The all new Xbox Live Gamertag Site including leaderboard, gamertag db, stats & more!

[SiD the Turtle]

Hi everyone!

Continuing on from the old thread (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17671473) I have spent quite a while creating a new program to gather data on gamers and have put it together in a new site: OcUKGT:

http://ocukgt.sidtheturtle.co.uk

Features

• Everything from the old web page.
• Easier to read leaderboard.
• Gamer profile pages including graphs of score over time and games played.
• Game pages including graphs of game popularity and game recommendations. For example you can see a graph that shows as the popularity of COD4 increases, the popularity of Halo 3 decreases (I'm looking at you FPS whores ).
• Gamer pic wall.
• Interesting statistics.

Note: I wanted to add a lot more but it is taking a lot of time to program. More features will be added as and when I can put them together.

If you have an idea for a feature please post in this thread.

Limitations

• All of the data from the site is limited to information I can gather from your gamercard (e.g. http://gamercard.xbox.com/sid the turtle.card). This means that I cannot track what achievements you have. This is a big priority of mine but time limitations mean this may not get added before March 2008 at the earliest.
• I do not have access to the Xbox Live API. This means I can only track what can be 'seen' publicly. Therefore I cannot track games that have not been played or gamer pics that have not been used.
• The site is updated once per day when I run my software. I cannot run it more often because I am not always home.
• I spent far more time in c# coding the tool that gathers the information than I did on the website. So it may look a little funky in IE or the page structure may collapse. If it does let me know.

Joining/leaving the site

The site lists all of the gamers that signed up in the old thread. If you wish to join the database or be removed from it post in this thread.
If you request to be added you will magically appear once I have run the evening update.
There are several gamers who appear to have a score of 0. This is because their gamertag has either changed or has been deleted. If this is you let me know what it has changed to so that you can be tracked again.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

To Do

• Add backend functionality to grab information on achievements from http://live.xbox.com/member/membername.
• Add additional statistics gathering (partially reliant on webhost upgrading MySQL version).
• Add more advanced game recommendations to gamer pages.
• Add user logons to update details or add custom info.
• Clean up PHP/HTML source formatting.
• Clean up CSS.
• Make site HTML standards compliant.
• Grab data more frequently than once per day. This is reliant on finding equipment that is running 24/7 and updating the code to handle those occasions when Xbox Live is borked.
• Add a search facility to the gamer page to search for a gamer rather than redirecting the user to the leaderboard.

Feature Requests

• Could you add the ability for users to add themselves? Saves you manually doing it?
  
  Completed Feature Requests
• Would it be possible to search which players are playing what games? For instance I would like to see who has GH3 or Rock Band. (Added in version 2.0.2)
  

Bugs/Glitches

• CSS that styles the pages is far from perfect, especially in Internet Explorer.
• Games with a '&' symbol in their name do not display correct in graphs, a work around to this was to replace '&' with 'and'. See Kane & Lynch for an example.
• Games with colons (':') in their name break the graph software, a work around to this was to remove colons in graphs. See F4:ROTSS for an example.
• Gamer pages for gamers that have disappeared (e.g. no data could be found for them the last time it was searched for, commonly caused by a change in gamertag name or a deleted tag) does not work gracefully.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Thanks for the approval guys! I just realised I set up the previous site on NYE last year!

I have added the follow people to the database and they will appear as if by magic once I hit the refresh button at about 7:30:

VeryVoid

da mic 153

killsta87

boroman83

shiftylive

Haly x3h

BFCTom UK

RuMp3l4sk1n

The Chadd

Shickster

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Thesnipergecko

Faded1984

Ammocity

Added and awaiting me pressing update!

Hey Sid, Your Sig needs changing now to meet the OCUK Gamer score address change, Just incase you hadn't realised

Schoolboy error! Thanks for that.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Missed a T

D'oh!

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Gro187

KennyBhoy

Needaf1x

All added. I still can't update the scores atm because ******* Xbox live isn't up for more than 30 seconds at the moment.

could you add *** ability for users to add themselves? saves you manually doing it?

A good idea, I'll add it to the list. The only issue would be making sure people who sign up are who they say they are.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Phew. Finally managed to update the database. Everyone who asked in this thread to be added should now be able to see their profiles on the site.

Edit: Errr, something didn't work quite right there... hmm.
Edit2: The wonky-ness of Live propagated some dodgy data into the database. This means two things: thank god for backups and I need to add in more code to deal with when live is being annoying. I need to wait until live is back up again to try and update again.
Edit3: All fixed.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Ah I should add that to the FAQ. Because you are new to the database, you only have one score and therefore are a dot on the chart. Look at McDaniel's chart to see what it will end up like (http://ocukgt.sidtheturtle.co.uk/gamerstats.php?id=13933). He has been on the database for three days now, so you can see his line starting to appear on the chart.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

spee

BurningHorizons

Melted Face

bluesdevil1

Poc Goodie

blackvault87

All added to the DB, you will appear once it is refreshed tonight.

Hey mate you can remove me from the list, i dont have a 360 anymore!

I deleted you on my test/development site... and it imploded! Evidently my code is more shoddy that I thought! I need to modify a few queries, I'll update once you've been removed. P.S. For shame! Why did you get rid of it?

NorthstaNder

You're already on there : http://ocukgt.sidtheturtle.co.uk/gamerstats.php?id=55176

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Possible feature request:

Would it be possible to search which players are playing what games? For instance I would like to see who has GH3 or Rock Band.

Cheers

Good idea... I've added it!

Feature added!
If you now look on the game page for a game it will list the gamers who have played it. If and when I get sign-ins sorted for the site, the next step would be to let people add some kind of 'would like to play' section, where you could advertise for example that you want to play GH3, or COD4 or whatever.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Perm Boy

Zymurgy661

Pyroboy 360

simo182

The Hogester

thebearuk25

Je11y Master

i kill bears

All added. The program is running now, Live is being a pain as usual.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Sid, have you thought about opening this out past OcUK? I think it could really be quite a hit!

Perhaps allowing people to create their own clans or groups, so that for instance, OcUK was just one of many? I am sure there are loads of internet groups and forums that have gamers who would be interested in playing together - especially if you get the 'would like to play' feature working. I know that on forums like AVForums and Piston Heads they quite frequently talk about gaming and if anyone else on the forum is into a game.

Another thought was allowing a registered gamer to create his own 'Friends List', where they can compare their own mates who might not be a part of a group. Again for instance, I would like to see 5 of my mates who don't use OcUK. If I could add them and then click on a friends button to see the list it would be most cool!

Anyway, just a few more ideas to keep you busy - if you aren't enough already! Keep up the good work, the site really is very cool

When I suggested opening it out, I didn't mean to loose the OcUK identity or allow non OcUK gamers to use the OcUK one.

Perhaps have a group setup / registration page that was separate from the OcUK one and styling. Perhaps allow the creator to select a couple of base colors to be used, a heading or even allow them to upload an image? Once the new group creator had completed registration they would be issued with an address to pass onto others from their new group.

Or perhaps this is too hard? I was just trying to think of some cool stuff to try and do as I know if I had managed to do what Sid had done I wouldn't be satisfied in thinking 'I can't do anymore'....I would be wanting to constantly make it better. Developing can be addictive!

To be honest the thought did cross my mind. The reasons for creating the site were these: OcUK doesn't really have one for such a large community we have here, to learn C# after not coding a single line of any language since leaving my last job and lastly to put into practice in a very hobbyist way, DB fundamentals from Uni and stuff I am picking up at work. Some of these are useful skills!

I have always wanted to eventually run a successful site that snowballs into something huge but in this regard, to be honest a lot of sites already do 99% of what I have done here, a lot better. I will continue to improve and adapt the site as time goes on and I have written the database and core logic in a way that it could be 'generalised' off of the OcUK forums, but whatever happens in future this site will always be OcUK specific. The only thing that will shove me into creating something separate is if I come up with a unique feature or idea that the other sites have yet to come up with and my coding madskills improve somewhat.

In short, this is just a small hobbyist project to be honest, but who know eh?

P.S. The site DB update just finished.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Hencore

UrbanExplorer

gtjunkie

alc2kuk

Wi99is

LloydSJ

Bengaboy

Lee82UK

Wh1terZ

WotDa

GMcC

Arsey01

MadFruit

All added!

Koxman

You're already on there: http://ocukgt.sidtheturtle.co.uk/gamerstats.php?id=64030

 

[SiD the Turtle]

cobrax99

St0n3y UK

plazm1ck

Added.

wejwood

Another person who was already on there :http://ocukgt.sidtheturtle.co.uk/gamerstats.php?id=5484

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Think I've found a bug.

On the games page for example:

http://ocukgt.sidtheturtle.co.uk/games.php?gid=223

When I click on another game and click Compare is doesn't load the game I select.

T.

Hmm seems to be working here. E.g:

Is is a specific game that isn't working for you?

 

[SiD the Turtle]

out of interest, how often does it update?

Once a day at the moment, as the software runs on my PC at home. I want to change that, but I need to find a host that will let me run a bespoke Windows program that consumes bandwidth every ten minutes without is costing a fortune, as obviously I don't make any money out of the site.

P.S. I'll add everyone who has asked to be added once I'm home.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

hellfire260

Neeeeil

Added!

 

[SiD the Turtle]

JAKSH

Added!

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Oh I see what its doing, blonde moment, it's comparing them on the graphs. I thought it would reload that particular game page.

T.

No probs. One idea might be that when you click compare, all of the other sections for a game are doubled up, one for each game. I'll have a play and see how it goes.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Can I suggest that the graph resolution is made higher so that as not to have those horrible angular lines? maybe a minimum resolution of 10 would do it, also, the x axis should be higher so you can actually see the peak of the line.

What do you mean by resolution? If you mean for example that graph a few posts up there isn't much I can do to make it 'curvy'- a limitation of the graph software. It does look a lot better on the more frequently played games. If it's something else, screen shot it and let me know.

Increasing the x axis a touch is a good idea. I'll just need to work out a way of doing it right. Say a uniform increase of 100 points would look okay for most people, but it would squash the graph for people at the bottom of the leaderboard and wouldn't be visible for those at the top. Let me have a play.