DOTLAN EveMaps

If you’ve may noticed, the evemaps webserver is crashing every now and then. It looks like some background scripts, which are keeping the database up to date, are crashing and killing the server at the same time, leaving the server in an unmanageable state. No logfile outputs, no console output, nothing. The current solution is to destroy the virtual machine instance and start the server again, which is … not acceptable.

I’m thinking about installing a clean virtual machine and move evemaps to this or rewrite the maintenance scripts or compiling php from scratch. Right now I’m still searching for the root cause, which is hard to find without any usable logfiles or debug output or beeing able to reproduce the crash.

At least I’ve setup a monitoring system on a different computer which notifies my via jabber/email and later text message to my mobile, if the server crashed again. Maybe I’ll add a auto-restart script on the xen dom0.

Update

So far the server keeps crashing every day without any logfiles or error messages. After several tries to find the crash reason, webserver/php reinstall, code rewriting, I decided to move evemaps to their own single, fresh installed virtual server instance. Lets hope this helps. Otherwise I might consider compiling php from scratch rather then using a precompiled debian packge. I’ll also try to get to the datacenter and do some memtests with the current server setup this weekends.

Update 2

I’ll be in the datacenter around 19:30 GMT to exchange ram modules and do some memory checks (just in case). DOTLAN EveMaps will be down for around 30 to 45 minutes.

As I already announced via Twitter, I’m done with coding a full zoomable Eve Online universe map. It’s completely done in SVG and Javascript. Sorry IE Users, for now: get a real browser. Sure SVG and Javascript isn’t that fast compared with native java or flash code but I think in any way, it will be a good addition to the complete mapping solution.

Right now the map is completly zoomable and movable can display routes, jumps and jumpbridge maps and has the ability to set their focus on systems, constellations, regions or alliances. Based on that code I can create additional features in the future (depending on performance, presentation, etc).

I suppose, I should really make the release update on the live version of evemaps soon 🙂

… there’s much going on. After the first announcement of the new ingame browser around 2 month ago, I started working in the background to get everything prepared for the new expansion. The last weeks and days before the fanfest were even more work heavier, even during the flight to Island I was still coding to be able to present improved EveMaps version for the Ingame Browser to the devs. During the fanfest itself I was trying to gather more ideas which I could realize.

What did I’ve done in the background, what are the new features:

• Switched live and testing environment to subversion, for better development and code review (even I’m doing everything alone)
• EveMaps with theme support: light (current), dark (black background), igb (Ingame Browser, optimized for small  window sizes)
• Full IGB Browser Support
  • Regions, Constellation, Alliances, Corps, Stations, Agents, Moons, etc are will show an info icon right next to their name when hovering over it.
  • Systems are also get some additional Icons like a link to the Ingame Map, etc.
• Zoomable Region Maps
  • You can zoom into the normal regional and pan around like google maps.
  • Before you ask: No there’s no full zoomable universe map, maybe someday, maybe not.
• Long Term Alliances Stats
  • You can select a start/end date range and see the history for memberships, corps, systems and outposts. Great, if you want documenting some of the recent failure cascades *hint* 🙂
• Nearest Locations (per System)
  • In the systems details you’ll find a list which will show you the nearest (in jumps) 0.0/low/highsec system or the next station system with refining/repair/medical/research/factory slots.
• R&D Agents will show their research services.

Most of the features, which I’ve listed above, are currently tested with Firefox and Chrome. I’ll have to see I can somehow realize some of those functions with the Internet Explorer ….. no comment. Anyway, everything is still in development, needs more testing and tweaking. But basically that’s what you can expect with the Dominion release of EveMaps.

There’ll be more updates coming out for dominion, but atm I’ve to wait until CCP is realising more informations about the sovereignty system, their upgrades and the how everything is integrated and linked with the API.

Fly safe.

It’s hard to describe the Eve Online Fanfest with only a few words. But the most simple and best matching way would be to quote the answer of a CCP Dev when I asked him, what I could improve on the DOTLAN EveMaps.

“Keep Beeing Awesome!”

I’ve seen so many new things, met so many exciting people and talked about uncountable things in (mostly) the API/IGB roundtables that it’s hard to clear my head and realize that everything is already over. But I’ll try to summarize a few things.

(more…)

Got my coffee and already sitting in the train which leads to Frankfurt Airport. The final destination? South Africa ….. no I’m kidding that will have to wait. Sure it’s the Icelandair Flight to Iceland. Fanfest here I come!  I hope it will be an exciting weekend. If you wanna talk to me or just see and discuss the upcoming evemaps changes for the next expansion or suggestions just look for a guy with a (mostly black) shirt with dotlan logo on it 🙂 I’ve really some interesting upcoming changes (also in regards of the new ingame browser).

I’ve stressed my subversion system quite a lot with many changes. It’s a pain to clean all the small things from the last year.

btw. 1) Blogging, Surfing in the train while rolling with 300km/h is funny.

btw. 2) Fixing mysql performance issues short before bedtime is a bad idea. I only had around 4 to 4.5 hours of sleep. At least I could find 3 issues:
Note to myself: A table with only 700 entries and no index could lead to serious performance if combined in a bigger sql query.

Based on the idea from Kirith Kodachi in his last comment about the jump range/planner, I just added a new feature. If you use the jump range tool, systems with a highsec connection will gets highlighted (). In the Jump Options you can also filter for them to only show those systems.

I hope that helps planning your logistic trips.

CCP has released the first beta of their new ingame browser (called Moondoggie) which comes with the next upcoming winter expansion Dominion. According to the latest Dev Blog, it’s based on a modifcated version of the rendering engine webkit which is used by Google’s Chrome browser.

As webkit is a feature rich and complete rendering engine, you can display almost modern web pages. Moondoggie is support Javascript, CSS, SVG, etc. You can even watch movies on youpor^H^H^Htube with your ingame browser while mining or waiting for your fleet.

I already checked my evemaps and the svg rendering engine of webkit is producing good results as I would expect them from a modern web browser. I already added a quick test page for a new Radar feature that will display your current position on a map or show you system details if you’re in wormhole space. But Moondoggie is still in an early development phase.

Here are some nice screenshots who the new ingame browser and evemaps are working together.

Lets see what we can do with the new upcoming ingame browser. Any suggestions?

As you already may know, the API Interface to EVE Online is currently offline to debug the latest server side issues. I know my maps are depending heavly on them. Let’s hope CCP is able to fix this in the next upcoming hours.

When the API Services get’s restored, the database should get their data and everything should should be updated automatically as usual.

Calculations in eve are sometimes wired. Today I got the information that a pilot got stuck on his route because of a rounding error in the jump distance.

Example:

My jump planer said yes, eve client said no. Wired math to be honest.

Anyway:
I tweaked some internal calculations, recreated my jump graph and removed now outdated, bugged caches. Maybe CCP can tell me how they’re doing the calculation.

I hope you won’t get stuck anymore. Fly safe!

A few month have past, since I wrote the latest update about the visitor and traffic stats on evemaps. All I can say: “I’m proud”. The visitor count in the last year increased by 1000% combined with the traffic. I’m even more happy, that the days and weeks I put into optimization are showing big results. One of the biggest traffic savers was the move from Flash to VML for Internet Explorer users. Do I really have to comment the following numbers?

In Details

Source: Webalizer, Datarange: October 2008 – August 2009

Here’s the nice little Webalizer Usage chart:

Webalizer Usage Stats Oct 08 - Aug 09

Jump Planer Usage:

After doing some more research on the access stats on the newly added Jump Planer I realized that already 74k requests to the jump planer have been made (50k of those were unique requests). The Jump Planer is now on place 4 of the most used pages in evemaps (according google analytics).

Some more Google Analytics Stats:

According to Google Analytics I had 67k unique visitors in the last 30 days and 264k unique visitors in the last half year. Those numbers compared with the number of paid eve online subscriptions (minus alts accounts) is quite impressive, even if you divide the number of visitors by 2 (Home/Work PC).

Anyway, I just checked the clock … I should better log off … 4am here.