DOTLAN EveMaps

Some of you might heard about it. CCP Games decided to change the local of nullsec systems into delayed mode. This means it behaves like wormhole space and you don’t know who’s around you until they reveal their presence.

Some sites in the eve online community (like zkillboard.com) decided to join in and turn their page black during the weekend. After some initial thoughts and after my kids went to bed I decided to join in. But rather then going black completely, I opted to just hide the sovereignty, kills/jumps and system related historical changes from the main page.

This way you can feel the blackout but you don’t lose the ability to navigate into “unknown” 🙂

UPDATE: 13.07.2019

I’ve lifted the blackout for low-/highsec systems. Those systems are not affected by the blackout ingame and shouldn’t be penalized here as well.

Fly safe.

Without going to much into the historical details or timeline: I can proudly announce that DOTLAN EveMaps has reached a major milestone and is providing a well known and respected service to all players of New Eden for 10 years now!

I can honestly say that the Eve Online community is one of the best communities I’ve ever been part of. From the gameplay itself, 5 awesome fanfests I’ve attended, the feedback of thousands pilots to the support of the community when I’ve upgraded my hardware and the donations I receive from time to time. But the best thing is the friendships that has been build. Friendship is the best ship 🙂 Nothing comes closer!

When friends or colleagues ask me what EveMaps is all about I mostly describe it as “The Google Maps for Eve Online enriched with live data directly from the game” and I don’t think that this description isn’t to far from the reality or what do you think?

So, what’s your favorite story about DOTLAN EveMaps? Mine is still the day when Band of Brothers died/disbanded while I was sitting in the train and checking with my mobile if my server could keep up with all the twitter messages that appeared around it. Let me hear your favorite story!

A big thanks to the best eve online community ever for the last 10 years, my family, personal friends and colleagues that helped my building and running it. Let’s see where the journey will take us to.

P.S. To the german players: The pilots of the New Eden Podcast have recorded a interview with me. Happy listening.

After the ESI migration has been achieved and a few bugs have been stepped on, I started playing around with the authenticated ESI calls and what should I say: the first functionality of the old ingame browser has been restored. Set your destination and add additional waypoints as you like.

I’ve created a few screenshots to explain how the process works (but I guess most of you will find it out anyway):

1. You need to have a registered user with a linked eve online character. If you haven’t registered yet, just login with Eve Online SSO and you’re nearly ready to go.
2. Now you can authorize EveMaps with the needed ESI Scopes (so the page is able to send commands on behalf to eve). You can select what kind of access you wanna allow EveMaps to gain or change your authorized scopes or revoke them depending on your needs.
3. To set destination you can right click any system on a map or hit the little blue  info icon to get the context menu on any other page. For alliances, corporations or characters you can let the info window appear ingame.

Screenshots:

It’s now around 36 hours ago that the XML & CREST API have been turned of and send to the virtual graveyard. I can honestly say, the have served us well and we have seen lots of interesting things in the past: Lots of facepalms (Sovereignty Structures Endpoint), lot of hickups (API shutdown during the alliance tournament) or gamedesign changes (removed jumps/kills from wormhole systems). We’ve seen a lot! And we’re still rolling!

But don’t look back the most important thing:

DOTLAN EveMaps has successfully been migrated to the new ESI backend and is now running smooth for around 2 days.

I’ve put a lot of effort into cleaning up the mess EveMaps 🙂 has become over years. With the usual highs and lows it took me around 5 months and a lot of git commits create the new ESI backend, refactoring most data collecting daemons, remove dead stuff (like Dust514 bits and pieces) or fix what was broken (zkillboard/evewho).

This isn’t the first time I had do a major rewrite of the backend to prepare for bigger game design changes or new APIs. Back in 2009 CCP has changed from daily sov changes to the dynamic system some people currently “enjoy” and later the introduction of CREST … anyway.

Lets proceed with the very long list: Read the rest of this entry »

In the last weeks I discovered that the XML and CREST API endpoints DOTLAN EveMaps is using are now deprecated and will be shutdown in may 2018. Yeah this means a “little” bit of work on my backend. Basically recreate all background daemons to make use of ESI instead.

In preperation for the switch to ESI (I haven’t started yet) I’ll try to do carve out some dead wood on the dotlan tool chain.

For the start I’ll remove the following features (The majority of people never used them or never had heard of them anyway)

• My Eve Section (Manage Characters/Account APIs/Locate Personal Assets, Verify account, Standings etc)
• Corp/Alliances Notes (Individual group and personal notes will still work)
• Radar (when I’ve time it will be replaced someday, but atm, it’s not working anyway)
• Ingame browser support (yeah it was never removed)

After this I’ll slowly (as my kids and job are allowing it) diving into this ESI thingy. Apart from this, I’m still alive … 🙂

Nearly a week ago I published the first integration of the Aegis sovereignty changes into DOTLAN EveMaps. Basically every evening/night in the last days I kept improving things, fixed bugs or added more details. I even had to replay (reprocess) some of the crest request from the archive to fix data that I broke with some sql queries (since freeport stations are not part of the sovereignty structures crest list, even they’re sovereignty structures ingame. Purely relying on the crest result in this case can be tricky).

In the last post I’ve started a list about things that I wanted to add as additional features at some point in the future … Some of the wishlist items have already been seen light:

New features:

• Campaign Details
  • You get access to campaign details. This way you can see when this event has been triggered (at least when background jobs stumbled over this event).
  • Campaign details contain a chart of the defender score over time or a graph for each entity during a freeport campaign.
  • Additionally you a listing that reports all the naked score numbers, when exactly the score changed  or when a new entity joined the party.
• Campaigns Listing
  • The sovereignty campaign listing is now the “frontpage” of the sovereignty section: I think this one is more interesting then the system that actually flipped after a successful campaign. This change is now part of eve’s history and no longer that important, while upcoming and active campaigns are the hot topics and entry points if you want to look for fights and action.
  • The sovereignty campaign listing has now a region filter so you easier keep an overview of you area.
  • The trend indicator icon or the arrow will bring you to the details page.
• Structure Listing
  • The trend indicator icon or the arrow will bring you to the details page.
• Freeports
  • The sovereignty section has now a special page dedicated to active freeports. If you ever want to checkout where you wanna place your market alts in the future: Those stations’re opened for the public 🙂
• Map
  • The map view got updated. Upcoming campaigns currently have a orange glow and active campaigns a red glow. Since multiple events (glow) in the same system are stacked on top of each other, the glow will look thicker.
  • The system overlay has now additional data to show:
    • Activity Defense Multiplier
      • Only the highest multiplier will be shown
      • Keep in mind, due to the fact that station/tcu can be owned by different parties they can have different multiplier applied. Look into the structure listing or system overview to get the exact numbers.
    • Sovereignty Structures
      • The color: number of strctures (0-3)
      • The text: T + I + S == TCU + IHUB + Station
    • Next Campaign Timer (shows the next upcoming timer for this system)
    • Vulnerability Window: the color indicates the status, the text when the next window starts.
• Navigation / Range
  • You can now filter your range result based on sovereignty status. Like “vulnerable now” or “system has a campaign”. This might be interesting for groups looking for a fight withing their range of operation.

New Ideas / Todo List:

• Make the sovereignty campaign region filter a multiselect filter and save this selection in your client. So you can filter out events that happen on the other end of new eden.
• I’ll likely ditch the active/upcoming/all filter and a date selector so you can scroll back in time and get access to pasted events. (But I’ll monitor the current campaigns and see what they do with campaigns that haven’t changed in the last 5 days or so … not sure)
• I’m also thinking about combining the Changes and Changes (per day) view to reduce the toolbar icons in the sovereignty section and free up space. Maybe for a dedicated campaign history? How knows
• Add historical campaigns available on the solarsystem and alliance page.
• The campaign details chart is currently limited to one hour time ticks even the data density is far smaller. Maybe I’ll look it and create more detailed graphs or into replacing the charts within something more flexible. But that’s more like a future topic.
• Make sovereignty campaigns available in the live-ticker/events/rss module.
• Adjust the Map > Rightclick > Jumprange context menu to make use of filters as well. Apart from the fact that only 3 jump range types exists. Capital, BlackOps, JumpFreighter.

Screenshots:

Hello fellow pilots. CCP Games has successfully deployed it’s ‘Aegis‘ expansion that includes the biggest sovereignty overhaul since the big ‘Dominion’ sovereignty change in 2009. A week ago CCP FoxFour release a dev blog description the new Sovereignty Structures and Sovereignty Campaigns CREST Endpoints that brings us the new shiny data. The first view on the amount of data was eye opening because I feared that CCP would have to revert back like they did in 2009. … but apparently it was discussed together with the CSM and every little information is visible in the client anyway. Well, lets see where this leads to.

It’s been a long time without any update here, but well. Not much was going either apart from smaller fixes of typos. But lets get down the road what has changed on DOTLAN EveMaps, what new information is integrated and what additions I’ve still on my TO DO list (before or after my family vacation).

New Features on DOTLAN EveMaps

• The Sovereignty Campaigns listing is integrated under the Sovereignty section. It includes all campaigns or events (how you wanna call them) that have been scheduled. This CREST Endpoint has a 30 second cache timer. So within 30-60  seconds your campaign (once you successfully reinforced a structure) should be online and visible for everyone.
• For a region you get a new regional list that includes all the sovereignty structures, their state and vulnerable window in a sortable form.
  Example: Scalding Pass, Fountain
• On the System overview you get a list/state of the local sovereignty structures as well
  Example: W-4NUU
• If you want to know which sovereignty structures an alliance is operating, there’s a new Alliance Structures tab to get a full list.
  Example: Quantum Collective
• Additionally the map will highlight systems with scheduled campaigns using a dashed system outline and red background glow. I think give it some days to check if that’s okay or if the map view gets to cluttered up. We’ll see
  Example: Cloud Ring

Here are some screenshot so you have an idea what it looks or where to find it, in the case you haven’t seen it yet.

What else do I’ve in my mind?:

• Add the Active Defense Multiplier as map overlay
• Add the vulnerable state and start as map overlay (green = safe, orange = vulnerable, red = campaign)
• Details and charts of the current score and the campaign progress
• History of campaigns, etc
• Add campaigns to the live ticker

Long time ago since I wrote the last blog post. But having had a cold and sick kids in the last weeks was keeping me busy and away from doing anything serious on my projects. I just want to give you some show updates on what has changed with the last 2 expansions:

Rhea

• I’ve just updated the evemaps database to include new systems that got introduced with Rhea.
• I renamed the “unknown region names” to match CCP’s names, after they decided to give them proper names instead of “unknown region”.

Phoebe

• Updated the jump base ranges and skills that take part in the calculation.
• I haven’t added a fatigue planer yet and I’m unsure how useful it would be

The problem with fatigue calculation is:

• it’s likely that you start evaluating multiple scenarios. Less people will plan their trips with jumps only.
• too many unknown variables for a planer tool. Initial fatigue, waiting time, operation time, gates in between jumps, etc.
• you don’t play alone. You’ve to take care about your fleet members as well.
• the API fatigue timer is cached, therefore likely not accurate for on request results.

Oh and before you ask: Creating a jump planer that also takes gates into the calculations is really complicated and doesn’t bring many benefits. The decision when to jump and when to take a gate is more a tactical decision based on the current situation. The computer won’t know what’s the best solution. Jump first and then take the gates, gates then jump or a combination. Sometimes you know that some systems are more dangerous then others … In the end it all comes down to proper planning and knowing your backyard instead of the one click-win button solution.

Don’t worry the incursions haven’t got removed. I just managed to find time to actually relocate the link into the “Universe” section. So Top Navigation > Universe > Incursions is the new way to go.

Well … I’m starting to get problem with too many pages that want to get a good place in the navigation toolbars. Maybe some day I’ve to restructure everything … we’ll see

Couple weeks ago CCP FoxFour told us about the upcoming new SSO Login System for 3rd party sites. Well after years of hoping, weeks of testing on SISI and waiting again they got finally ready and within the scope of a limited SSO trail and allowed a few 3rd party websites to use their newly crafted SSO (Single Sign On) System to be used.

What does this mean?

You can now login DOTLAN EveMaps using your Eve Online Characater (not account). Many social media sites are providing similar services (via OpenID, OAuth and OAuth2) like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or Google.

Is it secure?

DOTLAN EveMaps or other 3rd party sites using the SSO Login Service will never see your eve account details (username, password, email, etc). As long as you pay attention when you get redirected to log in, you’re safe. But you should always do this when entering your credentials and double check them.

I have already a DOTLAN EveMaps account and now?

The best way is now to log into your account using your old login method (email+password or facebook or twitter, etc.) and add an additional identity to your account. You’ll be able to login with all of your linked identities. If you try to login first with your Eve Account you might create a new account instead of link it to your existing one.

Do we have any other benefits when using Eve SSO as login method?

Nope. Right now CCP is just providing SSO as a Login service that provides the 3rd party site with your characterID, characterName and a hash so we can verify if the character is still living on the same account. There’s no additional information we get. For everything else we’ve still to rely on the old API keys, but this first initial step is the crucial requirement for the next big step: Authenticated CREST. Someday we might get access to different scopes and request user details requesting permission from the user … but I guess this will take another year or so 🙂

Even on DOTLAN EveMaps I haven’t added any special features yet or updated the API verification process … but I guess other applications, corp or alliance management tools will be standing on the door step of CCP and waiting every moment news.

I’m a developer, where do I get my OAuth2 credentials for my own applications?

This was the first and initial trail run and test for CCP. They take their login system serious and are afraid of potential security breaches. The time for the first sisi trails even got pushed ahead multiple times. The client credentials were created manually by CCP Devs inside the database. Once the Developer Site, where you can register your application with application name, backcall_url, etc., goes live you’ll see more websites using this method as it ensures that the user on the browser site is in charge of the API keys he’s providing. No more API Key Changing, Evemail verifications or 1 isk transactions will be needed to verify you on those multiple alliance or corporation management tools out there. One day …

I the meantime I would advice you to get familiar with OAuth2 login procedure (for websites) in general. Once CCP has finished their developer site you’re in the first line of requesting one.

Links

• Dev Blog: EVE Online SSO and what you need to know