Or, if you have time to say the whole thing, Escape from the Underdark Status and Logging is up and running.

What is it? It is a web based system that will enhance your playing experience! To be more specific, it is a web application running on PHP that interfaces with our server. Through this, we can get a boatload of information about the server in (approximately) real time. Also, all of that information gets stored as well, so we can get a boatload of statistics out of the deal as well.

Who is it for? You. Well, sorta. Most of what is being tracked and recorded you will never see, save for the DM's, who will get to see it all. What you get to see are the statistics related to your character.

I'm sick of these silly questions, how about you just talk for a few paragraphs? Ok.

EFUSL is currently in a development state -- it is not even close to being done. Even among the few pages the players have access to, there are some that don't even exist yet (you get 404 errors). Those dead links exist for the future, a preview of what's to come, if you will. As it turns out, it's way easier to store data than it is to display it nicely on the internet, so you have to spare a little patience. More is coming, I promise.

Right now though, both the players and DM's have enough to look at to make it worth opening. I won't go into what the DM's already have, but you, the players, can already see the current logged in characters, your character sheet, and some spiffy graphs of your gold and xp over time. More is coming, so look forward to it.

Obviously, you are going to have to log in. To set up your account, you will have to login to EfU, and once you are playing, type this command:

/c password [your_password]
(ex: /c password happydog)

Now, the reason for posting this while it is in the development stage is simple. I'm looking for some feedback. Now, I don't think there are any bugs what-so-ever at this point, but I would love to be proven wrong. I would also love your comments and suggestions. What sort of things would you like to see added? The sky is the limit in that department: it's possible to put up just about anything. Time is the only reason why it's not there already. To give you an idea, I am planning to incorporate this into EFUQS, the quest system, and eventually get a whole slew of data out, such as the frequency of specific quests you've taken, who you partner with, etc. The death system is also in sight, and some of the statistics you will see from that will be the deaths you've received, and also dealt :)

The last thing that's worth saying is 'yes, I know the site looks like crap.' My priority right now is getting the reports online, not making it look pretty. I do plan to go back once this is further along and start to beautify this, but that said, I could use help in that department. If you have some advanced experience with PHP and CSS and think you can help out, I might be able to work something out with you. Sending me a few examples of what you've made will give me a good idea of what you're capable of, and I pretty much garentuee it's more than what I can do already.

In case you missed it in the beginning, here it is again: http://www.escapefromunderdark.com/status/poc.php

awesome.

Maybe a stupid question, but while this is cool what's its real purpose? A DM tool?

Because while it's nice to check out my character stats and gold/XP charts, I don't see any extreme benefits of this system.

_Nightfire_ Maybe a stupid question, but while this is cool what's its real purpose? A DM tool?

Yes.

You only get a fraction of it. Most of what is being tracked is not appropriate for players to know/see, simply for the metagaming/powergaming/griefing that could come from it.

I love it. not the only one getting a 404 when I hit quest info though am I?

nope, no one has quest info. efuqs is one of the next on the list, and it will be a biggie!

You powergamers can now see your average experience gained per hour over the course of the last twenty four hours, week, and month. Look to the experience chart.

This is another tool to observe and control us!

Reject it!

(When can I see the most powerful thing Mormont's killed, BTW?! >.>)

Inquisitor

(When can I see the most powerful thing Mormont's killed, BTW?! >.>)

This made me think of the stats page in BG2 where it had (just loaded a game a checked... lol): Most Powerful Vanquished (not killed.... VANQUISHED!) Time Spent with Party Favo(u)rite Spell Favo(u)rite Weapon Total experience value in party Percentage of total kills in party Experience value of kills Number of kills

obviously some of these are not appropriate for EfU. But Inq just made me think of it with fond nostalgia.

_Nightfire_ Maybe a stupid question, but while this is cool what's its real purpose? A DM tool?

Because while it's nice to check out my character stats and gold/XP charts, I don't see any extreme benefits of this system.

Some of the main purposes for the DM's will be tracking things like how often specific quests get done. This will let us know if certain quests have gotten stale, or maybe have rewards that are too high or too low.

Thrawn

_Nightfire_ Maybe a stupid question, but while this is cool what's its real purpose? A DM tool?

Because while it's nice to check out my character stats and gold/XP charts, I don't see any extreme benefits of this system.

Some of the main purposes for the DM's will be tracking things like how often specific quests get done. This will let us know if certain quests have gotten stale, or maybe have rewards that are too high or too low.

See, that's the stuff I'd most like to see myself. Just out of curiosity, and maybe even so I can think of suggestions to give out too.

I see it only shows 1 character. Do you plan to have it list all characters per account?

All characters under any given account are displayed, assuming you have logged in with them since this reporting period has begun. If a character has not been logged in within the last two weeks or so, this system does not know of their existance.

It would be handy to be able to view the IG journal via EFUSL (as in, the one you type yourself, not the quest journal). That way I can make notes in my journal IG and use EFUSL to access them out of game in order to use on forums or whatever.

That is client side anyway. Go to c:\Program Files\Neverwinter Nights\nwn\localvault\charactername.txt

It's all there.

Sweet! 8)

cant wait to try it when I log in, kudos to you!

chezcaliente It would be handy to be able to view the IG journal via EFUSL (as in, the one you type yourself, not the quest journal). That way I can make notes in my journal IG and use EFUSL to access them out of game in order to use on forums or whatever.

I am pretty sure this is absolutely impossible, because as fish said, that journal is handled entirely by the client. The server cannot update/modify that journal in anyway.

Nope, its all client side.

any chance we can get this thing to keep a running total of the time spent online? it already shows The player last logged off at 2006-10-20 21:29:20 and was online for 02:04:15

it would be awsome if it added that up so I could see just how much time Ive wasted errr enjoyed playing this game :D :D :D

Definately planned once I start working on it again!

Some things are best left to the imagination. :oops:

Paste works in your journal also.. You can minimize go grab some text with highlight + ctrl-c

then go into your journal in game and press ctrl-v

Sometimes end of line characters appear as squares , just delete those.

Is this broken at the moment?

I just looked at the server status page, and it tells me 175 players are logged in !!! :shock:

Server Status: ONLINE The server has been online since 2006-10-26 13:56:31. (10:27:44)

Current Players (175)

Should be fixed.

Rawks!

Wow, this is really cool!

I like the new stuff that's been added: skills, feats, etc. Now I can bask in my character's glory without logging in at all- I don't even really need to play anymore!

Do you plan to include a feature that would allow us to mark characters for deletion?

At this time, no. We have no good resource for getting the specific .bic file attached to a given character. This becomes even more of a problem for all the people who make tons and tons of "same name" characters. Don't do that!

Hello,

my time for bless and prays in the holy war.

Maybe can add the total level for each char ?

I known, I known, I known...

I can see it in connection menu of NWN, (isn't metagame do it ?), but is more simple look in EFSL and see if have chars up to do some quests or plots.

[]s tooh

Um... No. It is meta gaming to look up the levels of people. It creates tons of bad experiences and adds nothing at all positive to the server. If you want the quest, use a sending. Meanwhile- These type of things should be added to the suggestion forum.. not tagged here. >_>

If I could figure out how to remove that information from the gamespy menu, I would do so in a heartbeat. That won't be displayed on the public efusl pages.