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Black Mamba

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Registered: 2012-12-01

Posts: 4,379

Global BF1942 player numbers and graph

For those of you that didn't know, you can see the global number of online BF1942 players on Henk's website here:

http://bf1942.eu/

A graph was added recently to display the variation of the total number of online players for the last 12 hours. I am a big data nerd myself and love graphs, and this one looks nice. It looks like this:

From my observations, new data points are added to the graph every 4 minutes. The graph is interactive and you can hover over each individual data point to get the total number of players (Y Axis), and the time stamp associated with that number (X Axis).

For example, over the last 24 hours, the lowest number of players was 14 on May 16, 2023 at 4:01:16 AM (not sure what the time zone of the server is) while the highest player count was 135 on May 16th, 2023 at 5:46:01 PM.

This graph is a great way to quickly see hourly trends in the variation of global online BF1942 players. This would give players a great way to check the pulse of the multiplayer community and know when to connect to catch higher player numbers in a server.

Henk, a few questions:

- Is there a correction in your code for the artificial dip of player numbers in a server when a map changes (player numbers go back to 0 when a map changes, it's a weird glitch)
- Are there any plans to add filters in the graph to display certain subsets of the data (for example, select global player numbers per mod)
- Eventually, it would be nice to see daily, weekly and monthly global player number data to check long term trends in global multiplayer player numbers. Are there any plans to display data for lower temporal resolutions, ie, long term data?

Great work as usual bud

Last edited by Black Mamba (2023-05-17 02:00:47)

Trench

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Registered: 2014-05-05

Posts: 221

Re: Global BF1942 player numbers and graph

I'd also suggest making the display in the time zone of the web browser viewing the graph.  Or at least declaring the static time zone the display will always be in.  But yes, very nice work.

henk

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Registered: 2018-07-07

Posts: 324

Re: Global BF1942 player numbers and graph

- Is there a correction in your code for the artificial dip of player numbers in a server when a map changes (player numbers go back to 0 when a map changes, it's a weird glitch)
Well good point! First of all its very logical the server has 0 players, but its very ugly in the graph. And its also very ugly in my server list, since the server is not shown as populated during a mapchange. I changed it such that the playerNumber is shown of the previous map until the current round is out of its 'pre' phase (start timer). So now there are less drops in the graph. I think the drops are due to moongamers. They have a short pre phase. Not all players are joined before it ends.

- Are there any plans to add filters in the graph to display certain subsets of the data (for example, select global player numbers per mod)
Yes sir! Any ideas are welcome. Note that its something I will pick up at some point when I feel like it

- Eventually, it would be nice to see daily, weekly and monthly global player number data to check long term trends in global multiplayer player numbers. Are there any plans to display data for lower temporal resolutions, ie, long term data?
Yes. I save all data now. I'll have to come up with a plan to manage the size of data

Yeah Timezone is the first fix I'll make

Darcano

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Registered: 2018-01-16

Posts: 457

Re: Global BF1942 player numbers and graph

Thanks Henk!

Black Mamba

Member

Reputation: +1500

Registered: 2012-12-01

Posts: 4,379

Re: Global BF1942 player numbers and graph

- Is there a correction in your code for the artificial dip of player numbers in a server when a map changes (player numbers go back to 0 when a map changes, it's a weird glitch)
Well good point! First of all its very logical the server has 0 players, but its very ugly in the graph. And its also very ugly in my server list, since the server is not shown as populated during a mapchange. I changed it such that the playerNumber is shown of the previous map until the current round is out of its 'pre' phase (start timer). So now there are less drops in the graph. I think the drops are due to moongamers. They have a short pre phase. Not all players are joined before it ends.

- Are there any plans to add filters in the graph to display certain subsets of the data (for example, select global player numbers per mod)
Yes sir! Any ideas are welcome. Note that its something I will pick up at some point when I feel like it

- Eventually, it would be nice to see daily, weekly and monthly global player number data to check long term trends in global multiplayer player numbers. Are there any plans to display data for lower temporal resolutions, ie, long term data?
Yes. I save all data now. I'll have to come up with a plan to manage the size of data

Yeah Timezone is the first fix I'll make

Thanks for correcting the drops and your time on this project. I’m really eager to see how it will all pan out, including  being able to see the numbers filtered by mod so that event planners have a better idea on when to organize their events. Also, seeing the long term data will be really helpful in assessing the global health of the online community.

Yeah, I’m curious to know what the data requirements are for all this data. If this is a question of acquiring a server with larger storage capacities, I wouldn’t mind donating.

Last edited by Black Mamba (2023-05-21 16:51:44)