- FLstat -

Freelancer Player Rankings for the Web

The latest version is v1.5 (Released 10th May, 2006) - What's New? Download it from here (80 Kb), or from The Lancers Reactor. Any questions or comments, send an email to:

1) What is FLstat?

Freelancer is a futuristic computer game for the PC which offers cutting edge space combat as well as
exploration, trade and missions. Players can also join one of many multiplayer games on the Internet.

Written for this PC game, FLstat is a program that decodes the player files on a multiplayer server, and generates a ranking table in HTML. This HTML file can then be published on the internet for all to see. Here is an example of FLstat in action >>>

FLstat is not a MOD, and does not change any of the files used by Freelancer. This will only run on multiplayer servers, not clients.

2) Why would I want FLstat?

This is designed to encourage healthy competition amongst players, and it can even assist administrators in spotting cheats on their multiplayer servers. However, this is tool is not specifically aimed at player administration - for a more complete admin tool, have a look at Freelancer Server Operator from www.ioncross.com.

Once a server is running FLstat, it is eligible to be included in the Global Player Rankings.

3) How do I use FLstat?

Windows 95/98/Me users: you will have to rename "update.cmd" to "update.bat".

Warning: On multiplayer servers with a large number of players, this may take some considerable time to execute and will put significant load on the computer, so schedule it for when the least number of players are on. Consider using the -nice option to reduce the load on the computer.

You can use a web server of your choice to publish this file on the Web. I found TinyWeb and SimpleServer:WWW to be very simple and effective.
If you want to run this from a different account or computer, have a look at the -path option in Advanced Options below.
Also see Tips and Tricks to see how you can automatically uploads the stats to another computer.

4) How do I customise how it looks?

Note: After editing "header.htt" or "footer.htt", you will need to run "update.cmd" again to see the changes. Also, don't forget to copy/move the file "table.css" to the same place that you have "flstat.html"!

5) Advanced Options

FLstat.exe -rank 25 -active 24 > middle.txt
copy /B header.htt+middle.txt+footer.htt flstat.html

-rank <N> - Show only players at rank N or higher.

-days <N> - Show only players which have played within the last N days.

-nice <N> - Run with lower CPU usage, for example: -nice 50. This is useful on multiplayer servers with very many players, as it minimises the load. Default setting is 10.

-path <dir> - Override the default location of the Multiplayer Accounts.

You might want to use this if you are running FLstat as a different user, or from a different computer. This must be the full path where the accounts are stored, for example:

-path "C:\My Documents\My Games\Freelancer\Accts\MultiPlayer"

This is best set to a number of hours that is similar to the frequency that the page is updated. For example, if the page is update once per day, then use -active 24, but if it is updated every hour, then you could use -active 1.

-cheats <N> - Highlight cheaters, where N is the sensitivity level.

The higher cheat sensitivity number N, the less sensitive the detection becomes. If you set this too high, then cheaters will go undetected, and if you set it too low then innocent players get unfairly branded as a cheat. 30 is the recommended value to catch most cheaters, where as 50 with only catch the really serious cheats. A value of 10 will probably catch all cheaters, but may also highlight someone who hasn't actually cheated. You should experiment with different values, and stick with the one that works best for you.

-sort <key> - sort players by Rank (default), Kills, Money, Time or Login.

It is possible to call FLstat.exe multiple times in the "update.cmd" file, each time with a different sort key. This means that you can publish different pages, each sorted by a different key. For example:

FLstat.exe -sort Rank > middle.txt
copy /B header.htt+middle.txt+footer.htt flstat-rank.html

FLstat.exe -sort Kills > middle.txt
copy /B header.htt+middle.txt+footer.htt flstat-kills.html

FLstat.exe -sort Time > middle.txt
copy /B header.htt+middle.txt+footer.htt flstat-time.html

FLstat.exe -sort Login > middle.txt
copy /B header.htt+middle.txt+footer.htt flstat-login.html

If this option is not specified, then the player filenames will appear as comments in the HTML code. Some admins find this a useful way to identify certain players who break the multiplayer server rules.

For example: <!-- File: 23-41639410/0a-bafe861e.fl -->.

However, some servers have rules that allow players to have more than one character, and so this option can be specified to preserve the players privacy, and protect their secondary characters.

6) Tips and Tricks

• On small multiplayer servers, where FLstat takes 1 second or less to run, you can get away with scheduling it to run every hour or so. On servers that take longer that 1 second, this is not advisable, as it will disrupt the game for players. The -nice option can be used to reduce this problem.
• On very large multiplayer servers, with lots of players, you can limit the number shown by using options -top, -rank or -days. For example: -top 200 will only show the top 200 players, and -rank 25 will only display players with a rank above 25. The option -days 30 can be used to exclude all players who haven't logged in within 30 days. You can combine any or all of these options at the same time.
• If you don't or can't run a webserver on the same machine as FLserver, you don't have to manually upload the stats to your own webspace. The trick is to use a program that lets you upload it from the command line, without requiring someone to type in a username and password each time. Have a look at the NcFTP client for Windows (you may be able to find other alternatives). Then, add the command "ncftpput" in your "update.cmd". For example:

  C:\path\to\NcFTP\ncftpput -a -f ftp.txt remote/path flstat.html

  This line will upload the file "flstat.html" to your ftp server (in ASCII mode), into the directory "remote/path". The file "ftp.txt" contains the following lines:

  host ftp.myhost.com
user myusername
pass mypassword

  IMPORTANT: Be very careful about your security - your password is stored on the computer here, so you must make sure that no one can get to it!

• An alternative program for automating the upload of files to webservers is: TinyUploaderSE.

• IONCROSS.COM have a program called Freelancer Server Operator, which provides a graphic front end to FLstat. This makes FLstat even easier to use, and has many other features too.
• Webservers can be configured to compress web pages on the fly, using the Apache module mod_gzip (or mod_deflate).

  If you're using an ISP webspace and can't configure the webserver, then try the Perl CGI script gzip_cnc.

Revision History

• Added -nofile option to suppress <!-- File: ... --> comment in HTML
• Added -sort option: Rank (default), Kills, Money, Time, Login.
• Actual server name and capacity is embedded as HTML comment (for Global Rankings).
• Removed -pos option - column is always present.
• Runs by default with -nice option set to 10, unless specified otherwise.

• Added support for Unicode characters in HTML output.
• Included Niwo's patch for reading decoded player files.

• FLstat webpage moved to new address: http://www.cryosphere.f2s.com/Freelancer/flstat.html

• Added -active option, to highlight players active in that last N hours.
• Added -path option, to manually override default location of player files.
• Added -cheats option, to cheat detection algorithm to highlight cheaters.
• Added -nice option, to reduce the CPU usage while processing players.
• Added info on how to automate the upload of the stats to another computer.
• Use of terms "Today" and "Yesterday" instead of date for recent logins.
• Slight modifications to "table.css", including descriptive comments.

• Display of Money and Kills with comma-separated thousands: $12,345,678
• Display of login time/date to more readable format: 17:30:01 - 19 Jun 03
• Minor changes to template header.htt and style-sheet table.css.
• Added command line options: -top N -rank N -days N -pos
• Fixed problem with special characters in names: < > &

• Excludes players that have never actually logged on to the server.

• Banned accounts and all characters within it are excluded.
• Fixed bug where a directory without a .fl file causes it to break.
• Finds path to "My Documents" itself, so no longer needed as argument.
• Expanded use of CSS to allow customisation of each individual field.
• Compiled with speed optimisations - now about twice as fast.
• Removed "Group" and "Failed Missions" columns.

• First release to public domain.

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