API?
zudensternen
REGISTERED
How about supplying an API for automated queries? E.g. when passed a username and a Freecell game number, return that user's numerical position(s) in that game, time(s), and number of cards placed.
Comments
Crikey!
i'm illiterate
Eh? Huh?
I've recorded something over 500 games in which I placed in the top 10, at the time. I'm curious how many of those "wins" stuck: for most of them I probably got kicked off the leader board by faster players within minutes or hours. It would be pretty impractical to re-open 500+ URLs to check. An API (application programming interface) as sketched above would let one automate the task.
We all get our pleasure in our own ways from the games here. My bent happens to be analytical. There can't be very many playing here with this particular approach to the games. I would be surprised if Jim / David bothered to reply to this request, and gobsmacked if they actually got intrigued enough to put in the time to implement & document a REST API.
Hello zudensternen.I,myself am of a philosophical bent,which puts me at a disadvantage in trying to understand your point.However,I am sure Jim or David will get back to you in regard to your quest.What's a REST API?I hope you enjoy these games as much as we do.
Thanks graeme. That I do. A REST API is one particular form of application programming interface., which often involves passing parameters to a server function in the URL string. For example, "https://greenfelt.net/freecell?user=zudensternen&game=1617486445" might return "position:07,time:0:0:50,cards:52".
Hello zudensternen.Thank-you for your illuminating reply to my question.It immediately shed light on the fact that I know nor understand any of the above.However,I am still sure that Jim/David will come to your aid .One thing we both share,in common with the rest of the players,is the keen interest in playing on this site.I will look forward to seeing many more of your interesting observations [I may have to revert to my book of logarithms,if I can find it]I wish you well and hope to hear more from you in the future.From an unreconstructed,stone-age computerist.
I lost my computers for dummies as well , that was in 1997 edition, barely knew how to turn one on then , still don't carry on.
I’m more interested in card count as i’m Often in the top 1% on that. Top 10 isn’t predictable as the number of games played varies so much. Still, I find that with card count at least your percentage position, e.g. 5th of 300 will hold as the number of games played increases.
I can tell you that the clock (and calendar) trip at midnight zulu time. So, if you're getting high scores as we approach the new day...the less likely it is that someone will unseat your top effort.
@homedoggy, seems to me that (in Freecell at least) the collection of games on offer resets more often than once a day. Playing on & off over a number of hours, I will notice that several games in a row have been played 500, 700, 1000 times; these numbers creep up over time. Most games top out at 2000-4000 by my observation (there are exceptions, the "easy" games that sometimes come up with e.g. 26,000 having been played, such as https://greenfelt.net/freecell?game=3006738255 ). After a while I see the new games I'm playing with numbers like 200, 300, so something has reset. So if you can manage to get on the leader board after, say, 4000 have been played, you're probably safe there for a while.
I find the best indicator of whether a win will last in the top 10 is where its time is in the range of times for the 10. Over some hundreds of Freecell games I've noticed that the average time for the #1 position is 45 sec. (standard deviation of 14 sec.), and #10 is 1:17 (std. dev. of 21 sec.). So roughly 1/2 to 1 minute for #1 and 1 to 1-1/2 minutes for #10.
Free Cell game# 65218, it's a devil of a game.
The games change once a day, that's pretty clear, since I only play the game of the day for the games I play. Seahaven and Spider are in the leaderboard lists, while Calculation (my favorite) isn't deemed popular enough B^) In either case, they all change at the same time each day....
Besides the game of the day, we try and steer people towards a certain sequence of games each hour. If you play later in the hour you will encounter more people who have played the initial games of the sequence.
There are more shuffles (52!) than stars in the sky (10^24), so without this the site would seem empty.
@jim, do you reset the played counts? E.g. game 127866108 now shows 3543. Is that for all time? So that game came up in one particular hour and never again? (Wouldn't be too surprising, for a random choice out of 8 x 10^67).
@zudensternen, we do not reset the played counts. They are for all time. Except for games of the day most of plays come from a game’s hour in the sun. If you are disconnected from the internet, you will continue along a given hour’s sequence indefinitely.
Technically we only (currently) support 2^32 shuffles. Otherwise the game number becomes unwieldy.
@zudensternen, at first I thought your inquiry to be over the top...a little too technical for the forum. I may be getting a glimmer of light what your goal is. Please correct me if I'm wrong...technicalities aside, what you would like to have is access to your standing on all the category of games you play. Which isn't such a bad idea if it weren't too complicated to do.
@anglais, that's exactly what I'm after. Yes, the post / request was pretty technical compared to the normal conversation here, but I was also interested to know if any other more technical types who play on these boards would delurk.
@zudensternen if there are any techies, your post most certainly would have drawn them out by now. I believe that on this site, the only people who may have the same technical interest would be Jim and David, unfortunately for you they are pretty busy guys. Thank you for responding...much appreciated. Hope you stay with us.
Re. random games (building on what @jim said): https://forum.greenfelt.net/discussion/comment/14098/#Comment_14098
Re. API: We have an internal API for querying high scores, but it's not documented and it's not guaranteed to be stable. We also don't have flood protection on the backend (shhh, don't tell anyone), so we're not totally on board with random unrestricted API usage. However, you can glean a lot from your browser's network log in the debugger, watching what happens when you click the "Show High Scores" button or loading the leader board. If you can replicate that without bringing the site to its knees with too many requests, and without duplicating our entire dataset, then we won't have a problem.
Also see this: https://forum.greenfelt.net/discussion/comment/13460/#Comment_13460
Something I cooked up a few months ago. Recently I've made it so it can be kept up to date efficiently, but I have to figure out how to do the initial calculations which are still inefficient. It will happen at some point. I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for @zudensternen, but it might be a nice starting point.
@david thanks, that will keep me busy!