New public scan parser

[Bashar]

Between the rounds I was bored, and so I decided to 'update' 1up's tool. In doing so, I finally got round to doing what I had been intending to do for a long time, which is write a scan parser that goes further than other current parsers. After a lot of slaving over a computer and EditPlus, I came up with a parser that I reckon does a lot of useful stuff.

Previously, scan parsers have always just parsed the scan, and saved it so you can see it, this became obsolete when PA started letting you do this. I decided that I would take it 1 step further, and so the one I've written does analysis on the scans for you. It is hard to explain everything that it does without an example (I don't have any saved scans from the beta, so can't parse it and let you all see at the moment ), however, it aims to work out what the scan tells you. For example, with a unit scan, you parse it in, and it gives you a breakdown of the fleet based on:

- The ships of the fleet (this is a list of each ship type in the fleet, and the damage they do - i.e. it shows you at a glance what the breakdown per ship of the fleet is, and lets you see which ships are going to do how much damage).
- The damage the fleet will do per class (i.e. instantly shows you what its weaknesses are).
- The ships it kills (this shows you how many of each ship the fleet would kill, however, for this, you have to assume it is only that ship, and that the ships are EMP'd - as it doesn't take initiative into account, it is just to give a crude idea of what damage the fleet could do).

This is just what the unit scan does, the other scans all do (or will soon for a couple of them) similar things. Of course, you can also paste the URL to the scan to other people so they can see it, complete with the breakdown.

Please all appreciate that this is a new parser, and may have one or two problems, and it may also recieve updates/improvements during the round, but I hope you will all find it useful. It seemed to me to be something that could be very useful to people, hence why I decided to share it with the community.

The URL is: http://www.1up-alliance.co.uk/parse.php

Any queries/suggestions/bugs/gripes/improvements about its functionality/look/anything else - please feel free to PM me on IRC (#public) or send me a board PM.

Hope you all find it useful!

Bashar

[LordNieminen]

Nice parser, won't use it thou.

[Marv]

Seems a nice way for 1up to collect co-ords and fleet sizes to me

[The Real Arfy]

Why is it that as soon as you've nearly finished with a project someone has done the exact same thing already...

nice parser bashar, I tested a scan on it and got some errors though, PM me on IRC if you want to

[pig]

Originally Posted by Marv

Seems a nice way for 1up to collect co-ords and fleet sizes to me

tbh 1up wouldnt do this...anyway enough flaming ta

I tested this in the midround break and its good too see people actually developing tools rather than relying on old tools, this is a good breakthrough and indeed useful, if people like "our support team" member dont want to use it good for them, at least I can look at scan more usefully than you can.

[Goatsemaster]

Originally Posted by LordNieminen

Nice parser, won't use it thou.

Nice post, won't read it though.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Marv

Seems a nice way for 1up to collect co-ords and fleet sizes to me

You know, I found a call to a function in pilkara called 'maySeeScans', but it wasn't declared anywhere. How many rounds have you been using pilkara?

[TheRat]

Originally Posted by ******master

Nice post, won't read it though.

Nice troll, wont laugh though.

(ok I did )

[Bashar]

Originally Posted by Marv

Seems a nice way for 1up to collect co-ords and fleet sizes to me

Would you care to explain to me exactly how that would benefit 1up? We collect the dump files for our private tools, that gives us a list of all coords in the game, and as netgamers lets people use +x, it isn't possible to use IP's to track who the coords belong to (and besides, it is no secret that we have no IRC bot integrated to our tools anyway).

Also, why would we need to collect fleet sizes? We have plenty of scanners.

[Guran]

very nice!

[Bashar]

Originally Posted by The Real Arfy

Why is it that as soon as you've nearly finished with a project someone has done the exact same thing already...

nice parser bashar, I tested a scan on it and got some errors though, PM me on IRC if you want to

Yeah, I know, I fixed them, and was about to upload, but then the server it was all hosted on went down due to some less than legal actions.

Will update it in a few mins.

[Bashar]

Oh, and also, for the cynical among you, such as Marv, feel free not to use them, it's no skin off my nose. If you choose not to, I really couldn't care less. They are there, and available for anyone who wants to use them. Whether you take advantage of them is your choice.

[Bashar]

Those errors should be fixed now.

[Marv]

Originally Posted by banned

How many rounds have you been using pilkara?

Honestly? Zero. Only ever used a battle calc which gives no coords.

Anyway, who needs a parser when you can share all reports / scans now?

Marv man, seriously back off. He didn't have to share this with the community, he was just being nice. If you don't like it then don't use it. simple as that.

[starbreeze]

NIce to see that the Pa support team is nice and unbiased and fair to all people

@_@

[Goatsemaster]

Originally Posted by Marv

Honestly? Zero. Only ever used a battle calc which gives no coords.

Anyway, who needs a parser when you can share all reports / scans now?

Thanks for reaffirming my belief that you have to be an idiot to be on the support team. In fact, I think you may be on the fast-track to PAteam.

[TheRat]

Originally Posted by Marv

Anyway, who needs a parser when you can share all reports / scans now?

Congratulations on missing the point to such an extent a point can possibly be missed. I suggest you reread Bashars initial post.

[Kal]

I think this is a great tool my self

[kaos]

Originally Posted by Banned

You know, I found a call to a function in pilkara called 'maySeeScans', but it wasn't declared anywhere. How many rounds have you been using pilkara?

heh, you got me , and i thought i removed all the evil "ely spies you all" stuff =)
i didn't test your parser, but i'm curious if you used pilkara code or did pilkara benefit you in making your parsers ? (i actually just wanna know how ppl use the source from pilkara :xmas: )

and to all the others claiming those tools steal your coords etc blabla ... using those scans is quite useless because
1. you can never trust foreign users
2. it would be quite some work going thru like 200k scans every round
3. everybody who does such tools does ALWAYS have access to all scans stored in the database
4. you can't really use those scans for anything useful but general statistics (like race statistics, fleet distribution and checking whether the scans inserted would fit to battles calced via bcalc)

edit: those breakdowns seem to be nice, was about time someone implemented such a thing in a scan parser ... i once wanted to do similar things in pilkara but was lacking time back then ... now i still have some kind of "über pilkara" in my mind but still lacking + commitment (i stopped playin pa few rounds ago ...)

edit²: i start to like you bashar, editplus was the main(only?!) editor used for pilkara too =)

[Banned]

Originally Posted by kaos

heh, you got me , and i thought i removed all the evil "ely spies you all" stuff =)

Calm down, I didn't make any claims.

i didn't test your parser, but i'm curious if you used pilkara code or did pilkara benefit you in making your parsers ? (i actually just wanna know how ppl use the source from pilkara :xmas: )

I use it. The packaged version is incomplete and broken.

edit: those breakdowns seem to be nice, was about time someone implemented such a thing in a scan parser ... i once wanted to do similar things in pilkara but was lacking time back then ... now i still have some kind of "über pilkara" in my mind but still lacking + commitment (i stopped playin pa few rounds ago ...)

This isn't the first parser to do it, but it is the first public parser to do so.

edit²: i start to like you bashar, editplus was the main(only?!) editor used for pilkara too =)

You can always judge a person on what editor they use. I only like people who use notepad, because they're manly men.

[kaos]

Originally Posted by Banned

Calm down, I didn't make any claims.

calm down from what ?

I use it. The packaged version is incomplete and broken.

i know ... where's the fun if you try to use something and it works out of the box ?
i released the source to let ppl see how we did the stuff not to please any ppl or anything else.

This isn't the first parser to do it, but it is the first public parser to do so.

great, i saw tools in r5 offering graph statistic etc too ... quite useless if only a very limited set of ppl can use it ...

You can always judge a person on what editor they use. I only like people who use notepad, because they're manly men.

maybe you should calm down a little, i was mainly joking but you missed the "pitch" in your post my dear ...

[noah02]

ta very much.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by kaos

i released the source to let ppl see how we did the stuff not to please any ppl or anything else.

Edit: misread this a bit.

You only released part of the source, pilkara as it is will not run, and has several show stopping bugs. I've pondered repackaging it in a more friendly manner (with proper install instructions).

[TheRat]

Heh, do I sense a bitchfight comming?

[Banned]

Originally Posted by TheRat

Heh, do I sense a bitchfight comming?

Not really, I still think kaos is cooler than you.

Wanna make somethin' of it?

[TheRat]

That hurts, you know :-/

Anyways, I dont think anyone should discredit kaos, however lacking his release is. He's done a great job with a community tool, and should be thanked even if he only released parts of the source for the general public (something I cant really say if he did or not, since Im not involved there anymore).

[Banned]

Originally Posted by TheRat

Anyways, I dont think anyone should discredit kaos, however lacking his release is. He's done a great job with a community tool, and should be thanked even if he only released parts of the source for the general public (something I cant really say if he did or not, since Im not involved there anymore).

Oh indeed. The release is just missing a pair of source files. Like I said, I'm considering repackaging a friendlier version so more idiots will be inclined to reuse existing code rather than clone their own.

[kaos]

Originally Posted by Banned

Oh indeed. The release is just missing a pair of source files. Like I said, I'm considering repackaging a friendlier version so more idiots will be inclined to reuse existing code rather than clone their own.

i know about the missing files for doing the load data infile, there's a reason i didn't package them into the original release: i moved that stuff directly into the dumper so you can possibly use the thing w/o access to exec too, but somehow lost (i KNOW i wrote that stuff, but i couldn't find that version anymore and didn't bother repackaging it, because thats actually about the easiest part of the dumper, because if you look at the dumper its about at the optimum of perfomance you can get with php [i actually improved the speed of the old dumper quite a lot (about 400-500%) i think, the entire thing should be able to finish a dumping run of 20k planets in less then 30 seconds on a half decent machine [it actually took about 4-5 seconds for 10k players on the box pilkara.com runs (a dual pIII 1ghz)])

Originally Posted by TheRat

He's done a great job with a community tool, and should be thanked even if he only released parts of the source for the general public (something I cant really say if he did or not, since Im not involved there anymore).

hey, there's still enough parts originating from you
the only thing i really removed is all the eads integration stuff and some parts used by the internal pilkara version for our attack planning stuff, everything else was left in place

[Bashar]

Originally Posted by kaos

heh, you got me , and i thought i removed all the evil "ely spies you all" stuff =)
i didn't test your parser, but i'm curious if you used pilkara code or did pilkara benefit you in making your parsers ? (i actually just wanna know how ppl use the source from pilkara :xmas: )

Not even looked at pilkara source, the code is 100% my own, entirely from scratch.

4. you can't really use those scans for anything useful but general statistics (like race statistics, fleet distribution and checking whether the scans inserted would fit to battles calced via bcalc)

Not got a battlecalc, so that is irrelevant - also... race statistics? Everything you need for those is in the dump. Fleet distribution, I fail to see how that would benefit anything, it might prove a point of interest, but I can't see any real value to it.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Bashar

Not even looked at pilkara source, the code is 100% my own, entirely from scratch.

This is part of the problem though. Whenever an alliance techie sits down to do something, it doesn't matter if it's been done before. They hack out something that probably duplicates work already done half a dozen times.

[Bashar]

I find it easier to go from scratch than to try and use someone elses code. The bit that parses the scan took me all of about 15 mins to code. It's the analysis stuff that took the most time.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Bashar

I find it easier to go from scratch than to try and use someone elses code. The bit that parses the scan took me all of about 15 mins to code. It's the analysis stuff that took the most time.

Good job it's perfect then.

[wakey]

I have to say I'm not suprised that people like LordNieminen. The alliances have over time helped encourage a sense of distrust in them with their cloaks of secrecy, their questionable activities and their distrust of others. If your involved heaverly with an alliance and your releasing public tools you simply have to learn to live with people questioning your motives and theres certainly no point kicking up a fuss about it. Just shut up and let your tools do the talking because thats what will change peoples minds and ultimatly help reduce some of distrust that surround s the tools. Just look at the responce things like pilkara and sandman's got at first, its only really now down the line that they are really accepted and they have both helped make everyone a bit more trusting.And as long as these tools and your tool Basher dont ever start abusing the info it gets its hands on then this increase in trust will continue. Now if only the alliances would help a bit further by cleaning up their act and being a little more open

[Nadar]

Who would spend several hours, days or whatever how long it takes to create a bcalc only to use even MORE hours to analyse the bcalcs to i.e find out if that's against an allied planet? I know for sure I wouldn't bother with that

[MAdnRisKy]

Originally Posted by wakey

I have to say I'm not suprised that people like LordNieminen. The alliances have over time helped encourage a sense of distrust in them with their cloaks of secrecy, their questionable activities and their distrust of others. If your involved heaverly with an alliance and your releasing public tools you simply have to learn to live with people questioning your motives and theres certainly no point kicking up a fuss about it. Just shut up and let your tools do the talking because thats what will change peoples minds and ultimatly help reduce some of distrust that surround s the tools. Just look at the responce things like pilkara and sandman's got at first, its only really now down the line that they are really accepted and they have both helped make everyone a bit more trusting.And as long as these tools and your tool Basher dont ever start abusing the info it gets its hands on then this increase in trust will continue. Now if only the alliances would help a bit further by cleaning up their act and being a little more open

sorry, how much more open would you like them to be wakey before you'll give them your seal of approval or god forbid actually *use* them?

[wakey]

Originally Posted by Nadar

Who would spend several hours, days or whatever how long it takes to create a bcalc only to use even MORE hours to analyse the bcalcs to i.e find out if that's against an allied planet? I know for sure I wouldn't bother with that

Your getting hung up on if they would or wouldnt abuse the data collected in someway, the point is that the lack of trust that anyone here is able to put in an alliance that we arent in is low and this filters through to public tools they release. As such people WILL be a little hostile towards them at first and the best course of action is not to turn it into a "are they abusing it " thread by reacting to a reply in a bit of a hostile manner. Simply saying "It has to store some data due to the way it operates but it does not in anway abuse the data it collecting for alliance means. If you still dont wish to use it though your entitled to your opinions" and leave it at that and let the tools do the talking. if theres nothing funny going on they will become accepted and then they make it easier for the next set of tools that comes along to be accepted thus enriching the community even more

[wakey]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

sorry, how much more open would you like them to be wakey before you'll give them your seal of approval or god forbid actually *use* them?

I havent said I wouldnt use them, In fact i've already used this tool and use sandmans and bcalcs ona regular basis. I was simply stating the fact that while we have alliances who wont even trust their galaxy mates with their real names, alliances who employ questioable activities to win and a history of alliances going as far as cheating to come out on top, then you simply cant expect people to embrace your tools immediatly, especially when they have a strong link to an alliance. This is especially the case if its someone you dont really know, I mean i've used Bashers parser because not only do i know how hard it iwould be to use such data for any gains but also more than that Imy path has vrossed with Basher due to us both frequenting the same IRC channel which puts my mid at ease to use it. If I hadnt however had much contact with him the chances are things would be different

[Goatsemaster]

Originally Posted by wakey

I have to say I'm not suprised that people like LordNieminen. The alliances have over time helped encourage a sense of distrust in them with their cloaks of secrecy, their questionable activities and their distrust of others. If your involved heaverly with an alliance and your releasing public tools you simply have to learn to live with people questioning your motives and theres certainly no point kicking up a fuss about it. Just shut up and let your tools do the talking because thats what will change peoples minds and ultimatly help reduce some of distrust that surround s the tools. Just look at the responce things like pilkara and sandman's got at first, its only really now down the line that they are really accepted and they have both helped make everyone a bit more trusting.And as long as these tools and your tool Basher dont ever start abusing the info it gets its hands on then this increase in trust will continue. Now if only the alliances would help a bit further by cleaning up their act and being a little more open

FEAR WILL KEEP THE LOCAL SYSTEMS IN LINE

[demiGOD]

A lot of tensioned posts on this thread.

It's a parser, dudes and dudettes!! Relaaaaaax !!!

[Bashar]

Originally Posted by Jester

Good job it's perfect then.

it isn't, but it's closer than I'd have got it with someone elses code in the time it took. Still got a lot to do on it. It is very much a work in progress.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Bashar

it isn't, but it's closer than I'd have got it with someone elses code in the time it took. Still got a lot to do on it. It is very much a work in progress.

You didn't reply to my bug report is all :\

[Appocomaster]

It's a nice tool :-), though the last round or two MISTU had scan analysis in their parsers (as i'm sure 1up know )

[Bashar]

Originally Posted by Jester

You didn't reply to my bug report is all :\

I got a PM from you, though I don't remember what it was. Catch me whilst sober.

[Tis]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

It's a nice tool :-), though the last round or two MISTU had scan analysis in their parsers (as i'm sure 1up know )

as if we actually bothered with spies :/

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Bashar

Catch me whilst sober.

That's unpossable!