Everyone: I'm about to start writing a program with my library that'll compile game statistics for posting on a webpage.  This is meant to be used to display information at the game's completion, not as the game progresses, since it would include informaiton that players wouldn't want to be public during a game.  What it would basically do is take a snapshot of the game information at intervals (perhaps every 15 minutes in a fast-moving unlim, hourly in a high turn game with edits meant to move quickly, daily in a low turn marathon) and then ideally be able to display that information in graphs of how various statistics and power shifted over time.
My question to the community is what stats would you like to see included?  Some things are obvious, such as asset values--fig counts and the like; perhaps even a total asset value in credits calculated based on fig/shield/ship values as they fluctuate--and universe ownership--calculated as % of total sectors "controlled" by each player or corp, control meaning contains their fighters, grid size in a nutshell.  But I'm sure this community can come up with stats to be included that I haven't even considered.
Keep in mind this would be run by the sysop and my library has access to EVERYTHING now.  Won't matter what edits are being used, I can track it.  It would take some work because of the way information is presented, but I could probably even estimate things like exactly how often player X killed player Y in there.   If you have an off-the-wall idea, toss it out there.  Consider this a brainstorming session.  No one will laugh at you.  Well, *I* won't, anyway.
Sysops: Once I have a basic version fleshed out, I'll probably host an unlim game or few to test it out.  Unlim games move quickly enough to get a good amount of data in a short time as an alpha test.  When the program is beta-test ready, I'll try to sign on the sysops of the more popular games.  The program should entail zero risk since it doesn't write anything to any of the data files, only reads them, and I've done multiple tests of holding the files open for reading while doing various tasks in the game and the game has no problems accessing the files simultaneously with my code.  (Hell, I can even write to the files while playing, and the worst thing I could get to happen was entering a sector mid-update such that a number of fighters would be there but they'd still belong to rogue mercenaries instead of the owner data I hadn't finished writing or the like.)  That said, to read the data would only involve opening the files for a tiny fraction of a second each time a snapshot came due, so the risk would be even more minimal.
To further help me out, this is probably a longshot, but if any sysops have run (or are running) a low turn game and perhaps performed daily backups of the game data files and still have each day's data files, I would appreciate it if you could maybe send me those files so I'd basically be able to take daily snapshots of a static preexisting game to help in my alpha testing.  Send me a private message if you have files that'd be valuable to this end and we'll discuss how best to get them to me.  (I understand there may be concerns about sensitive information such as passwords; I could write a utility to "clean" log files of player/corp password data and such, or you could manually edit out same, if you're concerned about my integrity.)
Thanks in advance for any help!  I can't do this properly without the help of the community I'll be serving.

This is an awsome project! While I'm merely a player and sometimes Game op, The uses of this project are exciting.
 
 

I think that is a great project. I would like the ability to post final scores and show stats on each team/player other than just a rank. It certainly would make the completion of the game more of a finished product.

I do have a question about scripts and the TWStats used via command line with TWGS. On our site, I post the TWStats the ScoreKeeper runs from the command line. In the early stages, I had to edit out the Ferrengi homeworld, etc from it. In one game, I had StarDock hidden, but then realized the TWStats displayed it's location. I would like to know if there is any way a TWXProxy script can do this? Take stats from the TWGS, and post in HTML format. I coded our ScoreKeeper to use TWXProxy, and it uses a script developed by Promethius to show Online Players. Mind you, I assume in order to get stats on each game, the script would need to log into each game?

I've seen DarkMatter's stats and they look great. I was curious if a TWXProxy script would be capable of doing a similar idea. I can't run CGI on our server, and I'd rather use ScoreKeeper/TWXProxy as I am now.

On a final note, if you need a game for data files and are stuck finding one, let me know. I have a slot on the TradeWars Academy OCS TWGS where it's used for tutorials. I have the ScoreKeeper running Bot's in the game to perform some tutorial manuals for the Academy. I can adjust it for unlim/turn. Let me know, and I'd be happy to grant you exclusive admin/ftp access to it.

I am not sure if some of the time I would like it.  My main reason is I am not sure I want other corps to know what my assests are even after the game.  Think it takes part of your overall strategy away.
River Rat

 
Would it put you at ease if it just used percentages?  Corp 1 had 20% of game figs, Corp 2 had 5% etc?
 
 

I could do just an endgame snapshot very easily.  The main issue with that would be when the snapshot is taken, as even after the game was over and called and no one was logging in, some random person might log in just to mess with stuff and skew the results.


You'll have to let someone else answer these questions.  I access the data files directly; there is no logging in and manual data crawling via text going on.  My way has the advantage of being able to read every piece of data in a 20k sector maxed out game in under a second.  The disadvantage is it requires some programming knowledge to use; I hope to get the library to a releasable state at some point which would make it simple for any C++ program to do the same.  (Right now I still need a lot of intimate knowledge of the files to make it work, what data goes where and what data in file A ties into data in file B and so on.  Definitely not ready for public consumption.)
The main thing I need at this point is just things to do with the access.  I can turn the data in the files into any format imaginable.  I can write webpages with all the info from scratch if that'd be helpful.  I sadly don't know any CGI/Perl and am a total html noob, but I can learn.
As for leaving out the Stardock location, it'd be a simple matter of "if stardock location hidden is true, don't print that data".  A script can do that logic as well as a program.


For static snapshots, I can handle using my own data files just fine.  What I ideally need is snapshots of the same game over several days so I can make sure code that tracks and stores data over time works properly.

That really wouldn't be very meaningful, since the total figs in the universe is public knowledge at all times anyway.  (Well, once an hour...)  I honestly fail to see how knowing Corp A had the best grid, Corp B had the best planets, and Corp C had the most fighters and credits but a bad planetary base and terrible grid is "giving away strategy".  No more than people playing the game could tell anyway.  It's not like you're not going to notice if Corp X has half the universe locked down.  The only people that could be concerned are those that hang onto a personal asset base and try to hide it from the corp.   "Wait, you had HOW many personal figs?!  We could've used those!"
And hey, stats like these would lend credence to people's claims.  "Yes, my unlim world SST script makes 300MC an hour.  Proof is right there on the graph, where in 6 consecutive 15-minute updates my net worth went up 75MC per tick."
Can you be more specific with an example of information that after a game is over would be destructive to have publically known?  After a game ends, if it stays online and doesn't rebang quickly, do you hang out to protect your assets so no one can invade and see exactly how much you had?  Do you play every game the same way and feel your start is completely unique in some way?  I'm a bit confused.