Version 2.0 of SWTOR.Parser

[Tim Rayburn]

Gentlemen,

 

This list was started because it has come to my attention that combat logs are being flushed to disk every couple of seconds.  While that is hardly as nice as "in real time", it's sufficiently close to in real time to deserve us looking into writing a version of the combat parser which can aggregate logs across all members of an Op.  As I see it, we will need to slay the following problems to accomplish this, and I would be very interested to see ideas on the technology side of these :

 

1. Be able to read files from the disk of a computer.
2. De-depulication of logs entries.  If a healer heals the tank, both logs with contain that entry possibly with some amount of timing drift, and we need to be able to handle that.
3. Pairing of clients, each member of a raid will need to be able to "join" the raid.  But otherwise we want these still private.
4. Charting.  If we are running during a raid, pictures trump numbers.

There are several options to accomplish this, I know that Devlin had thoughts about a WPF based Click-One application, but as I've thought about this more I'm left wondering if it would be better to do this entirely in browser without a download client at all.

 

My proposed technologies for the above problems would be:

1. HTML 5 File access from JavaScript, this will be a prompt when the log file is selected but that is fine.
2. Server based de-deplication engine looking for identical lines within 500ms (max) of drift.
3. Server would issue a session number, small and human friendly, to each raid group.  That could be shared in chat.  If you've seen Mikogo, think that.  Basically something like a 10 digit "telephone number" for your raid log share.
4. Currently thinking JSCharts here, but I've not done alot of Web charting in JavaScript so there could be better options.

Basically you'd open the web page in the browser, either join or create a raid.  If create you're issued a raidid, if join you're prompted for a raidid.

From there each member would select their current combat log.  For now I'd say we ignore anything already in the file.

We monitor the file via JavaScript for changes, when they occur we read the lines, and push to the server via SignalR

The server catches the SignalR push, runs deduplication routines, and pushes good new rows to all clients.

Those clients update the UI. (This means our analysis engine moves to JavaScript for these scenarios).

 

Those are my thoughts by they are HARDLY the only way to skin this problem.

Tim Rayburn
Principal Consultant, Improving Enterprises - Connected Systems MVP - Cell 817 760 0002 - Blog http://TimRayburn.net - T...@TimRayburn.net

[Devlin Liles]

I was leaning towards the download client for the times where you are in a flash point and only want to track your skills without giving up bandwidth for practice scenarios...

That being said can html 5 do continuous scanning of a file without multiple prompts happening? I think this is blocked by most browsers but will try when I get back home tonight.

Thanks,
Devlin

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From: Tim Rayburn
Sent: 4/15/2012 8:44 AM
To: swtorparser...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Version 2.0 of SWTOR.Parser

[Tim Rayburn]

If HTML5 can perform as I expect, then essentially you could run the analysis engine locally in JavaScript without the SignalR bus and have zero bandwidth impact.

Tim Rayburn
Principal Consultant, Improving Enterprises - Connected Systems MVP - Cell 817 760 0002 - Blog http://TimRayburn.net - T...@TimRayburn.net

[Clayton Havens]

Even offline I find graphs better.. helps me see issues with my rotation easier.

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Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2012 08:43:54 -0500

Subject: Version 2.0 of SWTOR.Parser

From: T...@TimRayburn.NET
To: swtorparser...@googlegroups.com