Roster

[_vic_]

Here's a simple wish.

I'd like to be able to view the arena rosters on a web page.

My system requires me to have all textures and skins preloaded into memory, so it takes me ~5 minutes to change arenas. Sometimes I'm hanging out on LW:Orange and wondering if there's anyone on MidWar that would make me want to change arenas... Or to see if there's a trainer in the TA. It's a minor annoyance, but 10 minutes of switching back and forth to different arenas can get annoying after a while.

Also, I could use something like this to check in quickly and see if any of my squaddies are online before I even bother to log in - something that may determine whether or not I feel like playing for the evening.

Flame on.
Tim

[MachFly]

sounds good

but you do know that you can use the .f <name> command to find someone or .sr command to show your squad roster and what arena they are in.

[_vic_]

MachFly,

That still doesn't achieve exactly what I'm looking for... For instance, a lot of the guys I enjoy flying with are not in my squad on midwar.... and I don't want to look for 10-12 possible people online - I just want to see who's on that might persuade me to [EDIT] switch *arenas* [/EDIT].

In regards to squad, I'm talking about finding out if they're online when I'm not even playing the game. Maybe I'm deciding if I want to go over to a friend's house after work, or log onto aces high. I could check the site from my phone, see that my squaddies are online, and tell my friend that I'll be over another time. (probably a bad example, but you get my point)

Thanks,
Tim

[MachFly]

oh yea, I agree with you, that would be great.

Also maybe HTC could add something like a buddy list, so you could view where all your friends are just like typing something like .sr

[_vic_]

MachFly,

Something like .sr for friends who aren't necessarily squadmates would be very cool. The only reason that I specified a web page was so that A) we could see who was on even if we're not currently logged on, and B) It would be much, much easier for HTC to implement a web page that simply pulls the list of current players from the database than it would be to change the actual game code. One requires a wait until the next patch - the other should be possible to pull off in a matter of days (speaking as a database administrator who has done work in PHP).

Thanks,
Tim

[MachFly]

Unfortunately I don't work for HTC lol, but I hope they will make that possible.

[frank3]

sounds good

but you do know that you can use the .f <name> command to find someone

I thought the .f command was used for swearing?

[LLogann]

I appreciate your desire for this...  But having 2 completely sep systems (Server farms) talking to eachother will only hamper people with poor performance even more, and even those that do not suffer lag effects.  And sadly, from the system side, not the ISP side.  So there is nothing that would fix it except more infrastructure...Which costs money to buy, install, maintain. 

Here's a simple wish.

I'd like to be able to view the arena rosters on a web page.

[_vic_]

LLogan,

I don't think a simple web page would cost that much overhead. HTC already has a page that pulls pilot/squad statistics from the database (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/newscores/squadstats.php) this is essentially a logical extension of what's already in place and could be run on whatever webserver(s) are already serving that content. Although I can't speak for them, this is the type of task that my users request of me daily in my job, so I know that it's not difficult unless there's something strange in their code base that would make it so.

[EDIT]
Of course, it's highly possible that their statistics page isn't querying a live database, but rather a cron job on the server is exporting statistics into some sort of flat file once or twice daily, which is then parsed by the page. If this is the case, then I fear you are may have a point. Only HTC can tell us that!
[/EDIT]

Thanks for your input

[waystin2]

I am not sure a web page would be the best answer, but the ability to check the rosters in all arenas would be nice.

[LLogann]

It's not the simple page that creates the problem... It's the AH game system having to communicate with the simple page that can run us into trouble.  Plus your edit is correct... I believe it to be once a day at like 10am CT.   

LLogan,

I don't think a simple web page would cost that much overhead.

[EDIT]
Of course, it's highly possible that their statistics page isn't querying a live database, but rather a cron job on the server is exporting statistics into some sort of flat file once or twice daily, which is then parsed by the page. If this is the case, then I fear you are may have a point. Only HTC can tell us that!
[/EDIT]

Thanks for your input

<SALUTE>

[dkff49]

It's not the simple page that creates the problem... It's the AH game system having to communicate with the simple page that can run us into trouble.  Plus your edit is correct... I believe it to be once a day at like 10am CT.   <SALUTE>

 actually the stats are updated real time and the rank is updated once daily.

i know this because last night i was trying to remember who all i fought last night when i got off and went to stats page and there all of them were for the whole tour including those from last night

[_vic_]

It's not the simple page that creates the problem... It's the AH game system having to communicate with the simple page that can run us into trouble.  Plus your edit is correct... I believe it to be once a day at like 10am CT.   <SALUTE>

Naaaaah. If it were that easy to bog down a server with a simple database query google wouldn't work. Nothing on the internet would work. I know absolutely nothing about how AH is setup on the backend, but there has to be some sort of RDBMS software back there handling all the information (unless they're in flatfile Hades) My idea that this is "simple" presupposes that HTC has made a game that's a little more scalable than that. If querying a server for a list of online players is enough to cause degredation of the game server then HTC has bigger problems than which plane should be implemented next - and I highly doubt Titanic Tuesday would even be possible; 400+ planes airborne at the same time is much more taxing on a server than simply seeing who's online.

Besides, if that were the case, I would crash the server every time I log in and click "refresh" in the roster 90+ times while waiting for it to fill up *I'm an impatient one, I am*

I do appreciate your thoughts, but since nobody from HTC has piped in we can pretty much assume this one's getting buried like 99% of the other wishes in here 

Tim

[Bruv119]

a simple web page isn't much to ask for,

It doesn't have to be a live updating system, just a quick snapshot of who is online from the server logs.  I've wished for this before and other lesser games have implemented it.