair, 'cause I'm crap. But then I look up another player who appears to be a master on the server where I've seen them, and I see they have a a big minus number too. Me confused.

All the fields should be described, in the FAQ perhaps?
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Post by strayer »

Hi Ralph,
thank you for your post.
I hoped all field names would explain thereself. But you are right that I should had made clear what "strength index" means...seems I forgot this in the FAQs...sorry.
The "strength index" is a rather simple way to show a player's strength. It's calculated with the formula:
((wins - losses) / wins) * |(wins - losses) / 2|

What else should be explained? I'm sure the rest is easy to understand, but I know I'm blind for things I did. ^^

I'll add this description to the FAQs during the weekend. I'll change to another way of strength measurement or add others during the next 'I have too much time'-period. :o)
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Post by Ralph »

Thanks for the reply, Strayer.

I think what added to my confusion is that I have a slightly +ve strength index here (http://my.bzflag.org/playerinfo.php?callsign=ralph) and a hugely -ve strength index at your site (http://bzstats.strayer.de/players/stats ... ph&lang=en). I think you have it right, BTW. :-)

What could be nice is to have some graphing of strength index over time. Then I could follow my development path from noob to below-average-competency to senility.
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Post by TD-Linux »

Wow, I first looked at this today, and it is great! I don't really like the theme, but that's OK considering all the features it has! Winny is working on redoing bzflag.org, maybe you should talk to him about integrating your stats into the official site? However, because the official site is on Sourceforge, you would need some kind of communication with my.bzflag.org for that to work (assuming you put your stats on my.bzflag.org).
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Post by learner »

That is a very nice site, nice work.. I would hope/suggest/encourage that you integrate your improvements into the main stats site (i.e. http://stats.bzflag.org/. Please feel free to stop by the IRC channel to talk if you're interested in doing that..

TD, for what it's worth, the new site will likely not be hosted on SF any longer. We're looking to consolidate so that we have more flexibility and control, plus just the ability to integrate all of the various web services better.
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Post by strayer »

Ralph
Sorry for the late reply..but here is a short explanation of the different strength indices.
While I'm using all cumulated session scores to calculate the current shown "strength index" (since October 2006), my.bzflag.org shows the highest and lowest strength indices measured (since 2003!).
Your idea of having a graph that shows how your strength developed over the last sessions, days, weeks, months... is really good. But beside choosing the term it's also a question if this makes sense to use this "strength index". Thinkable are also "kill ratio" or "elo rating strength". You see, it's not easy to decide what should be shown, because it should make sense. Tell me what you'ld prefer (and why) and I'll implement it when you convince me. ;o)

TD-Linux
Thanks for the flowers. :) I don't really like the main theme too, so I tried my luck with a few others. If there isn't one you like, you are very welcome to create one on your own and I'll definitely add it to the BZstats site as long as it works for more than just one browser.


TD-Linux + learner
"Integrating" can have different meanings...just using the data (I've an interface running for accessing my data), taking over a modified version of my scripts or using some parts of the/my current BZstats.

I see two real problems in using my current BZstats scripts for my.bzflag.org/stats.bzflag.org:

1 - long run saving of the data
Actually, m.b.o is just saving a few information for "eternity". For the BZstats I'm storing all sessions (time slices would waste too much db space). This results in a more of needed hard disk space ressources...around 500-600 MB per year. I'm not sure if it's worth it or makes sense. It's finally the decision of the community leaders/server owner/.. . But it seems most players are much more interested in live stats than in long term analyses.

2 - the way of getting the data
I'm using 100% PHP code, because it is easy to learn, to maintain and all webhosters offer it. Unfortunately, PHP doesn't support mutli-threading like Ruby, Perl, Java, and others (I prefer these three for collecting data in future) and it isn't planned to implement it in near future (definitely no plans for PHPv6). This means my scripts have to be rewritten anyway if you want to have a system that works in 10 years and with more servers/players without increasing the execution time to X minutes. This is the problem with my current BZstats system. Now, the scripts need around one minute to query all servers with players and to enter the information into the database. I don't know if this is really acceptable, because it would be much faster with parallel executed threads (for server queries).
For m.b.o I'ld suggest to use the information the list server gets from the servers. This will allow to use real live stats instead of querying the servers only from time to time. Someone (I think it was menotume) told me that the list server already gets the information when a new player joins a server (together with the info who is it). I'm not shure about this or if the server also tells the list server when player X leaves the server. Maybe the server code has to be changed a little to deliver the needed data...I don't know. However...here you could have a way to get the best thinkable solution for BZFlag statistics.

Anyway, I see it as an advantage merging my external stats with the official stats. More people can work on it and they can concentrate on a system with many useful features, instead of writing many similar web applications with basic functions.
I'll show up in the #bzflag channel next time, but I wanted to drop a line (ok, a few more ^^) to explain how I see the current situtation.
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Re: bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by strayer »

I guess it's time for an update ... after 21 months. :o)
  • The site is still running.
  • All BZFlag-related stuff from strayer.de has been moved.
  • More features were added:
    • activity graphs for servers
    • activity graphs for players (suggested by AlliedArmour)
    • additional BZinfo items
    • geo-ip-targetting information for servers
    • support for league tournaments
    • enhancements for the BZstats's own fallback list server
    • support for 2.99 (3.0 test) servers
  • Some leagues were added, some were removed.
  • Much more global registered players are using it (because logged-in users have a few additional stuff like a myBZbuddies tracking list and more myBZsettings options).
  • The amount of information increased (o: a lot :o).
Improvements take their time...
Last edited by strayer on Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by Bambino »

It's great, this is the one site I use quite often if I need to find a player (d'uh) Keep up the good work!
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Re: bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by Bambino »

One thing I would like to see, though I'm not sure if it's possible, is I want to see how many players are registered and how many unregistered players there are in the common stats page (main page)

Common statistics
online offline
Servers 339 28,996
Players 76 314,829
Player sessions 109 9,789,728

and in players have

Players 76 - 50 registered 26 unregistered.

Is this possible? Hope you understand...
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Re: bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by strayer »

Bambino wrote:One thing I would like to see, though I'm not sure if it's possible, is I want to see how many players are registered and how many unregistered players there are in the common stats page (main page)
[..]
Players 76 - 50 registered 26 unregistered.
[..]
Well, keep in mind all I can do is a check for callsign matching, because server queries don't offer any information about the players' authentication status. So it's more a "guessing" and nothing you can really rely on. Otherwise I would had implemented much more features based on global player authentication.

Finally...I can add some information in the way you asked for, but it wouldn't be reliable.
Please tell me - what kind of additional benefit do you expect from this information?
(o: If you can give me a good/convincing argument I'll implement it within the next hours. :o)
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Re: bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by Bambino »

strayer wrote:Finally...I can add some information in the way you asked for, but it wouldn't be reliable.
Please tell me - what kind of additional benefit do you expect from this information?
(o: If you can give me a good/convincing argument I'll implement it within the next hours. :o)
I have considered changing my server from EVERYONE can spawn and talk to an "auth only" method, and was wondering just how much popularity the server would loose. I am hoping it would cut down on abuses like unregistered people swearing, tking, cheating, etc.

I am also just curious.

Good enough reason? ;)
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Re: bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by learner »

Perhaps anecdotal, but every single server I know of that has required auth to spawn has ended up falling into relative obscurity, no matter how popular they were, within a few weeks. It sounds great as an idea, but in practice is rather self-defeating.

Unregistered players bias the popular servers towards the top of the list, keeping them on the top of the list. Remove them as an audience and eventually the momentum shifts towards other servers and it's hard to recover. Players go where there are other players.

Consider hypothetical counts of about 50 registered and 25 unregistered playing. If even 50% of those registered players are "server faithful", which is rather wishful thinking, that leaves the vast majority of players still going elsewhere. You might think that "25 is plenty", but eventually those faithful will finish for the day and those that follow will only see the majority playing somewhere else. The unregistered players keep the popular servers popular.
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Re: bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by joevano »

I'll back that up. Norang.ca has gone to "registered only" play no fewer than 3 times, and as learner has said, the players left. This was at a time when it was not unusual to have 3 or 4 of our servers on the front page, so it was not that our maps had played out. It just doesn't work...
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Re: bzstats.strayer.de - yet another stats site...

Post by strayer »

I have to agree with what learner wrote and joevano's experience shows that too. So think about restricting player access (because there already exists at least one plug-in to check for obvious cheating and swearing).

However, if you want to see how much player activity you would lose for your servers by blocking all non-auth. players, give me the server name an port and I'll give you a list or graph where you can see the activity on the server for the last week or month.
(Keep in mind what learner and joevano said - the real activity would be even lower.)
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