Introducing Rift Logs (Alpha)

[Dahri]

Hi everyone! This is Kihra, the creator of Warcraft Logs, WildStar Logs and FF Logs. I'm excited to introduce the initial alpha release of Rift Logs and to put it into your hands for testing.

The Web site can be found at http://www.riftlogs.com/

This is a very early technology preview, and so you should expect lots of bugs and issues at first, and I look forward to being educated regarding particular Rift-specific features that should be added.

One of the reasons it took me so long to tackle Rift was that I didn't want to build the site until I was confident that some of the hallmark features that my sites are known for (like combat replay) could be supported. I believe the approach I've settled on will work, but actual raid testing will be required in order to see if there are any issues or problems that might invalidate the approach.

How it works:

Rift Logs does not use the CombatLog.txt file. Instead, you install an add-on, RiftLogger, that collects events in memory and then flushes them to the non-combat log file. This means a typical log session involves typing:

/log (turns on logging to the non-combat log file)
/rlog on (turns on the collection of events in memory for RiftLogger)
/rlog save (in between fights you hit this to flush the fight to disk)

For those who are so inclined, you can have events get written out instantly, by turning on the instant mode with:

/rlog instant

However I don't recommend using this mode for any large-scale content, as the spewing of events into your General chat tab will impact your frame rate.

Supported Features:

(1) Millisecond precision timestamps for events
(2) Individual unit instance detection, e.g., you can see damage done just to Specific Bad Guy #6.
(3) Damage and Healing tracking.
(4) Sophisticated absorb tracking, including the synthesis of absorbed events to assign absorbs to specific healers.
(5) Resource tracking, including hit points, absorption, mana, energy, and power
(6) Buff and debuff tracking, including stacks.
(7) Combat Replay - Replay fights and watch where everyone is on the playing field. Complete with raid frames, source, target and target of target frames, live damage and healing meters, aggro tracking, and more.
(8) Live Logging - Upload fights during your raid and analyze what went wrong in between pulls.

Note because this is a technology preview, rankings are turned off. I also have not yet implemented any specific boss fight detection, so all fights will just be considered trash. I will be needing specific feedback from the community regarding what boss fights you feel are worth tracking at this point, and what the encounter timeouts and victory conditions are for those fights.

Future improvements:

- Casts and Interrupts panes had to be disabled. I couldn't find any reliable way to detect casts or interrupts, even with an add-on, so for now those are not tracked. I may attempt to synthesize cast events by studying the damage/healing, but I could not see any way to detect the use of abilities that don't do damage or healing.

- If silent logging to the non-combat log file were implemented, then I'm confident the "instant" mode of the logger would work without hurting performance. I believe the only reason this mode is hurting performance right now is because of the time spent updating the General Chat UI frame.

- Combat Replay is missing raid marker support since I could not find those images. If someone could make those images available somewhere, then I could easily add this support. The information is in the log... I just need the icons.

- Combat Replay for specific raid bosses is capable of supporting map backdrops, but this involves understanding how to map between offsets within the map image and the actual in-zone coordinates. This information has to be collected by actual raiders. Assuming the map images are available somewhere, and/or someone is willing to help collect the coordinate information, then map backdrops can be supported.

Final thoughts:

I am looking forward to your initial feedback and impressions. I'll close with a sample log from an Instant Adventure that you can browse to get a feel for how a typical report looks:

http://www.riftlogs.com/reports/8tvTYdy2XkMFJfN6

[Riane]

Let me just tell you that the play option when viewing a log is quite possibly the sexiest thing ever.

A+++++

[Qube]

Awesome! The logger we've all been waiting for. Thanks, Kihra!

Can't wait to get boss data so rankings can be enabled.

[Filri]

Î loved your Wildstarlogs.
Thanks for coming to Rift



edit:

Spoiler!

Error: RiftLogger/RiftLogger.lua:90: attempt to perform arithmetic on upvalue 'nLoggingStartTime' (a nil value)
In RiftLogger / Write a Log Chunk, event Event.System.Update.Begin
stack traceback:
[C]: in function '__sub'
RiftLogger/RiftLogger.lua:90: in function 'TimeOffset'
RiftLogger/RiftLogger.lua:384: in function <RiftLogger/RiftLogger.lua:377>

[Dahri]

edit: [spoiler]Error: RiftLogger/RiftLogger.lua:90: attempt to perform arithmetic on upvalue 'nLoggingStartTime' (a nil value)

Fixed in v1.1

[Filri]

Fixed in v1.1

Nice, this was fast.
Going to use it today for the full Raid

[Dahri]

Nice, this was fast.
Going to use it today for the full Raid

It apparently does have some performance issues in full raids, so I'll be working on some optimizations (and am going to add some profiling/debugging modes so people can collect information for me).

[Dahri]

I just pushed v1.3 of the add-on and v4.93 of the client uploader with many performance improvements. I also added "/rlog slowsave" for a slower saving experience that can stream out without messing with your frame rate too badly.

[Filri]

I just pushed v1.3 of the add-on and v4.93 of the client uploader with many performance improvements. I also added "/rlog slowsave" for a slower saving experience that can stream out without messing with your frame rate too badly.

Is there actually a way to fix this, so the whole log is not useless?

btw: thanks for fast updates!

[Dahri]

Is there actually a way to fix this, so the whole log is not useless?

btw: thanks for fast updates!

Is the error accurate, i.e., did you have the logger spitting out events but forgot to turn on /log, or is it a bug?

Was the log generated with v1.2 of the add-on or v1.3?

[Filri]

Is the error accurate, i.e., did you have the logger spitting out events but forgot to turn on /log, or is it a bug?

Was the log generated with v1.2 of the add-on or v1.3?

The problem is I think, I saved the Log (it was fully saved) then a few min later while Raidbreak I got an Error Report, but after logging in I did /log etc.
Maybe this ****ed the Raidlog up?
It was with v1.2

[Dahri]

The problem is I think, I saved the Log (it was fully saved) then a few min later while Raidbreak I got an Error Report, but after logging in I did /log etc.
Maybe this ****ed the Raidlog up?
It was with v1.2

If you're able to make the log file available somewhere e.g., on Dropbox I can take a look. (Keep in mind, since it's the non-combat log file it has chat stuff in it, so may not want to post a public link).

[Filri]

If you're able to make the log file available somewhere e.g., on Dropbox I can take a look. (Keep in mind, since it's the non-combat log file it has chat stuff in it, so may not want to post a public link).

I will upload it on Dropbox. But it will take sometime, the file is about 400mb

[Dahri]

One thing I noticed from raid tests uploaded so far is that lots of the Damage Taken (and even some of the Damage Done) is from unknown abilities. I am curious if other add-ons are properly identifying these abilities, or if you know what those are.

I'm using Inspect.Ability.New.Detail in the LUA API to try to get details, and I am assuming that the ability ID was set in an "abilityNew" field. I don't know much about this, so maybe I'm supposed to be checking "ability" also if "abilityNew" is unset?

[Filri]

One thing I noticed from raid tests uploaded so far is that lots of the Damage Taken (and even some of the Damage Done) is from unknown abilities. I am curious if other add-ons are properly identifying these abilities, or if you know what those are.

I'm using Inspect.Ability.New.Detail in the LUA API to try to get details, and I am assuming that the ability ID was set in an "abilityNew" field. I don't know much about this, so maybe I'm supposed to be checking "ability" also if "abilityNew" is unset?

I recognized this also. I honestly don´t know how they can be identified properly.
For example "Rift meter" (DPS meter) works fine with these it also tracks the T3 Trinket dmg, while for example in this log ( http://www.riftlogs.com/reports/wPYr...-done&source=5 ) the Trinket is also seen as a unknown ability (while its name is actually "Explosive Intent")

Another thing I´ve seen is, that some Bosses are not correct logged. So in this log ( http://www.riftlogs.com/reports/wPYr...urce=5&fight=2 ) the fight "ends" after 36 seconds, while actually its a few minutes and didn´t log anything even though I didn´t do anything. Just as in ( http://www.riftlogs.com/reports/wPYr...ummary&fight=3 ) where it´s ended after 1 Second.
I don´t actually know why this is happening or what causes this. So the first Boss worked properly, next 2 bosses didnt, and the last Boss again worked.