Log Reader Programs to Help You Hone Your Play

[FunkySwerve]

Listed in chronological order of posting:

Ruby Chat Log analyzer

Hedges Nwn Logparser

Bort's NWN Log Parser for windows

LogWatcher by syn

Log parcer by Ill

LootIndexer by syn

Ekstrom's NWN Logger

Gollem9's Magelogger

[AndyDeck]

Don't forget Hedges NWN Log Parser.
I've been running it under Cygwin/X for a while now.

[FunkySwerve]

Added, thanks.

Funky

[FunkySwerve]

Added syn's LogIndexer.
Funky

[MightyKhan]

I believe its LootIndexer, not LogIndexer, but w/e

[FunkySwerve]

Fixed, thanks.
Funky

[FunkySwerve]

Added Ekstrom's NWN Logger.

Funky

[nohmask]

Can someone who has used all of these give a few highlights of what they offer and what their differences are, what type of player would be suited to which, etc.?

[..[Sirloin]..]

Small summaries would be nice, indeed.

Anyone got any experiences of some of these programs?

[MurphysLawAgain]

Syn's one overlays the game screen and works very well for an individual understanding of your play (kills, SR, damage taken & received by type, + more). At the moment it does not allow comparison with other players but then - why are you using this anyway? To hone your play or compete on numbers of kills with people doing a different party role to you?

[Yomi]

The Ruby analyzer is generally a post-run setup, and provides a good view of what individual mobs were weak too, what classes/players were best at damaging them, and how they damaged the players. It doesn't show a concise summary.

Bort's parser is a real-time display of how you are doing, with timers, saves shown in a separate window, and so on. It's good for tracking what's going on to your character. I believe Syn's parser is similar, though I have not used it.

I have a perl parser I run that I haven't publicly released, that does whole-party analysis (actually it tracks everything, but you can limit it to just party members). I meant it as an analysis tool rather than an overlay display, so it doesn't include fugue timers and so on. What it does allow is display of kills, damage, deaths, damage taken (what types), XP, paragon percentage, accumulated run time, kill combinations (who's killing what the most), maximum and median AB, total number of hits, crits, misses via conceal, misses via AC, and more. Certainly one can use it as you imply -- to compete with party members in different roles, but that would be missing the point entirely. I use it both for semi-real-time display (updating every 5-10 seconds) as well as post-run analysis, especially of Nessus runs.

While you may view a discussion of maximum / median AB's and their impact on damage and special attacks to be a crude competition, and it can devolve to that, it can be used to get insight into how characters actually perform vs. what the character sheet says or what hitting things in town shows.

You can use analysis of damage taken by other party members to help them if they're new -- for instance to verify that yes, it's kickback from infernal machines that is damaging them the most.

Looking at damage output, I have played a WM with huge crits, and it sure looks from the floaty text like the toon is a real powerhouse, with big 3 digit numbers showing up over stuff. Indeed the log says the character does pretty well. In contrast I've played a HS dex monk with 10 attacks a round, and looking at the floaty text makes me think the toon's quite weak, as the crit damage especially just isn't impressive at all. However the logs show that the number of attacks and a good AB does add up, and the end result, while not up to the WM, is enough to keep up with most traditional tanks. It's not a competition, yet I still like to know that I'm contributing well.

Now imagine I'm playing a str tank, and there's another str tank on the team playing a relatively similar role. Let's say the logs show he did over 2x the amount of damage I did. It gets complicated at this point -- after all maybe I spent time rezzing and he didn't, or I played smarter and he went for stupid kills (e.g. I hit the PF while he beat on the KD'd Osyluth). Hey look, Ithe log has called some attention to play style that maybe could be used to help the party (seriously one could figure this out without the log, but sometimes it helps point these things out). It may also lead me to wonder if maybe there was a different weapon choice, build choice, or something else that leads to him doing better damage. This could start a discussion with the player about his toon. That will help me in the long run. Perhaps I didn't realize that a large size tank using a Heavy Flail is going to do far, far better than a Battleaxe user in the Hells.

Any time you're getting too caught up in the numbers, ask yourself if you're having fun. I've been in groups where all the numbers and stats paled in comparison to how much I enjoyed doing the run with the group. The logs don't easily track how much the party used strategy, smart play, crowd control, supported each other (e.g. fast rezzes, healing circles when needed), and had healthy party chat.

[CataclysmicDeath]

Syn's log Parser overlays your screen as a small box that can be positioned where ever u want it. It displays damage dealt and received totals and individual hits, your ab, SP/TP, Monster SR, your Phys and Elemental Buffage remaining as well as your current conceal and kill and death totals.

Can be reset in game to allow u to go from one run to next without having to restart it.

It is excellent to see how much damage you deal and receive against different mobs but it is only personal data at present. Most others give party stats I believe.

The main advantage is that for those of us who only have one moniter we don't have to keep tabing back and forth to see it

[illandous]

Yup, I agree with Yomi, in real time, I use mine mainly for the fugue timers. but it does keep track of everything that I need from how much damage I'm taking from what element. I don't agree with some of the math in Bakchudas, so mine uses a slightly different way of calculating the damage for "average" damage.

[mikekolba]

The links in the first post here are all broken since the threads were moved..

Mike

[FunkySwerve]

Should all be fixed now, thanks.

Funky