log file parsing and the difficulties of doing it reliabily

[Skandragon]

<p>I have a small Ruby script I use to parse log files, to populate the zone and per-character kill tables on eq2mission.flame.org.  I would love to know of other log parser source code that does this as well.  My main purposes:</p><p>(1) Get the zone name, and track it.</p><p>(2) Get the character name for that log file.</p><p>(3) Get the kills, and if they awarded AA or not.</p><p>If they do or did award AA to that character, I flag the mob in the zone as killable for AA, and mark the character as having killed it.  Then, the player can make a zone hit-list of named to hunt for AA in those various zones.</p><p>Of course, I'd really rather pull all this data from the Sony database directly, but...  :/</p>

[feldon30]

<p><cite>Skandragon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I have a small Ruby script I use to parse log files, to populate the zone and per-character kill tables on eq2mission.flame.org.  I would love to know of other log parser source code that does this as well.  My main purposes:</p><p>(1) Get the zone name, and track it.</p><p>(2) Get the character name for that log file.</p><p>(3) Get the kills, and if they awarded AA or not.</p><p>If they do or did award AA to that character, I flag the mob in the zone as killable for AA, and mark the character as having killed it.  Then, the player can make a zone hit-list of named to hunt for AA in those various zones.</p><p>Of course, I'd really rather pull all this data from the Sony database directly, but...  :/</p></blockquote><p>I hate to burst your bubble, but much of what you are doing on EQ2Mission is going to be able to EQ2 Fan Sites in the coming weeks directly from SOE. Especially the XML/JSON feeds of what characters are wearing, achievements, etc.</p><p>Now, it doesn't have zone info or the names of mobs in that zone, you'd still have to farm that yourself for the time being.</p>

[Therendil]

<p>They are? That will be good if it happens. On the other hand, I've been waiting since 2000 for a reliable player info feed like that.</p>

[Skandragon]

<p><span style="font-size: 11px;">Sony has said and failed to deliver this sort of thing in teh past.  Even this mythical "eq2players" update that SmokeJumper has said is coming first, followed by general data feeds, is taking a huge amount of time.  Also, closed development shows a lack of concern for community interests, and the data feeds are limited to what eq2players (aka Sony developers) can come up with.</span></p><p>Having a list of all quests, having a list of mobs killed for AA, etc. are not on the existing eq2players site, and AFAIK eq2mission.flame.org is the only "fan site" that has that information even close to usable.</p><p>So, while I would love to have my bubble burst and find that Sony will deliver this sort of info -- like many other larger-than-EQ2 MMOs do today -- Sony has not impressed me with much on the community front over the last 7 years of my playing EQ2.</p><p>For instance, that this thread was moved from the developer roundtable to "general tech support" shows most of what I need to know about how Sony thinks of community development projects.</p><p>I hope they prove me wrong.</p>