It’s time for another release of COGSBot. So, what’s changed? Well, uh, not really very much… not with the bot itself anyway…
COGSBot has been gathering a lot of data over the past while and it was time to do something useful with it all. So, I can now present our very own IRC statistics generated by COGSBot. They have pretty graphs and lots of interesting numbers. I hope you all enjoy looking at them.
There are future plans to create many more interesting types of statistic but for now this should do!
To help support these stats in future, the bot now has better logging support (such as rolling over to a new file). Also added is a !stats trigger which will provide you with a link to the statistics page. You can find the statistics here.
So some folks said there would be a physics BBQ this Friday. This is therefore a late announcement that COGS will be crashing the party (with invitation) and that we can probably be found trying not to let our pale, pale skin burn somewhere in Royal Fort Garden in the afternoon, while munching burgers.
This will lead on nicely to our social for the evening, starting with a meal (for which you will already be booked if you’re on the list) and then followup chatter in Bar 100. For the more robust, we will then be following COGS tradition and going to All in One for cocktails.
Today phpBB was updated to the latest version, which was released a few days ago. WordPress was updated to the latest version at the same time to minimise disruption. Normal order is now restored.
Additionally, a bunch of spam users have been removed from the forums, and we should have made it a lot harder for spam users to register themselves again for the time being (here’s hoping…)
The post exam “mini” LAN is looking to be quite a hot event with 22 signups so far! This Saturday in AR2 we’re looking to have quite a few outsiders descending upon our fair and pleasant aisles – that’s right, some of us loonies have been out “socialising” (albeit at LeachLAN) and making “friends” with “people.” Then apparently some of them saw fit to blast the living cabbages out of us another time by LANing with us once more. Make them welcome!
This LAN we’ll once again be trying some sort of forum-based food order, and we’ll try and have some of the sillier games going (especially another bout of the all-popular armagetron) so make sure you’ve got your source and WC3 mods installed! Also, since we’ve not played it for what seems like ages, I think I should announce CARBALL.
Stressed about exams? Can’t think of ways to procrastinate? A LAN is clearly the answer! Rapidly drawing closer is the 16th of May exam-LAN, which had to be emergency moved to MR4 due to marauding desks.
Come along for the usual mix of computerised hilarity. We’re planning for a few new crazy games such as Armagetron and Gang Garrison 2, to further help relieve your worries. Sign up using the link at the right!
A while ago a number of people said to me that they were annoyed that they had to put their phone number and address down even if they didn’t need a lift. This surfaced when we added the checks to make sure we were getting valid phone numbers etc, since you could no longer put “077URMOM” in the phone number field. Mentioning no names there, except Robbo’s.
In actual fact you never had to fill in these fields, even if you asked for a lift, for this very reason. When we designed the system we knew we wanted to, at a later date, allow you to sign up without these details if you didn’t need a lift but require them otherwise. In the past week this has now been finalised, and I’ve learnt some new 1337 javascript skillz and it makes the fields disappear when you don’t need them – sweet or what? I know, I know, you can shower me with praise in the following ways…
I’ll understand if you want to switch between the different lift options a few times to witness the magic (I certainly did) but just make sure you pick the right one when you finally submit 
I worked upon our IRC bot quite a bit over the Easter weekend. [Hurray for mobile internet on train journies].
Aside from a couple of bug fixes, and some code to try and prevent us waking up to a scrollback full of ping timeout…join…ping timeout from certain individuals, the thing I’ve been working on is a statistics module.
Statistics is quite a big addition to the bot. So large in fact is this update, that for the time being, you aren’t even able to tell the difference. I’m going to wait a short while until I’ve collected a good base of data before I make a front end for statistics available to everyone.
Here’s a brief overview of the major changes I’ve made in the latest iteration of our COGSBot.
Internal stuff
- I implemented a ‘constants’ system to handle text which is often subject to change, e.g. !lan which describes the next LAN date/venue. I moved many such strings over to this system, allowing much more stuff to be updated without the need to restart the bot
- Bot can now join multiple channels, and it can leave/join them without needing to restart
- Increased efficiency of sending large messages from bot (e.g. !help)
Requested stuff
- Improved the !help text. It now defines the available commands in a much clearer way, rather than a large & hard-to-read block. It also describes the operations of lists much better (i.e. how to use them)
- Implemented a simple permissions system, which allows committee members to do select tasks e.g. adding new games lists. This means that I am not the only person who can update the bot content, but the system is also designed such that other committee members can’t accidentally the whole database
- Some people wanted the bot to /notice them, some wanted private messages. It’s been a long time coming, but I hope you understand. To allow people to interact with the bot however they choose, a user preferences system has been created. Currently this is the only preference you can set, but there will be more in future. Try !set to get started
- People wanted the bot to have system for storing games lists, which people can subscribe to. The rationale behind this is that it will help us to better organise frequent bigger games. It allows groups of people to easily let other interested parties know when they want to play a particular game
The games lists – usage:
- People sign up to a list for a particular game (e.g. TF2)
- If someone on that list wants to play TF2, they can trigger a message to everyone else on that list, informing them that a game of TF2 is going to start
At the moment, everyone is PMd informing them, and a message is also sent out in the #cogs.gaming channel, highlighting everyone on the list. If you do not want to receive these notifications, e.g. you are busy and can’t play games for an evening, you can use !away to stop them, and !back to start receiving them again.
There is one limitation, not of usefulness but in implementation: there is a hard limit on the frequency at which these game notification messages can be triggered — we absolutely do not want to generate ’spam’ with this feature. Therefore, each trigger can currently only be used once every 5 minutes (you are told how long you have to wait before you can use it again). Feedback on the duration of this limit and/or opinions on whether people would like to be able to ’silence’ these messages for a time, without needing to remove themselves from all the lists would be welcomed in this forum thread
Regular games nights have been a staple of the weekends of COGSers past and we intend to bring them back. To that end, we’re suggesting that everybody interested gathers on the IRC at the following times:
- UT2k4: 8PM Saturday
- TF2: 8PM, Sunday
- Strategy (SupCom, Sins etc): 8PM, Thursday
These times aren’t fixed, and nor are the games – tell us in IRC, forum or electronic mail message what you think of the times, requests for different games and so on. Obviously we can’t have regular nights for every game, so we’ll be restricting these to games which are popular and which benefit from having a good few people.
These nights will be facilitated by new functionality on the COGSBot. Currently the COGSBot is primed with a few games – TF2, UT2k4, Supcom, DotA, l4d, AoE and Warcraft 3 (and mods, other than DotA). If you wish to be notified when others wish to play these games, add yourself to the list with, for example, !dotaadd. Then, when a regular event is about to start, or when someone else wishes to play, you will receive a message from the bot. To notify other people that you wish to play, type, for example, !tf2 and they’ll all be told about the impending baby-killing.
Hand-in-hand with this update is the official “release” of the #cogs.gaming channel. From IRC, just type ‘/join #cogs.gaming’ to join this new channel, specifically for the organisation of games. This channel will hopefully be especially important in LANs (instead of the #cogs.lan channel we had last LAN) where the games-of-the-day can be set-up and requested.
