Systems (?) - Play time tracking website associated with SteamID

[AlphaOwl 307 / 7,593]

On the GMod servers, there's a reliance on the respective server's gametracker in order to track a person's statistics and playtime, typically used for admin applications in justifying hours on the server. However, one fatal flaw is the fact that the hours are tracked accordingly by name, which means that initial start times of players or recent activity may be misinforming of how much/long that player had actually been playing, as another user could've used their name and tracked their stats. I'm sure this is a similar situation to those in other divisions as well.

 

The establishment of GFLBans has proven to be effective at keeping bans across different games for the GFL servers based on SteamID. So based on the effort put into that, I don't imagine it being too challenging for an hour-tracking/playtime website to be made. 

 

 

[flying4ssassin 108 / 3,879]

All I am saying is that SAM includes playtime in the player menu that follows SteamID, but it might only be visible since I am SM but I am not sure. Also the time is messed up since this is after the rebuild of the server only.

 

The issue with a GFL wide repository would be the scale of it. Think of all the unique users that play on GFL once but will still have data on the table, it will be massive. Another issue I could see is that it could be difficult to itemize by server instead of adding them all up. While this is a good idea, it is also an unnecessary one since gametracker works fine and there are alternatives like battlemetric that are quite honestly better. It is also that the people that are capable of this are all busy with other projects and real life since in the end GFL is a volunteer position and having a career (or going to school) and dealing with IRL things come before GFL.

Edited November 27, 2021 by flying4ssassin

[Liloz01 1,256 / 19,840]

A few points:

We'd all love a robust stat tracking system across all of our servers, but it's hard. Not just to develop... all the way through, it's hard. From finding people to develop it, to getting server staff on board with the idea, to actually developing it and onward... Your example of GFLBans is perfect for this, Aurora and many other developers have been working on GFLBans for around 2 years now, and it's going to take a hell of a lot more time until it actually supports all of GFL in a "satisfactory" way. Possible? Sure. Really hard? Yep.

 

We use many stat tracking systems in GFL... GameTracker, BattleMetrics, gameME, and per-server solutions like the one mentioned by @flying4ssassin. As a robust stat tracking system across all of GFL isn't coming any time soon, I feel that Division Leaders should make a push to find a good but easy solution to implement across in servers for basic stat tracking THAT IS CONSISTENT ACROSS ALL THEIR DIVISIONS SERVERS (I strongly dislike how servers (not even across all of GFL, in the same division!) have slightly, or even wildly different methods of tracking hours/stats when there's no reason to be different! just use the best system grrrrr).

 

For example, for GMod: https://www.gmodstore.com/market/view/gstats seems suitable.

This would also make the process for Admin applicants WAY easier. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stopgap lul.

 

On a somewhat related note:
I have actually had this idea on my web project board, on Trello, for a while... this isn't to say you're being unoriginal or your post is meaningless - it's to say great minds think alike 😉. I plan on making my Web Project board ready for public view in <an indeterminate amount of time>. If you have any other web project ideas I'd love to hear them, even if they have already been said in the past. New perspectives on why a system is wanted are always welcome. 

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

To be fair, a stat tracking system would be much easier to do than GFLBans, but idk if you're gonna find anybody who would be willing to take up such a project at this point.

[Infra 714 / 12,401]

If all that's wanted is play-time tracking, I guess the easiest way to go about it could be:

• Have some form of API that plugins log when a client connects/disconnects, time counting done API side,
• Have different people make simple plugins that send a POST request to above API when a client connects/disconnects along with what server they connected to,
• Maybe some super simple Discord bot that allows people to check their play-time on a specific server

Maybe at some point, the system could be expanded to have a web page or something, but it doesn't really need to be overly complicated.

 

I don't mind doing the API side of things and a SourceMod (CS:GO, CS:S, TF2) plugin to interact with it, I already have a plan for a project that this could fit perfectly in to, might be the perfect way to get the project started if people want this!

 

I'm going to ask the Dev team if we can make something happen, I'm sure making a simple GMod plugin to interact with the API will be super easy. 🙂

 

 

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,950]

27 minutes ago, Infra said:

Have some form of API that plugins log when a client connects/disconnects, time counting done API side,

we discussed this internally, but ill just post here that i believe a heartbeat approach would be more reliable for the same reason GFLBans heartbeats to tick timed mutes.