Guides

[center][size=6][size=6][font=monospace]CODACOT[/font][/size][/size] [font=monospace][size=6][u]Co[/u]liseum [u]Da[/u]ta [u]Co[/u]llection [u]T[/u]ool[/font][/size] [font=monospace] [size=4][url=https://oriwritesaplugin.github.io/Codacot/]Use the tool[/url] [url=https://github.com/OriWritesAPlugin/Codacot]View source code[/url] [url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VsBY6QZCXVwp-K62tbYZpXcDBjJ12Qpz-M_EPE-osbM/edit?usp=sharing]Access raw data[/url] [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gde/2242582#post_28531463]Build your own CODACOT[/url] [/font][/center] CODACOT is a JS tool designed to make collecting Coli data a much more pleasant experience. Hit "Use the tool" above to take a look! FEATURES --------------- [LIST] [*]Unified and stable. No more juggling spreadsheets! [*]User-friendly! Manual is included if anything's unclear [*]Import data to save/load Coli runs [*]Data modes! [*]Button-based for GUI fans (also accepts keyboard) [*]Integrated with a data dump, makes sharing results easy [*]Data formats: CSV available! [*]Not [i]entirely[/i] hideous [*]Extensible [*]No external dependencies--run a local copy! [*]Commented for easy reading [*]Free as in beer, free as in freedom [*]Achievements for the achievement gods [*]Stats for the stat throne [*]Firefox and Chrome friendly [/LIST] ISSUES ----- [LIST] [*]Does not, and will never, include IE(dge) support. [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gend/2153325/3#post_26462448]For reasons.[/url] [/LIST] As always, please feel free to send feedback. I hope you enjoy! Update: we now have a [url=http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2270850]challenge thread[img]https://imgur.com/w0D48ZF.png[/img][/url]

CODACOT's perfectly capable of functioning offline, and I encourage you to consider setting up a local copy to play with. There are no external dependencies, the entire thing is a single file. Note that it does link out to Google Forms for donor data--obviously you can't donate data offline, but everything else is there.

Simply copy the contents of this file into a blank text document, then name it <something>.html (ex: codacot.html). Double-click to launch in a browser window.

If you're playing with the code, I highly recommend using something with syntax highlighting. Sublime Text 2 is excellent, as is vim with a properly configured .vimrc. Since it's pure html/JS, you can also play with it live in a browser. Right-click, Inspect, toy around. You can always get a fresh copy from git.

Advanced users, please feel free to git clone and make a few pull requests. I especially need help with making this look decent...design is not really my strong suite.

Questions? Ask! If this tool can double as someone's entry into coding, I'll gladly do what I can to make that as pleasant a process as possible.

@Oranitha - Pinging because I've edited my post heavily.



1. What data do you need that isn't represented here? Adding new data types (ex: Fest Lightning) is fairly simple.

Current available data setup looks good to me.

2. What could be done to make this easier/more comfortable to use?

I like that there are input fields as well as + buttons.

3. Do you have any ideas for approachability? I'm hoping to develop a tool that anyone on FR could use (even better: would want to use). There are some stats and achievements already, I’m happy to hear ideas for more of those, phrasing changes, layout changes, etc.

I'm very sorry, I took several looks at it and read the instructions and clicked all the buttons and I don't understand what inputting numbers is supposed to do to the output, especially the bottom buttons.

I see an option to export raw data to CSV, which is really cool, but the output doesn't mean much to me. I just can't seem to understand the relationship between the input and output, and I'm unable to interpret the outputted data. The instructions say that stats are outputted (which it is!) but it's really not obvious to me what kind of stats they are.

Perhaps I'm misreading something. I'm not seeing what the numbers are supposed to tell me.

If I fight a Coli battle against a 2-pack in the Training Fields, do I count each monster and its drop, and how does that factor into the stats? There's a mismatch somewhere between the input and the math that I'm expecting as the output, maybe. I'm having trouble resolving the percentages, and I have no idea where some of these achievements are from!

An example of which combination of fields are absolutely required to be filled out and which numbers on the right that they affect would be awesome.

[EDIT]: Okay, I think I get it now. I'm supposed to input the number of monsters of a type that I've encountered as well as the corresponding drops.

Few suggestions:

1) Differentiate the # fought visually (maybe a white thick border on the right side).

2) Put a few more line breaks between the stats and the raw data.

3) Perhaps the first sentence in the Help should be "This tool takes into account the number of times you fought enemies and what they dropped, then calculates the drop rates for you." or something along those lines, rather than jumping straight into explanations of what to click.

I lost my balance reading the instructions, and it took me a - really - long time to figure out what the goal of the tool was! Before I'm told what to click, I like to understand why I am clicking. It's really straightforward once I realized what the tool was supposed to do.

A descriptive h1 would go a really long way to help with immediate calibration, even without reading instructions. I suggest something like "Coliseum Drop Rate Tracker".


Still unsure of any visible effect of clicking the special buttons down bottom. Are the rares supposed to show up somewhere other than incrementing the raw data output?


4. Since you guys maintain data-based projects, I was hoping you might have some ideas on where to post this tool. FR’s current forum layout doesn’t provide an obvious choice.

I think Guides is the most appropriate.

@Sylvandyr Thank you for the feedback, that's exactly the info I need! I've added more help text, a heading, and adjusted the headers a little bit. Could you give the help text a run-through and let me know if it helps at all?

EDIT: Saw your edit, addressing. Give me about 10 minutes.
EDITED EDIT: Edits up!

Hosted Copy

@Oranitha - Much better! The title instantly tells me what the tool is now, and I would have no confusion as to what I needed to do.

Few questions left:

1) Is incrementing the counters of rare drops at the bottom supposed to do anything? Right now, the only effect I'm seeing is that it updates the raw data for optional submission.

2) Are the achievements just for fun, internal to the tool? (I cheated and peeked at the javascript, sorry!)

[EDIT]: Whoops, looks like we're playing edit tag, sorry about that. I have a really, really bad habit of editing over and over before AND after I post.

@Sylvandyr I do the exact same thing...as I'm sure you've noticed, whoops. Last of the edits should be live. Mostly just a warning that data beneath a certain point isn't really formatted for human readability.

Right now, the rare counters are just for the raw data. I'm trying to come up with some interesting stats for them. "Total rare items" seems a bit underwhelming, but things like "Eggs found" are a bit too self-evident...I figure if someone gets three unhatched eggs in a sitting, they probably won't need a tool to tell them about it! Maybe just "Rares drop rate" as a percentage and leave it at that? Coding stats is easy. Figuring out fun ones is tough for me :P

In the world of code, cheating is what the losers call technique. Never apologize for reading the source--in fact, I'm pretty darn happy someone did!

Achievements are just for funsies. In case I release the tool widely, I figure it might appeal to folks who maybe aren't 100% in the data boat, but do enjoy collecting and discovering things. Or maybe I'm trying to be hip with the youths

@Oranitha - Looks good!


Random brainstorming, re: rare counters...

1) Could be used for achievements

2) Rares drop rate as a percentage would be nice, BUT for the number to be meaningful, it needs to be linked to the specific monsters that drop the items. That doesn't play nicely with Eggs on the current UI since that's element-specific, but I could see it being relevant for Eliminate and reasonably un-invasive, UI-wise. If you were gonna support the specific-monster-for-Eliminate thing, I think it'd help some people out by showing which monster drops it, by necessity.


Thanks for making this tool. :)

@Sylvandyr

1) Oh, wonderful idea! And not difficult to implement in the slightest. I can imagine the puns already...I'll get that up in the next commit.

2) Alright, I'm not so much the data side, so be patient with me--I'm going to have to work this one out in text!

The big problem I see with collecting rare-item data (besides it being so rare) is that we don't know who drops what, and the majority of coliseum groups are mixed-species. So I can imagine this being a sort of twofold problem. We want to know who exactly can drop ex: an Eliminate stone, but because of how the coliseum is set up, we can't just hunt one enemy to confirm. On the other side of the coin, even if we know that only Longneck Menders or something drop Eliminate in the Arena, that doesn't help the day-to-day use case--whether it's one mob at 1% or ten at 0.1%, all else being equal, the end user gets all their "chance of getting an Eliminate" info at the venue level.

Back to the mixed-species thing: the only way to know for sure that a given enemy drops an ex: Eliminate is if we get an Eliminate from a battle where it's only that one species. But because it's rare, if we just disregard all data from non-single-species groups, we're massively reducing an already teeny-tiny data pool, not to mention badly messing up our Eliminate drop chance stat (unless we're ONLY counting single-species groups, of course). So that's a lot of seeming catch-22's.

I can sort of propose a half-solution: a data type ("Rare Hunter" or something) where the food/material/etc buttons are replaced by eggs/vistas/etc. If you managed to get a rare drop, you would + the counter for every species present during the battle. Obviously this makes our rare% data completely wonky, which is why it's a separate data type--we can filter it out. Then we can use general/fest/etc. to get our Eliminate % Chance, and "Rare Hunter" to narrow down who drops it. Once we're reasonably sure about that, it might make sense to revisit the Rare Hunter data to see if we can get an estimated % Chance per-mob from that.

Sorry for the wall of text! I'm going to try very hard not to edit it :)


3ish) It's my pleasure! I did it to save my own wrist, hah. Thank you for giving me such informative feedback!

EDIT: Just a typo, I am weak. teggs->eggs

Ooh, this looks neat!

1. What data do you need that isn't represented here? Adding new data types (ex: Fest Lightning) is fairly simple.

Adding NOTN seems like the major thing to me that people might want. Though it may be tricky to upkeep depending on how much things change each year.

It seems to me that with this, the rates for familiars and rare drops are averaged out between all the monsters - if you defeat, say, 5 mobs and receive 4 familiars, it will list a familiar drop rate of 80%, but since each monster has its own familiar drop percentage, that would skew the results (and I've been trying to nail down boss familiar drops in particular). I assume that rates for things like Eliminate and Ambush are the same for every monster in a given venue, but unique drops may not be.

EDIT: re: your post about confusion on who drops Eliminate, etc. - you can know who drops what in a mixed-species battle... most of the time! (Which is better than none of the time, I guess.) I gotta see where all my spreadsheets are at and dig through them for the relevant information @_@ (This is why you organize your digital files, kids.) But! The loot window orders drops by the order of monsters in the group (top to bottom in a battle of 1-3 or clockwise from top right in a 4-pack); the drops are listed in the order of Material-Food-Rarer Food-Familiar-Rare Item. So if you get, say, a peacock scorpion's tail and then an Eliminate and then a Serthis' flower, you know that the scorpion dropped your Eliminate.

Edit 2: Sylvandyr beat me to the punch below, excuse my wall of text.

2. What could be done to make this easier/more comfortable to use?

Admittedly, I don't know how the coding and stuff works (I aspire to learn someday perhaps). So I'm not sure what would be in the realm of feasibility. But I think color-coding the columns would help, since I'm the kind of person who'd have to scroll up and make sure I'm clicking the right button for food, familiar, material, etc.

If it were me I might have the drops in the rows and the monsters by column, but that's just a personal preference. :3

3. Do you have any ideas for approachability? I'm hoping to develop a tool that anyone on FR could use (even better: would want to use). There are some stats and achievements already, I’m happy to hear ideas for more of those, phrasing changes, layout changes, etc.

Hmm. None that I can think of right now.

4. Since you guys maintain data-based projects, I was hoping you might have some ideas on where to post this tool. FR’s current forum layout doesn’t provide an obvious choice.

I am but a humble spreadsheet lady, alas.

@Oranitha - I think you can be forgiven for "teggs". :P

Oh, right, I wasn't thinking about the unconfirmed drops. This guide has a lot, but as you said, the missing ones are harder to confirm due to the very small amount of packs that can give a meaningful answer.

If you wanted to use the tool for rare drop tracking, I actually suggest designing a separate section for it altogether that accepts the following:

1) The exact pack that was encountered
2) The drops, listed in order from left to right, top to bottom

The Coli groups items together based on the monster that dropped them, so sometimes it's possible to tell who dropped what, even with mixed groups.

I think that this data format would be much easier to sift through (when just considering rare drops), and I think that determining which monster drops what item needs to be inherently separate from the drop rate data and the current format of input.