Once again I forget to check this thread for a couple weeks and there are tons of posts I would have replied to!
I'll try to cover the main things:
Re: A local civstats server type thing. I believe what's being proposed is that either the uploader has a built in HTTP server so that you can access the stats without civstats.com,
or the uploader spits out static HTML pages every time something changes which can then be viewed directly. The latter is actually what I did in
OLStats, an old very similar project of mine. I actually might do this. It's possible that I'll output a very simple display of who has completed their turn and how much time is left. It wouldn't have the graph or full game log or historical information or anything like that, but that basic info should be enough for most people. Yes... I will think on this some more. It certainly would be pretty simple.
Re: "Uploader not connected." I am getting to the bottom of this problem. I'm working with someone who is having this problem as I type this. The technical problem is that the uploader IS connecting and uploading data, but one of the fields in the database, "numplayers" is for some reason not getting set, and by chance that's the field I depend on to tell if data has been uploaded. I am trying to figure out if it's a server-side issue or an actual uploader issue. Regardless, it will be fixed!
Re: Wacky turn timer, oh my! This is a problem with Civ 4 and there's unfortunately no way to fix it. I have thought a lot about trying to predict its inaccuracy and such but the problem is it varies so much. It appears to be affected by how fast the host computer is and how much in-game stuff it has to process. That's why the timer slows down as you get later in the game. In the end, I think it's much simpler just to know and tell people "The timer is slow" than have to explain "The timer is sometimes slow, but the site tries to predict it which means sometimes it's actually fast but it might get more accurate over time unless too many people log in over and over because then it gets slow etc etc."
Re: Site suggestions. I got a new job a couple weeks ago. For this new job I've been writing a pretty hefty PHP app, and I've been having a ton of fun learning how to use stuff in php that I haven't used before. Mainly, php5 classes. It has really given me an itch to rewrite the civstats site backend using these new techniques, which would make the code
much cleaner and easier to work with. Why am I telling you this? It means that I will actually be working on adding suggested features and
maybe actually doing Civstats 2.0 which will be really cool. The reason I got discouraged and kind of abandoned 2.0 before was because I knew I was going to have to rewrite the Civstats site (it was originally written as a personal tool for one game of mine, so the core code was not designed to be what it is now!) and didn't really feel up to doing it. But now that I've seen how easy it would be to rewrite it cleanly, I really want to. I probably won't do it until I'm done with my work project which will be a week or two but then expect to see some changes. Notable features I will implement when this time comes:
- Better notification of when an uploader has disconnected. I like the idea of having an icon on the "My Games" page.
- A mobile friendly version of the site.
- Double-move indicator.
- Finally adding the Warlords stuff properly.
- More?
Civstats 2.0. I would like to know how interested people would be in Civstats 2.0. Here's the idea: You will be able to access
ALL of your Civ information on the website. Basically, anything you can view in the in-game advisers would be available on the website. You might even be able to see a (ugly
) map of your land and can see where your units and enemy units are. You could even issue an "end turn" command to end your turn without needing to actually log in which would be useful for those early turns where you do nothing for many turns. Of course only the players who actually own the civs would be able to see the information for their civ, and any information related to other players would only be available as much as it is in the game. It would also allow the site to display "world events" like when someone builds a wonder, or when two nations go to war. Of course this information would only show if you have met the civs in question. My favorite part of the whole thing is that at the very end of the game, the site would have enough information to show post-game stats, much like you get in a single player game.
Sounds great, right? Here's the catch: You would need to run a mod that gives the uploader access to the information. You could run it as a "serverside" mod which means the players wouldn't have to download anything but they would be greeted with a "Files differ from host" message every login. Or you could run it as a bona fide mod, requiring all players to download and install the mod. Both aren't ideal, but there is no other way. So, knowing that you would have to do one of those two things to get all of the cool features above, would you do it?
