BB Manager is permanently down

[TheGutterRunner]

Mine's a web program with a database so I'm not sure how it's fundamentally different.

However I definitely intend to keep to high standards of uptime, interest, features and backups than BB Manager had though, as well as letting people export/view more of the data through means rather than the front end client.

 

[Nikolai II]

I was thinking if you shared the program so it could be set up on servers belonging to a particular league that might be a selling point for some, since they could be sure the server would hold as long as the league did (and not get the BBM problem of a horribly bloated database)

 

[TheGutterRunner]

Well, I'm a database professional of some 10 years so I should be able to deal with a large amount of data. For instance, by default you can only see matches from your "community", this should help keep things fast and uncluttered for the end user.

There are advantages of having the data all in one place, I can think of 3 straight away. a) You don't have to be a whizz to set it up, b) can provide aggregated data/stats across a larger number of games, and c) upgrades/improvements are implemented for all.

Not that I'm averse to letting people set up their own versions. I just don't think it's the best solution for most, and not whilst it's still under active development.

 

[mamutas]

Yes, I would totally be interested in the solution that we can run on bbtactics.com and own ourselves. Would you tool allow that? If so, it increases the interest in it and may put Mordrek's tool to the side.

 

[mamutas]

Well, I'm a database professional of some 10 years so I should be able to deal with a large amount of data. For instance, by default you can only see matches from your "community", this should help keep things fast and uncluttered for the end user.

There are advantages of having the data all in one place, I can think of 3 straight away. a) You don't have to be a whizz to set it up, b) can provide aggregated data/stats across a larger number of games, and c) upgrades/improvements are implemented for all.

Not that I'm averse to letting people set up their own versions. I just don't think it's the best solution for most, and not whilst it's still under active development.

Yes, you are bringing the valid points, but they are valid with some certain goals.

If you want to get stats across all the games, then yeah, put them all together.

Our goal here is to have a tool that would supplement the game for our own league, we are not much interested in the global stats, but more likely to get our own standing rights and being able to setup the rules on our own.

Not asking too much?

 

[TheGutterRunner]

I stick by the last line of what I said - not whilst it's still under active development.

we are not much interested in the global stats,

Plenty of people would be

but more likely to get our own standing rights and being able to setup the rules on our own.

A proper solution should give you plenty of options for all those things anyway. I want the tool to be the best that it can be.

This is all theoretical anyway isn't it, as you're talking about BB2, which I doubt I will even start looking at until Q3.

The more testers the better really - bugs are more easily picked up, suggestions can be implemented for everyone etc.

 

[mamutas]

Oh, I am sure there are people who think differently than I am.
But, I think you missed @Nikolai II point - if the solution is outside of our control, what guarantee we have that the servers will be around? That is my argument for the custom solution, whether it is BB2 or BB1.

 

[TheGutterRunner]

But, I think you missed @Nikolai II point

On the contrary, I think you've missed half of what I'm posted.

If you're not interested in it, fine. I'm not wasting my time repeating myself. Just read what I've already written, properly.

 

[Nikolai II]

Well, the worry might be about having "locked in" to the "development version" and thus not being able to split out if one has helped out.

But it's a conundrum since if one is not helping out there's less of a chance to get to the final version to begin with.

Still, the concept does sound promising, but perhaps only for a CTALE or equally small and solitary league to begin with?
(Or maybe the CC playoffs? Does it handle playoffs?)

 

[Znarx]

I think that Crunch Cup is a good league to try to test this out with, since we don't have to worry about trying to set up standings from season to season, but we still need rankings to determine who goes to the playoffs. @TheGutterRunner can you send me information on how we can use your stuff?

 

[TheGutterRunner]

I've been chatting to @cjblackburn, he plans to try it out on one of the Big Crunch divisions in the season that's about to start.
@Znarx you're welcome to use it too if you'd like; drop me a PM & we can discuss.

 

[Steele]

Appears I am not the only one who have had thoughts about doing my own app for BB stats

My design is based around the leagues setting up their own servers to contain the DB, though, but with the option to have a central server with DB for world stats set up to collect from those leagues subscribing, and also app updates. The world server could go down without really affecting the league-run servers, except for lack of new updates.

Promises of up-time is all fine and well, and I don't mean to discredit your intentions @TheGutterRunner, but you can't guarantee that your server will run forever, or at least as long as the BB:CE servers are up. Force majeure and all that.
I really think you should rethink the centralized DB model, to make it not mandatory for the whole app to function, if at all possible, but it sounds like you're locked into that track already, judging from the time spent on your app.
Just remember, people have lost so many, many matches to the centralized structure of BBM. Personally, I have lost about 5 years of match history and stats for my league, and I would be really careful about making my league 100% dependent on a 3rd party again. Around 300.000 matches total were lost, according to SuperJC

That said, you're light-years ahead of me already, development-wise, since I'm just getting started, and there's no question that having a professional DB person design this is better than the model used by BBM
A centralized stats manager is still better than NO stats manager, and I wish you the best of luck and progress in developing it!

 

[TheGutterRunner]

Appears I am not the only one who have had thoughts about doing my own app for BB stats

My design is based around the leagues setting up their own servers to contain the DB, though, but with the option to have a central server with DB for world stats set up to collect from those leagues subscribing, and also app updates. The world server could go down without really affecting the league-run servers, except for lack of new updates.

Promises of up-time is all fine and well, and I don't mean to discredit your intentions @TheGutterRunner, but you can't guarantee that your server will run forever, or at least as long as the BB:CE servers are up. Force majeure and all that.
I really think you should rethink the centralized DB model, to make it not mandatory for the whole app to function, if at all possible

I feel like a broken records here... I've said earlier in this thread... and I'm doing it again in caps because you (& presumably the 3 people who "liked" your post) don't seem to have taken it on board.... I'm not releasing it for people to install themselves AT THIS TIME - it's simply not in a fit state for someone other than the person who wrote it to administer it. NO decision has been made for the future. There's NO technical limitation on it being installed elsewhere. So no I do not need to rethink the "centralized DB model" as there IS no such model in place.

Your model is, in the end, superior, but if you want to set everything up like that, from the start, then you have additional things to worry about. You've got to make it easy to install, support other communities with installing it, set up communication between people's instances and your own, and you have to do front-end coding for the stuff I have to do in the back-end so other communities can administrate it. It took me 2 months to create something basic & usable for my community, add in those things too and you're adding at least 50% more time. Different people have different motivations but I would've given up with such a large task list before me before I had anything to show for it. Plus there's that many more things that could go wrong.

, but it sounds like you're locked into that track already, judging from the time spent on your app.

Not true - see my bold text, and also it's coded pretty well, it's not a humongous mess of spaghetti code, the various elements of the code function independently. It would be far from an impossible piece of work to make it work under your model. However having it centralised at the start means you a) have something to show for your efforts sooner and b) it's easier to get people to test your code as you don't have to get them to set up an instance of their own.

Just remember, people have lost so many, many matches to the centralized structure of BBM. Personally, I have lost about 5 years of match history and stats for my league, and I would be really careful about making my league 100% dependent on a 3rd party again. Around 300.000 matches total were lost, according to SuperJC

I think it's important to understand that originally I was building it just for my community, so this "third party" concern was not a concern as I was not and am not a third party as far as my community is concerned. I've known some of the guys I've played with for over a decade & met some of them in real life too. This also means it would've been madness to start designing it under your design... so much work for absolutely zero gain. But I thought I may as well build it in such a way that others could use it too, as the development cost of doing that was waaaay lower if I did that from the start than if I decided to do that later. This is something you learn from working with large growing databases.... having to cope with future demands based on poor design decisions made earlier on wastes so much time, money and effort. It's the death of BBM that has pushed forward the "multi-community" line of development. Better the community has something to fill the void, rather than waiting another 6 months until I'm perfectly happy with everything and all the features I want to be in there are in there.

That said, you're light-years ahead of me already, development-wise, since I'm just getting started, and there's no question that having a professional DB person design this is better than the model used by BBM
A centralized stats manager is still better than NO stats manager, and I wish you the best of luck and progress in developing it!

7.5 months, ~450kb of code and way too much of my free time.

Oh and one more time so people don't keep repeating the same fallacy...

***I'm not releasing it for people to install themselves AT THIS TIME*** PLEASE NOTICE THE BIT IN BOLD, IT'S VERY IMPORTANT!!!!

 

[TheGutterRunner]

OK... after some more testing and the crunch cup testing it out too... if anyone wants to upload random matches to my tool, you can now do so. I've set up an Auld World league for such fixtures.

gandalfgames.net/bbdb

In the username field you should type AWcoach

As for the password, well, it has no spaces, no capitals, and is the name of the fastest skaven position followed by the Skaven positional who starts with block.

Please don't type the password here, I'm sure people can figure it out, and I'd rather not have bots spamming the website.

PS there maybe a match image available soon. I'm not developing that though so I can't promise anything.

 

[Ghastley]

Hi GutterRunner,

I wanted to test your new site, looks very promising! I can log in fine, but when I try to submit a match the page just says "Page not found, or you lack the necessary permissions.". Other parts of the site don't work for me as well. How can I submit matches?

 

[TheGutterRunner]

Ah the joys of testing. It's one of two things...

1) There are caching issues with my webhost. You need to do hard refreshes quite often - that is, press ctrl+F5, and it should work then. Sometimes this doesn't work well on Chrome either. I need to speak to my webhosts about this, as it's nothing I can do anything about and makes my website appear somewhat defective...

2) I could've set up the new user without the right permissions... I'll check that in the next 24 hours and get back to you.

 

[Ghastley]

Thank you for your answer! I hammered Ctrl + F5 a lot of times in Firefox and while it seemed to hard refresh the upload page, the result didn't change. So I assume it is option 2. I can try tonight again, though.

 

[TheGutterRunner]

Yes it was 2. I set up a user with no permissions. What a genius I am. Try it again now.

 

[Ghastley]

Okay, I was able to choose the files to upload now. Well, but then it says "Non-numeric input detected where number expected. Upload aborted". I only have a BB_LE000.log, but no 001 and 002 and I can't choose the competition type, maybe because of that?

 

[TheGutterRunner]

Yeah the lack of a competition is probably the issue. I've fixed that, can you try again please? Thanks for your patience & helping to sort out these issues

Most matches only have a BB_LE000.log file, if you roll tons of dice you can get a second or (VERY rarely) a third log file.