Data Mining

Catch-all for all development not having a specific forum.
craigp
Posts: 177
Joined: Fri May 11, 2007 2:59 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Post by craigp »

BlackViper wrote:QUOTE (BlackViper @ May 11 2007, 11:17 AM) -stuff-
Thanks for your help, BlackViper. I've gone through the tutorial and am reading the academy texts, etc, etc. Being a spectator in a real game would be an ideal next step in familiarizing myself, so I'll probably try to take you up on it early next week.

As for the data I'm looking for, I won't know exactly until I've seen a lot more of the game. If experienced players have any data they want to see gathered, mentioning it would also be helpful. We're hoping to monitor a lot of the tactical and team elements, which is why we're considering this game.

-Craig
Last edited by craigp on Fri May 11, 2007 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
madpeople
Posts: 4787
Joined: Tue Dec 16, 2003 8:00 am
Location: England

Post by madpeople »

there has been A LOT of debate about stat's systems and ways we could assign points for in game actions.

problem is deciding how to decide what was good and what was chance.

e.g. a probe spotting a bomber could save the game for a side, but that bomber could actually be a random noob flying in circles and is no danger atall

if the data you record could be used for assigning end game points, that would be cool, (also shows you can do useful stuff with the data, not jsut collect it /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> )

try looking at some of our stats related threads e.g. this one
Kap
Posts: 1466
Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:20 am
Location: Mexico

Post by Kap »

It might had been pure luck for the newbie to spot the bomber, so what? if it was pure luck it won't happen again. He deserves those points even if it was luck.
ImageImage
If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut. -- Albert Einstein
Raindog
Posts: 281
Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2003 7:00 am
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

Post by Raindog »

I'd say the biggest question of whether people will play on your server is how good your server is. Assuming the Zone Leads have no problem with the data you are mining, if your server is better and faster than the others available I guarantee you will have plenty of players.
Image
Pook
Posts: 1758
Joined: Tue Aug 13, 2002 7:00 am
Location: Texas, USA

Post by Pook »

I've replied via PM.
Image
craigp
Posts: 177
Joined: Fri May 11, 2007 2:59 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Post by craigp »

Don't get too far ahead of the game, guys: what we collect and how we collect it may make the data useless for scoring purposes, and I really don't have any intention of ravamping how the game works. In the distant future, perhaps, someone else might implement those changes. But I'm thinking much smaller.

Exactly what kind of events do people think make or break a victory, tactically? Those are what we probably want to track, after implementing the basic stats of hits/kills/PUs/etc.

These are the sorts of things that can be determined regardless of the skill level of the game. How much you win by is not important to us: the strategic, tactical, and social choices you make are. That's what we want to measure. Measuring hits and kills is just something we do to introduce ourselves to the code base.

-Craig
Raveen
Posts: 9104
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:00 am
Location: Birmingham, UK
Contact:

Post by Raveen »

You might want to measure the time spent in each type of ship a player has available (do teams with a couple of regular bomber pilots win more often?).

Beyond that event based numbers which would be useful would be: Damage repaired by nanite, probes dropped, what those probes spotted, miner/constructer kills, player kills, pod kills, times pod killed, bases killed/captured. I'm sure there's more but that's it for now. Some of this data is already tracked but most of it isn't as far as I know.
ImageImage
Spidey: Can't think of a reason I'd need to know anything
MrChaos
Posts: 8352
Joined: Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:00 am

Post by MrChaos »

Craig

If I understand:

1) You are going to write code that will record game based events by the individual players

2) You need to run things on your server since this file is going to be quite hefty and well... then you have control

3) You want to look at the behavior of the players

My comments:

1) Rather then filtering out game based events you should endeavor to be as inclusive as possible i.e. collect it all and let the miners sort it out. Like the famous case of banana prices driving grocery store selection ( whether the individual wanted them or not ).

2) A simple Baysian approach shows great promise in predicting win/loses for this game.

3) Im VERY comfortable hearing in DETAIL what your approach is going to be in tackling this task.

Im a bit of a skeptical gent. Ease it and you may be quite glad you took the time


Nuff Said
MrChaos
Ssssh
craigp
Posts: 177
Joined: Fri May 11, 2007 2:59 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Post by craigp »

MrChaos wrote:QUOTE (MrChaos @ May 12 2007, 04:47 AM) 1) Rather then filtering out game based events you should endeavor to be as inclusive as possible i.e. collect it all and let the miners sort it out. Like the famous case of banana prices driving grocery store selection ( whether the individual wanted them or not ).
2) A simple Baysian approach shows great promise in predicting win/loses for this game.
3) Im VERY comfortable hearing in DETAIL what your approach is going to be in tackling this task.
1. The problem with tracking everything is simple: there's too much stuff. Even with a relatively simple game like Quake 3, if you track everything you end up with hundreds of thousands of rows entered every minute, none of it usefully related. This is true of every real-time game.

For example, if I tried to track the positions, thrust vectors, and orientation of each ship every time the physics engine fires... that's a lot of data! (Especially because I have to record the data of everything that moves, not just players!) We could collect it, if we thought it was worth it, but it usually isn't. So, say we only record shot vectors. But what do we record on firing? Just the shot vectors? Do we want to keep track of live ammo remaining? Ammo left in cargo? Health? Proximity of enemy? Health and ammo of enemy? Too much data!

Instead, you have to pick and choose what data are most interesting.

2. As I mentioned, our interest is less in who will win, and more in how the team interacts. I'm not trying to create an alternate scoring system or anything of the sort. Integrating our data into the game system is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future.

3. I don't know enough about the game to give specifics as to what we want to track, but here are some examples of things that we might want to track:

What ships players fly. What roles they fly in those ships.
Actions taken by injured players.
General proximity to other players, ally and enemy.
Team performance after a significant loss or gain.
Overall tactics pursued.
Effectiveness of different weapon loadouts and techniques against specific enemy tactics.
Responsiveness to commands. Tradeoff of response to command (IE, trying to figure out a bad command versus a good one).
Effectiveness of automated units (turrets, bases, miners, probes, etc) based on some kind of relative position to critical elements...

The problem is, these are just guesses. I won't know what to track until I've tried it. Learn by experience.

Although if you have specific things that you want to track, knowing about them makes my job easier.

Raveen: I'll definitely put those in. I'll also save max HP of nanned target (and a few other details), so we might be able to calculate context. Context is important.

-Craig
Raveen
Posts: 9104
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:00 am
Location: Birmingham, UK
Contact:

Post by Raveen »

If you want to learn Allegiance relatively well then I suggest you sign up for the Cadet course. It's provided by the community to help new players find their feet and will give you an insight into the ins and outs of the tactics and strategies used commonly.

It's an 8 week course but most of it is forum based so you can (justifiably in you case) do it at work and play in the evenings. It's also a very good place to ask about some of the mechanics of Allegiance with a bunch of very knowledgable brains to pick.

You'll probably want ot get the rest of the office playing so you can simulate stuff on your system to test it (I guess?). @Cadet for everyone!
ImageImage
Spidey: Can't think of a reason I'd need to know anything
Post Reply