preaes...

it's the preparser's (preaes) job to read log files for most of the shooters out there and to convert them into a standard log format, the meta log format.

this intelligent filtering is controlled by the hardcoded obituaries in in executable, the banlist.txt and the alias.txt file. see the configs page for details on this.

what's preaes for?

the meta log format

after lots of tests (three previous generations of stats programs), i have come to the conclusion that it is best to dump all the relevant frag information into a fixed format. this format i call the meta log format. basically it dumps player names, suicide info, map names, time and date into fixed columns, that are separated by tabs. this makes things a lot easier to parse for aestats later on. here is the format:

        ---the meta log format---
        line 1:   name of the game
        line 2:   1/0 <t> *13 //1 denotes data available
        line 3-n: //below is one line of frag log information
        0     <date time> <t>
        1     <mapname>   <t>
        2,3   <player1>   <t> <player2> <t>
        4     <damagetype> <t>
        5,6   <weapon1>  <t> <weapon2>  <t>
        7,8   <altweap1> <t> <altweap2> <t>
        9,10  <health1>  <t> <health2>  <t>
        11,12 <item1>    <t> <item2>    <t>

        <t> is a tab (ascii 9)

• line 1 mentions the name of the game, this way the parser automatically knows for what game the following data is.

• the 2nd line is a sequence of 13 pairs of 1/0 values and tabs. this line tells the parser what data is available. e.g. quake ii log files have no map names, i give them dummy names (rising sequence of numbers). by setting the map value to "0" the parser then knows that there are no real map names available.

• line 3 and all the following lines contain the actual frag data. each line has 13 columns that are separated by tabs (ascii 9). this is what they mean:

• date time: the date and time of the current incident in the format yyyymmddhhmmss. (year (e.g. 1999), month (1-12), day (1-31), hour (0-23), minute (0-59), second (0-59).

• mapname: the name of the currently played map.

• player1, player2: the names of the players involved in that incident. if a player falls prey to an environmental death (like lava) or suicides, then it is his fault and player1=player2. note player1 is the fragged ("the one who bought it"), player2 is the fragger ("the guy who handed it out").

• damagetype: the number of the form of death (æstats uses a hard coded list sofar). mostly used to remember the form of player suicide (lava, acid, crushed etc., n° is game dependant).

• weapon1, weapon2: number of the weapon the players had in hand when the incident occurred. note: sofar only unreal uses both fields. all the other games only provide weapon2 info, the weapon the fragger had in hand (game dependant, uses internal lists).

• altweapon1, altweapon2: weapon1/2 used in alternate mode? possible values are 1 and 0, 1 denotes "yep alternate mode". unreal supports alternate weapons due to the aeonsdmmod.u. half-life and tfc could provide this info since these games also have alternate weapon modes, but they *don't* :( (game dependant).

• health1, health2: the player1/2's health when the incident occurred. values normally range from 0 (dead) to 100 (full health), but negative values are also possible (like really dead), values above 100 denote the use of health power ups. sofar only unreal shows this info.

• item1, item2: number of the extra the player1/2 was holding in hand when the incident occurred. only unreal supports this sofar. items are forcefields, torches, flare to name just a few. uses internal lists. i initially intended to use this for quake ii to be able to track the use of runes, alas that info was never provided in the lithium ii's log files... *sigh*.

the command line parameters

to get a current list of the preaes command line parameters simply type preaes without any other options:

->>./preAEs.exe<<- : [-notes] -<Mode> file1.log file2.log ...

v4.68  20.05.01 18:54 generates meta logs out of misc log files.

-notes  : Optional... will dump extra Weapon, Player and Map
            lists & the meta log shows Weapon, Item, Damagetypes
            as text!.
          DON'T use this option if you plan to use AEstats.exe.

Mode    : Set by one of the following switches.
          -aq2 Action Quake II.
          -ci  Cold Ice (Half-Life Mod).
          -cs  Counter-Strike (Half-Life Mod 1.1+).
          -dk  Daikatana
          -fa  Firearms (Half-Life Mod v2.5, 1.106 logs).
          -flf FrontLine Force (Half-Life Mod v1.2a+).
          -hl  Half-Life v1.106 logs.
          -hr2 Heretic II log.
          -hx2 Hexen II.
          -kp  Kingpin.
          -opf Opposing Force (Half-Life Mission Pack).
          -oz  OZ (Half-Life Mod).
          -q2  QuakeII log with LithiumII mod.
          -q3a Quake III Arena (Retail, Quake3: Team Arena).
          -qw  QuakeWorld (frag logs, not the console dumps!).
          -ra2 Rocket Arena II mod log.
          -sin SIN log.
          -t   Tribes.
          -tf  Team Fortress (for Quake).
          -tfc Team Fortress Classic (Half-Life 1.106 logs).
          -u   Unreal's log using AEonsDMmod.
          -ut  Unreal Tournament (ngStats logs,
                    Infiltration,Strike Force,Tactical OPS).
          -v   Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force
          -wfa Weapons Factory Arena (Q3A Mod, v1.1+).
          -wl  Wasteland (Half-Life Mod).
          -wq2 Weapons Factory Quake II.

Log file: Log file(s) from the above list.
          The log files HAVE to be for the SAME game!

          e.g. u.log  -> Meta Log Naming: u.mlg

E.g.:  ./preAEs.exe -hl hl.log        //half-life log file
       ./preAEs.exe -u u/*.log        //all log files in u/
       ./preAEs.exe -notes -u u/*.log //extra info for notes db.

note you can also use the joker character * to preparse lists of log files. example usage: *.log.

if you specify more than one log file, all these will be read and only *one* meta log file with all the data will be created. the name of the meta log is determined by the parameters us used. e.g.

./preAEs.exe -hl halflife1.log halflife2.log

how to generate log files

for each game the way to create your own dedicated server log files is a bit different. i'll explain how game by game:

• unreal
  for unreal things are really complicated since, unreal by default does not provide frag information in its log files. i had to write a module called aeonsdmmod.u to fix this. this module needs to be installed in the unreal/system/...

• quake 2 / rocket arena 2 (and all other q2 engine games)
  add a line to the config file you use to run your server that reads

  set logfile 1
  

  or simply type the line above directly into the dedicated server console window. you can also redirect quake 2's output into a file from the shell:

          quake2 <misc options> >>mylogfile.log
  

  this will 'append redirect' all log file information to your mylogfile.log.

• half-life, cs, tfc (and all hl engine games/mods)
  add the lines to the config file you use to run your server that read

          set mp_logfile 1
          log on
  

  or simply type the appropriate line above directly into the dedicated server console window. these games do not support shell command line redirection of log file info.

• quake 3 arena
  under win32 by default a games.log will be generated in baseq3/. this can be parsed by preaes using the "-q3a" option.

  under linux a games.log will not be generated on a dedicated server for some reason. but you can redirect the standard error messages into a log file and parse that. i use this alias to run a dedicated server:

  alias q3a 'cd /home/q3a/; ./linuxquake3 +set dedicated 2
             +exec aeserver.cfg >>& /home/q3a/q3a-err.log &'
  

  simply type q3a in the shell to run the server. note that >>& will append-redirect the frag info into a log file.

• unreal tournament
  
  • æstats supports the ngstats log files built into ut.
  • activate logging: in menu options/preferences/game turn on ngstats local logging
  • the unrealtournament\logs\ directory will then contain .log files to parse.
    note: the .tmp files are incomplete log files. these might not fully work with æstats.
  • preparse with e.g.: preaes -ut //d/unrealtournament/logs/*.log

player name banning

if you do not want certain player names to appear on the æstats html output pages then simply edit the banlist.txt ascii file that comes with the æstats package.

by default all players with the name "player" are kicked, if folks can't play with a proper name, then they should not be in ranking. please see the configs page for details on this. there you will also find infos on buddy lists and name aliasing.

what actually happens: the preparser checks the player names from the input log file against its banlist. if there is a match the *whole* frag line is ignored! this means the banned info will *not* appear in the meta log file.

last updated on sunday, june 17th 2001 re-design: sunday, june 17th 2001 up since: sunday, may 16th 1999