EntropiaPlanets presents: Integrated tracker

i just did a quick browse at the global page, while checking the ingame flow of globals and noticed some ore-amps being skept. might be related to what wizz commented earlier on about OA global spams with similar sizes, but these globals were definitely quite different in size.

 

Downloaded and using this tool now. Have not got any reply for the performance yet but will keep you informed.

 

...............................................

 

just did some wiresharking :P and checked that my client is feeding data correctly to the server.

regarding the missing globals, they were all OA-101's. my client was reporting them correctly but they were not shown on the live web page. my bet is that the check for fake globals on the server might be too strict at the moment and discards too much.

 

Btw, it's hard to know if it's doing anything, could we get some sort of overlay saying when it's taking a picture and when it's uploading info?
I'm so "scared" that it's not doing anything at all.

 

Just a short feedback on most of the requests:

The tracker icon will change color depending on it's state, moreover, there will be a tooltip for the icon showing the number of globals tracked - all in the next update.

We are working on an overlay graphics for the information feedback and all of the cool future functions, no ETA on that tho - we do everything to avoid that the tracker needs admin rights, for obvious reasons... but this doesn't exactly help with the development.

As for the missing globals:
We are chasing potential bugs atm (please keep in mind that the EPTracker is still under heavy development) - however, we try to fix every reported problem asap, so bear with us.

 

Wizzszz do you think this could be some type of spyware? Anyone else getting this problem?

I've run a virus scanner on my computer it didn't find anything.

 

So there is no way to run this without a chat log running?

nor a way to NOT be running when I am not in EU?


or am I reading these posts wrong?

 

I dont think the program consumes a lot of RAM compared to for instance.. uhm.. skype.. msn messenger.. explorer .. and so on...

So if the program in its idle stage causes problems for you.. Id suggest a trip to your locak hardware pusher to get a better computer :D

 

A vanishing chat.log file... hmm... I don't think that there is any real benefit from deleting your chat.log (other than breaking the trackers maybe), but if ET read the globals, it should be there... somewhere...

Windows Vista and up tend to lie to users about the location of files you write to protected folders w/o sufficient rights, but this shouldn't be the case here - unless you run EU and EPTracker under different user accounts. O_o (not likely)

Are you sure you are looking in the right place?
The chatlog is supposed to be under c:\users\<your windows username>\mydocs\Entropia Universe\

Yes, scanning from the ingame chat panel is no longer that easy, because you can move the entire thing now :(


But ofc you can close the tracker client when you don't run EU, it's just not recommended because the future functions kinda require that it's running BEFORE you start EU (well, you can still start it manually directly before you launch EU) and some functions that are tied to the EP forum functions will only work as long as EPT is running - if you dont need them feel free to shut the client down while you are not ingame.

 

EPT should cause no noticeable impact on the system performance whatsoever, if half a MB of ram that is paged to the swap file while not playing EU is too much, you shouldn't run it anyway - but i doubt you will be able to run EU with such a machine.

If you are worried about any "background activity" not related to logging globals, feel free to download wireshark and see what (and when) the client sends - the data format is XML, so all the data are (somehow) human-readable, so you can exactly see what the client is sending.

 

Windows 7 Professional 64Bit Danish looks like this:

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\Documents\Entropia Universe

AND

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Entropia Universe

The chat.log is under <USERNAME> folder..

 

Well, the "mydocs" is a windows internal name for that folder, which is mapped to a local name, which is i.e. "Dokumente" in the german version of windows - so your local path may vary, i thought "my documents" (= mydocs) is obvious... and everyone using windows for a while should know that.

EPT doesn't use the absolute path anyway and requests the "special folder location for %mydocs%, so there is no need to enter a path name, EPT will find it automatically.

 

I'm using windows xp, so path i think is:
C:\Documents and Settings\?<username>\My Documents\Entropia Universe


At least that's where i popped up when i started EU and i pointed Entropia tracker for the chat file. ET shows the globals feed fine so it must be reading it.

Eptracker also shows my global i got recently, so maybe that's reading it fine too or maybe it got that from someone elses feed...


...

am i looking at the wrong folder?

 

That location should be perfectly fine - so the chat.log file was there before and when you pointed ET to it it vanished and you can't find it anymore in that folder?? Did i get that right?

That's odd, especially because XP shouldn't do stunts like hidden file redirects and ET is able to find the file - maybe starfinder can comment on this?!

 

yeap, that's what i did, not because i was suspecting any "undesirable" activity, of course, but simply out of curiosity, from a fellow developer :P

the EPT client sends every ~30 seconds a batch of globals in a single HTTP POST request (usually 5-6 globals). each request is not more a few hundreds bytes, so the network activity is indeed negligible.

now that i'm at it, i have another suggestion for the tool tip in the system tray icon, hehehe... :

could you make the tooltip display the number of EPT clients currently active? i guess it is pretty simple to piggyback this info in the server response after each upload and update the tool tip accordingly.

why this is good? well, if i see there are 83 clients, i know that i can simply leave and shut down EU when i'm done playing. however, if i see there are only 1-2, i may be tempted to leave EU "on" while i'm off to watch TV or something

 

Awesome work guys :)

 

Yup you got that right. Ok I'll wait for starfinders comment.