[Nick (psychonic)]

As work on our large 1.7.0 feature release continues, we are also trying to optimize code and remove anything not needed.

We are also forced to make decisions on whether or not to continue to maintain little-used features despite this going directly against our ideals of choice.


Ingame Plugin
Currently, the Sourcemod Ingame Plugin and the SuperLogs plugin set are already the preferred methods of extra logging and support for ingame stats. While we have support for others, we have no control over them, which makes it difficult to add new features or make large changes. For some of the changes, improvements, and extendability we have in mind, it would not be feasible to keep support for Mani, Beetlesmod, and Ministats as we would effectively have to have two code paths with much redundant code or a huge series of kludges.

Some of the new features would include enhanced support for more games, slightly less traffic/load from the daemon under some circumstances, and an api to some stats events and playerdata in Sourcemod. Overall, we would be sacrificing some option to enable much cleaner code, more maintainability, and extra ease in adding enhancements.

No decision has been made and this is only a poll to try to see how many people this would affect and what their thoughts on it are.

Please voice your opinion in a vote above and post any further comments. Also, please no plugin bashing.

Tracking Mode
"Normal" tracking mode (SteamID) has always been the best supported mode. SteamIDs make great unique IDs and are available on all legitimate public servers. They also allow tying into Steam Community features, such as showing the Steam Community avatar in player info. No-steam has always been unsupported (don't know if it works or works well and frankly don't care. I would even go out of my way to break it if easily done).

"LAN" tracking mode (IP address) does also have some legitimate cases, such as if the server and players are all on a LAN and there is no reason for the server to be public. I believe when sv_lan is set to 1, all SteamIDs show as STEAM_ID_LAN. I don't know how many people use this, but I would love to see.

"Nametrack" tracking mode (player name) seems useless. It requires the most code kludges, and name is the easiest to fake of these three identifiers. Also, the only legitimate use case I can think of for it is a sv_lan 1 server where the players are all NATed from the server and all appear to have the same IP address.

I'm curious to see what modes players are using, and if not by SteamID, then why not? Again, we are just evaluating these and nothing is necessarily going away.

All opinions are welcome.

[Nick (psychonic)]

Three people so far have selected LAN or Nametrack yet no one has posted why, as asked in the above post.

Again, I have only heard of one legitimate use case of Nametrack mode and it is a far corner case.

[Munra]

IMO

Amxx and SM should be the standards for hl and hl2 games.

There is really no reason to do name tracking.

[proxy8014]

For access to our game server we use a VPN, each user is assigned when registering a static ip address.
Therefore, option "LAN" is preferable.

[Nick (psychonic)]

proxy8014, on 20 January 2010 - 02:08 PM, said:

For access to our game server we use a VPN, each user is assigned when registering a static ip address.
Therefore, option "LAN" is preferable.

Does the server run in lan mode? (sv_lan 1)

[propaganda]

I am pretty happy with what your team is doing, the stats are way more comprehensive than most of what's required, there are a lot of features that some pay little attention to, like awards and such.

I would like to see better integration with sourcebans, as in not having to run a script to have them show in the stats. Or even better a package release for the whole works, HLstatsx, Sourcebans and Sourcemod would be awesome, but the logistics would be rather difficult I am sure.

[ArsiRC]

hey!

i would like to see the integration of sourcebans too ...

one idea for the teambalancer ... make it more configureable,
so that, for example, you can choose to stick players with
same clantag (homeclan) in one team if playercount is lower than
4 (var) or something. or make a servercommand to stick all
homeclan members in one team.

thx

greetz
RC

[Munra]

Integration of sourcebans would be cool but not needed.

I think it is more that we see the HLX:CE team updated and making the product better were the SB team is occupied with other projects and seems to have forgotten about the SB users.

[Rogue]

I don't like the fact that running HLStatsX:CE causes mysqld to run at high CPU a usage, and that I have a huge database (over 2GB) even when I remove stats/players every month. It makes it hard to backup...

[Nick (psychonic)]

Rogue, on 21 January 2010 - 10:07 AM, said:

and that I have a huge database (over 2GB) even when I remove stats/players every month. It makes it hard to backup...

Newsflash: data takes up space

[proxy8014]

Nick (psychonic), on 21 January 2010 - 06:30 AM, said:

Does the server run in lan mode? (sv_lan 1)

Server run in sv_lan 0

[Nick (psychonic)]

proxy8014, on 21 January 2010 - 03:32 PM, said:

Server run in sv_lan 0

If server is in sv_lan 0 then you can use steam id. It is a much better unique identifier than ip or name.

[Toughsox]

We actually use HLX:CE as a stand alone with no Superlogs or other add ons. Thus, we are more then extremely happy with what you guys have done in the past and anything more you might add to it is just a mega bonus to us.

GREAT WORK GUYS !!!

[Nick (psychonic)]

My current thought (based on feedback) for tracking modes is to support only SteamID tracking or SteamID + LAN for 1.7.0, but continue to provide bugfixes for 1.6.x.

Only 1.7 and beyond would get new features, but bugfixes and minor releases could still be made for the 1.6 versions.

As for plugin support, still undecided. 1.7.0 may be SM/AMXX-only, or we may find a way to keep the legacy code in-tact and just have Mani/Beetle/MiniStats not support some of the new features since they are out of our control.

Discuss.

[telefunken]

I use mani mod because it's clean, simple and straightforward to use. Just install and use without the fuss of installing plugins and configuring menus. I would appriciate it if support for this mod isn't dropped but I'm guessing you guys mean the ingame plugins and not the RCON commands of mani. The features provided throught he RCON commands is sufficient for mean as I do not like having too much clutter in the form of commands, text or menus popping up.

I think most people using mani would agree with me as the main reason to use mani is because it's so clean and simple.

Eventscripts might be added to the list of supported mods thought as it seems to be as popular as SM and AMXX as can be seen in the stats of SM.
http://www.sourcemod.net/newstats.php

[Munra]

I disagree SM is easier to use then Mani and even more straight forward

You can choose only the features you want. Plugins give more flexibility and settings for each plugin can be found in <pluginname.cfg>

Instead of a 1 huge cfg file

Also hlstats supports many other games mani does not and SM does.

Eventsscripts's fame is all due to gungame.

[Nick (psychonic)]

telefunken, on 22 January 2010 - 10:45 AM, said:

I use mani mod because it's clean, simple and straightforward to use. Just install and use without the fuss of installing plugins and configuring menus. I would appriciate it if support for this mod isn't dropped but I'm guessing you guys mean the ingame plugins and not the RCON commands of mani. The features provided throught he RCON commands is sufficient for mean as I do not like having too much clutter in the form of commands, text or menus popping up.

I think most people using mani would agree with me as the main reason to use mani is because it's so clean and simple.

Eventscripts might be added to the list of supported mods thought as it seems to be as popular as SM and AMXX as can be seen in the stats of SM.
http://www.sourcemod.net/newstats.php

I don't care to learn ES syntax and functions, but would be happen to help someone develop a compatible plugin.

One of the beauties of SM is that it is modular. You could still use mani for everything but hlxce. The only issue is that we have absolutely zero control over the hlx commands built into mani. We cannot extend it.

[telefunken]

Nick (psychonic), on 22 January 2010 - 05:56 PM, said:

I don't care to learn ES syntax and functions, but would be happen to help someone develop a compatible plugin.

One of the beauties of SM is that it is modular. You could still use mani for everything but hlxce. The only issue is that we have absolutely zero control over the hlx commands built into mani. We cannot extend it.

Yes, but the built-in RCON commands are sufficient todo most of the needed work.

[Nick (psychonic)]

telefunken, on 22 January 2010 - 04:23 PM, said:

Yes, but the built-in RCON commands are sufficient todo most of the needed work.

Right, for the current feature set, but not for anything new. Mani is not modular, we cannot add to it. Also, Mani doesn't support translations.

[AE 417]

What would you end up doing if support for other admin mods was dropped?

I already run SM (have for years as it's the best admin plug-in out there). With that said however, I DO NOT run the in game plug-in for HLX:CE due to running a simpler less intrusive SM stats program instead.

I would most likely upgrade to HLX:CE 1.7.) but it would be a good while after it was out as my stats are hosted and upgrading them won't be an easy task.

I don't want to find another stats solution because there most likely isn't one which supports SGTLS and I am not a fan of stats myself (the server community is though) and just simply don't have countless hours to find a stats program that works and then customizing it for the mod.

If I had to use another admin plug-in because SM was discontinued I would use Mani. I find SM to easier to use and to be more flexible then Mani by a long shot (not to mention over the years Mani has had long periods where it has gone unsupported).

Tracking mode I have always used is STEAM ID. What few LAN servers I have run have never had the need for stats formulation. Why there was ever Name Track is beyond me?