Request TPA Website Issues / Requests

[Maggie]

Yes we were definitely experiencing some posting issues related to back-end leaderboard maintenance which was aimed at improving the speed and responsiveness of the leaderboards. The latest information I have on this is that it has been fixed but let me see if I can get some direct confirmation....

After reading this I played a quick game of El Dorado. It still tells me I haven't played the table all week. Will update if that changes.

 

[LAW]

Ok programming has just confirmed that PC is working correctly, we are currently checking specifically for mobile now, and then we'll re-check PSN, I'll keep you updated.

 

[LAW]

Mobile was not posting correctly, but has been fixed according to programming as of last night

 

[invitro]

I hope the website leaderboards will soon have updated high score lists. The in-game leaderboards seem to be updating ok now, and when in the RS table, I can view other tables' leaderboards, and they have at least my recent high scores. The website leaderboards, and the .csv files, have data from about a week ago.

Thanks for your work Farsight!

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

It would be great if we could check up on tournament status from the website, without having to go into the game.

I mean there's nothing like checking the tournament during working hours to see who's beating your scores and working out which games you need to play later....

 

[invitro]

It would be great if we could check up on tournament status from the website, without having to go into the game.

I'll add a +1 to this.

I would still love for the date a score was made to appear on the website (beside the score) .

 

[LAW]

I'll add a +1 to this

I'd like to +1 this too Sounds great and should be possible. I was looking into displaying the dates, but the server load would skyrocket so its on hold until I can interface the website leaderboards with the new high speed leaderboard enhancements, and it might be possible then although that may be awhile yet, and I have to check but I believe this is the reason the web leaderboards are not updating with the rest.

 

[LAW]

Just an update: the new leaderboard enhancements may or may not be staying and until we know for sure its probably best not to commit the changes to the website leaderboards as that is no small procedure, which unfortunately means that they are out of sync. For now we're in a holding pattern and waiting to see how things go. Even if we decide to drop the enhancements then it will be a fair amount of time before the old system is reactivated and everything is re-synced.

 

[invitro]

Just an update: the new leaderboard enhancements may or may not be staying and until we know for sure its probably best not to commit the changes to the website leaderboards as that is no small procedure, which unfortunately means that they are out of sync. For now we're in a holding pattern and waiting to see how things go. Even if we decide to drop the enhancements then it will be a fair amount of time before the old system is reactivated and everything is re-synced.

This is massively depressing.

I hope there is no chance that high scores made now (and since the website boards died) will be lost forever if/when the website boards are fixed?

[P.S. this is a duplicate of my reply posted to my top-40 thread.]

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

Just an update: the new leaderboard enhancements may or may not be staying and until we know for sure its probably best not to commit the changes to the website leaderboards as that is no small procedure, which unfortunately means that they are out of sync. For now we're in a holding pattern and waiting to see how things go. Even if we decide to drop the enhancements then it will be a fair amount of time before the old system is reactivated and everything is re-synced.

The posting speed for the game leaderboard is a very good enhancement at the moment, please try to keep this! I can´t believe that it´s so difficult to sync the game with may different speed to the web leaderboard...

 

[vikingerik]

Do remember we're not just talking about our top 10 or 100 scores. Syncing the leaderboards would include all tens of thousands of scores, all the way down on all the tables. For all the platforms. And including the weekly/monthly/alltime designations as well. I can see where it might be a significant task.

 

[LAW]

The speed boost is great, and it would definitely be nice to keep. I am actually not clear on our reasons for wanting to drop it, I'll see if I can find out why. In the meantime I've been talking to Programming and it looks like we can re-sync the leaderboards without the tremendous surgery I was anticipating. It might be a short term solution in the bigger picture, but should get us back up and running on the web

 

[LAW]

I've got the scoop! Dumping in 3...2..1....

So our server load in maintaining our ever-expanding leaderboards has been slowly getting out of control and we've been looking around for solutions to cut out most of it. The amount of data 60+ tables, each with their own monthly/weekly/all-time leaderboard with hundreds of thousands of records in each from all kinds of platforms sorted into ranks might add up quickly (especially since we never clear them ) The new system currently in place is a good one given our current hardware but requires programming maintenance and its own infrastructure, so we're planning to move to a different solution in the near future which should keep most of the speed boost we are currently enjoying (it may not be quite as awesome, yet still pretty fast) and be much cleaner and simpler to operate. What this means for syncing web leaderboards is that we're going to jump ahead to interfacing with the future system even though it won't provide the boost until we are actually running on it. What this means for the game leaderboards is a theoretically seamless transfer, no interruption similar to what happened recently is anticipated. Anyway, that's the news!

 

[Gus]

Good news LAW, thanks I don't see how posting a score is affected by overall data size tbh. Even pulling data from a few hundred k records per table should not be a problem, right? I bet there are some factors I'm unaware of though

I want to add that I do like that you guys are posting statistics in your news letters, but there must be some errors in your calculations there - I beat your supposed 'average' score on Genie by plunging 5 balls without touching the flippers or nudging. Are you counting average posted scores / started games and not considering that many games will be restarted before a score is posted?

I'd like to see average and total gametime per table, do you have that in your database?

Anyways, thumbs up for improving stuff. Keep it up!

 

[LAW]

I don't see how posting a score is affected by overall data size tbh ..... I'd like to see average and total gametime per table, do you have that in your database?

Its more the processing than the size that's the issue, especially the way we were figuring out who ranked where in what categories involved some very intense and crippling processing. It probably could have been designed better , but it wasn't so much of an issue when there were only 20 or 30 tables. As for the average gametime per table, that would be interesting, ima follow up on that and see.

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

As far as I can see the web leaderboard is synced with the game now, at least the top ten scores are there. I've missed my new Addams Family 84B score, listed in the CSV file too. Should be a filter fault again.

[MENTION=2570]LAW[/MENTION]: Can you fix this one more time? Thanks.

 

[LAW]

Should be a filter fault again. Can you fix this one more time? Thanks.

Aye!

 

[Tann]

Hey Law,

I just noticed that dates are now included on the website leaderboards. I was happy first, but it seems something is broken: all dates are not older than June 2015.

The real dates are not stored somewhere? (i.e. the real date when the highscore was made in the game, and not the date when the new leaderboard system fetched the data).

What's weird is when a score seems to have the correct date, the player ID is broken:

1929	  ----	  256063390	ios	Tales of the Arabian Nights	2013-11-27
410	  ----	  8676838940	ios	Theatre Of Magic	        2013-7-6

Note: in this week's Master Data (July 19th), bogus/hacked scores haven't been filtered (some are filtered on the website, and some aren't):

Ex: Both on the website and CSV file:

1	----	666666660	ios	Black Hole	2013-6-16

Only on the CSV file, filtered on the website:

1	----	60542803910	ios	Theatre Of Magic	2014-2-12

 

[LAW]

I just noticed that dates are now included on the website leaderboards, all dates are not older than June 2015

Yes that seemed very strange to me as well, but Programming has assured me that those are the actual posting times. I'll see if I can dig further in to get hard coded verification of this though. A note on the scores listed with usernames as "-----", these will likely all be removed as there is strong reason to believe none of them are legitimate.

 

[Tann]

Yes that seemed very strange to me as well, but Programming has assured me that those are the actual posting times.

Thanks for the answer.

But it's beyond "strangeness". I highly doubt that every player from rank 1 to 1496 on ToTAN posted their all-time highscore the same day, which is the June 22nd, 2015 (three weeks ago... errr). And player from rank 1497 to 2000, the day after (June 23rd, 2015).

Nice try from the Programming, though. ^^