Common Stats Project

[Fahhh]

As I'm not into MySQL and php, I cannot help with them. But at a later stage, when for example everything is ready, up and running, there is a need for localization of the rules or anything else, that's an area I can take part in :)

 

I'm also thinking about some small (hmm what's the word) php scripts or smth, that enable the stats to be shown in another website just like TCL ladders are displayed on lockonfiles. So each squad may add a small window showing the current for example Top 10 stats right on their site. But these are things that can be done at a later stage :)

[Pilotasso]

Globalising the stats program and getting different ideas flowing makes for exciting times ahead.

 

 

I'd have to disagree, Lockon HL was pretty busy during this time especially in the peak hours.

 

Just look at the 51st stats for 200, there are nearly 3000 unique player names! We might not have 60 people playing all of the time, but there are plenty of people out there who fly online. I can't wait to see that number grow with the addition of Black Shark pilots and anyone who might come back for FC2!

 

Many people dont even show on HL as they jump directly to the server via stored IP.

[Case]

Many people dont even show on HL as they jump directly to the server via stored IP.

Well for FC2.0, if we are going to replace HL with a web based chat option, forum and stats, we could have each server that wants to participate run a small LUA scripts that uploads the current players to this website. In this case it would not matter if you join through IP or otherwise.

[Grimes]

Well for FC2.0' date=' if we are going to replace HL with a web based chat option, forum and stats, we could have each server that wants to participate run a small LUA scripts that uploads the current players to this website. In this case it would not matter if you join through IP or otherwise.[/quote']

 

Exactly, it is an up-to-date list that nobody could hide from. You could see exactly who is in there, what they are flying, how long they've been there, what mission is being flown, how much time that mission has been live and how long till the next rotation.

[Moa]

SOAP Webservices should be used rather than re-inventing a solution in LUA or whatever. Webservices allow the client to be written in the language of the user's choice and there are a huge number of tools already out there (for Java JAX-WS/Metro/Axis2 etc for .NET WCF). Plus, this is the way that industry solves the exact same problem - it is good for your IT career if you know how to use SOAP Webservices.

 

The advantage of such a system is that neither a common backend or common frontend is needed. Each squadron can customise as much as they want. They only thing they need to agree on is the format to exchange data on (eg. the joint SOAP Webservice specification to be agreed upon). Again, this is how businesses do it since they've already tried and dismissed ad-hoc client-server models.

 

On the VNAO statistics board I mentioned earlier the scores software I gave a link to earlier makes player information available (well, pretty much all the statistics are available) via a SOAP Webservice. Yes, this show the online players that connected from Hyperlobby as well as direct IP connections (the reason I did this feature).

 

The webservice has been running on:

http://stallturn.com/dynamicscoreweb/DynamicScoreWebService?wsdl

 

If you go to the link it won't make sense to you (unless you're an expert) since it is designed so that tools can automatically generate connection code for you. Instead, point a tool such as SoapUI at that link and you'll be able to submit requests:

http://www.soapui.org

[Case]

Moa, can you explain what is needed for SOAP to transfer data from the game server to somewhere else?

[shu77]

It would be cool if you could tie the stat board to the airbase/squadron map that was linked a little while ago, so you could hover over an airbase on the map to see which online squadrons flew from there then click to drill down into detail

[104th_Crunch]

It would be cool if you could tie the stat board to the airbase/squadron map that was linked a little while ago, so you could hover over an airbase on the map to see which online squadrons flew from there then click to drill down into detail

 

While some squads specify that they use a specific airbase, many do not.

[Maximus]

Well for FC2.0' date=' if we are going to replace HL with a web based chat option, forum and stats, we could have each server that wants to participate run a small LUA scripts that uploads the current players to this website. In this case it would not matter if you join through IP or otherwise.[/quote']

 

it would be nice if we could host web based chat room, since the HL will probably die away after released after FC.

[Moa]

Moa' date=' can you explain what is needed for SOAP to transfer data from the game server to somewhere else?[/quote']

 

Hi Case. SOAP stands for "Simple Object Access Protocol". It is simply XML carried in an HTTP exchange. In this way the entire web infrastructure for transporting HTML over HTTP (that is, web pages) is re-used to perform operations with a remote system (do some action, or get some data). Since Web access is ubiquitous in IT no changes usually need to be made to firewall rules (something hard to get done with the multi-layered defences present in big organisations).

 

The XML dialect for SOAP is an W3C standard. You can read the specification there but unless you're implementing a SOAP library you don't need to. Instead you need a library for doing SOAP and need to create a SOAP webserver server and from that create a client that can access the webservice (they can be in different programming languages and on different platforms). You are using PHP yes? I understand there are a bunch of libraries for PHP. For Java the support is built directly into Java 1.6 and higher and creating a webservice can be as simple as adding the annotation @WebService to a class. Clients are then generated by tools pointed at the running webservice.

[shu77]

While some squads specify that they use a specific airbase, many do not.

 

I was thinking about that after, maybe you also have the squadrons broken up by red/blue coalition, so that those flying ruskie planes are red and US blue.

[Grimes]

it would be nice if we could host web based chat room, since the HL will probably die away after released after FC.

 

Exactly, and from just looking at the Black Shark multiplayer browser there is a chance the functionality built into FC2 might be quite limited. Besides most of this unified stats project and other extensions to this idea was originally dreamed up through hyperlobby's chat to begin with.

 

shu77, I think breaking down which squads fly certain coalitions isn't exactly the best idea. I believe few players think of the aircraft they fly as the "Russian Su-27", but rather they fly the Su-27 be it Ukrainian or Russian. Almost all of the public multiplayer flight scenarios are unique in their composition of coalitions.

 

Your first comment exists in a way. The 51st stats already have a squadron grouping. I believe it is done through text parsing, looking for the same tag used with multiple players and simply grouping them together. In general I would like to see a more advanced version of this. Perhaps featuring more in depth information to be part of their page. Website link, common flight times in Zulu time, and admin'd profiles preventing player impersonation.

[Case]

You are using PHP yes?

Yes, but I am only using PHP to make the web pages which access a MySQL database. Before that there is a dedicated parser program that reads the mp_logs and generates the queries that are uploaded to the database. In that sense there are three servers involved. The first is the game server and the third is the web server. In between is a separate server that does the hard work of running the parser program. By setting it up this way all the hard work is done neither on the game server nor on the web server. This means the game server is not losing clock cycles that it could've used for running the game. On the other hand the web server is doing nothing more than execute MySQL queries to sum, group, count and order the data and use PHP to display it, which makes the web pages load extremely fast. The server running the parser program is doing the hard work of pulling the latest mp_logs from the game server, parsing the mp_log into optimized MySQL queries and uploading it to the database.

 

So if I am not mistaken I am using a third layer between the game server and client which is not present with SOAP webservices.

[nemises]

sounds like you two boys might want to set up a conference call..

 

GL with the global stats initiative case, it's a great idea ... hopefully a ubiquitous data transfer method can be developed (ala SOAP) to let each squads existing solution stay intact, whilst also providing data for the global stats initiative.

 

My only suggestion is to not let yourself get too "featurey" ... concentrate on the global stats aspect, and don't worry about the Global Chat / server query features unless they come for free!

KISS as they say , and beware the feature creep!

[Moa]

Yes, but I am only using PHP to make the web pages which access a MySQL database. Before that there is a dedicated parser program that reads the mp_logs and generates the queries that are uploaded to the database. In that sense there are three servers involved. The first is the game server and the third is the web server. In between is a separate server that does the hard work of running the parser program. By setting it up this way all the hard work is done neither on the game server nor on the web server. This means the game server is not losing clock cycles that it could've used for running the game. On the other hand the web server is doing nothing more than execute MySQL queries to sum, group, count and order the data and use PHP to display it, which makes the web pages load extremely fast. The server running the parser program is doing the hard work of pulling the latest mp_logs from the game server, parsing the mp_log into optimized MySQL queries and uploading it to the database.

 

So if I am not mistaken I am using a third layer between the game server and client which is not present with SOAP webservices.

 

Doesn't matter how many layers you have (known as 'N-tier architecture'). Since it sounds like your web layer does some work (summation etc) then a SOAP webservice would be placed there. Just think of it as exporting XML over HTTP instead of HTML over HTTP. Nothing special really.

 

Nemesis: Hope the travels are still going well. Good idea about the conference call but I find it hard to catch Case on HL/TS. He's in timezone +1 and I'm currently in +13. You'd think the morning/evening overlap would work but it does get tricky. So I'm afraid these forums are the best I can do for now. Plus, it allows others to get a glimpse at all the hard work that goes into making Case's global stats work - something all the naysayers don't really appreciate when they come to these forums and complain about work done by the LO community.

[Case]

Doesn't matter how many layers you have (known as 'N-tier architecture'). Since it sounds like your web layer does some work (summation etc) then a SOAP webservice would be placed there. Just think of it as exporting XML over HTTP instead of HTML over HTTP. Nothing special really.

So from what I explained earlier on how my stats system is setup, how would you introduce SOAP here? The PHP way of reading the MySQL database seems to work perfectly, and give me all what I need to present the data. On the other hand is the transfer of the mp_logs to the server that parses them could be improved. Perhaps SOAP has some uses here.

[Moa]

SOAP is so other people can read your stats without necessarily having to use the 51st web interface. Also, you could read other people's stats and use for your own purposes without having to screen-scape their web page interface. It's all about sharing the data and allowing squadrons to use data in the common pool for their own ends (removing the barriers that result in silo-ing of data).

 

Yes, if you don't want processed data and only want SOAP for data transfer then you could use a SOAP interface that gives any events that occured within a time interval. Saves you from ftping the entire mp_log each time you want to do an update (which I'd imagine prevents updates from being in near real-time). Typically a client might request the mp_log and AsyncNet log entries more recent than 10 seconds ago (which will keep stats up to date in near real-time). Or you could go and get historical data from times when the 51st server was used for other purposes (eg. Crimean Incident) while other squadron's servers were busy generating events.

 

FYI: PHP & SOAP

http://php.net/manual/en/book.soap.php

http://developer.apple.com/internet/webservices/soapphp.html (for the Mac)

[Case]

Introduced a new page showing stats of squadrons: http://www.51st.org/common/squadron.php

[Boberro]

It is really cool.

[SVK_Motas]

GREAT WORK CASE :thumbup::thumbup:

Edited February 23, 2010 by SVK_Motas

[Moa]

Very very cool

[*Rage*]

Simply incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cool_t]

2.0....

 

Muuuhahhahaaaaaaa!!!!

[Pilotasso]

Let me suggest to include kill ratio (AA and AG) for individual pilots as well. :)

 

Mine are awfull, been trining different tactics with different aircraft for FC2.0 :D

 

How often is it updated?

[cool_t]

Some people are landing on ROADS after Ship kills.........