GZStats: A quick rundown

[Rachael]

Michaelis wrote a nice stats script for Python that works much better than the one I originally wrote. We're in the process of integrating that, now.

[Rachael]

I've gone ahead and merged in _mental_'s prompt, bumped the stats check number, and redirected to the new Python script.

I haven't implemented a user-friendly message yet, though. If I do it, I would use Matt's as a template, minus the Microsoft/FBI/etc namedropping, but I'll have to use sprintf to form the string since that's the only way I know of how to do it. If anyone has a better way, then this is your chance to chime in before I go forward with that. I'm pretty sure Graf will be relieved to have all of this finished.

[Graf Zahl]

Thanks.

Concerning the new release I am still having to do some cleanup work on the alphatextures. More about that in the developer forum.

[m8f]

I have a question: is there a way to detect some malicious user sending his info multiple times on purpose to skew statistics?
Because I was messing with gzdoom.ini today, and ended up mindlessly pressing "Yes" on rundown dialog, and sended info three times.
I'm not malicious, just inattentive.

[Graf Zahl]

Obviously we won't go into details here because the more we tell about the process the easier it will be for 'malicious' users to manipulate it, but generally, yes, it is possible to detect if some IP is spamming the service and once we know it's easy to discard such data when reviewing the results.

So there is no point in running a manipulated EXE that continuously sends data to the service. The traffic load alone would be sufficient to detect this and act on it.

[Kroc]

Suggestion: Show the actual data in the dialog box that pops up. I.e. "CPU: i5 4200U, cores: 2(4) ...". This would actually make me trust the dialog more.

[Graf Zahl]

The main problem with that is that at the point where we know this data, in particular the renderer info, the fullscreen display is already up but the box will have to be shown before that happens. But at that point we cannot show the data.

[_mental_]

Suggestion: Show the actual data in the dialog box that pops up. I.e. "CPU: i5 4200U, cores: 2(4) ...". This would actually make me trust the dialog more.

This will be misleading because this information isn't sent to stats server, only number of CPU cores in the given example.

[Graf Zahl]

Suggestion: Show the actual data in the dialog box that pops up. I.e. "CPU: i5 4200U, cores: 2(4) ...". This would actually make me trust the dialog more.

This will be misleading because this information isn't sent to stats server, only number of CPU cores in the given example.

What it actually sends is three numbers: One (1-12) for the operating system (where Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1) are grouped together, one for the number of cores and one for the renderer configuration (1-6, where 1, 2 and 6 are software renderer settings and 3,4,5 are OpenGL settings.

[Caligari87]

Would it be unreasonable to ask for a real-time reports page on gzstats.drdteam.org? Perhaps with the option to show the raw data received by the server, and a table to show the translated stats?

Suggestion: Show the actual data in the dialog box that pops up. I.e. "CPU: i5 4200U, cores: 2(4) ...". This would actually make me trust the dialog more.

I reiterate my frequently-unanswered question: Why? Graf and Rachael have said and shown exactly what the survey sends. If you don't believe THAT, then why would you believe a popup window that they could make say literally anything? Review the source code and/or build it yourself if you're so worried. There's literally ZERO reason to make a request like this.

[Rachael]

Yes, real-time is completely out of the question. I would not mind showing delayed aggregates for those curious, though.

[Caligari87]

I think everyone would be okay with that. It'd certainly be better than a placeholder page at the location the game is contacting

[Matt]

I would like to see what I'm sending, but for a different reason: as a very unsophisticated and lazy hardware user I'd like to know what I'm using myself! (Turns out I had to upgrade to Debian Stretch to even use OpenGL 4???)

[Rachael]

On the 4rh developer mode (spammy) it will show you exactly what it sent to the server.