DOTLAN EveMaps

As DOTLAN is currently the biggest history and statistic database for Eve Online. But when it comes to alliance and sovereignty tracking, there’s always room to extend. When we would have a green field, what informations would be really nice to get. Lets start with a wishlist for 2010. I’m sure that most of those ideas won’t made it into eve’s real api world, but that’s what wishes are for.

The return of SovereigntyStatus API

As already blogged, CCP removed this specific API to maintain the current fog of war. This was based mostly of the fact that onlining TCU units were shown via API before somebody was actually in a system to report those. Every other state what you could read from the API was mainly common knowledge. Example: If an alliance has sovereigtny in a particular system, you know that there must be a TCU. If Alliance B is dropping SBU’s in a system where Alliance A has sovereignty you basically have several hundred pilots in space fighting for this system or defending it. With all the intel channels several thousand players already know that there’s a big fight going on for sovereignty. So there’s nothing to hide. (@CCP remove modules in onlining/anchored state and you’re ready to go.)

Additionally if you include SBUs in the API it would be nice to track current campaigns from alliances who’re fighting for/defending their space.

System Indexes

Well, I don’t think I really need to say more. I would love the show more graphs in the System Details and Alliance Lists. Btw the strategicIndex is the most important for the majority of people, cause with Level A you’ll be able to install feature B, etc.

Concord wars

An API that would list current wars and their state would be nice. I know you can query every corp/alliance information ingame, but it would be a really interestesting statistic to show current and past wars of an alliance or corporation. I think R.E.P.O’s list would be never ending 🙂

Batch operations

Querying corporation details for several thousand corps is a pain in the ***. It would be nice to introduce batch opererations where you can query corp details for corp 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 in one API call instead doing X seperated calls. It would recude the CPU and network load tbh.

With just 1 hour left this year, I wish every reader and pilot a happy new year. If I find more things for the wishlist, I’ll update the blog. If you have updates, place a comment here.

Well. Fly safe

to everybody in New Eden. Red or blue, carebear or pirate 🙂 I would like to thank all people that gave me feedback, donations or content which I could include. I would also like to thank my corpmates who supported me.

Well, lets see if CCP brings back some new interesting things into EVE and into the API as well in the new year. I hope you all enjoy the next upcoming days with your family instead of eve drama going on everywhere.

Until then. Fly safe

Well, lets make it short. I fixed a bug where outdated stats have been shown on the IGB map version. The cache files for the dark and IGB theme didn’t got purged after new data was available. Users of the IGB Version have seen outdated numbers for jumps, kills and other live stats. The ‘default’ theme always showed the right data.

Thanks for reporting me that issue.

Well, lets make it quick. After I got feedback from various sources I decided to disable the mouse wheel zoom support on all (expect the ingame region map) by default. If you feel the need to zoom in you can still use the zoom icons or just toggle the mouse icon and the wheel support is enabled/disabled.

A couple more bugs are fixed as well.

CCP Chronotis just announced that they’ll remove the SovereignyStatus API which lists all Territorial Claim Units and Sovereignty Blocking Units.

Quote:

Folks,

We will be soon be removing /map/SovereigntyStatus.xml.aspx API which allows you to see the sovereignty structure status for the universe. We would like to eventually re-release it with restrictions to either the corporation or alliance owning the sovereignty structures so they can get a good overview of the status of their solar systems.

The information provided by this view was far too extensive compared to what is available ingame where you should rely on traditional scouting for this intelligence data. The ‘fog of war’ should be maintained here without having a far too revealing view through the API.

As per CCP Elerhino and Incognito’s previous responses, we will also be working on adding more relevant sovereignty APIs in the future such as the sovereignty index and changes overviews from the dashboard in related ongoing development.

-Chronotis

In the final end this will means, the time I put into the Sovereignty Structures View was wasted. 🙁 I can understand that the API contained far too much sensitive intel informations. The first 12 hours in the onlining process of a TCU are the most critical, as the TCU is still in a vulnerable state and and can easily be destroyed by a remote repping battleship gang.

Well. Lets see what CCP’s final decision will be. Maybe the API will only get restricted and a couple of informations are not available or available only to those systems where a particular alliance has their structures in or it is getting completely removed.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1228297

UPDATE

The SovereignytStatus.xml.aspx API is already down. Woah, this time CCP was really fast.

Yeah it’s weekend and the ideas are coming, a solution is also already in mind, so why not doing it right now. It’s only a couple of hours ago since the last post dominion update release but this one is too good to be postponed.

Updates:

• Added a filter option for the Jump Range Tool. You can now also list highsec systems, which are in jump range. That way you can easily search for a good jump off point (for your Jump Freighter or Black Ops) from a secure high security system to your favorite destination system.
• Additionally I fixed a bug with the radar page which didn’t worked correctly for wormhole systems.
• Fixed some smaller bugs.

Warp Drive Active #50 – The Hotdrop Edition

This was kinda funny. Winterblink, known for his warp drive active podcasts (mostly together with Urban),  asked on twitter for some randoms chats over skype. Friendly as I am, I replied and we started to have a nice funny talk until he said

“This will kinda be a hot drop *BEEEEP* This call is beeing recored *BEEEEP* Alright, joining me this week on Warp…

Aaaaaah yes. I was his first hot drop victim, but in the end we had a nice talk. Well anytime again sir! Until next time.

Go out and listen:
http://www.warpdriveactive.com/2009/12/05/podcast-50-hot-drop/

After a few days playing around with CCP’s new Sovereignty Status API, I think it’s time for an update. Here we go.

• Structure Changes (live) for the last 48 hours (overall), per region or per alliance
• Structure Listing per region or per alliance
• Moved the API Updated to the bottom of the page (too many timestamps)
• Extended the Factionwarfare Live Ticker for the last 48 hours instead 24
• Fixed some bugs with maps and the jumps/npc/shipkill overlay numbers
• a couple of smaller fixes around the world
• Added a dropdown list to switch between the regions if you’re in the list view.
• Finally I also added a Support Page. Here you can find all informations how to contact me or show me your support by donating or buying GTCs etc.

That’s all for today: Now happy hunting for onlining TCU’s and happy donating 🙂

It’s finally done. The DOTLAN EveMaps Dominion Edition is ready to go. I hope you all have fun. If you like my work feel free to donate stuff to me: ISK, Minmatar Stuff (hint: I can finally fly Minmatar Black Ops and Caps o/) or just leave a comment here.

Let’s round up the new features and changes that happened in the last 4 month.

New Features and Changes

• IGB Integration
  • Support of the new javascript Ingame methods (for showInfo links, etc)
  • New Theme which is optimized for smaller browser windows
  • Added a ‘Radar’ page which displays the current region with the system highlighted where the user is currently in. (only for trusted pages)
• Zoomable/Moveable Region Map (svg only)
• Zoomable/Moveable Universe Map (svg only)
  • Integration in the Jump/-Range/Route Planer
  • Integration into Region/Alliance View
• Outposts
  • Added outposts details including ownership and name history
  • Added live outposts changes
  • Track outpost ownership/name changes
  • Reduced API calls from every day 24h to every hour!
• Faction Warfare
  • Added live changes (contested/uncontested/lost/recovered)
  • Added occupied overview (which alliance has occupied what and since when?
• Systems
  • List sovereignty structures and their states
  • Added Nearest Locations: List closest low/high/nullsec system or closest station with $service
  • Links to outpost details
  • List Agents in Space
• Alliances
  • Added long term statistics for members, corps, systems and outposts
  • Links to outpost details
  • Link to universe map with the systems highlighted the alliance is holding
  • New Alliance Ranking/Listing. You can select between sov holding, all and dead alliances
  • Alliance listing is limited to 100 alliances per page (including pages switcher)
• Sovereignty
  • UPDATE: Added sovereignty structures list which are not in a normal state (You can watch things onlining)
  • Added a live sovereignty ticker with all recent losts/gains
• Misc
  • Moved the unified search in the header section (available on every page)
  • Merged Alliance + Corporation + NPC into one section
  • sorted table column gets highlighted
  • Active page section gets highlighted (in the main navigation bar)
  • Agents in space will be linked to their right location/system
  • Many tweaks, fixes, updates to make DOTLAN EveMaps a better world to live in for us all. 🙂

Background system

• Switch from cron-based scripts to daemons
• Rewrite of all update scripts and daemons who’re keeping the database up2date
• Rewrite of API backend handlers
• Added cache clearing on cache groups

Database

• Complete change of all tables that are handling historical data
• All startDate/endDate fields (for historical data) switched from ‘date’ field type to ‘datetime’ to be compatible with dominion sovereignty changes
• With dominion all sovereignty Levels will be changed to level 0/1 expect 0-4, old sovereignty Levels will be preserved
• Added outpost history table
• Added summary table for kills/jumps in the last 1/3/24 hours (to reduce query run times)
• Added more historical sovereignty data (thanks to exi from #eve-dev) starting now with June 2007

And what’s coming after all that? Sure the work is still not finished with all the new shiny stuff which is coming out with dominion. I’ll focus more on the Sovereignty Status API and try to merge more data together.

Possible new stuff could be:

• Conflict View: Alliances which are fighting against each other (based on contested systems SBU from alliance X is attacking space hold by alliance Y, and so on.
• Better startpage with more likely customizable features and widgets
• Notification services (jabber/email)? (In the far far future)

During the rewrite of the backend (in preparation for the upcoming expansion), I made some very big enhancements to the database. Everything must be able to get updated every minute, because sovereignty can change anytime, but not only sovereignty can change anytime even outposts are playing ping-pong games or alliances are growing and disbanding anytime.

After the biggest part in the database conversion, fixing, and reimporting old data (from old stored xml api files) has been done, it was time to see what stuff I can create with the revamped and freshly imported data.

The outcome? Everything is getting LIVE (or at least with max 1hour refresh timers) and here are screenshots from some of the new features I announce for the dominion DOTLAN EveMaps release: Outpost history/details and faction warfare changes/informations.

Do I need a release party for the launch of the upcoming DOTLAN EveMaps release? 🙂

Everyone is waiting for the release of the upcoming expansions ‘Dominion’ which will revamp the sovereignty system. Tracking and visualizing the current sovereignty and territorial status/changes was and is still one of the major key parts of DOTLAN EveMaps. After waiting weeks to get response from the CCP Devs about upcoming changes and their connections with the API, I can finally say there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We got heard. While CCP Elerhino is preparing his Devblog which should come out in the next days, he and CCP Incognito already answered a few questions on the eveonline.com board and released a few new details.

What are the basic Sovereignty API changes?

• Sovereignty can change every minute and not just only after downtime. With this the cache timer will get reduced also to around 1h.
• Sovereignty Levels and Constellation Sovereignty are gone.
• corporationID will get added to the API to indicate which corporation owns the Territorial Claim Unit/System.
• There’ll be a new API SovereigntyStatus.xml.aspx which will include SBU, TCU, Outposts, Upgrades? in each system (quote: relevant informations)
• If the system index levels (strategy/military/industry) are getting added one day is unsure right now.
• The new APIs won’t be released on day one as they’re lacking behind the Sovereignty Changes.

What does this mean for DOTLAN EveMaps. Which parts are affected by this?

• Sovereignty can change every minute:
  The complete sovereignty database needs to be converted. Before Dominion, sov only changed once a day during the downtime. In the upcoming EveMaps version you can see sovereignty changes every hour (or even minutes, depending on future API’s changes or caching changes).
• Sovereignty Levels are gone:
  I’ll likely convert every single system from Sov 4, 3 or 2 to sovereignty 1. I know that after dominion there’ll be no sov levels at all. But keeping the database compatible with the past and the future will a big deal. I don’t really want to lose my historical data. Neither you.
• Sovereignty Status:
  If it comes true and CCP is releasing the SovereigntyStatus API soon after the dominion release, I’ll start tracking this API too. Right now I can’t really tell what the API will contains: Likely it will contains a list of the Territorial Claim Units (TCU) Sovereignty Blockade Units (SBU), Infrastructure Hubs and Outposts in their current state. That would be a really nice to show which systems are currently under attack/siege/whatever. *Dreaming* If they would add the hub upgrades to the API Export you can watch how your space is developed (or the one of your enemy). That would make it very easy to plan assaults against your enemies infrastructure. But right now we’ve to wait what CCP is including in their API and how long we’ve to wait for this.
• More APIs, more data, more, more, more

As I’m currently rewriting the whole DOTLAN EveMaps backend programs that keep track of updates, etc, etc. I found various things that I could also track and visualize and even fix.

Additional Changes:

• Faction warfware systems:
  Sorry for the past, but I never took a bigger look into the faction warfare API. Systems are getting contested and uncontested every few hours (depending on the successful or unsuccessful assaults of the militia). Basically the contested state will get updated very hour (API cache timer).
• Faction warfare stats:
  Maybe I’ll add them in also in a future release.
• Alliances changes:
  I’ll also track alliances changes every hour soon. You’ll directly see which corporations are joining/leaving your enemy (failcascades live!) or if CVA or BOB MK3 gets disbanded again.
• Outpost history:
  Similar to the alliance changes I’ll keep track of outpost stations changes. That includes corporation/alliance ownership (station ping pong) aswell as the funny station renaming battle (Youtube @ 5:07) between Goons and the GMs in 77S8-E. I still have a daily outpost naming history for the last 14 month.

I’m looking forward to for all the upcoming changes. btw. It seems the DOTLAN EveMaps Server is running stable again, apparently it looks like a bad memory configuration during the upgrade at the start of November caused the crashes.