I see lines like this in my log:

[Thu Jul 13 14:50:22 2006] 2x of Stingray Homing Missile Launcher purchased for a total price of 1048c

So I'm guessing we could track buying and selling prices as they accumulate. I'll work that into the script. How would you want to use the data, report by latest in each location, averages, what else? I presume a way to combine entries from multiple players would be most useful.

I'm writing in perl so having it work in windows should be no problem, but I don't know about the voice-synthesizer driven announcements. The only perl module I've had to install so far is 'File::Tail'.

--Harpo

"I may be interested in helping a bit"

Do you program? Someone taking the server side stuff would save time. We could collect some things for common use like the weather and the prices for web display. If you can build a web form and save it's input to database then we are covered.

I am a master's CS student focusing on artificial intelligence. So, yes, I program - alot - but it is not necessarily USEFUL programming knowledge I have picked up (undergrad at a small private liberal arts college with much CS theory)... However, I did a lot of web stuff (MySQL, JavaScript, HTML, PHP - unfortunately I have not used Perl before, but I can learn whatever if necessary) for my senior project. If you can give me some requirements for the webpage/site, then I'll see what I can do for that. :)

Just remember that everything you're doing will be made irrelevant in a month or so when the API is opened up. That's why I've stopped development of VORuby (bidirectional Ruby wrapper for Vendetta with support for fetching guild players and active players from the website).

Which is also why I haven't started anything like this myself... At least if I were to make an informative website, I could slightly modify it in a month to accomodate a different data input system - the way it looked and operated could be left intact.

" If you can give me some requirements for the webpage/site, then I'll see what I can do"

Ah a CS guy, very cool. I imagine for storms we'd want to store the system, sector, character reporting, and entrydate/time. For the commerce data we'd want to store the system, sector, item, price/cu, buy or sell, and entrydate/time, character reporting.

I imagine the web page would report storms in order of reporting time (descending) and drop them after 2-4 hours. I haven't thought about the commerce display yet.

Perl I'm sure you can pick up quickly. If you can do AI programming then perl syntax will be a no-brainer.

"Just remember that everything you're doing will be made irrelevant in a month or so when the API is opened up."

Unless they change errors.log or remove the load command this stuff will still work. We can always improve it. I'm not going to get too excited until I know more about the new api.

"Just remember that everything you're doing will be made irrelevant in a month or so when the API is opened up."

where are the specs on the API?

ZOMG TRS! WTFBBQ! >_>

Okay, I have no life; I have a MySQL database (all the statements to properly set it up, I think) and a pair of PHP pages for you (1 collects data and one displays it). Currently the display page can only do storms, but I would like to know they work before I bother with them any more. Can I email them to you, or what would you like?

- Captain of the Sylvanas - stvrbbnsataol

If I recall correctly, Roguelazer is talking about the built in Lua interpreter in VO. Which, while locked right now, used to be completely functional- even to the point of allowing players to add new buttons to the UI, fetch the names of all the players in the sector and write it to an external file, and create various and sundry scripts for things such as mineshows(Not that all the things you could do with the Lua interface were completely good and harmless. It -was- locked up for a reason.)

And no, I don't need corrections on the lock status. Save that for racecar.

"Can I email them to you, or what would you like?"

If you don't have a place to host it I can work something out. Sent me a note, my address is csg at 4griffin dot com

Thanks

Done. Also, it struck me last night that there was an obvious additional thing to handily keep track of, but have now forgotten it... Maybe it was Hive bot kills by type?

*bump* So, the script itself is not quite done yet, but the display is:

http://www.4griffin.com/vo/HelpyScript_VO.php?page=storms
http://www.4griffin.com/vo/HelpyScript_VO.php?page=commerce

Comments and/or suggestions please? Thanks.

Wow, LC. These are really good. Your head might be oddly-shaped, but it's fulla brainz! :P

Seriously, this is good stuff. How are you collecting all the data? The PA guild would probably be interested in provinding you with stormwatch information if we can develop an easy system to collect it and shoot it off to you.

Well done, man. This is the most useful third party thing I've seen since FM's active player list. (Now if we could create a V-chip like they had in the South Park movie to implant in Leebs's head to stop him from drinking tequila and smashing moths into things, we'd be in business.)

~D.
"Nigel"

Harpo is writing a Perl script which reads the chat log and parses it for stuff (like "You are entering Arta Caelestis B-7" and "2x Purified Water sold for 12 credits (10 credits profit)"). The script then sends this information (e.g. "storm", "Arta Caelestis", "B", "7") to a PHP page I made which properly places it into a MySQL database. As such, all anyone would need to "do" to provide me with said information would be to install Harpo's script when it is finished.

Also, to anyone else who knows programming -- any security ideas would be welcome...

That Harpo's a useful guy, ain't he?

How are you collecting stormwatch information?

~D.
"Nigel"

"You are entering Arta Caelestis B-7"
-- set location watch to "Arta Caelestis B-7"
"You are entering an ion storm ..." (whatever it is - light blue text)
-- report(number=0, system="Arta Caelestis", sectorLetter="B", sectorNumber=7)

Wouldn't it be more useful to report every sector entry, clear and stormy? Then you could get a vague idea of how long storms last (at least, you could if you reported the time as well)...

Um... LC, while I understand that that post made sense to you, as a programmer, can you crank down to dumbass level where I'm at and explain what I need to do to get the ion storms I run into reported to your database?

I have no clue what you posted there.

~D.
"Nigel"