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Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Sun Feb 28, 2010 7:06 pmby Naked Magnus
So the problem I have is that there is no way in hell I have the time to inspect every single tourney mission, count my kills, make html links, and post my score.
So...I am asking if I could build an HTML scraper that would calculate my scores for me. Right now I am copying and pasting my tournie missions to a text file. The plan is to write a quick program that will parse the file, look up each mission, figure out my kills for that mission, and then generate an HTML report in the required format.
My company has a MAJOR deliverable due at the end of March. It is pretty much do or die for my company. I may not get around to building this scraper...but one thing is for sure, I don't have the time to do this by hand.
So, assuming I am able to find the time, would this be allowed? I assume, for it to be fair, I could open it up for everybody. Having said that, I don't have time to make the thing robust. It will be a quick and dirty program. It will, of course, check for duplicates and ensure the tourney missions end in 0s or 5s.
Worst case scenario I can have this thing written in early April.
Let me know your thoughts.
-RoS
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Sun Feb 28, 2010 8:26 pmby Burn
We'll get back to you on that one.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Mon Mar 01, 2010 11:50 amby Redimus
To be honest, I'm against that. It's very easy to just constantly fling your TFs in and get something else to do the work for you. There are two reasons for the way I run the kill competitions on my tournies. 1 of them is a simple case of practicality. It is a long slow and tedious job to check that who killed what for all the kills in all the valid missions. The second one is, I want people to actively take part in this tournament. Part of the fun (for me) is hunting through my results for the kills, and personally, I feel if you stand a chance of winning some prizes, you should damn well do a little bit more than fling your tf in and hope for the best.
However. This is not an area I am willing to rule on. It really is a subject for the mods/admin of HMW to rule on. That being said, it was my understanding that all none official macros and effort saving programs were completely against the rules, no matter what they do. Hence the stink about Glyph's fixes program for Firefox.
Also, it is worth pointing out that if you don't expect to get the program running until April, it is of absolutely no use to you for this tournament anyway, as the tournament is 2 weeks long, and all the results will be long since collated and prizes long since given out by then, and I sure as hell will not call for Mkall and co to recall and re-award prizes then.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Mon Mar 01, 2010 1:47 pmby Burn
Redimus GTS wrote:To be honest, I'm against that. It's very easy to just constantly fling your TFs in and get something else to do the work for you. There are two reasons for the way I run the kill competitions on my tournies. 1 of them is a simple case of practicality. It is a long slow and tedious job to check that who killed what for all the kills in all the valid missions. The second one is, I want people to actively take part in this tournament. Part of the fun (for me) is hunting through my results for the kills, and personally, I feel if you stand a chance of winning some prizes, you should damn well do a little bit more than fling your tf in and hope for the best.
Thanks Red.
A point that Red raised was the initial concept of a tournament was to stir up life on the forums, smack talk, rivallries ... okay so that mostly came from the 'Con side.
Point is, they're designed to get people active on the forums, and as Red said, if there's prizes involved then you should make more of an effort than dump-n-run (my personal opinion)
As the tournament organiser Red's opinion does have a major influence on our decision. Once again, we'll get back to you!
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Mon Mar 01, 2010 3:27 pmby Naked Magnus
Burn wrote:Thanks Red.
A point that Red raised was the initial concept of a tournament was to stir up life on the forums, smack talk, rivallries ... okay so that mostly came from the 'Con side.
Point is, they're designed to get people active on the forums, and as Red said, if there's prizes involved then you should make more of an effort than dump-n-run (my personal opinion)
As the tournament organiser Red's opinion does have a major influence on our decision. Once again, we'll get back to you!
Dump-n-run is all that I can mentally afford right now. It takes no effort for me, every 30 or so minutes, to make a few clicks and send my bots into missions. I am able to do this while I am writing code for work, as it does not require a mental context shift. Having to inspect the result of each mission, however, would force my brain into an expensive context switch and it would seriously hurt my work productivity.
So far I have participated in 48 tournie missions. By the end of the tournament, I will have fought in about 350 or so. If it takes me two minutes per mission (which is not unreasonable, considering the format we need to produce), that will end up taking me 11.5 hours, which is basically a full work day. Or, I figure I could spend 4 hours writing a little program that could do the work for me. I would make the source code available to you guys.
I understand that early April would be too late for you guys. I am just being honest with my availability. I might be able to do something this weekend, but that may just be a bit unrealistically optimistic.
-RoS
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Mon Mar 01, 2010 5:02 pmby Chaoslock
As I understand, manual counting is part of this tournaments Best Killer part. You can still participate and help your faction if you don't want to do that.
Personally, my method of counting is: ctrl-f the word "stasis" on the missions' page, and check if my cons name is at the start of a highlighted line.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Tue Mar 02, 2010 12:32 pmby Redimus
I'm very sorry if you don't have enough time to take part as much as you would like, but that is just life I'm afraid.
I've made my opinion clear on the matter, and Burn has said he and the other mods will get back to you, so really there is little more to be said on the matter until a decision has be reached.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:02 pmby -Soundwave-
Alright RoS, you have a good point, however the point of the killer part is to look though the mission results. Plain and simple that's what it was designed for.
While your idea has merit, and could be something that could be used in the future, this particular time I believe that it should be done by hand just like everyone else. One reason is you may not have it done for this, and two its already started.
I know you like to play but perhaps your two minute click into the missions to help your fellow bots is all you'll have time for. And that's perfectly fine. They need all the help they can get. You don't have to win the kills event as well.
Mind this is only my opinion and as Burn said it is Red's project. He's created it..and yeah we'll get back to you.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:56 amby Redimus
It's worth pointing out that tournies are not about making lots of xp. They are about waiting for the valid missions and deploying your characters with some tactical skill (including knowing when joining none tournie missions would be likely to generate a tournie one. I say this because you are by far and away the strongest guy in your faction, and they could really use you right now. Instead I keep seeing your strongest characters in none counting missions.
The current score is 139 vs 210 to the cons. You complain you are not being allowed to really take part in this tournament, might I suggest you try to take part in it?
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Wed Mar 03, 2010 10:07 amby Naked Magnus
Redimus GTS wrote:It's worth pointing out that tournies are not about making lots of xp. They are about waiting for the valid missions and deploying your characters with some tactical skill (including knowing when joining none tournie missions would be likely to generate a tournie one. I say this because you are by far and away the strongest guy in your faction, and they could really use you right now. Instead I keep seeing your strongest characters in none counting missions.
The current score is 139 vs 210 to the cons. You complain you are not being allowed to really take part in this tournament, might I suggest you try to take part in it?
What are you talking about? I have been making tournie missions a priority. I play my bots in non tournie missions when there are no tournie missions available. Sheeesh... Where exactly are you getting your info? According to my records, I have participated in 73 tournie missions.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Wed Mar 03, 2010 10:24 amby Redimus
Do you volley all your guys into missions at once, or leave a couple of powerful ones in case more tournie missions turn up before they would otherwise be free?
I mean, from what Ive seen, he may only be level 5, when you have some level 6s, but Ultra Magnus appears to be by far and away your most consistently good transformer, and he seems to spend a large amount of time in normal missions.
Anyway, that last post may have been a bit overly aggressive, sorry about that (I had just spent 2 hours collating the last 2 day's results, and hadn't quite readjusted to polite conversation), but you lot *really* need to get organised. And as the strongest member of your faction, you need to be part of that, even if it means you don't get as much xp as you would in a normal couple of weeks.
One of the good by products of these kills games is, instead of commanders putting their weaker tfs in for 'free xp' (which generally isn't there), they put their strongest available characters in, which helps their faction.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Wed Mar 03, 2010 11:20 amby Redimus
Ive just been given some bad news Im afraid. My French Gran is at death's door, which means I may be heading off to France for her funeral at very short notice. As it happens I was planning to see my English Gran for a couple of days, and expected to be able to run this tournie in a relatively uninterrupted way, but should I need to go to France, it will mean I will be away from the internet for a bare minimum of 3 days.
She's lead a very long and happy life (she turned 100 last year), and in all honesty, her quality of life has been poor for a while now, but Im sure you will all understand if this takes a back seat for me at any point.
Until I have any more news, this runs as normal, and the end date stays the same.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:47 pmby Mkall
Moved to HMWGD per request
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:56 pmby Redimus
Cheers Mkall.
Re: Finally planning to do another 'Im on holiday' Tournie.
Posted:
Fri Mar 05, 2010 8:04 amby Naked Magnus
Redimus GTS wrote:Do you volley all your guys into missions at once, or leave a couple of powerful ones in case more tournie missions turn up before they would otherwise be free?
Anyway, that last post may have been a bit overly aggressive, sorry about that (I had just spent 2 hours collating the last 2 day's results, and hadn't quite readjusted to polite conversation), but you lot *really* need to get organised. And as the strongest member of your faction, you need to be part of that, even if it means you don't get as much xp as you would in a normal couple of weeks.
One of the good by products of these kills games is, instead of commanders putting their weaker tfs in for 'free xp' (which generally isn't there), they put their strongest available characters in, which helps their faction.
Thanks, I was a bit caught of guard at the insinuation that I of all players am not contributing to my faction. My pattern is to play every 30 to 45 minutes and keep my interaction with the game down to less than one minute. If I play longer, then my brain context switches too much away from writing code and it takes me too long to get back into programming, which hurts my work productivity. If tournie missions are available during that window, then I place my top bots in them.
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Fri Mar 05, 2010 6:10 pmby Burn
Alright, so here's the "official" decision.
There were good arguments for both sides of the fence, but in the end we're not going to allow it for this particular tournament.
As I previously said, the tournament organiser has a large say in how the tournament is run. Red made clear his thoughts on the matter so that alone was a big factor in our decision.
There's also the issue of availability. Obviously something like this would give RoS an advantage over others. So make it available to everyone? That would be the right thing to do but then we run into the problem of it being a piece of off-site code, and we've had issues in the past with that sort of thing.
Ideally it's code that needs to be worked into the game it's self. Once Mkall gets his FTP access restored he's going to look into things like that (and if you're willing to help him out RoS I think he'd appreciate it).
Hope that clears things up.
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Sat Mar 06, 2010 10:34 amby Naked Magnus
Burn wrote:Alright, so here's the "official" decision.
There were good arguments for both sides of the fence, but in the end we're not going to allow it for this particular tournament.
As I previously said, the tournament organiser has a large say in how the tournament is run. Red made clear his thoughts on the matter so that alone was a big factor in our decision.
There's also the issue of availability. Obviously something like this would give RoS an advantage over others. So make it available to everyone? That would be the right thing to do but then we run into the problem of it being a piece of off-site code, and we've had issues in the past with that sort of thing.
Ideally it's code that needs to be worked into the game it's self. Once Mkall gets his FTP access restored he's going to look into things like that (and if you're willing to help him out RoS I think he'd appreciate it).
Hope that clears things up.
That's fine. Work has been kicking my ass anyway. The timing just did not work out well for me. My company's biggest deliverable in its history is due at the end of this month. Hence, I don't have time to manually count scores in March. I guess it makes the whole point moot.
The plan was always to make the app available to everybody and to make the source code public, so that you guys can check for things like:
if (transformer.getCommander().getName() == 'Burn')
{
transformer.getScore().deductPoints();
}
else if (transformer.getCommander().getName() == 'revengeofstarscream')
{
transformer.getScore().addBadAssBonus();
}
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Sat Mar 06, 2010 2:50 pmby Burn
I only had one major concern about the code.
HMW requires you to be logged in to see mission results and what not. That wouldn't have been an issue?
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:09 pmby Naked Magnus
Burn wrote:I only had one major concern about the code.
HMW requires you to be logged in to see mission results and what not. That wouldn't have been an issue?
Ahh, Yes! Forgot about that. One way to do it would be for me to log on and then grab the PHPSESSID from the seibertron.com cookie, and then have the scraper add this value to the HTTP header whenever it makes an HTTP GET request for a given mission id. HTTP is stateless, so the session id is what lets the server know you are you vs. someone else. So the scraper would, in effect, be logged in as me.
After a little thought, it would just be easier for the program to generate a report on everyone and then post the report online somewhere. It would start with the first tourney mission id, and then iterate over all tournie missions and compile results for everyone.
Cut it out Burn! The more you make me talk about it, the more I want to do it....just no time... ARRRGGHHH!!!
This would be a lot more fun than what I am currently working on.
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:17 pmby Burn
revengeofstarscream wrote:After a little thought, it would just be easier for the program to generate a report on everyone and then post the report online somewhere. It would start with the first tourney mission id, and then iterate over all tournie missions and compile results for everyone.
Now that, would work perfectly.
And because I absoloutely REFUSE to cut it out, it wouldn't be too much to put into a spreadsheet for the number crunchers amongst us?
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Sun Mar 07, 2010 3:59 pmby Redimus
Im slowly working through the scores, so we should be up to date soon, and I shall also post a league table of the kills game (hopefully) tonight.
Just one word for the Bots.
You guys need to get organised. Quickly.
You've been making the odd little gains in isolated batches of 20 missions, but you always lose more in the next batch. And the whole lot of you should be ashamed for this particular batch of 20:Mission #195705-195800 wrote:Standings In This 20
: 2
: 15
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Sun Mar 07, 2010 5:41 pmby Redimus
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Mon Mar 08, 2010 1:51 amby Zordon
im going to have to spend a hour or so tonight tabbing out the links and get my kill count up to date. if RoS wants his doing at the same i will charge 100K in energon
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:51 amby Name_Violation
damned new job gettin in the way of victory
Re: Legacy of the Quintessons: Chat, Questions, Smack Talk.
Posted:
Mon Mar 08, 2010 7:14 amby Redimus
If it's any consolation, the next two days will have me playing a lot less. After that though, it's every killer for himself!