Tasks & Stats in continuous online campaign

[SNAFU]

Alter Schwede,

I hear what you say, but I don´t understand a word. I wish I could follow your script, above the 5th line...

Anyhow, looks great!

[SNAFU]

Your mission is now running on our test server (III./JG27TestServer) for a try, will report back tomorrow evening (UTZ+2).

[stillborn]

Originally Posted by SNAFU

Your mission is now running on our test server (III./JG27TestServer) for a try, will report back tomorrow evening (UTZ+2).

you should be able to see my stats in the log right now
please report any mission related errors you experience from the StbVolcanicIslands2_errorlog.txt

[SNAFU]

Here the stats:
http://www.india499.server4you.de/JG...rstats_low.htm

Seem to work!

But I have no "StbVolcanicIslands2_errorlog.txt" on the disk, sorry. Do I have to create that file, so it can write into?

[Ataros]

Hi, stillborn!

Thanks a lot for your mission again! Just had a quick look at it. Looks fantastic!

I did not see any frontline on the map. I assume it should move depending on tanks progress? Moving frontline gives players incentive to fight harder.

Could you please write a very short briefing for the mission explaining what sides can achieve, e.g. moving frontline, capturing some objectives, etc. I think it is important for players to know what they should concentrate on, e.g. if shooting down bombers or destroying ships helps to move frontline. How AI bombers select targets? I would like to have a short description to post on the forums to attract more players to the servers running this mission.

BTW. On Repka #3 we added Spit2 to the captured blue airfield. It is a good incentive for everyone to fight for it now.

Also I have a small request especially important for this new mission as it has only 4 airfields. Vulching is a big problem for small maps with few airfields. Could you please include a script damaging attacker's plane if someone damages enemy within 1200m diameter and 1000m altitude from an airfield? Maybe you have better idea how to prevent vulching on small maps.

What are the balancing rules? Is it progressive like 15 seconds if there are 10% more fighters, 30 seconds if 20% more fighters, 1 minute if 30%, 3 minuted if 40%, etc. or something like this?

Could you please include air kill per death, air kill per sortie, current streak, max streak into statistics and same for ground and ship kills? Do I understand you correctly that statistics will be continuous for months and years of the server life? I.e. each pilot's record can be viewed from the very beginning? I did not get what you mean by "Different stats like "tasks completed per place enters" or "ace of the week/month" can be variated." Can not see anything like this in stat sample.

Thank you for great code again!

PS. What do you think of writing a mission like this one? http://www.adw.alkar.net/en/static/rules/index.html

[Ataros]

Need urgent help, please!

When trying to run the mission on Repka #2 server we get a pop-up window "Can`t open / create file". This prevents server from automatically restarting the mission twice a day as we do with other missions. What could be causing it and can it be fixed?

btw. Server has a Russian version of the game and OS (Win Server 2003 x32). Thus system uses comma as decimal separator, not a decimal point. This caused some issues in other missions. BigRepa changed paths in your mission to match x32 version.

StbVolcanicIslands2_errorlog.txt is not created either.

Edit.
Attached is the mission with paths edited for x32 version. Please have a look if it does not miss anything.

[stillborn]

Originally Posted by Ataros

Need urgent help, please!

When trying to run the mission on Repka #2 server we get a pop-up window "Can`t open / create file". This prevents server from automatically restarting the mission twice a day as we do with other missions. What could be causing it and can it be fixed?

btw. Server has a Russian version of the game and OS (Win Server 2003 x32). Thus system uses comma as decimal separator, not a decimal point. This caused some issues in other missions. BigRepa changed paths in your mission to match x32 version.

StbVolcanicIslands2_errorlog.txt is not created either.

Edit.
Attached is the mission with paths edited for x32 version. Please have a look if it does not miss anything.

ive checked the file the only different lines are upload related ones at the top, make sure the "user account credentials application(game) uses" have read/write/create etc permissions for the folder StbVolcanicIslands2 and the ftp username and password has the same permissions for the upload path. Some windows user accounts may have read write change permission but not create, this is more typical in server environments, make sure the game is running as administrator.

the path creation method i used has some hardcoded dumb approach, like this:
1. get the application path => (which is "C:\Users\user01\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\cache" in my computer)
2. crop last 5 chars => ("C:\Users\user01\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\")
3. append "missions\Multi\Dogfight\StbVolcanicIslands2\" to it => ("C:\Users\user01\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\missions\Multi\Dogfight\StbVolcanicIslands2\ ")
4. create all the absolute full file names from this => ("C:\Users\user01\Documents\1C SoftClub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\missions\Multi\Dogfight\StbVolcanicIslands2\ StbVolcanicIslands2_playerstats_low.htm" etc etc)

maybe cache folder is named something else in russian version or you have uploaded it to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\missions\Multi\Dogfight\StbVolcanicIslands2" instead, sorry i forgot to mention this, but you have a user stat in the file with name "satar" which means all this progress completed correctly and it wrote to the file successfully and you dont have to care about the explanation in the upper paragraph.

Currently my system has a different default CultureInfo too (uses comma as decimal separator). I've created an invariant culture info(en-US) variable and used it in all required string conversions in all threads. So you dont have to worry about different system settings, this is very very low probability but there may be an extra change required because of the Russian game version, cant tell it without testing.

just make sure you use ToString(stb_nf) or "ToString(stbSr_nf) in stat recorder class" instead of ToString() if you want to add anything in the future.

Originally Posted by SNAFU

But I have no "StbVolcanicIslands2_errorlog.txt" on the disk, sorry. Do I have to create that file, so it can write into?

StbVolcanicIslands2_errorlog.txt is not created unless there is an error, its totally fine if you dont see it.

[stillborn]

Originally Posted by Ataros

I did not see any frontline on the map. I assume it should move depending on tanks progress? Moving frontline gives players incentive to fight harder.

I was planning to create dynamic frontmarkes placed at the positions of ships&tanks and updated periodically but i had no time, this is relatively easy and not cpu intensive, will include this feature when i have time.

Originally Posted by Ataros

Could you please write a very short briefing for the mission explaining what sides can achieve

Mission Info is in the attachment, I had prepared a better info for mission but lost it when my raid array failed, anyway this would be useful too.

Originally Posted by Ataros

What are the balancing rules?

there are two modes for balance either by fighter ratio difference or by fighter count difference. Default values are these:

• stb_FighterBalanceActive = true
  used for enabling/disabling balance system
• stb_BalanceFightersByRatio = true
  means balance will be checked according to ratio difference
• stb_DesiredRatio = 2.0
  means if one side's fighter count is greater than 2 times the other side's fighter count, new players at the high ratio side will be blocked from spawning fighters, this scales well with changing total player count whereas setting BalanceFightersByRatio to false makes the balance system check for a current fighter count difference which is the constant value defined in DesiredDelta. For example DesiredDelta = 5 means there can only be 5 more fighters on a side regarless of total player count
• stb_DesiredDelta = 5
• stb_MinCountForBalance = 10
  this means the code wont block any player(fighter) if total player count is lower than 10 even if the ratio or difference is above the desired values.

Originally Posted by Ataros

Could you please include air kill per death,...

collecting stats for deaths(ondead events) is a little bit more tricky, for example you damaged a ship, its burning but not dead yet, you exit and changed side, than the ship died, game's onActorDead event triggers and you seem to kill your own ship, because the parameters on this event are just references which are up to date. The same is true for reverse and opens a door for easy unfair score gain by attacking your own side, with missions allowing side change, in script there is no easy way to know "the initiators side(army) when the related events occured" causing another event even if you recorded army change times for each player manually and checked them with event times, This is also much hard&complex to write and very cpu intensive compared to current stat collection system. The right way to go this far in my opinion is in c++ not managed c#. The game also has a nice score system for the kills in which your score increases even depending on how well you hit a target. (i got 7 score points when i killed a ship by dropping a bomb to water, a few meters next to it but it gave 17 score points when i dropped the bomb right into its belly) It also seems to resolve these conflicts. There's no need to do the same calculations on the script which the game already does, it could be a good idea to ask the devs for a tip or example about this.

About different/variated stats:
if you stop the battle, move the "StbVolcanicIslands2_playerstats_full.txt" and "StbVolcanicIslands2_playerstats_low.htm" files to another folder manually and restart the battle, it will create the stats from scratch. This way you can archive them daily/weekly or however you like and can give the player with most air kills a nick or award. etc. i'll write an example about the things like "tasks per placeEnters" shortly.