A new stats tool | Forums

[rlmergeuser]

http://www.bagill.com/trials/

Stulli's stats comparison tool is awesome, and I've found myself using it daily to keep track of my ranking as well as to decide which tracks I need to improve to move up the leaderboards. There's really no beating his tool for that purpose, and I don't really want to try competing with such an awesome resource. But I had an idea for something, so I started building it and I thought it'd be fun to see if anyone else would find it useful, or perhaps just give me some ideas on how to make it valuable to the community.

I tend to think of Trials as a long-term competition against myself as much as I think of it as a competition against others. I've been saving my stats and flipping back and forth between them in an effort to see where I've improved. I especially feel lucky when I get to work the morning after playing a few hours, and I see my old stats still loaded on the screen so I can switch between tabs and get an idea of what I've done. Well, I decided to make that possible every day

I just started this last night, but I'm getting kind of excited about the possibilities...



So, basically, you can save your statistics at any time. 'll add point values later, as well as your overall point total, and your overall ranking). But then when you want, you can load up your stats from that date, and view the snapshot side-by-side with your current stats.

Your previous runs are not saved in the system until you've used the tool for the first time, so, unfortunately for those of you who've already progressed to the edges of what is possible in Trials2, this tool may not be so exciting. But for the up-and-comers, or those who plan on making major progress over the next couple of months, you may enjoy being able to see your changes. You can save a snapshot at any time, and (once I've finished the menu) load it up against your current scores and see the highlighted differences between your times and ranks.

I'm really just starting this, so if anyone has any ideas, I would like to implement as much cool stuff as possible. I'm not going to make it public until I have it in a bug-free state, but I expect to have it ready for some testing in the next week. Let me know what you think!

Planned features:
per-track statistics comparison
multiple columns with (up to 4?) snapshots at a time
player-to-player comparisons (like stulli's tool)
points based on deadlast's records
a point/rank difference column
(and more)

-Facestab

[rlmergeuser]

looks cool

[rlmergeuser]

Given our little competition I've found myself using Stulli's brilliant application almost daily, and wishing it could do something like this too. How about rather than a manual snapshot option, it automatically saves your scores (or the updated ones, at least) every time it accesses your profile. That way you'd have a complete historical record of all records against all tracks. Then you could either select a date to compare your current records against (as you've done above) or select a track and see a graph (and/or list) of your progress through time. You could also graph your rank and points against time.

Either way I'd certainly use it, and if you want a beta tester then feel free to PM me.

[rlmergeuser]

Glas, glad to hear you may get some use out of it. Thanks for the feedback, too. My intention is to allow the tracks to be clickable so you can see every score you've got saved in your history all in one spot. I'll have to get a little clever in order to save it every time it's accessed so I don't get a giant database full of records and leave the users overloaded with data. I think I can do it though I was even thinking of having it check nightly for all users who have used it, so they can see their progress later on. I don't want to hit redlynx's servers that often though.

(BTW Mods, I'm scraping your site for stats. Let me know if that's not okay.)

Below is the latest version. I'll PM you a link, Glas, once I've got the score calculations going. I'll look into how to make a chart (a simple one) of your ranks on a track, and see if I can't get something like that implemented soon. Thanks again for the feedback. I've unfortunately had to spend some time away from home, so I can't play as much as I'd like. So, working on this stats thing is my consolation prize

It's funny to see how your rank goes down just by not playing a track in a while! One month of 0 improvements, and I lose an average on 9 spots on those tracks!

[AnttiKi]

I sent you a PM. I hope you read it.

[Godmil]

Oooh ooh oooh! This is exciting. I used to save my page on Stulli's site every day so that I had a record of my improvements... so this sounds fantastic.
I'd love to have a graph for each track which charts improvements (either in rank or time) per track, and maybe have my friends times/positions on it too so I can see where we overtook eachother, that would be amazing.

Also in first with the True Fan call (provided this works anywhere near as well as it sounds like it will).

EDIT: I hope Anttiki's message is more along the lines of "here are the data names you need to improve your tool." rather than "Stop scanning our server or we'll ban you"

[AnttiKi]

It's more like "here's a better way to do it" and "don't overload our servers"

[rlmergeuser]

Ah it's a web app, I sort of presumed from the first screenshot that it was a standalone app with data being stored locally. No matter, I still think it would be a really cool addition. It does make my graph request more difficult though, but there are a few javascript apps that will do something like that. Not my area of expertise though.

IMO it would be best to leave the user comparison stuff to Stulli's app - it does a really great job with that, and has pretty much everything anyone could want on that side of things. This would leave you to concentrate on the historical stuff rather than replicating what's already available. Also, and you may well think differently about this, the idea of discrete and selectable snapshots doesn't really do anything for me. I'm much more interested in my overall progression in points, times, rankings etc. rather than comparing today's data with the 8th of June or whatever. Of course you have to store the snapshots to produce the data, but being able to access them all individually and comparing them wouldn't be of great benefit to me. Regarding the data, a daily snapshot would be fantastic if it's feasible and RedLynx are happy with it, but a manual system would be cool too as I'd tend to take a new snapshot whenever I beat a record anyway.

Lots of moaning from me as usual, but hopefully it's constructive. Seconded for the true fan nomination if this works.

[rlmergeuser]

Okay, I've applied AnttiKi's recommended changes, which took a little while but made life much easier on both sides.
Then I added point diffs between dates.

I also added a task to save any changes in your stats when they are refreshed. I.E. you don't have to save a snapshot of your stats. If the app detects a change, it's saved. This will allow the app to keep track of per-track improvements once I write a script to separate the tracks out of your records and compare them individually. (which is going to happen).

I've also come up with a way to do the daily snapshot automatically, but in a way that limits the toll on their servers. Here's my idea:
If you log in and use the app, it'll create a task that saves your progress once per day without requiring you to do anything. However, if after 14 days, your times don't change at all, it will stop collecting . The only way you can get it to start again is to come to the application and turn it back on, and the timer starts over again. This way, we won't be hitting their servers needlessly, and we can start ignoring users who've stopped playing. Oh, and it'll force you to keep improving . I'll have to limit this automatic feature if the app sees many users.

Here's a screenshot. I have one more task and I'll PM whoever asks for a link to it. Then I'll begin working on the per-track portion.
More ideas, please!

[rlmergeuser]

Looking good! Do you choose a snapshot from a list to get the comparison screen? Also, for the per-track stuff, will that be a progression over time more akin to what I described above? If so, doing the same for ranking (and possibly points total) would seem to be the obvious next step.

On a slightly unrelated note, one of the things I find myself doing with Stulli's app is copying it into Calc and sorting it by the points per rank field. This lets me see where best to aim for improvements; tracks with a high points per rank where I have a relatively poor ranking. It might be nice if it could show that. It is somewhat outwith the remit though as it doesn't use the historical data.