PlayYourTurn.com -- Successor Site to CivStats: Track Pitboss Games Online!

[Inverse Icarus]

I know there's a Pitboss section, but I figured I'd get more views here. Feel free to move it if you really want to.

I've been away for a long time. I used to troll these boards as "Uber Krux" and "Inverse Icarus" for a long while. I remember fondly ruling as Supreme Military Commander in the first Apolyton Civ III Democracy Game, but that was a very long time ago. I come with news for you Civ IV multiplayer loving people!

Today marks the official public beta of PlayYourTurn.com, a Civilization IV Turn Tracker and Event Logger.

PlayYourTurn.com is intended to be a successor to CivStats, which hasn't had a major update in over two years. It started off with adding the new options and civilizations in Beyond the Sword, and quickly I found myself adding new interesting features.

The coolest feature so far, in my opinion, are the embeddable, customizable score graphs. For example, here is the last 10 turns of the game I'm currently playing with 2 friends:



That image is dynamic. That is to say that when we play more turns, the image will update itself. I don't have to edit my post and add a new image, PlayYourTurn.com takes care of all that for you.

You can customize a bunch of things like this. For example, here's the same graph with 30 turns, the lower-scoring AIs removed.



You can also "tag" events. For example, you can tag an "Ended Turn" event with "The Sumerians completed the Pyramids!", or "The Dutch declare war on the aggressive Native Americans." The event log can tell a story about your game.

In addition to these neat graphs and tags, you get event lists for your games, much like CivStats. You can see score changes, turn ended events, logins, etc. A large portion of the design was actually taken from the CivStats page. OverloadUT from CivFanatics had a good design, so I borrowed some of the best looking things. Emails to his account bounced back, and he hasn't been online there since August, so this is without permission. If he wants me to change the design, I would be happy to do so, but as mentioned before, he has a very slick design.

The game I'm playing with my friends can be viewed here, so you can take a look at the site yourself.

As mentioned in the most recent news post on the site, there is absolutely no reason you cannot run this turn tracker in addition to CivStats. I promise my uploader will play nice. You can use CivStats are your primary tool and still help me by beta testing the site. When you feel completely comfortable switching over, you can.

If you're currently administering a Pitboss game and use CivStats, I'd ask you to please try my website out.

I appreciate any and all feedback and bug reports from everyone. You can post here, or email me at joe@playyourturn.com.

[Robert]

Hey Inverse Icarus!

Fanastic news that you this new turn tracker!
I was hoping for a civstats update, but this also sounds really good!
Right now I'm creating score graphs by entering data into google docs manually! (check the first post of the "Dance of Civilizations - organisation" thread for examples of these graphs!

I'll defenitely try you tool out on our current diplo game! (dance of civiliations!)
Thanks for your work!

Robert

[St Jon]

I think you have a wonderful new system. CivStats is getting old and tired indeed but I could not see any graphs in your demo site or how to get to one. I'd really like to see that feature work.

Great work and I look forward to using PlayYourTurn in the future!

[Inverse Icarus]

St Jon,

Do the graphs in my first post not show up for you? You should see two.

Several of the games that people are beta testing the site with don't have enough turns (2-3 minimum) to generate a graph, but you can check out my game (PMS I) and play with the custom graph tool.

The options are limited for now, but it's still pretty cool. I plan to add better controls once I iron out all the major issues.

[Robert]

Icarus,

First of all: I hope you're ok that I created a news article about this release for Apolyton.

Further:
I've implemented the tracker for our diplogame "Dance of Civilizations". Thanks a lot!

Some feedback:
- While the tracker has been active during the entire past turn in which 14 out of 15 player played, it did not update all scores and did not catch the 'end of turn' for 2 players. (compare with civstats)

- We play an anonymous game, if I claim my civ with my rplomp account, will other players then see that rplomp claimed civ x?

- I don't think it says anywhere how much time there is left for the current turn

Some feature requests, apart from some obvious stuff (like sorting civ-list on score, etc.)

- If a game is 'anonymous', don't display the user-given name of the player. (to make sure that I won't spoil my identity if I accidentally login as "Robert" instead of Attila the Hun)

- Give the possibility for the game admin to enter a text that'll be displayed on our game-page at pyt.com.
That can come in handy especially if the game is down. (a msg like: "Game is down for this reason, it will be up again in 8 hours")

Thanks for your hard work!
It's really appreciated! Tools like this are very important for our games and we were really looking forward to new tools or updates of existing tools! I'll try to continue to post feedback here!

Robert

[Inverse Icarus]

Icarus,

First of all: I hope you're ok that I created a news article about this release for Apolyton.

That is much better than ok with me, that's awesome

- While the tracker has been active during the entire past turn in which 14 out of 15 player played, it did not update all scores and did not catch the 'end of turn' for 2 players. (compare with civstats)

Last night, around 6pm PST, I broke part of the site and then went out with my girlfriend without testing it. It stopped recording events as a result. I fixed it when I got home, around 8pm.

Are the missing events from this time period? I'll compare the lists later tonight myself.

- We play an anonymous game, if I claim my civ with my rplomp account, will other players then see that rplomp claimed civ x?

No. Your user account is in no way displayed on players in a given game. The data linking them is there in the database, but never displayed to anyone.

- I don't think it says anywhere how much time there is left for the current turn

This is currently not supported. Truth be told, I've always played with a small group of close friends, and have never used a turn timer! I will have to set up a test game and see how the turn timer display works in Pitboss, and then figure out how to handle this. I can certainly see how this would be a useful feature.

Some feature requests, apart from some obvious stuff (like sorting civ-list on score, etc.)

Sorting like that is simple. I'll come up with a way to sort the list however you want.

The reason it's sorted by player number currently is because for turn-based games, it shows you who's turn it is (check check marks go in order).

- If a game is 'anonymous', don't display the user-given name of the player. (to make sure that I won't spoil my identity if I accidentally login as "Robert" instead of Attila the Hun)

This one is kind of tricky, and I'm not sure how anonymous games work,since I haven't played in them. (Again, this is why I need testers like you!)

Generally, the game just updates the player name with whatever Pitboss is saying the name is. When a player logs in, their name shows up as "Joe" or whatever in the Pitboss menu.

In anonymous games, does Pitboss report the player name just like normal games? Do these names remain after they log out?

If so, when you create the game and the players are populated for the first time, you'll have to "correct" any names that have already been set. This shouldn't be too hard, the option for this is already there when you're setting up the game, or when you click on "Manage Players".

I've added a filter to check if the game is anonymous. If it is, any "changed name" events will be ignored. Whatever names are configured in the website will stick.

Admins can still change these in the "Manage Players" section.

I'm sorry if this has spoiled anything in your game. If you want, I can go in and delete all of the "changed name" events from your game, and you can set the player names however you wish.

- Give the possibility for the game admin to enter a text that'll be displayed on our game-page at pyt.com.

That can come in handy especially if the game is down. (a msg like: "Game is down for this reason, it will be up again in 8 hours")

Simple enough. I'll add this tonight.

Thanks for your hard work!
It's really appreciated! Tools like this are very important for our games and we were really looking forward to new tools or updates of existing tools! I'll try to continue to post feedback here!

Thanks! The appreciation, and the fact that people actually want to use the site really help keep me going, and excited about adding new features. I'm glad you like the site!

I'm serious about taking all the feedback I can, and working on this site often to keep it updated, fixed, and feature rich. Anyone and everyone should feel free to report bugs, or ask for features.

Question for you: You've been running the uploader tool for a while now. Has it ever crashed? some users are reporting bugs with an "Array Out of Bounds" exception, causing the uploader to crash. From everything you've said, you haven't run into this.

What version of Windows do you run? And is it 32 or 64 bit?

[Robert]

Last night, around 6pm PST, I broke part of the site and then went out with my girlfriend without testing it. It stopped recording events as a result. I fixed it when I got home, around 8pm.

Are the missing events from this time period? I'll compare the lists later tonight myself.

I'm not sure, I'll keep an eye on it.
Perhaps the score is only updated when the score changes, I later realised.
So players whoms score didn't change in the game just kept a 0-score, till they got an updated score.

In anonymous games, does Pitboss report the player name just like normal games? Do these names remain after they log out?

Anonymous games show in the game just the leader name, no matter what the player typed in the player's name window.
So if I log in as "Robert" while I'm France, it still shows "Napoleon" in the score list.

BUT the pitboss server window does show the login-name!
Thus civstats and now playyourturn take over this not-so-anonymous name and publish it.
Your solution is indeed sufficient, if the 'anonymous' box is checked, don't pass this login-name through.

No harm was done, we are aware of this and pay good attention to not spoil our name by typing it in the login screen
civstats also just publishes. But now and then one of us forgets to change it after another MP game, and then an anonymous identity is exposed.

It would be even better if we would be able to place an override name in our player profile which jus always shows. (b/c we play roleplaying games, our old king may die and a new king may rise).

example:
(a) Robert Plomp plays and logs in as "Robert"
(b) The leader name is: Napoleon
(c) the override name is: Jacques Chiraq

Normally (a) is shown
If a game is anonymous (b) is known
if (c) is filled in, then (c) is shown.

Simple enough. I'll add this tonight.

Thanks! That'll really help us!

I'm serious about taking all the feedback I can, and working on this site often to keep it updated, fixed, and feature rich. Anyone and everyone should feel free to report bugs, or ask for features.

I'll continue to update you with feedback and reports.
This tool is very important to us! I'll give you an Apolyton Plus account, because that's what you deserve for what you've done for the community!

Question for you: You've been running the uploader tool for a while now. Has it ever crashed? some users are reporting bugs with an "Array Out of Bounds" exception, causing the uploader to crash. From everything you've said, you haven't run into this.

What version of Windows do you run? And is it 32 or 64 bit?

It neve crashed. (we're game 32)
I'm running it right now on a dedicated server (just a desktop)
A windows vista 32 bits home pc, 1 GB RAM, 3.6Ghz processor.
Only pitboss, civstats and playyourturn are running on it.

It runs fine though it's not very responsive, as you already said somewhere on your site. Not a problem, btw.

Thanks for getting back!
Also thanks for all those answers that didn't require a comment from me

Robert

[Robert]

I see you're already implementing stuff! That's really quick!
I have abused the "description" field to add a link to our game thread. This works but can, if abused worse, destroy pages.

Maybe you should remove all of the following characters from input:

< and >

And then my request would be, include the possiblity to post a link to a game thread.

Look at how I 'abused' the description link to insert a URL: http://www.playyourturn.com/?page_id=17&gameID=32

[Inverse Icarus]

Yeah, I have to run a lot of sanity / whitelisting for various fields. Player names, game descriptions, and Event Tags could have JavaScript commands in them, the way it stands now.

I'd like to allow images / links in these, but disallow scripts and other malicious things. It's in the plan, but there are bigger bugs right now.

I've secured the site against SQL injection attacks, so no worries there, but JavaScript hackery is still possible, as you saw.

Since it's a beta and not too many games are being run, I can police this manually and delete / ban people who abuse the site.

[Hercules]

I welcome this potential improvement to multiplayer Civ tracking, and appreciate it is still at the beta stage.
Robert P covers most if not all of my questions.

Yes how does it react to automatic MS updates?

[Inverse Icarus]

Yes how does it react to automatic MS updates?

Not sure what you mean.

Do you mean when your computer reboots as a result of a Microsoft Update?

It behaves like any other application. You have to start it whenever you start Pitboss, and click the "Start Uploader" button.

[Inverse Icarus]

New uploader version released, 0.06, which should fix a lot of the "Array Out of Bounds" errors that some people were seeing.

This version also introduces logging, which can be enabled by going to File > Enable Logging. If you can reproduce an error, please turn on logging and send me the log file created! It's very helpful. If you're running fine without errors, I'd advise turning off logging, because the log files can get pretty big.

[BigFree]

Cool stuff. I just might start doing some PitBoss games again.

[Inverse Icarus]

Just checking in to announce that a major update to the Uploader Tool has been released today, version 1.00! We're officially out of beta, and the tool has been enhanced in many ways. Many bugs have been fixed, and new features have been added.

I've still got a list of things to do, but with a solid feature-filled uploader tool now complete, I am now free to work on enhancing the website itself.

If you are running a game, please update to the newest version! It will provide a more stable experience, and has better event logging.

[Inverse Icarus]

The diplomacy area is working now.

Please take a look at this blog post I made explaining it, and try it out if you have a game over there.