Thread: [Plugin] Combat Analysis

Originally Posted by Souku

those having trouble, what version of the .NET framework do you have installed?

might want to try updating to Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 via Windows Update and see if that fixes your issue.

edit: should have clarified above advice is for the XP users.

According to my Control Panel... I'm at .NET 3.5 SP1. But was a good idea to check that.

~ Pax

Originally Posted by PaxRansom

According to my Control Panel... I'm at .NET 3.5 SP1. But was a good idea to check that.

~ Pax

Yeah same here. We have been trying to narrow down the differences between those who can and those can not connect. We get no error message like you, only the flashing in and out then fail.

Is there anyway to export the parse information into a data dump, such as a text file on the local machine? Interested in what I can do with these parses, but as of right now not entirely sure how I could tease out the information from the external application.

Finally found this plugins, been looking for it an while now

Works perfect, thanks alot for doing this! Good work

Originally Posted by Jamers

Is there anyway to export the parse information into a data dump, such as a text file on the local machine? Interested in what I can do with these parses, but as of right now not entirely sure how I could tease out the information from the external application.

Not really, currently, given the way the info is held. I looked into this myself but the way Evendale writes to so many files precludes anything practical. I've kidded him about that choice but apparently it seemed like the best way originally. If he was starting from scratch it would be different. As far as I am aware he isn't planning on making any further changes to the program.

The nearest alternative is the old method of timestamping the combat log and working from that. Of course, that only gives your own data, but I'd imagine kinnies could send their logs too if you wanted to compare.

Originally Posted by slack_n_hash

Not really, currently, given the way the info is held. I looked into this myself but the way Evendale writes to so many files precludes anything practical. I've kidded him about that choice but apparently it seemed like the best way originally. If he was starting from scratch it would be different. As far as I am aware he isn't planning on making any further changes to the program.

The nearest alternative is the old method of timestamping the combat log and working from that. Of course, that only gives your own data, but I'd imagine kinnies could send their logs too if you wanted to compare.

Thanks for the reply, that corroborates what I gathered myself. Looked into trying to affect something simple, but it definitely would not be, as you mentioned.

Originally Posted by Jamers

Is there anyway to export the parse information into a data dump, such as a text file on the local machine? Interested in what I can do with these parses, but as of right now not entirely sure how I could tease out the information from the external application.

Basically no, but there is a slight chance I might do another update in October, in which case I would at least allow saving/loading.

I found an issue about the connection, although the portforwarding was set up properly.

I got a network bridge which basically contains all interfaces (LAN1-3, WLAN) except my virtualbox interface (VirtualBox Host-Only Network). If I start the Combat Analysis.exe I can start press hosting and it says 'Accepting Connections' but noone can connect to me. If I now disable my virtualbox interface and restart the Combat Analysis.exe the connection works just fine.

I'm not that familiar with windows, but it looks like that you bound your socket to the wrong interface (is that possible in windows?). Unfortunately I couldn't find out anything with netstat, apart from the fact that it's listening on the correct (internal) IP(v4) and port.


EDIT: Another issue which was already reported before. We got five Windows 7 user and one Windows XP user. When one of the Win7 user starts hosting, the Windows XP user can't join. He pops up for a few millisecs and disappears soon after. Although this is probably not related to the above issue, I thought it's worth mentioning.

would it be possible, and if possible, not too much work, to add a DPS meter that reflects current DPS?

the only way i can think of to explain what i mean, is to use the example of a speedometer in a car....

the way combat analysis currently works, is that it takes (in analogy) the total miles driven, divided by the total time driven. so if i drove 5 miles in 30 minutes in rush hour taffic, CA would tell me i drove 10 mph...

but what if i stepped on the gas pedal to initiate combat (ie the tank starts a boss fight) was stopped at a light for the 11 minutes of "combat", then drove 60 mph for 4 minutes (which would be 4 miles), and then then the last mile was stop and go for the last 15 minutes. CA would never reflect that 60mph for that 4 minutes, it would steadily increase from 0 at 11 minutes, until it showed 12 mph at 15 minutes, and then gradually declined to 10mph at the end of the 30 minutes.

i guess what i'm asking, is could CA be programmed to also show the burst, or current, DPS? like how the in-game FPS shows the burst, or current, FPS?

CA already shows the "min" and "max" DPS in its functionality in the stats... it would just be really nice to have a real-time update to DPS, like how a speedometer works.

Originally Posted by Forgotten_Legend

would it be possible, and if possible, not too much work, to add a DPS meter that reflects current DPS?

the only way i can think of to explain what i mean, is to use the example of a speedometer in a car....

the way combat analysis currently works, is that it takes (in analogy) the total miles driven, divided by the total time driven. so if i drove 5 miles in 30 minutes in rush hour taffic, CA would tell me i drove 10 mph...

but what if i stepped on the gas pedal to initiate combat (ie the tank starts a boss fight) was stopped at a light for the 11 minutes of "combat", then drove 60 mph for 4 minutes (which would be 4 miles), and then then the last mile was stop and go for the last 15 minutes. CA would never reflect that 60mph for that 4 minutes, it would steadily increase from 0 at 11 minutes, until it showed 12 mph at 15 minutes, and then gradually declined to 10mph at the end of the 30 minutes.

i guess what i'm asking, is could CA be programmed to also show the burst, or current, DPS? like how the in-game FPS shows the burst, or current, FPS?

CA already shows the "min" and "max" DPS in its functionality in the stats... it would just be really nice to have a real-time update to DPS, like how a speedometer works.

Yes, but then what period do you define burst dps as being over? The last 10 seconds? The last minute? It's all very arbitrary - what you really want is to be able to select any period of time and view your dps over that period.

Ages ago I was working on something like that. A chart that plots your DPS over time, showing a short moving average, and where you can actually select any period of time to view your DPS over. Of course, there's a tonne of usability and performance issues around making this work in practice.

Will I get around to making something like this that's actually usable? Probably not, but possibly.



Here's something similar; a pic of my morale over time with some info (yes I died at the end there and no-one healed me, sigh):

Originally Posted by Forgotten_Legend

would it be possible, and if possible, not too much work, to add a DPS meter that reflects current DPS?

the only way i can think of to explain what i mean, is to use the example of a speedometer in a car....

the way combat analysis currently works, is that it takes (in analogy) the total miles driven, divided by the total time driven. so if i drove 5 miles in 30 minutes in rush hour taffic, CA would tell me i drove 10 mph...

but what if i stepped on the gas pedal to initiate combat (ie the tank starts a boss fight) was stopped at a light for the 11 minutes of "combat", then drove 60 mph for 4 minutes (which would be 4 miles), and then then the last mile was stop and go for the last 15 minutes. CA would never reflect that 60mph for that 4 minutes, it would steadily increase from 0 at 11 minutes, until it showed 12 mph at 15 minutes, and then gradually declined to 10mph at the end of the 30 minutes.

i guess what i'm asking, is could CA be programmed to also show the burst, or current, DPS? like how the in-game FPS shows the burst, or current, FPS?

CA already shows the "min" and "max" DPS in its functionality in the stats... it would just be really nice to have a real-time update to DPS, like how a speedometer works.

Yeah, this stuff right here. A floating average or something would be ace.

Quite a lot of the fights in the game will have you momentarily hold DPS, whether it be fell-beast kiting or platform switching or lurker killing or transition waiting etc, rendering the DPS-value rather pointless.

Average of the last X seconds is one way. This is how the connection status measures your net performance.

Another could be to have the external program log the movement of the DPS-value and show it in a graph, like Cstats used to.

Hell, I'd settle for a text command to just "pause the stopwatch" as well. I've tried the R button to replicate such a function but that didnt work too well.

Anyway, thanks for the plugin. I'm so religious about using this, even my level 40 minstrel has it running from login to finish

Originally Posted by Evendale

Yes, but then what period do you define burst dps as being over? The last 10 seconds? The last minute? It's all very arbitrary - what you really want is to be able to select any period of time and view your dps over that period.

Ages ago I was working on something like that. A chart that plots your DPS over time, showing a short moving average, and where you can actually select any period of time to view your DPS over. Of course, there's a tonne of usability and performance issues around making this work in practice.

Will I get around to making something like this that's actually usable? Probably not, but possibly.



Here's something similar; a pic of my morale over time with some info (yes I died at the end there and no-one healed me, sigh):

i was thinking of a default rolling 10 seconds average... that way you can get a good general idea of what you're doing... without it bouncing around on every critical hit and/or induction. mainly because there are so many lulls in a fight that can last 10, 20, even 30 seconds (like temporary "green" bosses, or dazes/stuns) that wreak havoc with the total DPS for the encounter (which is still good info). so for example, the first 10 seconds of a dze would show the DPS dwindle down to zero, then once you start back DPSing, it would rise back up over 10 seconds before "levelling off" into your typical skill rotation, and even indicate damage spikes... like Blood aroow devestates or exactly how buffs like oathbreakers affect DPS. that default rolling average could even have an option to be changed by user input, and even a toggle to turn it on/off.

i also like that graph, too... i think that would definately require a toggle, though... for those with less than optimal PCs... or perhaps even another log could be generated by combat analysis in the background, which would show the graph when examined outside of the game.

as matter of fact, creating a new combat analysis log, based off of the normal combat log, but including timestamps and a summary, could provide all the extra options, like the graph and the functionality you mentioned, by allowing Combat Analysis to re-analyze the CA log afterward, maybe even outside LOTRO proper.

In a raid setting we've found this to be a bit of a lag monster. During a fight, each user generates five or six files a second, which get saved to the pluginsdata folder, and forwarded to the server. All those files (in a 12-man raid, 72 a second) get forwarded to everyone else. So while LOTRO is serving up all those nice graphical goodies, CA is thrashing the hard drive creating 72 files a second. Massive skill lag.

So for the next version of this valuable program, I'd love to see an in-memory version for storing all the data, if LUA allows such a thing.

Originally Posted by b.e.wilson

So for the next version of this valuable program, I'd love to see an in-memory version for storing all the data, if LUA allows such a thing.

Basically it can't be done (well not without some serious haxor skills where you'd somehow allocate memory in LUA, and directly store specific values into those memory addresses).

But:

a) You can now read player's own chat log in game. So, if/when I get around to updating it, if you aren't connecting to anyone, all the processing will be done in game in Main Memory (and you won't even need to run the .exe at all to parse just your own data).

b) If you want to connect to other people, you'll still have to run the .exe file, and load in the data (using the extremely inconvenient workaround to get data into LUA) from disk.

c) The creation of so many files can be avoided by doing more processing in game in LUA (only single threaded unfortunately), and minimal processing out of game in the C# app. This should hopefully drastically reduce/eliminate the stuttering most people get (at least it will shift the bottleneck from Hard Disk operations to the CPU).

Originally Posted by Evendale

Basically it can't be done (well not without some serious haxor skills where you'd grab memory directly from LOTRO, without using LUA, and somehow interpret it).

But:

a) You can now read player's own chat log in game. So, if/when I get around to updating it, if you aren't connecting to anyone, all the processing will be done in game in Main Memory (and you won't even need to run the .exe at all to parse just your own data).

b) If you want to connect to other people, you'll still have to run the .exe file, and load in the data (using the extremely inconvenient workaround to get data into LUA) from disk.

c) The creation of so many files can be avoided by doing more processing in game in LUA (only single threaded unfortunately), and minimal processing out of game in the C# app. This should hopefully drastically reduce/eliminate the stuttering most people get (at least it will shift the bottleneck from Hard Disk operations to the CPU).

Sounds great!

oh wow its now possbile to get the info from fellowship members ??

If you're interested in making line graphs, feel free to use the line.lua or arrow.lua classes that I added to the Cards game (please just add a comment indicating the original author=Garan). They make creating lines and arrows from any point on screen (or their Parent) to any other point incredibly easy (they will draw outside their Parent so you have to make sure both end points are on the Parent). They can't take the place of freehand drawing since they are limited to lines and each line is actually a window so they aren't terribly efficicient in large numbers, but for graphs and such they are quite handy. Note, they require their Refresh method called in certain circustances because of bugs in Turbine's rotation mechanism (hiding and redisplaying a window wipes out it's rotation info) but this is fairly easily managed.

Originally Posted by Garan

If you're interested in making line graphs, feel free to use the line.lua or arrow.lua classes that I added to the Cards game (please just add a comment indicating the original author=Garan). They make creating lines and arrows from any point on screen (or their Parent) to any other point incredibly easy (they will draw outside their Parent so you have to make sure both end points are on the Parent). They can't take the place of freehand drawing since they are limited to lines and each line is actually a window so they aren't terribly efficicient in large numbers, but for graphs and such they are quite handy. Note, they require their Refresh method called in certain circustances because of bugs in Turbine's rotation mechanism (hiding and redisplaying a window wipes out it's rotation info) but this is fairly easily managed.

Exactly how efficiently are we talking? And, in your implementation of this in the Cards plugin, do you create (run the constructor of) all the line (window) elements in advance (fast) or create them on demand (slow)?

Also, what exactly does your "refresh" function call? (I could look at the code myself but I'm a bit lazy to do that atm soz).

I was thinking it'd be best to avoid rotations as I want the charts to potentially be quite large (up to full screen height if desired) and probably to be able to be constantly fully updated on the screen at a quick speed. The chart in the screenshot linked on the previous page contains a lot of elements but updates very fast (resizing and changing the back color of control elements seems to be super quick; whereas creating control elements can be super slow - not sure if windows would be any noticeably slower), and actually doesn't look too bad. If performing rotations doesn't turn out to be slow though, they could make things look a little nicer.




-------------------------------------------

Update on progress on new version:

I have the full parsing of the combat log in LUA 95% completed now (painful process that it was) with some minor new additions (mostly around tracking of how long buffs/debuffs are up for throughout a fight) , and just need to link the data into the UI. Obviously the parsing is never going to be quite as efficient as the C# code was, but it should be very marginally slower. No longer having to load in data from the hard disk, on the other hand, provides a massive improvement on the old hacky way of doing things and should completely remove the stuttering/lag problems a lot of people had and allow updates to occur instantly (also the timestamps will be marginally more accurate).

I'm still going to make a few changes to the basic UI (better tabs, potentially shorter bar display, nicer window showing additional stats, option to hide headers & make UI very small, etc) before releasing the new version, so it could still be a week away.

The next version is not going to allow you to connect to other players, but will instead include a button to post your output to the chat window. I will probably eventually add back in the ability to connect to other players.

After that I intend to re-add the main menu and start rolling out the new features starting with these charts that will allow you to view moving averages of DPS/TPS/HPS, select any period of time to view the stats for, see how your morale changed over time, and who healed you when you were about to die, or wasted lots of overheals on you, etc, etc. But that's probably quite a way off still.

-------------------------------------------


Btw, for anyone wondering, the current version is still working fine atm, except for the fact that it is not detecting self-heals (the way they appear in the combat log has changed).

Great to hear that!

Originally Posted by Evendale

Exactly how efficiently are we talking? And, in your implementation of this in the Cards plugin, do you create (run the constructor of) all the line (window) elements in advance (fast) or create them on demand (slow)?

Also, what exactly does your "refresh" function call? (I could look at the code myself but I'm a bit lazy to do that atm soz).

I was thinking it'd be best to avoid rotations as I want the charts to potentially be quite large (up to full screen height if desired) and probably to be able to be constantly fully updated on the screen at a quick speed. The chart in the screenshot linked on the previous page contains a lot of elements but updates very fast (resizing and changing the back color of control elements seems to be super quick; whereas creating control elements can be super slow - not sure if windows would be any noticeably slower), and actually doesn't look too bad. If performing rotations doesn't turn out to be slow though, they could make things look a little nicer.




-------------------------------------------

Update on progress on new version:

I have the full parsing of the combat log in LUA 95% completed now (painful process that it was) with some minor new additions (mostly around tracking of how long buffs/debuffs are up for throughout a fight) , and just need to link the data into the UI. Obviously the parsing is never going to be quite as efficient as the C# code was, but it should be very marginally slower. No longer having to load in data from the hard disk, on the other hand, provides a massive improvement on the old hacky way of doing things and should completely remove the stuttering/lag problems a lot of people had and allow updates to occur instantly (also the timestamps will be marginally more accurate).

I'm still going to make a few changes to the basic UI (better tabs, potentially shorter bar display, nicer window showing additional stats, option to hide headers & make UI very small, etc) before releasing the new version, so it could still be a week away.

The next version is not going to allow you to connect to other players, but will instead include a button to post your output to the chat window. I will probably eventually add back in the ability to connect to other players.

After that I intend to re-add the main menu and start rolling out the new features starting with these charts that will allow you to view moving averages of DPS/TPS/HPS, select any period of time to view the stats for, see how your morale changed over time, and who healed you when you were about to die, or wasted lots of overheals on you, etc, etc. But that's probably quite a way off still.

-------------------------------------------


Btw, for anyone wondering, the current version is still working fine atm, except for the fact that it is not detecting self-heals (the way they appear in the combat log has changed).

Another Update:

Parsing: 90% done
UI: 66% done
Testing: 45% done

So I'm slowly getting there, but potentially another 5-6 days still. Don't let the screenshot fool you; there's still a lot of work to do. Note the tabs can be dragged away to make multiple windows, and the titles, stats, etc can be (or at least will be able to be) hidden.

Any suggestions related to the UI would be welcomed. Thanks.








The best thing about the new version is that you don't need to run any helper .exe and don't even need to start logging your chat tab

Ok. In the long time the forums were down, Combat Analysis version 4 was completed. Check the first post for details or go straight to LOTRO interface:

http://www.lotrointerface.com/downlo...tAnalysis.html

No more SSD lag... Awesome, thank you!

LOVE the new Combat Analysis Evendale. So much more functionality.

Some things I will miss like logging combat across different log ins/log outs and connecting to other users, but all in all it's an excellent update thank you!

Originally Posted by thunderchickn

Some things I will miss like logging combat across different log ins/log outs and connecting to other users, but all in all it's an excellent update thank you!

Yea, saving/loading should be coming in an update in the not too distant future (unless BF3 is too addictive ), and hopefully this last update fixed the bug that seemed to be occurring with the send to chat button so I can put that back in.

4.0.2 is out which fixes a couple of bugs, and adds a few new features.

Notably, you can now lock info in the stats window if desired.

Hey Evendale, just curious if you found a way to get the "send to chat" button working? If not, any chance we get another way to share our results as well as see results from other players?

First of all, this is a great tool Evandale and I thank you for creating this and keeping it updated.

I was wondering if you would add the following: we can see how many of our hits were Crits versus Devastates (and infer from those how many were "normal" hits). Is there a way that you can add what % of our total damage was from Crits and from Devs?

Thank you very much,
Radian

Originally Posted by Rhino-Man

First of all, this is a great tool Evandale and I thank you for creating this and keeping it updated.

I was wondering if you would add the following: we can see how many of our hits were Crits versus Devastates (and infer from those how many were "normal" hits). Is there a way that you can add what % of our total damage was from Crits and from Devs?

Thank you very much,
Radian

It's all under the detailed description. Make sure you're looking at damage, then the detailed stats should have number and percentage of both crits and devs. Check the lotrointerface page for more info.

Originally Posted by thunderchickn

It's all under the detailed description. Make sure you're looking at damage, then the detailed stats should have number and percentage of both crits and devs. Check the lotrointerface page for more info.

Yes, that's the number and percentage of the HITS,not total damage dealt, unless I'm missing something. In other words, it might show that you hit the mob 300 times, and devs were 30 times, giving a 10% dev percent. But how much total damage was that?

Just thought I'd pass along a weird bug, Evandale, which is probably not worth addressing as it's very rare.

Having the word "heal" at the end of a name creates errors in CA.

Not sure all the circumstances that this could happen, but the specifics from last night were:

We were in a Raid skirm and I had a herbalist, which was spamming group heals. Another character had a herbalist named "SometimesIHeal." Every time my herbalist would heal the other soldier, it would produce an error, and my chat log was getting spammed on every tick of the HoT.

We messed around with pet names, and it seemed to happen whenever the pet name ENDED in "heal". The name "HealMe" did not produce the bug.

I'm not sure if it makes a difference if it's a character's name, or a pet name. Also not sure if it's only when a herbalist is healing, or if it's for any healer (mini, rk, capt, etc.).

Originally Posted by Rhino-Man

Just thought I'd pass along a weird bug, Evandale, which is probably not worth addressing as it's very rare.

Having the word "heal" at the end of a name creates errors in CA.

Not sure all the circumstances that this could happen, but the specifics from last night were:

We were in a Raid skirm and I had a herbalist, which was spamming group heals. Another character had a herbalist named "SometimesIHeal." Every time my herbalist would heal the other soldier, it would produce an error, and my chat log was getting spammed on every tick of the HoT.

We messed around with pet names, and it seemed to happen whenever the pet name ENDED in "heal". The name "HealMe" did not produce the bug.

I'm not sure if it makes a difference if it's a character's name, or a pet name. Also not sure if it's only when a herbalist is healing, or if it's for any healer (mini, rk, capt, etc.).

Thanks for letting me know. I actually happened to also call my herbalist a name ending with heal and encountered the bug already. Its fixed in the next update which will be coming out shortly.

Also I have the Send to Chat functionality fully working too. I'll be uploading it shortly.

Originally Posted by Evendale

Thanks for letting me know. I actually happened to also call my herbalist a name ending with heal and encountered the bug already. Its fixed in the next update which will be coming out shortly.

Also I have the Send to Chat functionality fully working too. I just need to add in an option to manually switch localization (so that CA works for people running a client with a different language than their OS) and then I'll be uploading it.

Excellent! Great to know re: updates, and thanks for the addin once again!

One other thing - is there a way to see the total damage done (and percent damage) from Devastates, Criticals, and therefore "regular" hits? I see that you can see the number of them (ie. 100 Hits, 21 Crits, 7 Devs) and the percentage of hits (in this example, 21% Crits and 7% Devs) but do not see how much total damage is done by each type? Sorry if I'm just missing something here.

Thanks!
Radian

New version is up btw

Originally Posted by Rhino-Man

Excellent! Great to know re: updates, and thanks for the addin once again!

One other thing - is there a way to see the total damage done (and percent damage) from Devastates, Criticals, and therefore "regular" hits? I see that you can see the number of them (ie. 100 Hits, 21 Crits, 7 Devs) and the percentage of hits (in this example, 21% Crits and 7% Devs) but do not see how much total damage is done by each type? Sorry if I'm just missing something here.

Thanks!
Radian

Not possible atm.

Originally Posted by Evendale

Not possible atm.

Thanks for letting me know!

Originally Posted by Evendale

New version is up btw

Thanks Evendale! Love the send to chat!

Anyway to get the tab window to reappear after it's disappeared? I loaded it up one day and only the little square window popped up but not the tabbed one, so I can't select which fight to view. Happened twice to me now and the first time I had to reinstall to fix it.

Originally Posted by Dorothir

Anyway to get the tab window to reappear after it's disappeared? I loaded it up one day and only the little square window popped up but not the tabbed one, so I can't select which fight to view. Happened twice to me now and the first time I had to reinstall to fix it.

Hmm, I'm not sure what could cause that. It'll go back to the default settings if you delete the settings file ("Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online\PluginData\<your username>\<your server name>\<your character name>\CombatAnalysis.plugindat a" [no spaces]) which is a bit easier than re-installing the whole plugin.

I'd love to know what's causing that so if you could please PM the contents of that file to me if it happens again before you delete it. Thanks.

When I get around to adding a proper menu, I'll add the option to restore defaults, etc.

Just wanted to say thank you for making such a great and useful plugin!

love using it, keep up the good work!

Love the plugin, but recently when i tried to load it, I got


Tried reinstalling with multiple restarts of lotro, no dice
Is there anywhere else the plugin is "installed" besides user/x/documents/lotro/plugins etc?

Great work, would love some help :3