CoH Stats v2

It could be an option to run it on linux instead but then I'd need to manually transfer every time the data (around 100mb) from my comp to our server since I don't think the game can be installed there.

JSON is only about 20MB, and that's without compression.

Note : as said in the first posts of this topic, there might be already existing tools to partially or fully extract and/or transform and or render data from either json or xml.

cr4wler has said to be working on a stats grabber already too.

I think we just need to use this thread to communicate about it, and see what everyone actually wants to do or has done already.

*cough cough*

you do realize that i offered doing exactly that (writing a program that converts units stats/intel bulletin info/commander&ability info directly from sga to sql? to both you and ami? about 6 months ago? :-P

if you look at the start of the thread, my program was already grabbing pretty much all the relevant info (most of the actions/modifiers were missing, it did not support multiple weapons per squad yet, but that would have been trivial) when darkblade started his site. from that point in time i pretty much did 0 coding on that program, since i am doing an internship at the moment and i have better stuff to do than get home and program a statgrabber for a game i don't play, after i came home from work, when i programmed stuff for 8 hours already :-P

since you are saying that the game also stores stuff in json files (which i am fairly certain it did not in alpha or closed beta) i'd have to re-write at least part of my code.

and believe me when i say, "finding" the data is NOT 80% of the work. finding the data is like 2% of the work, trying to make sense of it is like 90%. the remaining 8% is "dumb" coding work that my grandma could do (probably better than me). stuff like the weapon cover tables or the requirements will drive you nuts.

if i get bored, stop playing LoL or start caring about coh2 again, i probably will continue with the grabber. i will probably still make it generate sql, maybe even deliver a SQLite db along with it (which would make versioning very easy... diffs prolly too). at the moment, i just cba tbh....

Yes I know, this is why I a mentioning it. It was too early back then though so either way it wasn't possible for us to focus on it when we just launched coh2.org, and then the coh2stats site came and it was even less a question.

It would have been easier with your knowledge but if you're not interested by that anymore I can totally understand. Just trying to figure out how we can look forward with it today considering that other site will be shut down and lots of people, me being the first, will look for the data. Despite my previous post, I think at the end of the day, I would rather someone else host it and take care of it somewhere else. But experience (cohstats and now coh2stats) shows us that these initiative eventually stop being updated/improved at some point and I believe having it here would give a bit more guarantees. I also realize some people might not be interested by the hosting and publishing part, so I'm offering options and help now that the site is stable and we can more easily support such things.

I agree with you about 90% is making sense of it. In my mind I included that into my % of finding the data. All in all I think we agree the coding is not the primary issue here.

The game didn't change a bit, it's still sga -> rgd. json, it's just the tool allowing to convert to it too (but it still offers the other ways it did back when you did it, txt, xml, so no change there).

JSON is only about 20MB, and that's without compression.

Did you exclude unnecessary files from that? AttribArchive.sga is only 13MB. It's 63MB in rgd. It goes to 148MB in json.

So obviously it's doable in 20. But unless the tools to convert the different formats are also available on linux (I didn't see at first sight) I don't want to bother with Wine or whatever, so the transfer would be the txt/xml/json. But yeah thinking about it, might be 20MB after excluding all the useless files.

I wouldn't have an upload issue even if it was 200MB tbh, it's just annoying (one more script to do for sending and some waiting, and another to update from distance), that is why I am suggesting a windows tool if it doesn't make a difference to creator, since the original file and all the tools are there too. But yeah it doesn't matter much either way, just basically if I end up doing myself I know it would run on windows.

if the game didn't change much, my code should still work... it still doesn't grab actions/modifiers, intel bulletins or commander info, and left out some of the less used stats for some stuff (like tracking speed or scatter for weapons). the stuff i left out is easy to grab, the rest does need some amount of work. another thing i did not code yet is multiple entities for squads (as in squads that have leaders), which is also minor.

i didn't actually write too much sql creation code, but that is mostly copy/paste work.

as for how my program works:
i wrote custom classes for all the important stats... as in, a squad has a name, a race, a list of squad types, a list of abilities, vet info, list of upgrades, an entity (should be a list though), info about "squad_female_chance", "squad_members", "reinforce_cost_percentage" etc. etc.... then, for every weapon, ability, upgrade, enitity and squad there is in the game, all the stats are being grabbed and instances of the classes are filled with the information. so i basically have a programmatical copy of all the game info (that i grab). now you can pretty much do what you want with that, whether it be counting how many weapons there are in the game, calculating how much hitpoints all german infantry entities have combined, what the spawn chance for female grenadiers is... you name it.

don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that i absolutely will not do any work on it anymore... just that i have neither time nor motivation really at the moment.

as for work on program/site, i don't know if you remember... but i offered to help even before the site was launched :-P and then again after... then again in december... february... maybe march again... and i said that the only thing i would NOT do is the frontend stuff... you probably get my point ;-)

updated probably the last time

updated probably the last time

Why is it the last time? ...

updated probably the last time

why did you sell it...

Turns out some people like money.

If a company offered to buy a tool I coded off me for a decent sum of money, I'd probably sell it too. Besides, it's not exactly impossible to replicate what he's done on another site.

Yeah I'd have sold it, too.

GJ in making money, TY for keeping it up for the community for now, but FU for making your money off the communities back. No offense.

Im equally surprised and amused that somebody actually bought free data.

joke's on them... no offense to darkbladecr, but the data on the site is incomplete.

in case there really is a high demand for a new statgrabbing tool, i might bring my statgrabber up to a point where it can actually not only grab, but also save the data (so you don't have to wait 15 seconds every time you start it up for it to grab all the stats).

GJ in making money, TY for keeping it up for the community for now, but FU for making your money off the communities back. No offense.

Im equally surprised and amused that somebody actually bought free data.

this

though the question is did they buy just the IP or that and the program that got the stats in the first place.

@cr4wler
should make a program i can download onto my computer and check the stats of coh2 any time i want instead of having to rely on a website. (if i knew how i would be doing rignt now.)

if you want you could also expand it to other rts games as well which would make it a really cool tool for rts gamer. most importantly don't sell it.

@cr4wler
should make a program i can download onto my computer and check the stats of coh2 any time i want instead of having to rely on a website. (if i knew how i would be doing rignt now.)

thats exactly what my program is.

also, (if i implement it ;-)) it will be able to save stats along with the version. so you can basically compare stats over different versions. and you will not have to rely on the site being up to date, since you are grabbing the stats from the game you have installed (that is most likely up to date).

Ok, give us your version...now!

You guys should really stop jumping on Darkblade. He might as well not have done the work at all. This way we at least were able to benefit for several months...
It might be well possible for others to do it as well, but it takes time and DB spend that time for the community. At that point he didn't know/think about any money at all.

Also, whats bad about taking the money. You know when you were a student, living on the edge. A little extra money can make a huge difference. Its not like he became rich by selling it.

i don't think anybody is mad at darkblade.

he put a lot of effort in, and got rewarded for it in the end (not by a community being "grateful", but by a company actually being money for his work). after all, his work is not lost in any way.

in any case, my program is far from even being in a pre-alpha state, but i am confident that at some point anybody could make his own coh2stats page (if there would even be a need for it at that point).

Dark Blade worked hard for it. He deserves to do whatever he wants with that hard work.

As for the future... someone motivate/bribe cr4wler please.

No one don't blame him. just I love that site ...

I look forward to the new site!