Development Status

[cdsoccer7]

I really don't know if Groundspeak is excited about this project or not. I do know that we are not planning to include any of the Pacific Northwest in the LCP to start with .

NICE!!!

Good one CC!!!!

[skeeper]

We now know CC has a sense of humor. Sick. But he has one.

[Corfman Clan]

I apologize for being a bit late with this status update but I spent four days hiking the Royal Arch loop of the Grand Canyon and also had to work on my taxes .

Despite those distractions, a fair bit of progress has been made since my last update.

• All statistics used for the leaderboards is now run automatically and can also be run on demand by a site administrator.
• Many adjustments were made on how the site will retrieve data through the Live API. These were necessitated by some tuning Groundspeak made to the API to deal with high volume API calls.
• Statistics can currently be generated for total hider points, total finder points, and total combined hider/finder points.
• The ability to generate statistics for First Day Finder points is mostly complete.
• Work has continued on the site branding and we are getting very close to finalizing the site logo.

[cosninocanines]

Thanks! I always need the little extra so I do appreciate the the added info.

When I fall on my backend, minor bruising, embarasment.
WhenI fall on my front end, hydrogen peroxide, bandaids, maybe a soft or hard cast, always some damage.

[cdsoccer7]

CC and Redfist, thank you so much for getting this together. I know that time is hard to come by and that you are using yours to get the LCP up and running. I truly appreciate it and wanted to let you know not only do I check on the DGP everyday in the hopes that it will return, but I check here to see if we have leaderboards yet. I am on my 225th day of DGP withdrawal and and slowly but surely recovering. I am dying to find out if we have a reasonable ETA for the leaderboards? Not to pressure by any means, but a possible month/year or even a season and year would be awesome. If I have missed this info in a thread I apologize, ...slap my hands and direct me that way please. Thanks again,
cdsoccer7

[Corfman Clan]

...I am dying to find out if we have a reasonable ETA for the leaderboards? Not to pressure by any means, but a possible month/year or even a season and year would be awesome. If I have missed this info in a thread I apologize, ...slap my hands and direct me that way please. Thanks again,
cdsoccer7

I really hesitate to publish a release date, especially since this is essentially a hobby site and not a business. Redfist and I completely understand that there are quite a few people waiting patiently for this to go live and we really would like to do so sooner than later. I'm hoping that we can get the site branding completed soon. We're close but it's taking longer than I anticipated. Shortly after that we should be able to get access to the geocaching.com production database. Once we have that, it will take a bit before all the data are collected. I'm not yet sure at what rate we will turn things up but I can see it taking three weeks before we have the five SW states covered.

Intially we'll have basic leaderboards for the entire project and for the states. These will be overall and for each cache type. We will also have some First Day Finder board and a backcountry type board. I don't know what other content will be included then and what we'll have to add later. I think a lot of the bells and whistles may come shortly after we go live.

Personally, I'm going on vacation in about two months and really want this to go live at least a week before then. So, I'm shooting to have something ready and live by mid June. I don't know if we'll make it though, so please Keep your fingers crossed but don't hold your breath.

--
Russell

[kingbee]

How Are teams going to be scored?

[cdsoccer7]

Thanks for the update. I was hoping to plan a quick 2-3 week trip up north this summer too, and it would be nice to have some research done and high CP caches on my GPS...just in case i found some extra time I will hope things go well for you guys and will not hold my breath...i passed out too many times waiting for the DGP to come back. and now I will crawl back in my hole and patiently wait for more updates.

[Corfman Clan]

How Are teams going to be scored?

I started a new topic to discuss scoring.

[Corfman Clan]

The last two weeks hasn't seen much change in development status. Both Redfist and I have had other things on our plates and have not been able to dedicate as much time as we'd like to this. We finally are getting some motion on the branding and hope to have it finalized in the next week or two. There's also been some progress cleaning up the piddly things I don't want to deal with now list."

[Careless1]

Thanks for the update Russell; also hope you had a great birthday! Can hardly wait for this new site to be up and running; all your hard work is much appreciated!

[Taz]

I really appreciate the fact you guys are working on this and keep people posted on whats going on. I think that was about the most frustrating part of the DGP was the lack of communication. Thanks for all you are working on!

[A & J - Adrift]

I really appreciate the fact you guys are working on this and keep people posted on whats going on. I think that was about the most frustrating part of the DGP was the lack of communication. Thanks for all you are working on!

First, I also give my accolades to the developers on this project. I hope everyone appreciates your effort.
However, I'd like to remind "Taz" that this whole effort would not exist except for DGPAdmin and his inspiration. Last September, he abruptly dropped out of communication. I continue to hope that it was not because of a problem in his personal life.
Prior to that, he was very responsive in his responses in the DGP forum and he was very forthcoming in the few personal contacts I've had with him.
Please, don't show any disrespect to DGPAdmin.

[Corfman Clan]

In the last couple weeks, we've made some headway with branding. The basic brand has been created and now we're working on it's display and will tackle site layout soon.

We've started creating the web pages for the leaderboards. That includes listing the leaders and creating region pages. Current regions are LonelyCache Wide, AZ, CO, NM, NV, & UT.

For this status, I have a few more teasers for you. The layout is the same as the previous teasers. We're still working on layout so what is shown may very well change as we figure things out. It will show you that the leaderboards are being generated (only show point totals here, backcountry and first day finder will come next). As I stated before, the site is not retreiving data from the live geocaching.com site, but from a test site. The test site was a snapshot of geocaching.com taken around mid February, 2011. This means that no finds nor caches have been added for over a year. Please keep that in mind when looking at the snap shots below.

The following is the top of the home page. Note that my Geocaching.com Avatar is displayed. This occurs when one creates an account associated with Geocaching.com. Also see the summary of the points leader boards.

Top of Home Page

LCP_Default_1.jpg (62.98 KiB) Viewed 13831 times

The following is the bottom of the home page. Here is a list of the loneliest of each type of cache LonelyCache wide. Also note the time when the statistics were last updated. The time shown is Eastern since the server is near Boston, MA.

Bottom of Home Page

LCP_Default_2.jpg (71.32 KiB) Viewed 13831 times

From the home page, if one clicks on the link to the Best All Around board, then this is where he/she will end up. Currently the top 100 are displayed. I had to laugh when I looked at this since I meant to change World Wide to LonleyCache Wide.

Best All Around Board

LCP_BAR.jpg (52.08 KiB) Viewed 13831 times

Here's the top of the Region page for Colorado. I'm not real happy with the layout at this time since it takes too much space. This will most likely be reworked, but it's a start.

Colorado Region Page

LCP_CO.jpg (56.45 KiB) Viewed 13831 times

[skeeper]

This is great. I'm getting excited as will all who read this update. Thank you RC for your hard work.

[jcanyoneer]

Awesome! Great Job guys! I can't wait to be able to look at these type of stats again!

One question...On the Loneliest board, it's awesome to see this list by cache type-Great improvement over the old board...but, I thought that caches that had no finds were not going to be awarded points? Could/Should there be 2 boards here maybe? One that shows caches with actual points and one that shows caches with "potential" points?

[rocketsciguy]

Looking good! Very excited for the first live release. I have many questions which I will refrain from bothering you guys with, so you have more time to get this finished!

[Corfman Clan]

Awesome! Great Job guys! I can't wait to be able to look at these type of stats again!

One question...On the Loneliest board, it's awesome to see this list by cache type-Great improvement over the old board...but, I thought that caches that had no finds were not going to be awarded points? Could/Should there be 2 boards here maybe? One that shows caches with actual points and one that shows caches with "potential" points?

Even though the cache has not been found, it still is accumulating points. I do think we want to hilight the value of all caches, even when they haven't been found. Please realize that The Loneliest is just a list of the loneliest caches per cache type, it is not a leader board. We'll also have a way to see more than the top loneliest too, but the home page is just a summary. So for listing lonely caches, unfound caches also need to be scored and included.

When calculating the leader boards, unfound caches are not included in the hider's score.

Here's the result of a query I just ran for Beaster, hider of GCGG7W - The Devil Made Me Do It, currently worth about 882 points, on the table we use to save geocachers' point totals. Rows with Job=1 are for finds, rows with Job=2 are for hides. You can see that for Beaster, he has no score for hides as he has no hides that have been found. RegionID=1 is for LonelyCache wide, RegionID=3 is for Colorado. Note, that I did not include all the columns.

Code: Select all

CacherID  Name     RegionID  Job  OverallPoints
77887     Beaster  1         1    136.93938357737
77887     Beaster  1         2    NULL
77887     Beaster  3         1    136.93938357737
77887     Beaster  3         2    NULL

For those into this kind of thing, here's the query I ran, a small glimpse into the LonelyCache database schema:

Code: Select all

SELECT [CacherID], g.Name ,[RegionID] ,[Job] ,[OverallPoints]
  FROM [LonelyCacheProject].[dbo].[GeocacherPoints] p
  join lonelycacheproject.dbo.geocacher g on g.id = p.cacherid
  where CacherID=77887

[Corfman Clan]

Looking good! Very excited for the first live release. I have many questions which I will refrain from bothering you guys with, so you have more time to get this finished!

Go ahead and ask away. You may want to start a new topic though.

[Team Opjim]

Happy to see it evolve. Looking forward to seeing you at the event on Saturday CC!