SoD Parser

AngryCow

Dalayan Elder
Most players from what I have seen use gamparse to parse logs and to get a measure of their characters ability in-game. Gamparse was built for old Ever Quest and doesn't support SoD beyond the basics, as such it often has errors. When players are attempting to discuss theoretical versus experimental data with the staff, it is often shared as screenshots of gamparse. While gamparse has done well enough for us historically, I would like to propose a better option. I think it would be a benefit for everyone if the staff created a log parser similar to gamparse that was dedicated to SoD.

Features of this proposed parser could include:
-Parsing damage from pets better
-Parsing specific to SoD spells better
-Parsing things like ENC abilities to the characters they are buffing
-More relevant data for staff to find bugs in
-The ability to directly upload a parse file to the staff instead of a screenshot

I doubt the server has the ability to host a program like this live, so it would probably be a client side thing still. But hosting a webpage for downloading the new parser as well as a place to possibly upload parses to the staff shouldn't be a big issue. Understandably making such a tool would take staff attention away from content in the game, but I think such a tool has many benefits for our community and would have a good payoff for the time invested in it now.
 
Such a large endeavor would probably not be a focus for an extremely long time.

I would like to propose a better option.
If you are adept in the fine arts of coding, I'm sure the devs would highly appreciate your support.

I copied this into the DEV channel.
 
some of these arent even possible due to how EQ logs combat. Also enchanters buffs not being attributed to the player they're cast on is intentional. Its already possible to export a log file of a specific fight, its just nobody does it because you can get most of the relevant data from a couple screenshots anyways and save the trouble of making someone else load the file.

What does "more relevant data for staff to find bugs in" even mean?

A lot of these proposed changes require fundamentally changing how EQ logs data or changing the the messages that every spell output to the client when cast.

It wasnt until the last couple years that live EQ fixed some of these issues with combat logging being terrible. Just seems like a massive amount of effort for an amount of data precision that isn't really needed.
 
Simple tweaks can be done to make logging better. I always figured it was intentionally vague to avoid giving too much information to players.
 
All the things I listed are possible with a little bit of imagination. Yes there are obviously limits due to the client and the way things are logged, but a little bit of data cleaning and maths can go a long way to being able to show new things or old things better.

As for ENC buffs being not attributed by intention, I suspect you may be wrong about that in the current post-vision paradigm. There was some discussion about enchanters yesterday in the SoD discord server where it was mentioned that not seeing enchanter numbers was problematic. This interaction is what gave me the idea about perhaps showing the numbers could alleviate the angst.

"What does "more relevant data for staff to find bugs in" even mean?"
It means, but is not limited to:
-Time of death of mobs (For loot bugs)
-Better time of death markers for players versus dps (This just came up recently with trying to determine mob health changes post-ENC refactor)
-Mob damage output (To better track theoretical output to experimental output. Also tank and healing charts on gamparse are iffy)
-Timing of emotes related to mechanics
-Being able to track spells cast for spell specific interactions (ie caverns of darkness spells)
 
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