Pitboss WebStats Proof of Concept - Curious About Interest

[OverloadUT]

I just uploaded a new version of the uploader, same link as above. You should update to this version as soon as you can. It turned out that it WAS uploading all the data at every interval when it shouldn't have been.

Now it will only upload when things change, so you don't have to worry about bandwidth. (It will also force an update every 15 minutes to keep the turn timer up to date.)

Also, I added a score graph feature! Unfortunately my main game doesn't have enough turns logged (you need 2) to show the graph yet, but it'll be pretty snazzy.

 

[the oob]

I seem to be having problems running two instances of the program (one for each pitboss game)... only one is able to connect at a time according to your server, although they both claim to be connected on my end.

 

[OverloadUT]

I seem to be having problems running two instances of the program (one for each pitboss game)... only one is able to connect at a time according to your server, although they both claim to be connected on my end.

I've never actually tried running two copies of the program, but I did all the preparations such that it should work.

Are you supplying a different user/pass for each game? You have to do that; right now, that's the only way the server differentiates between different games.

Edit: Actually, I see now that that is indeed the problem. Your game stats have really wacky stats because the year is jumping back and forth. To fix it you'll unfortunately have to start uploading both of them using a different user/pass combo.

Keep in mind that this whole user/pass thing is just a temporary situation until I get actual user registration implemented. It should be cleaner then.

 

[the oob]

Yeah that was it, thanks.

Feel free to remove the older entries for my games from the main page (3rd and 4th on the list).

 

[MooManof_]

I'm willing to help out with the PHP side of things, as well as exploring the possibility of reversing some of the control, you allow a web admin feature for PitBoss (so you could install it on a remote server). In theory this would allow for settings to be changed mid-game (although not necessarily mid-turn).
It should be possibly to have the system ask for three types of login (one to register / admin a game, one to check player stats, and one to admin the site, or some sort of combination).

 

[HitAnyKey]

This is a totally awesome idea and concept and I think it would be a great addition for our RealPolitik game. I'll have to get him to take a look over here and see if he can get your app running to upload the stats to your webserver page.

A couple questions though:

The Game Log. Does that display global events of things that people would normally see in-game, such as Wonders being created, Religions founded, Cities destroyed, etc?

Also, if you have Multiple people logging into a single Civ (for Teams) would that screw up the app, or would it just act like a 'Name Changed To' line in the Game Log?

We also have an 18-person PBTS game that was just started which I'll point the hoster to this thread too. It'd be great for that game.

 

[HitAnyKey]

That's not unique to your machine. I'm hosting on a pretty good server and my "24 hour" turn timer ends up being about 24.7 hours. The uploader re-uploads the time remaining at least once every 15 minutes to try to keep that web version up to date, but the "New turn at xxx" indicator does indeed change. For example, my page says 10:20 right now, but when the turn ended last night, it said it would be at 10:04. I'm not sure what I can do about this. Computers are supposed to know how long a second is!

One of the primary reasons that this actually happens is that the game pauses every time a player logs in. And the longer it takes for the game to load and for them to log in the longer the pause of the game. So if you have a lot of people and they log in multiple times a day to check what's going on with the turn, the turn will last that much longer.

In our 18-player game we had the turn timer set to 24 hours, and the first few turns took over 27-28 hours. So we edited the timer down to 20 hours and things are back to being more on a 24 hour schedule.

 

[OverloadUT]

This is a totally awesome idea and concept and I think it would be a great addition for our RealPolitik game. I'll have to get him to take a look over here and see if he can get your app running to upload the stats to your webserver page.

A couple questions though:

The Game Log. Does that display global events of things that people would normally see in-game, such as Wonders being created, Religions founded, Cities destroyed, etc?

Also, if you have Multiple people logging into a single Civ (for Teams) would that screw up the app, or would it just act like a 'Name Changed To' line in the Game Log?

We also have an 18-person PBTS game that was just started which I'll point the hoster to this thread too. It'd be great for that game.

Good questions!

Global Events - No, it's impossible to get those from the admin window. However, I have been toying with the idea of expanding the WebStats system to optionally work with a WebStats mod. The mod would report TONS of more info about the game (who's at war with who, wonders being built, current standings, etc.) to a file and then my app would upload that to the web part of it. It's something I will look in to more after I get my current plans with the website finished.

Multiple people logging in - Yeah, in that case it would simply show a "name changed to" event each time they alternated control.



Who is uploading stats for a game named "zonk"? Something has gone wrong because it shows that everyone has finished their turns, but no new turn has begun. It looks like you're not using a turn timer, so I might have a bug in my uploader related to that. I would appreciate if you would post here so I can troubleshoot it with you.

 

[Great_Scott]

Overload, this is fantastic. I dont run a PHP/MySQL server... but I would really, really, really like this feature for my game Realpolitik!

 

[grimliin]

I am running an 18 player PTBS in connection with RPII. I would love to run this on that game as well, but don't have any experience setting up webservers. I would definitely be interested on putting the stats on a public site, or if you can tell me how to set up the server I could give it a shot.

 

[namliaM]

About the time changing thing.. I know that if you log on to a pittbos game the time pauses due to it beeing downloaded and setup on your side.

It might only happen if someone is allready online, but I have noticed this when I was online making my turn and someone else was connecting...

 

[Fosse]

Thanks Overlord. This is a big help for all of us.

 

[OverloadUT]

I've been making huge strides in this project!

The ability to register an account, claim your civilization, and then use the diplomacy center to message other players is fully implemented. There are a lot of little things missing which I'm working on right now.

Now I'm looking for some input. One of the things you need to be able to do on the website is "register" your leader. This means you are claiming that you control the leader you selected, and will be able to send diplomatic messages as that civ. In the future this will also allow you to access all of your civ's details like the advisors in the game. Obviously this should be protected in some way so that unscrupulous players cannot register as someone else's leader. You can't register a leader once it's already been registered, but there still should be some sort of protection. There are a number of different ways to approach it:

• The game administrator sets a registration password that must be used to claim any civ. This prevents people outside the game from registering as one of the civs and messing things up, although it doesn't prevent one of your players from registering as the wrong civ.
• The game administrator sets a different registration password for each civ. This prevents anyone from registering as the wrong civ, as the game administrator would email the registration password directly to the correct player.
• The game administrator must approve any leader registrations. He would check the email address of the person trying to register to be sure it's the correct person.

Right now I have the first option implemented, but I don't think it's good enough. I'm leaning towards the second option, but I'm curious to know what you guys think.

Oh yeah, I also got a domain.

 

[IglooDame]

This is exactly what I've been looking for - I'm going to be putting the Offtopic forum's CivIVor game on this feed, at least for turn notifications (neither the embedded nor the PBNotify email notifications works on my pitboss server).

 

[Fosse]

Overload, this is amazing! Work like this is really appreciated. Access to advisors and diplomacy while at work and away from the game? Outstanding!

Regarding passwords, as safety goes, option 2 sounds the best. 3 would work and be easier on the admin of each game (especially since some players may not use the page at all, as seems to be the case with my current CINvilization game), but could be a hassle for players to have to wait for approval.

I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the features when they're done. The messaging center sounds promising, especially. Will it be like a mini-forum with PM's? Am I correct that the site will be able to generate turn notification emails? The programs available on these pages take care of that now, but it would be nice to just start Pitboss, then start your stats uploader and be done with it, especially as people start hosting multiple games.

 

[Fosse]

I tried to register my leader, and it tells me the game admin picks the password. I am the admin, and I haven't found where to do that. Is the feature available to the public yet, or have I missed something?

 

[OverloadUT]

I tried to register my leader, and it tells me the game admin picks the password. I am the admin, and I haven't found where to do that. Is the feature available to the public yet, or have I missed something?

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I haven't implemented the interface to actually administrate the game (to change those passwords and stuff.) For now, I set your game registration password to the same password you used to register at the site (note that I can't tell what your password is; it's encrypted. But I can copy and paste the encrypted string. ) EDIT: Oh yeah, because you can't set the leaders of each of your players, all of their pictures are going to be giant question marks, which is pretty ugly. You'll just have to wait for me to finish the administration interface. At least you can check out the diplomacy center and give me any suggestions you might have.


I think I will go with option 2 then. You're right that it would be a bit of a hastle to the players if they had to wait for authorization. If we want our players to use this tool, it should be as painless as possible! The admin we don't care about because us admins are used to having to do things the complicated way.

About the turn notification: It's not in yet. However, this will be even better than using PBNotify or the built in tool because players will be able to individually choose if they want to receive the new turn notifications, they will be able to change their email address whenever they want, and in the future I may have the turn notification show "key events" of the previous turn or something like that.

 

[IglooDame]

Overload, I downloaded the app, un-rar'ed it (I would suggest converting it to a zip file instead, as Windows boxes are more likely to unzip them natively), and ran it. I entered a profile name, and got the app window. The name of the game matches the first line (if it doesn't, I see a "Cannot find pitboss window" error), I've tried both your http://www.apartment167.com/pitboss/pbupload.php and http://www.civstats.com/pitboss/pbupload.php addresses (the Try It button never un-grays out, btw), and put in a username of Igloodude and a password, but I get 'upload failed' over and over.

I've got my pitboss server locked down pretty tight, and it is behind a firewall that only allows 2056 TCP inbound to it, so I suspect a connectivity problem...

 

[OverloadUT]

Strange. It should work. Open up your PitbossStats.ini file and change the LogLevel to 2, then run it again and let it fail a couple times. Then post the contents of your log file here.

NOTE: Be sure your password is something you don't care about, as it will be in plaintext in your log.

The cool thing about the way this system works is that a firewall should never block it, because it's doing everything on standard web port 80. You'd be hard pressed to find someone blocking port 80.

 

[IglooDame]

Here's the log data. I can browse the internet from the pitboss server, so port 80 is open outbound through the firewall, at least. I'd suspect that some function/service required for this has been disabled as part of my OS lockdown.

6/21/2006 13:41:21 tt - Script started at 6/21/2006 13:41:21 tt
6/21/2006 13:49:50 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:50:01 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:50:11 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:50:21 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:50:31 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:50:41 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:50:52 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:51:02 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:51:12 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:51:22 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:51:32 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:51:42 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:51:53 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:52:03 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:52:13 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:52:23 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:52:33 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:52:44 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:52:54 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:53:04 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:53:14 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:53:24 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:53:35 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:53:45 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:53:55 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:54:05 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:54:15 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:54:26 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:54:36 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:54:46 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:54:56 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -1
6/21/2006 13:55:09 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -4
6/21/2006 13:55:19 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -4
6/21/2006 13:55:30 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -4
6/21/2006 13:55:40 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -4
6/21/2006 13:55:40 tt - Script stopped at 6/21/2006 13:55:40 tt | Reason: GUI Closed. UNABLE TO UPLOAD HALT COMMAND!
6/21/2006 13:55:40 tt -

6/21/2006 14:41:11 tt - Script started at 6/21/2006 14:41:11 tt
6/21/2006 14:41:14 tt - Found Pitboss Window. Handle: 0x000204FC
6/21/2006 14:41:15 tt - There are 18 players. Parse Time: 1.40173681291896
6/21/2006 14:41:15 tt - A turn timer is in use and is currently: 11:24:44. Parse Time: 0.0876209127137667
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - A new turn has begun! Year: 1960 BC
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 1 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 1's name is now: azzaman333
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 2 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 2's name is now: Davo
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 3 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 3's name is now: Dr.Yoshi
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 4 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 4's name is now: Truronian
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 5's name is now: Whomp
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 6's name is now: .Shanihito.
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 7 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 7's name is now: Robboo
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 8 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:16 tt - Player 8's name is now: BCLG100
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 9 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 9's name is now: RaisinBran
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 10 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 10's name is now: Sparta
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 11 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 11's name is now: *MOD* Tycoon101
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 12's name is now: VRWCAgent
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 13 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 13's name is now: De Lorimier
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 14 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 14's name is now: King bleuet
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 15's name is now: Ed The Great
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 16 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 16's name is now: IglooDude
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 17 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 17's name is now: Blackheart
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 18 has finished his turn.
6/21/2006 14:41:17 tt - Player 18's name is now: Montezuma
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 1's score is now: 153
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 2's score is now: 189
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 3's score is now: 148
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 4's score is now: 227
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 5's score is now: 132
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 6's score is now: 114
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 7's score is now: 187
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 8's score is now: 128
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 9's score is now: 121
6/21/2006 14:41:18 tt - Player 10's score is now: 194
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 11's score is now: 160
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 12's score is now: 153
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 13's score is now: 174
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 14's score is now: 141
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 15's score is now: 117
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 16's score is now: 243
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 17's score is now: 114
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 18's score is now: 128
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 1's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 2's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:19 tt - Player 3's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 4's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 5's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 6's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 7's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 8's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 9's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 10's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 11's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 12's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 13's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:20 tt - Player 14's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:21 tt - Player 15's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:21 tt - Player 16's type is now: 1
6/21/2006 14:41:21 tt - Player 17's type is now: 3
6/21/2006 14:41:21 tt - Player 18's type is now: 3
6/21/2006 14:41:21 tt - Starting an upload. Func=Init URL: http://www.civstats.com/pitboss/pbu...er=1&GameName=CIVivor&UploaderVersion=0.5.0.5
6/21/2006 14:41:21 tt - Upload Finished. Data Downloaded: -1 Time: 0.506621092904266
6/21/2006 14:41:21 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -4
6/21/2006 14:41:32 tt - Starting an upload. Func=Init URL: http://www.civstats.com/pitboss/pbu...er=1&GameName=CIVivor&UploaderVersion=0.5.0.5
6/21/2006 14:41:32 tt - Upload Finished. Data Downloaded: -1 Time: 0.214370262142256
6/21/2006 14:41:32 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -4
6/21/2006 14:41:42 tt - Starting an upload. Func=Init URL: http://www.civstats.com/pitboss/pbu...er=1&GameName=CIVivor&UploaderVersion=0.5.0.5
6/21/2006 14:41:42 tt - Upload Finished. Data Downloaded: -1 Time: 0.192262703779391
6/21/2006 14:41:42 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -4
6/21/2006 14:41:52 tt - Starting an upload. Func=Init URL: http://www.civstats.com/pitboss/pbu...er=1&GameName=CIVivor&UploaderVersion=0.5.0.5
6/21/2006 14:41:52 tt - Upload Finished. Data Downloaded: -1 Time: 0.193911796052292
6/21/2006 14:41:52 tt - Upload FAILED. Return code: -4
6/21/2006 14:41:52 tt - Script stopped at 6/21/2006 14:41:52 tt | Reason: GUI Closed. UNABLE TO UPLOAD HALT COMMAND!
6/21/2006 14:41:52 tt -