- 264
- Silicon Valley
- yonis
EDIT (2013-02-18): I am no longer developing this project. It will continue to be provided below "as-is" with no warranty. As such, I have also disabled the Donate feature.
If there are any enthusiastic GTPlaneteers who want to pick up the torch (or already have), PM me and I'll give you a link to your edition here instead.
Thank you all for the support during the development of this Widget. It means a great deal to me. I wanted to experiment with providing a free, high-quality program to a small but passionate community of people. For me, this experiment was a success. I sincerely hope it was useful to you, and that it will continue to be in the future.
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ORIGINAL POST BELOW:
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This is a Widget which will automate Remote Races for you. As soon as one race ends, it will try to start another.
Keep in mind that your PS3 may drop its connection to the Internet if you leave it running overnight, in which case B-Spec Grinder will not be able to communicate with it.
HOW TO USE IT
Download and install Yahoo! Widgets (Windows or Mac OS X).
Download and run B-Spec Grinder v2.5.2 (it's the Widget inside the ZIP file).
Enter your PSN email address and password in the preferences, and select the country to which the account belongs.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
This Widget, to put it simply, emulates a web browser. Using HTTPS, it first authenticates with store.playstation.com to authenticate your credentials. Then, just like a browser, it stores the logged in session and starts making requests to the JSON APIs on gran-turismo.com. It requests your profile information and the status of your PS3, then tries to automatically launch a race if it's online and ready to go, trying to fill all 16 driver slots with random drivers from your friends list. Then, it monitors the status of the race using the Remote Race JSON API, updating the display appropriately, and when the race is over, it repeats. Simple as that.
CAN I GET IN TROUBLE FOR USING THIS?
I honestly don't know. Because you can only use one of your own drivers at a time, you're benefitting other people more than you are yourself when you use this Widget. But, this is not an official use of the Remote Race API (I've totally reverse-engineered it) and I suppose it's kind of cheating, so Sony may frown upon it. If in doubt, don't use it!
ANY KNOWN PROBLEMS?
Sony's servers can be a bit ropey at times, so you may experience issues when loading data. The Widget has been thoroughly tested on the US servers, so if you have problems logging into your own country's server, try switching to the US one.
I have not successfully been able to log into the Japanese servers, either.
I'VE NOTICED IN MY FRIENDS' DRIVERS, NEXT TO SOME OF THEIR NAMES, THERE'S A "?" SYMBOL.
This means that the Widget was denied access to that friend by Polyphony's servers. You'll see the same error if you log into the site proper. After you add a friend on PSN, both of you need to boot up GT5 so that Polyphony's servers know about it. After that, it can take a couple of hours before Polyphony's servers will sync up.
OKAY BUT WHAT IF I HAVE A PROBLEM?
Gather as much information as you can get about what happened before the problem occurred and report it in this thread. Then, reload the Widget or change over to the US servers to see if the problem goes away.
WHERE'D THE DEBUG WINDOW GO?
The debug window was a temporary fixture for debugging server connections during the beta phase. You can enable logging under the Advanced section of the Widget Preferences.
An upcoming version will allow you to see a list of the races run without having to turn on logging, so sit tight!
I DON'T TRUST YOU WITH MY PSN ACCOUNT.
I understand why you wouldn't. You can crack open the Widget and look at all the source files with this Widget. It is trivial for me to obfuscate the JavaScript, but I have not because I have nothing to hide.
I'm also fully compliant with Yahoo! Widgets' security policies; you can see every domain my Widget accesses right in the security prompt. Any domain outside of that whitelist is blocked by the engine, so you can see that your login credentials are not going through any servers they shouldn't be.
I'VE BEEN USING THIS FOR A WHILE AND GT5 LOADS AND ENDS RACES A LOT SLOWER NOW.
In GT5, try going to Options > Network > Clear System Cache. It may take around 10 or 20 minutes if you've never done it before, but it should help! Thanks to vakie-81 for that tip.
VERSION HISTORY
Right-click the Widget and select "About B-Spec Grinder" to see which version you're running.
Current version: 2.5.2
2.5.1
2.5
Older Version History...
If there are any enthusiastic GTPlaneteers who want to pick up the torch (or already have), PM me and I'll give you a link to your edition here instead.
Thank you all for the support during the development of this Widget. It means a great deal to me. I wanted to experiment with providing a free, high-quality program to a small but passionate community of people. For me, this experiment was a success. I sincerely hope it was useful to you, and that it will continue to be in the future.
----------------------------------------
ORIGINAL POST BELOW:
----------------------------------------
This is a Widget which will automate Remote Races for you. As soon as one race ends, it will try to start another.
Keep in mind that your PS3 may drop its connection to the Internet if you leave it running overnight, in which case B-Spec Grinder will not be able to communicate with it.
HOW TO USE IT
Download and install Yahoo! Widgets (Windows or Mac OS X).
Download and run B-Spec Grinder v2.5.2 (it's the Widget inside the ZIP file).
Enter your PSN email address and password in the preferences, and select the country to which the account belongs.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
This Widget, to put it simply, emulates a web browser. Using HTTPS, it first authenticates with store.playstation.com to authenticate your credentials. Then, just like a browser, it stores the logged in session and starts making requests to the JSON APIs on gran-turismo.com. It requests your profile information and the status of your PS3, then tries to automatically launch a race if it's online and ready to go, trying to fill all 16 driver slots with random drivers from your friends list. Then, it monitors the status of the race using the Remote Race JSON API, updating the display appropriately, and when the race is over, it repeats. Simple as that.
CAN I GET IN TROUBLE FOR USING THIS?
I honestly don't know. Because you can only use one of your own drivers at a time, you're benefitting other people more than you are yourself when you use this Widget. But, this is not an official use of the Remote Race API (I've totally reverse-engineered it) and I suppose it's kind of cheating, so Sony may frown upon it. If in doubt, don't use it!
ANY KNOWN PROBLEMS?
Sony's servers can be a bit ropey at times, so you may experience issues when loading data. The Widget has been thoroughly tested on the US servers, so if you have problems logging into your own country's server, try switching to the US one.
I have not successfully been able to log into the Japanese servers, either.
I'VE NOTICED IN MY FRIENDS' DRIVERS, NEXT TO SOME OF THEIR NAMES, THERE'S A "?" SYMBOL.
This means that the Widget was denied access to that friend by Polyphony's servers. You'll see the same error if you log into the site proper. After you add a friend on PSN, both of you need to boot up GT5 so that Polyphony's servers know about it. After that, it can take a couple of hours before Polyphony's servers will sync up.
OKAY BUT WHAT IF I HAVE A PROBLEM?
Gather as much information as you can get about what happened before the problem occurred and report it in this thread. Then, reload the Widget or change over to the US servers to see if the problem goes away.
WHERE'D THE DEBUG WINDOW GO?
The debug window was a temporary fixture for debugging server connections during the beta phase. You can enable logging under the Advanced section of the Widget Preferences.
An upcoming version will allow you to see a list of the races run without having to turn on logging, so sit tight!
I DON'T TRUST YOU WITH MY PSN ACCOUNT.
I understand why you wouldn't. You can crack open the Widget and look at all the source files with this Widget. It is trivial for me to obfuscate the JavaScript, but I have not because I have nothing to hide.
I'm also fully compliant with Yahoo! Widgets' security policies; you can see every domain my Widget accesses right in the security prompt. Any domain outside of that whitelist is blocked by the engine, so you can see that your login credentials are not going through any servers they shouldn't be.
I'VE BEEN USING THIS FOR A WHILE AND GT5 LOADS AND ENDS RACES A LOT SLOWER NOW.
In GT5, try going to Options > Network > Clear System Cache. It may take around 10 or 20 minutes if you've never done it before, but it should help! Thanks to vakie-81 for that tip.
VERSION HISTORY
Right-click the Widget and select "About B-Spec Grinder" to see which version you're running.
Current version: 2.5.2
- Now displays the fancy new helmets from the GT5 1.10 patch!
- Fixed the following errors:
- Problem where cookies were not being properly deleted after expiration.
- Cookies with no expiration date set were not properly deleted when the Widget was reopened.
- "Secure" session cookies did not have a test in place to make sure they were being sent over https.
2.5.1
- Quick bandaid for a cookie change on the PlayStation Network login page.
2.5
- Several changes to the authentication code:
- Tested with new PlayStation Network authentication.
- Now caches session cookies between relaunches.
- This should (hopefully) lead to better reliability with the PlayStation Network is undergoing maintenance.
- Startup time should be much improved if we have a cookie set. V-TEC just kicked in, 'yo!
- Lets you know if you need to update your PlayStation Network login credentials.
- PSN will automatically email you with a reset link if you try to log in from the Widget.
- Recognizes when the PlayStation Network is in maintenance mode and it cannot log in.
- You can now elect to stop the Widget from automatically starting races.
- The Widget will wait for the current race to complete but will not start another one.
- One novel use of this mode is monitoring races which are started from another computer.
- The Widget is localizable to the following languages supported by Yahoo! Widgets. Please PM me if you want to translate the interface to:
- Mandarin Chinese
- Simplified Chinese
- Danish
Dutch- Thanks, GTHQ_MeShell!Finnish- Thanks, MMORacing!French- Thanks, Dany Caron (DCSemi) and WarriusZero!German- Thanks, Andreas 'gNNY' Nie!- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean - In progress, maybe
Norwegian- Thanks, dr_de5ibel!Portuguese- Thanks, João Tiago "JT"!- Russian
- Spanish - In progress
- Swedish - In progress
- Fixed the following errors:
- Problem where the experience sorting calculation was inaccurate.
- Security sandbox problem related to $redirect_url.replace('signout/','') (for real this time). Retries in one minute.
- Security sandbox problem related to /[country]/signin/psn_error.html. Assumes the PlayStation Network is in maintenance mode.
Older Version History...
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