Mods; I wasn't sure where to put this, seeing as its more relevant for hosts at the moment, I figured here might be a good choice.

Let be honest, being a sysadmin / host isn't always fun, so I hope this will provide a little entertainment and possibly a little friendly competition.

I present a very very alpha version (a little less than an hour of hacking and calculating) of http://stats.oghosts.co.uk/ (anyone feel like coming up with a half decent name for it?). I eventually plan on expanding it to teams, wr, longer histories, pretty graphs, etc.

Every 50 minutes past the hour my script will go away and update itself, calculate the differences between that and the last fetch, and update the stats.

Server growth registers any change in the number of slots on the server

Racer growth registers any change in the number of active racers

XP is calculated very roughly at the moment, taking into consideration the change in number of players, change in number of slots, the previous XP level, etc. I'll work on it and the idea is that it'll give you a sort of ranking. If your server is offline during any server fetch, your XP is lost (incentive to keep them going!).

Any suggestions, etc. are welcome

hehe, that's quite funky. Can you make the page listable by the different headings, so we can order them by XP?

*gulp* one of my servers has -200 ! *yikes*

ooooh thats gonna be fun and usefull. nice idea there.

and that idea of becky's would be handy also ... can you buy XP?

Thanks for the kind words Becky and Frankie

I had planned to sortable tables using Stuart Langridge's sorttables javascript snippet - unfortunately it's somewhat slow on large tables, so I ripped it back out.

The backend really needs to be reworked (it's all icky inline prototyping) at the moment, which I'll do tomorrow lunchtime, so I'll add in the proper sorting then. For now I've resorted the results by XP

By the look of it I might have to rejig the formula a little though.. Yet another thing to stop me finishing my book tonight I fear

Quote from tombarlin :

Caribbean Cruise will be the winner ive cant remember seeing it with less than 20 people in it

Ah, but at the moment you get more points for sudden changes. During testing it looked like some league had just started a race and shot up by about 2k XP in one go.. still not quite as I want it though as its penalising too much for negative movements, which will be unavoidable due to the nature of the world & the lfs community

Definately a tweek needed to favour me in some way, servers that lay empty are better than all but my S1 server ! Grrrrrr - I knew my server software was bad but...

Would it be possible to have both relative and absolute Racer Growth shown in the list? I mean, if you have 1 people on the server and 2 joins you get 200% racer growth

Or am I doing it wrong :/

imo the XP should be calculated by kilometers or laps... the more the server is used, the more XP.

lol dude, something a little out with the XP calculation - to get to the top we need to shut the server off then password protect it on relaunch so it stays on 0pts rather than tumbling into the depths ...

Quote from Hyperactive :

Would it be possible to have both relative and absolute Racer Growth shown in the list? I mean, if you have 1 people on the server and 2 joins you get 200% racer growth

Or am I doing it wrong :/

At the moment racer growth should be absolute, not relative I'll think about publishing the relative growth as well. Could be fun

Quote from ORION :

imo the XP should be calculated by kilometers or laps... the more the server is used, the more XP.

Good idea, but as far as I can see through my blurry eyed vision is that it would have to be done via an mpr parser or by being nasty and screenscraping lfsworld, as that sort of detail isn't available via pubstats. Naturally you can infer it, but since my fetch only occurs once an hour the calculations could be horrifically out

Quote from Becky Rose :

lol dude, something a little out with the XP calculation - to get to the top we need to shut the server off then password protect it on relaunch so it stays on 0pts rather than tumbling into the depths ...

Yes, I know my weighting is a tad... well totally wrong Ho hum. I'll obviously reset them when I rejig things later.

Edit: Yes I'm aware the website is down and has been for a little while, and I'm pretty annoyed time to move dc again I fear.

Edit: the box is back... grrr.

I didn't get as much time as I'd hoped unfortunately, so I've done a quick fix on the XP (it's still calculated on the previous "tick" / fetch for now though), so its not so radical and negative figures are now impossible. I plan to possibly change the formula once more, just to tweak things. Meh, we'll see how it goes

I've added a tooltip to the server growth, so its possible to see the actual growth.

Oh and I've changed it so that the fetch occurs every 20 minutes, in preparation for bigger things to come

I plan to add the rest of the 'cool' stuff this evening

woohoo i'm not so sucky any more

Howzabout join links?

Heh, if you can get my customers to stop logging pointless calls I'll do it

It's already on my list of cool stuff

Good job Karl. I like it!

Quote :

Heh, if you can get my customers to stop logging pointless calls I'll do it

Heh, try sitting on my support desk, I got 1 director at a customer telling me to do something, and another director counter-manding him... I'm currently piggy in the middle in some corporate power struggle at a customer premesis. I'll be taking instructions only from their company secratary now I think... What a day... Ah but wait, they're in another country, so who's law do we use? Oh heck...

Quote from Becky Rose :

Heh, try sitting on my support desk..

Heh sounds familiar Becky I've personally had 51-ish or so new calls in the 5 days - consider last month was busy and I did 154 calls in the month, it looks like I'm set to break a record at the moment - which is unfortunate as I actually need time to do in house development, all the flagged log entries need checking, security checks, update checks, a newbie needs to be "trained", and plans for a few new customer networks by the sound of it, etc. etc. Makes me wonder if its all worth it sometimes

I've tweaked the XP formula again - it seems to be reasonable to me.
For those interested;
previous max racers difference + previous difference in number of racers + rounded((previous number of racers / previous number of max racers) + previous number of racers * 0.03) + previous XP value

If a large number of players connect then the rewards are larger, equally if the server size increases you get a large bonus.

Time for some food and then I'll start the code for back logging to enable pretty graphs, and calculating average server load, etc.

You tell admin, 'grrr I lost my XP! Right, i'm going to camp the touring car players.'
admin tell yous. 'We do not support camps.'
You tell admin, 'whatever dude'

You shout, 'I'm camping the touring car players!'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'camp check!'
You shout, 'Touring Cars!'
Redline shouts, 'FOX'
ConeDodger shouts, 'GTR at Aston'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'You know damn well what i'm camping'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'dude, i'm new, tell me your bloody camp!'
You shout, 'He's camping Julien Clarey!'
Redline shouts, 'Shes off again!'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'dude come on, tell me your camp'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'Oval, BF1'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'lol'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'what?'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'shouldnta bothered telling me'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'ffs!'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'I was only kidding, i'm a circuit racer thas all'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'I wasnt ffs you, I was ffs this newb who didnt shift-s'

You shout, 'Anyone camping the bangers?'
LFS Bangers shouts, 'yo, me'
You shout, 'who the?'
LFS Bangers shouts, 'yah, beat it. You had STD and TBO last I looked any way'
You shout, 'I just fancied a change'
LFS Bangers shouts, 'bldy uber guilder'
You shout, 'sorry'

You tell admin, 'dude, where the fk is my XP?'
admin tells you, 'you have not lost any'
You tell admin, 'ffs - I had 100 points last night'
admin tells you, 'that was when we where in beta. When we went to beta 2 we restarted your character'
You tell admin, 'but ffs I was half way to S3'

to be contnued...

Quote from Becky Rose :

You tell admin, 'grrr I lost my XP! Right, i'm going to camp the touring car players.'
admin tell yous. 'We do not support camps.'
You tell admin, 'whatever dude'

You shout, 'I'm camping the touring car players!'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'camp check!'
You shout, 'Touring Cars!'
Redline shouts, 'FOX'
ConeDodger shouts, 'GTR at Aston'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'You know damn well what i'm camping'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'dude, i'm new, tell me your bloody camp!'
You shout, 'He's camping Julien Clarey!'
Redline shouts, 'Shes off again!'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'dude come on, tell me your camp'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'Oval, BF1'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'lol'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'what?'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'shouldnta bothered telling me'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'ffs!'
HumerousAcronym shouts, 'I was only kidding, i'm a circuit racer thas all'
Oval Junkies shouts, 'I wasnt ffs you, I was ffs this newb who didnt shift-s'

You shout, 'Anyone camping the bangers?'
LFS Bangers shouts, 'yo, me'
You shout, 'who the?'
LFS Bangers shouts, 'yah, beat it. You had STD and TBO last I looked any way'
You shout, 'I just fancied a change'
LFS Bangers shouts, 'bldy uber guilder'
You shout, 'sorry'

You tell admin, 'dude, where the fk is my XP?'
admin tells you, 'you have not lost any'
You tell admin, 'ffs - I had 100 points last night'
admin tells you, 'that was when we where in beta. When we went to beta 2 we restarted your character'
You tell admin, 'but ffs I was half way to S3'

to be contnued...

hahhahahaha
oval junkies part is good!

noob tells you, 'can u help me with bf1 quest plz'
you tell noob, 'sorry, busy'
noob tells you, 'plz. my frinds cant do it'

wrecker shouts, 'mwhahahaha'
angrymob shouts, 'wrecker!'
angrymob shouts, 'fking T1 wrekcerz!'
wrecker shouts, 'im camping T1'
helpfulidiot shouts, 'T1 aint a camp'
wrecker shouts, 'reveng wreking is still wreking, i ban u!'
angrymob shouts, 'wtf, im banned'
noob tells you, 'plz i want bf1'

angrymob tells you, 'help plz im banned'
you tell angrymob, 'no u not'
angrymob tells you, 'im banned, help plz'
you tell angrymob, 'your not on ban file?'
angrymob tells you, 'why u ban me?'
you tell angrymob, 'dude, you are not banned!'
angrymob tells you, 'sry it was lag'
you tell angrymob, ''
angrymob tells you, 'wtf, why your server so laggy?'
you tell angrymob, 'it isnt, im on it now'
angrymob tells you, 'im on redline 2'
you tell angrymob, 'thats not my server'
someoneelse tells you, 'actually your server is lagging too'
you tell someoneelse, 'its datacentre'
forumjunky shouts, 'wtf your server is shit'
noob tells you, 'plz i cant drive fox'

conedodgers shouts, 'yay new pb: 10000 laps on this track!'
someone shouts, 'lol'
/emote ovaljunkies looks at lap count and laughs
someone shouts, 'oval pwned conedodgers'
noob tells you, 'plz plz plz i giv u uf1'

someone shouts, 'y we always race aston cadet in fox?'
helpfulidiot shouts, 'go redline 2'
someone shouts, 'im bored of as1'
helpfulidiot shouts, 'go redline 2'
someone shouts, 'dude i cant'
helpfulidiot shouts, 'why?'
someone shouts, 'ive not done fox quest'
helpfulidiot shouts, 'its easy'
someone tells you, 'will you help me with fox quest plz'
noob tells you, 'plz i wont bf1 i cant play without bf1'
you tell nob, 'dude! practice!'
noob tells you, 'fk u'
noob shouts, 'shes a tart'
forumjunky shouts, 'not another one, take it to pm'
noob shouts, 'i cant bf1, plz help'
forumjunky shouts, 'cracker!'
wrecker shouts, 'i cracked it first'
noob shouts, 'how do i crack?'

lol sounds like you've been reading my mind Becky

I got a bit distracted with WoW again last night, so I didnt get a chance to do what I had planned

lmao becky.

Worst part is... that happened before the xp came out. :O

Well i think its clear that the most popular servers are ones where people pretend to be police and pretend people have broken the law lol..

Scawen will at this point be smashing his computer to little tiny tiny pieces

Quote from tombarlin :

Well i think its clear that the most popular servers are ones where people pretend to be police and pretend people have broken the law lol..

I was somewhat annoyed to discover this also

The interesting question is whether it's a symptom of the fact that the lack of new and refreshing content in LFS isn't frequent, or that people just want to echo their real lives? Perhaps live out a life that they cannot in real life? Perhaps it's a simple 'exploit' of the XP formula? Is 'cops and robbers' simply more accessible? Somewhat out of my field unfortunately. Any resident social psychologists?

I honestly wish that I'd done the work on the stats project that I'd intended to do last week (bloodly real life getting in the way again), then we'd beable to see how and when Redline Racing 2 suddenly shot up to 430-odd, and the average racer load over a rolling period.

Meh. Tomorrow perhaps. If I can dig myself out of the depths of self pitty.

well altho this thing you made hasnt really told us much we didnt already know (ie the race servers used most are stcc redline and conedodgers) i hope this might bring some sense into peoples heads and i hope they start racing again i mean the amount of empty servers is crazy SO COME ON PEOPLE RACE!!!!!

Heh. A popularity contest was never the original intention, but it kinda evolved into that due to my general stagnation towards my various projects, including this one.

It was meant to be, and probably will still be eventually, a sort of monitoring system where by uptime, average "load", etc. will all be calculated and displayed, and warning messages being delivered to participating admins if their server ever disappeared from the pubstat list, with the 'XP' being a simple after though. Ho hum.