Data Mining

[madpeople]

QUOTE (KofiMan @ May 29 2007, 04:19 PM) Don't forget to check if those pickups actually make it home.

and if they don't why not.

did the person who picked them up get killed
did they eject them in favour of a nicer piece of tech / one more useful to their tech path.
did they accidentally/deliberately use the tech (e.g. accidentally using the prox 2 you found when you thought it was a prox 1 you took with you / df 2 on someone who attacked you)

also did they use the tech they found before taking it home (e.g. finding a gat 2 and mounting it to use in a fight if you find an enemy)

[Dogbones]

Datamine was connecting to the beta server's lobby, but, after months of no changes, we are moving forward with development and are not using the beta server for R4 beta, thus only R4beta servers and clients can connect. This drastically limits how many people will play on his server.

As far as I know, all their changes are server side, so it would be possible for them to connect their server to the main lobby. This is bigger decision for the community and for the admins. We already barely have enough players to populate the current servers, splitting the community is a problem. Stripe is already doing that to some extent, (although personally I like stripe as it has 40% less lag for me).

Perhaps the way to go is to host their server on Stripe for 2 weeks and encourage people to play on Stripe. I fear, even if we allow them on the main lobby as a new server, say DataMine, no one will play on it, but I am not against giving it a try. It is a simple matter of making an entry for their IP address to allow them to connect.

[craigp]

QUOTE (Dogbones @ May 29 2007, 08:54 AM) Perhaps the way to go is to host their server on Stripe for 2 weeks and encourage people to play on Stripe. I fear, even if we allow them on the main lobby as a new server, say DataMine, no one will play on it, but I am not against giving it a try. It is a simple matter of making an entry for their IP address to allow them to connect.

I'm not familiar with what Stripe is.

Playing on the main lobby was what I originally wanted, but I'm not sure it's such a good idea. I don't want people popping in and playing without realizing that they're feeding a database. You know how it is: if a game gets started, people will trickle in because it's the only game up.

-Craig

[craigp]

QUOTE (madpeople @ May 29 2007, 08:26 AM) and if they don't why not.

did the person who picked them up get killed
did they eject them in favour of a nicer piece of tech / one more useful to their tech path.
did they accidentally/deliberately use the tech (e.g. accidentally using the prox 2 you found when you thought it was a prox 1 you took with you / df 2 on someone who attacked you)

also did they use the tech they found before taking it home (e.g. finding a gat 2 and mounting it to use in a fight if you find an enemy)

Do you think this level of detail actually matters? How important is it?


-Craig

[Raveen]

Stripe is one of the game servers. It's run by TE and gives low lag for US players but truely horrible gameplay for us poor Euros.

If the DataMine Server stuff is installed on all the stripe servers (or maybe just the DN ones if you don't want weird data from other cores) then a notice in the MOTD message should be enough. That'll give people the choice of DataMine on Stripe and untracked gameplay on Planet/Thalserve/Euro/etc. If they don't read the MOTD then well, tough.

If you want decent sized games then this is the way to go. Getting people to move from server to server is going to be a real problem for you otherwise.

[craigp]

QUOTE (Raveen @ May 29 2007, 09:09 AM) Stripe is one of the game servers. It's run by TE and gives low lag for US players but truely horrible gameplay for us poor Euros.

If the DataMine Server stuff is installed on all the stripe servers (or maybe just the DN ones if you don't want weird data from other cores) then a notice in the MOTD message should be enough. That'll give people the choice of DataMine on Stripe and untracked gameplay on Planet/Thalserve/Euro/etc. If they don't read the MOTD then well, tough.

If you want decent sized games then this is the way to go. Getting people to move from server to server is going to be a real problem for you otherwise.

It would give me more players, but the problem is installing our servers on the Stripe servers. Our code makes core changes to the server, and it's unlikely those in charge will want to accept those changes. (Actually, I even disabled the old stats collector. For some reason, it was causing the game to crash whenever anyone quit mid-game. So you can't even participate in the standard rankings from our server.)

I sure wouldn't mind getting in on an existing lobby or server, so long as my server was clearly marked as unusual... but from what I can see, there's a lot of paranoia about that sort of thing.

-Craig

[Dogbones]

QUOTE (Datamine @ May 29 2007, 01:41 PM) I even disabled the old stats collector. For some reason, it was causing the game to crash whenever anyone quit mid-game. So you can't even participate in the standard rankings from our server.)

I believe this is due to the subsequent player name lookup member function on the player that left. The parent object ends up null so the subsequent call fails (as in crashes). I am not sure why the original code did not protect against this but it is a known problem in multiple places.

Old style stats are not being used on the live servers either.

I am not sure if TE (TigerEye) would be up for hosting your servers or not, I just threw it out there as an option.

Dog

[madpeople]

i thought the problem with the main lobby was that the admins wouldn't let any server that hadn't been approved by the dev team on the main lobby, especially one running un-tested code.

[Dogbones]

It does not necessarily have to be the dev team, but I think the server / lobby admins would look to me (and the rest of the dev team) for a nod of approval. It would at least need to be beta tested, perhaps on their lobby and server first. I'd hate for a group of players to see this server on the main lobby, join, only to have the server crash on them. But I am sure Datamine would dislike this as well as you cannot collect data if you cannot keep a game running.

I am sort of neutral on this entire topic. I will put the time into trying out their server IF the community at large thinks it is a good idea, otherwise it is a waste of time. There is nothing in this for us, unless Datamine is willing to share the code modifications. There might be something in it for the players in terms of greater insight into what it takes to win games or to reveal things like, the average players spends x% of the time in base, etc.

[craigp]

QUOTE (Dogbones @ May 29 2007, 12:43 PM) It does not necessarily have to be the dev team, but I think the server / lobby admins would look to me (and the rest of the dev team) for a nod of approval. It would at least need to be beta tested, perhaps on their lobby and server first. I'd hate for a group of players to see this server on the main lobby, join, only to have the server crash on them. But I am sure Datamine would dislike this as well as you cannot collect data if you cannot keep a game running.

Well, we'll try to run a few games on our lobby, and if everything seems smooth but we have a hard time getting players, we'll negotiate. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

We don't need many players for our early games - five or six would be fine. We're just calibrating.

Not quite ready for that, yet. I'm busy trying to get the last of the stuff implemented. Long weekends. /tongue.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":P" border="0" alt="tongue.gif" />

-Craig