in every section (obviously with varying weapon names.) If you duplicate a weapon name, you'll have duplicate tables generated. If new weapons come out, you need only copy some other block, change the weapon name, and adjust the weapon information I've put in there. Like everything else, the player stats that get shown (by default, number of kills with weapon, total number of kills, and percentage) can be any of the valid player stats. Just add the proper tags, and the app will fill them in. I'll write up something more formal soon for the FAQ.

Doh	March 16th, 2000

I forgot an image file with my first posting of 0.83. It's a small green bar, named appropriately enough small_green_bar.png. I'm confident you'll be able to get around the problem, however I have posted a new download. Same name, except now it includes the missing image. Thanks go to Neil Soane for pointing my goof out :-)

Version 0.83 Released

March 15th, 2000

I've just posted version 0.83. This doesn't have anything terribly revolutionary in it; just some small bug fixes for logs that did not include map names, and a feature enhancement to the built-in player editor. When editing a player's stats you can now sort by the various columns for the opponent list, and I've added a K:D column.

A bigger piece is the addition of a new series of templates. I put these together after becoming tired of the classic look. Take a peek at them here. The individual stat pages are also using the new template series, so be sure to check them out. Look for a new folder under Templates named Contemporary (couldn't think of anything cool) and just copy those over to your current directory if you want to use them right away. Or not, and just let them sit :-) These templates make heavy use of cascading style sheets so that the oft-duplicated table colors and font sizes can be quickly and easily changed.

I've added weapon pics for the new weapons (aug and mac10), and I've now included the source images that I use to build the smaller pics. They are in PaintShop Pro format (.PSP) with two layers. One layer is the background color, the other is just the weapon itself. These are much larger than the pics included with the html. This is so that you can change the background color, do fancy stuff, then shrink them down and maintain a higher level of quality during the sampling.

Beta 6 Notes

March 14th, 2000

Just a quick note, as there seems to be a bit of confusion about the log files and what's needed for CS Beta6. Let me start by saying that the log files spit out by the HL server engine are always the same, no matter what mod is being played. This is because the server engine is locked code from Valve and cannot be altered. As a result, the logs are very generic. Along the lines of "Player1 killed Player2 with weapon" and nothing more. In a nutshell, the only thing that ever has to change with a new beta of CS are the images of the weapons. Technically, you could use cs_stats with any mod made for HL, so long as you included images that match the weapon names. If you've removed the images from the output html, you wouldn't even need that. This flexibility and lack of anything hard-coded is one of my initial goals.

I will be posting a new release soon; probably tonight or tomorrow. I've got a new template for individual player scores to show off, and a couple niceties added to the editor. There's also a small bug fix for server logs that do not include the map name, so that those stats with map names are able to be tracked again.

Along the lines of the above paragraph, make sure you've got the log on command in your autoexec.cfg file, and NOT server.cfg. For some reason, the logs that are generated by logging through the server.cfg show up with no map name or any other server variables. Don't know why, but if you put the command in your autoexec.cfg (somewhere before the map xyz command) it works fine.

Links Wanted

February 29th, 2000

If you're a server admin, and you run some stats using cs_stats, I'd like to link to your site off of here, to give some people a place to go for other templates, check out scores, and what not. After all, stats don't do much good unless people actually see them, right?

So if you run a server and use cs_stats to post the stats, send me a note and I'll put a link up here. Thanks!

Source Code Released

February 25th, 2000

Numerous people have requested the source code for cs_stats, and I'd been planning on releasing when I considered it "finished', but I found that there probably won't ever be a final release. Kind of like Counter-Strike, it's just always in Beta. Head to the Downloads page for a link to the download zip file, and some info about the code base.

Version 0.82 Released

February 22nd, 2000

Version 0.82 is now out. This fixes a couple bugs, changes the method by which it tracks players, adds a few new stats, and includes a built-in player stat editor.

First the bugs. There was a problem tracking the total number of minutes a player has played. It had to do with missing disconnect messages. If you've got existing stats with some players at huge numbers of minutes, you can use the new built-in editor to manually fix that. Alternately, you can just yank all of the stats and re-process your old log files to have them regenerated.

As I mentioned in previous posts, the method by which cs_stats tracks players needed to be changed. LAN admins could not make use of the app because players do not get Won IDs, or in some cases they all get the same Won ID. To fix this, along with the "same player but separate Won ID" problem, cs_stats now tracks players by their name instead of their Won ID. This is a big change in terms of the stat files, but a small one overall for the actual code. Check out the FAQ page for more info on what I'm doing with special characters in player's names.

Please be aware of the following:

The first time you run this new version, the app is going to convert your existing stat files to the new tracking method. It will match up duplicate names and combine them into one player. You will see this happen a second or two after the app launches. The bottom progress bar will show the conversion status. It will not build any new HTML, so you'll have to run some logs through or manually build them to immediately see the new name matching scheme.

It is important to note that this conversion only happens the one time. This is because it needs to read in *every* stat file to look for duplicates, combine them, yank out the old ones, and write the new data files. This is too intensive to do every time the app runs. If you try and copy in some old stat files after the conversion has happened, the app will still read them and treat them as if they were valid, converting them on the fly. However, because the old WonID files could actually be someone's name (bizarre, I know) there's no way to force a removal of those old files, you'll end up with duplicate names for those two players, and only one of them is going to win out. Eventually the old stat file will get removed from disuse.

Bottom line: don't try and use any old stat files you've got stashed somewhere after the conversion has taken place. Let the app convert your stats, and never look back. I've added code to automatically back up your existing stat files to a "Conversion Backup" directory located under the main app directory, so you can be doubly sure that if anything goes wrong, the old stat files will still be available for another conversion attempt.

You might prefer to just yank out all of the existing stat files and html, and re-process the log files you've accumulated with the new version. This way you start with a clean slate, and the new stats I've added will be accounted for. This is what I did for the server I play on. All 600+ logs. If you run into problems with the conversion, and you don't have the old log files to re-process and start anew, send me a note and I can give you instructions for how to fake the app into thinking it needs to do the conversion again.

Speaking of the new stats: they are A) the total number of rounds the player has played, B) the average number of kills per round, and C) the average number of deaths per round. Because these stats are accumulated, they won't really have much weight right away if you've got existing stats out there already. They will be accurate so far as the fact that a player's average number of kills per round is only tabulated from the new logs being processed, so it's not like it's not accurate. It just can't assume a total for any logs it's already done. You might want to just yank out all of the .csd files, re-process your saved logs, and re-build every player's stat file if the stat is important to you. Otherwise, just note that the stat is only kept from this day forward, and can't be known for previous logs.

The last piece I want to mention is the new built-in player editor. This editor lets you manually alter a player's stats, delete players, combine players, etc. If you know someone that plays on your server on a regular basis, has changed their name from something, and now has two or more stat files, you can use this editor to combine them into one. Check out the FAQ page for more info on how to use the editor, and what sorts of things you can do with it.

Version 0.81 Released

February 15th, 2000

I've just posted version 0.81. This fixes a problem with reading log files from a Linux server, and fixes sort issues with best round (K:D) and other floating-point stats. There's also a bug fix with the player stats templates; I was missing the end table tag, and as such, people using Netscape weren't seeing the Weapon Distribution stuff. Doh!

I wanted to get this out first, as there are some significant changes I need to make to fix a problem with LAN games. LANs don't use Won to get a unique ID, so the method by which I use to keep people separate needs to be overhauled. I'm thinking of just going to straight-up name matching, and hope that there aren't any issues with duplicate names. Obviously you can't have a dup name on the server, but the possibility exists that someone will come along after another with the same name (there is no method to really know who is who), and those two people will share the same stats. People playing from a LAN to an Internet server will find this same problem.

Considering LAN server admins can't really use cs_stats at all, and the issue with people playing from a LAN, I think it's best to move forward with the name recognition only and skipping the WonID completely. The only thing I can recommend for people who are concerned about malicious "name stealing" or "stat degradation" (IE someone uses your name, joins a server, and plays like crap) is to not use generic names, like Player (duh), Killer, Beefhole, Sniper, etc. Come up with some unique character string, spelling (I am going to enforce case-sensitivity), or clan marking to make your name as unique as possible. Even if you don't belong in a clan, or like your Beefhole name... change it to {--=BeefHole--=} or something like that.

I've also added a new directory name to the zip. I realized that some people will want to have only one spot for the templates, and not ever have to change the config to point to new ones. At the same time, they'd like to be able to reference the classic templates for use in their own. So I've added a "Current" directory underneath the "Templates" directory, and the application will use that first instead of "Classic." All of the template files are there in Current, they just happen to also be in Classic. So you basically can do whatever you want with the Current directory and not worry about overridding the classic formats. Think of it as an automatic backup that I've done for you :-)

FAQ Updated

February 14th, 2000

There seems to be some confusion as to how to get the app up and running, what the operating mode is like, and other general questions that I forgot to include within the FAQ. Thus, I've updated it with some more basic information on getting it started, things like that.

Version 0.80 released

February 9th, 2000

cs_stats Version 0.80, the first public version, was released today. This initial offering doesn't have everything that I want to put out, but I wanted to at least get a version out there for people to play with and make use of.

You'll probably want to visit the FAQ page for a little more detailed information on what this app does, how to change how it behaves, how to change the html it spits out, etc. I've tried to make it as easy to customize as possible. I've got a few ideas on how to take it one step further to allow you to practically do anything and everything you want (where you specify the templates you want to load, and the app just figures out where it's supposed to insert things) but that's a few notches down on my ToDo list.

The first thing I want to sort out is remote file output. I realize most admins have a separate box for their web server, and would like to automatically drop the pages to that location as opposed to on the game server itself, or having to process them manually after moving them over. I personally have a need for this, as my friend's server isn't the same box as the web server. So I'm looking into writing a "helper" app of sorts that will forward the log files over to a remote machine using some TCP socket stuff. I've got code already to do it, I just need to fine-tune it a bit and make it more robust. Should be fun to do.