CivStats.com - View your Pitboss games on the web

OverloadUT

Stats Monkey
Joined
Nov 9, 2005
Messages
352
Location
Novato, CA
This thread marks the official "launch" of CivStats.com.

It's been up for a while, but the last site update allowed me to cross off every item on my design doc that I wanted to cross off for version 1.0. So with that, a new thread! Plus the other thread calling it a "Proof of Concept" is a little out of date!

CivStats.com is a (not-so) new free service that allows players in a Pitboss game to view lots of information about their game right on the web. See an example game here.

Key features include:
  • A diplomacy center that allows registered players to communicate with each other. This is there because the in-game diplomacy center is very buggy, and I find email to break the "immersion" factor. The diplomacy center on CivStats.com shows a picture of the leader you're sending a message to and is designed to look similar to the in-game diplomacy screen.
  • RSS feeds for each game showing who has and hasn't finished their turns. There is also an RSS feed for the game log.
  • New turn notifications. Registered players can choose (default is on) to receive email notifications when a new turn begins. The built in turn notification system is pretty buggy, and this allows players to easily choose whether or not to receive them. Plus, in the future the notifications will contain information about what happened in the game.
 
Thanks Overload. 2 games I'm in uses this great program. I appreciate you hosting this and doing the program.
 
Tubby Rower said:
Thanks Overload. 2 games I'm in uses this great program. I appreciate you hosting this and doing the program.
Ditto from me Overload. Thanks!

Now I must crush Tubby. :evil:
 
the oob said:
You should change the RSS feeds so that they link to the new page rather than the old one.

What RSS feed are you using?

Are they loading off of the apartment 167 site? Those are very old feeds - that's why I said to update your feeds to load off the new site. ;)

Still though, you have a good point. I'll change those old feeds to not display anything except a "please update your feed sources" message.
 
Tubby Rower said:
Thanks Overload. 2 games I'm in uses this great program. I appreciate you hosting this and doing the program.
Aye, two for me too. Thank you for your time and effort to make such a nifty program! :goodjob:
 
Cheers Overload- am in 3 pitboss games using this right now and its the most usefull thing i've seen for many a year goodjob :goodjob:
 
Thank you everyone for the kind words. :)


A non-mandatory minor update to the uploader has been released.


There was a bug causing the program to appear locked up if more than 1 pitboss window was detected when you click "Auto Detect."
 
I'm hosting one and playing in two, and it's a great system from both points of view. :D

Suggestion: when there is a new uploader version, perhaps you could email the people who are actively hosting?
 
Now that the system is 'officially' released, I'll restate my offer to help out in whatever way you need. Also, I'm shouting out the website to anyone who hints at asking for it, over at Apolyton.
 
MooManof_ said:
Now that the system is 'officially' released, I'll restate my offer to help out in whatever way you need. Also, I'm shouting out the website to anyone who hints at asking for it, over at Apolyton.

I've got a question for you: Do you have any experience with Civ 4 mods? :D I'm not getting any love over in the modding forum. :(
 
What would be nice, would be to have the new turn Year show up in the Subject line of the turn notification email instead of just in the Body.
Also, do you have an estimation of when the host might be able to make a custom message in the email?
 
I just noticed that one of the games I'm playing in has "City Clipping After Capture" enabled. ;)
 
Fosse said:
I just noticed that one of the games I'm playing in has "City Clipping After Capture" enabled. ;)

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I fixed that bug a long time ago, but in order for the change to show up, your game admin needs to go to the "Game Settings" (from the admin panel) and just click Save - that'll re-generate that string that is displayed from the fixed name in the database.

I should implement a feature that forces a refresh on all games for when I make a fix like that...
 
OverloadUT said:
I've got a question for you: Do you have any experience with Civ 4 mods? :D I'm not getting any love over in the modding forum. :(
Awww! OverloadUT isn't loved... Course he is!
I haven't really got around to doing much in the way of Civ4 modding, but I do know how to program in C++, Python, and XML (it's just like XHTML :mischief: ).

EDIT: I got bored of waiting for a reply, so I made a logo...
 
Hummm... OverloadUT seems to have disappeared.
 
2 days of inactivity is hardly a disappearing act. ;)

I'm just taking a bit of a break from working on CivStats now that there is nothing pressing I need to fix.

I'm putting together my design doc for version 2, and trying to figure out what I actually want done in version 2. Here are some of the ideas/plans:
  • Autosave/Restore feature built in to the uploader. It would detect when the server has crashed and relaunch it from the latest auto-save. It would create an autosave every time the last player logs out from the server.
  • A new diplomacy center on the webpage that is "conversation" based (thread based) instead of single messages back and forth. It should make it easier to actually use the service as your primary form of communication. Right now it's a little unorganized when you get a lot of messages.
  • Full access to all of your civ's information right on the website. You could see the stats of all of your cities, your military units, foreign info, etc. It would also allow more important items to appear in the game log, like declaration of war.
  • Remote administration of the server. A game admin could kick a player to an AI from the webpage instead of needing actual access to the computer that Pitboss is running on.
  • I might integrate the saveconvert utility in to the Uploader, allowing a game administrator to change options like the turn timer without needing to run a command line tool. Combined with the previous idea, admins could change these options from the webpage.

MooMan: I like some parts of your logo, but I feel that some of the fonts break from the Civ "theme."

I've been wanting a custom icon for the uploader for a while, actually. My idea was that it would be the Civ4 icon but with something along the bottom like a series of 1's and 0's representing stats or information, but everything I tried didn't come out right. But I suck at graphical design anyway.
 
Well, the 'C' was ripped straight from the png at civstats.com, which I guess is from the fansite pack. The 'IV' was a best guess mock-up because I couldn't grab it from the same png (the rest of the Civilization name was in the way). The 'Stats' bit was the only script font (ie joined-up handwriting style) I had, and the rest is generic web fonts. Verdana and Times New Roman, I think. Oh and that funny target thing in the corner is just my own little logo - a bit like a signiture or a watermark.

Also, I was thinking that would be the website logo, with another one for the icon...
 
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