YAL - Yet another logger

[ekstroem]

Latest Version of YAL

Above is the most recent version, in zip format.
2011-07-17

Funky


(And the link and current code is not by me (Claus) - see this thread for a history of how YAL has evolved)










[EDIT]

NEWEST LINKS HERE:
www.keleous.com/downloads/nwn.pl and
www.keleous.com/downloads/yal.exe

-the management, by way of illandous
[/EDIT]


Seems everyone and their grandmother is making log analyzers at the moment. Thought I'd throw mine out there as well.

It resembles bort's quite a bit as I was quite fond of his but there were a few things I'd like to have included/tweaked. I'm borderline fanatic^* when it comes to open source and free software, so I decided I might as well take a shot at make a "bort-like" logger that everyone could help improve.

The following picture shows the result from last nights Malbolge run:

Several things can be seen: input/output damage, effective hit-percentage (and defence) over the last 30 attacks, different timers etc. Skill checks, saves, yada yada yada.

The party window gives summaries of the party members, and it's clear that 1) Ashley completely owned the layer, 2) Divine slingers (Fiona) badly need a damage boost or something (and I do know which damage types to use for the different mobs), and that 3) Raj "won" the tank contest in the end.

The script is written in perl/Tk. To run that under windows you can get perl for free from ActiveState, and once you install the ActiveState version you can run the package manager, select Tk and install that. Under *nix it just runs although some distributions may have to install the Tk package though.

Place the nwn.pl script in the same directory as the NWN log files and enjoy.

For this program to work, you must enable client logging. To do this, open nwnplayer.ini from your neverwinter nights directory and change the line that reads
ClientEntireChatWindowLogging=0
to
ClientEntireChatWindowLogging=1

Feedback welcome. Bugs may even be fixed. Or better yet: tweak the program and mail me the changes.

Oh ... and the program is pre-pre-alpha. Written very quickly with quite a bit of spaghetti code and undergoes changes quite often. Download the lastest version here. I'll try to make sure to upload the newest version at least once per week.

Also I run the logger under linux so any annoyances under windows will only be looked at if someone tell me about them.

Claus

^* Not the hair-chewing, square dancing type - I just think it's a great idea. Like sliced bread. Or sushi. Or Monty Python.

[phalthallus]

Looks pretty nice Claus. I'll give it a go when I get a chance. Any idea if there's any harm in running multiple parsers on the same file at the same time? Assuming the program opens the file with the right attributes, it shouldn't be a problem, correct?

[Mjolnin]

Hi Claus,

from a feedback point of view, it might be nice to have headlines for the dmg types on top of the nice colors.

Otherwise looks fine to me.

Best regards,

Mj.

[bort]

Looks nice Claus.
Love the idea of making it open source. If mine was written in a 'real' programming language that 'real' programmers actually use and if my programming wasn't confusing even to me, I'd be tempted to do the same.

phalthallus said:

Looks pretty nice Claus. I'll give it a go when I get a chance. Any idea if there's any harm in running multiple parsers on the same file at the same time? Assuming the program opens the file with the right attributes, it shouldn't be a problem, correct?

Considering both NWN and the parser are accessing the file at the same time I can't see why having a third program accessing the file would be an issue (especially as the parser(s) are only reading the file, not writing to it).

[oropher987]

Python is not a "real" programming language? Anyhow, I would think a log parser would be rather easy to write in any language that supports associative arrays (i.e. Perl hash, Python dictionary or C++ STL map/multimap). My main issue with the one parser I tried was if I tried to move the parser window around while NWN was running, my NWN crashed with video problems (kinda like the old TV where you had to sync the picture Anyhow, I could help anyone looking for help with the parsing (probably not needed) but don't work with the windowing portion.

As far as accessing the files, it depends on your operating system's handling of file locking and how the userland programs perform the file i/o.

[dodrudon]

Isn't Perl a language infamous for write-once read-never? All the profs here make fun of it, saying not even the writer can read their own code... =(

[crtguy]

I use it for digging data out of debug text files often, but I don’t think it is very intuitive.

[Yomi]

dodrudon said:

Isn't Perl a language infamous for write-once read-never? All the profs here make fun of it, saying not even the writer can read their own code... =(

To be blunt, your profs are full of it in this regard. I can make obfuscated code in any language. Admittedly Perl lets you make very obfuscated code (they're probably thinking of the various Obfuscated Perl and JAPH contests), but there's no reason to. Personally I find it far more intuitive than Ruby, for example. I refer to my old Perl scripts all the time -- I revived a web form one from 1995 for creating RSS feeds from run shouts. I think it's definitely the right tool for parsing NWN logs -- I wrote a parser that I posted in my guild forum that shows all sorts of info, though I didn't write a GUI for it.

You want to use the right tool for the job. Perl is great for string processing. I wrote a 15k line bibliography processing package in Perl and it would be far, far harder to understand if it was in C. When I want to do image processing I don't normally use Perl (I've done some simple stuff with it but it's really wrong). We use it quite a bit at work for development, though don't ship it in products.

[bort]

oropher987 said:

Python is not a "real" programming language?

Python? I suspect you confuse me with Synan.
Mine was written in Visual Basic 6, which is so 'high level', it's practically English - hence my claim it's not a 'real' programming language.

That doesn't stop my code being a convoluted mess which even I find confusing to decipher, unfortunately (mainly because I never wrote it with the intention of it being open source). Besides which, I doubt many people have a copy of VB 6, either because (as far as i know) it's not something that's widely used by professional programmers, or because they use (the more recent) VB.NET instead.

Still, if anyone wants the (messy) code for my parser, they need only to ask.

I look forward to seeing YAL progress, as I'm sure there are at least a few experienced programmers on HG who could help out, which would allow it to progress much faster than mine.

[mishimayukio]

I'd like to see other people in my party show fugue timers as well, but color coded so I know which timer belongs to who so I can give higher priority to rezzing someone about to limbo.

[dodrudon]

Perhaps change their box to be red if they're going to Limbo within the next 10 seconds if they're dead.

[ekstroem]

Updated.

[Raj]

hey claus mind make the instructions a lot more noobs friendly ?

The script is written in perl/Tk. To run that under windows you can get perl for free from ActiveState, and once you install the ActiveState version you can run the package manager, select Tk and install that. Under *nix it just runs although some distributions may have to install the Tk package though.

Place the nwn.pl script in the same directory as the NWN log files and enjoy.

sooooooo i downloaded ''ActivePerl-5.10.0.1002-MSWin32-x86-283697'' and placed that file in my logs directory, now how do I run it ? if I double click on it I only see a flashy dos window

[ekstroem]

therajah said:

hey claus mind make the instructions a lot more noobs friendly ?

sooooooo i downloaded ''ActivePerl-5.10.0.1002-MSWin32-x86-283697'' and placed that file in my logs directory, now how do I run it ? if I double click on it I only see a flashy dos window

Installation and running:

• Get the lastest version of ActivePerl from ActiveState. At this time of writing that is indeed the file that Raj mentions above. Size is around 15 MB.
  
• Install ActivePerl by clicking on the downloaded file. You now have perl installed.
  
• Install the TK package by starting the Perl Package Manager. The package manager is found under Start Menu -> Programs -> ActivePerl -> Perl Package Manager. Once the package manager is running you can "View all packages" (shortcut Ctrl-1), select the Tk package and then hit the "Mark for install" button (shortcut +). Final step is to click on "Run marked actions" (Ctrl-Enter) and Tk will be installed.
  
• Perl is automatically placed in the path, so you should download the script (nwn.pl) and place the script in the log directory under nwn or where you save your logfiles.
  
• Run nwn.pl by double-clicking on the file to start the logger.
  

Hope this helps. If not then let me know.

If you have perl installed but not the Tk package (that manages the GUI) I'm sure a DOS window will pop up and complain that Tk is missing.

Claus

[Raj]

thx, i was missing the package manager thing, now when i double click on that thing i see a log window

little problem ^^ : how do I start to collect logs? I just doubleclicked on that, put my name as the only party member and went kill some beetles. nothing happened