B-Spec Grinder 2.5.2: Automate Remote Races

[GTP_FastM3]

Hello all. I have a question about the version 2 grinder. Please bear with me as the backround information is a bit lengthy, but I think it's necessary to the question I'm asking.

I've been using this widget now for 48 hours. When I first started up I was running it with one of my secondary accounts and using all the drivers from my primary. I only had 12 drivers total between my accounts at first. Using the US servers I found that about 50% of races would have all 12 drivers. Of the 50% of races that used less than 12 drivers, about half of those missed my primary account. So about 25% of races missed my primary. Not bad, but could be better.

Last evening I downloaded credits and XP on 2 of my secondary accounts. This allowed me to add enough drivers to get up to 16 total. I could have added more, but I didn't want to have excess drivers, as I didn't want the widget to skip some of my primary drivers. I had heard that Singapore had better servers so I also switched there.

I found that about 60-70% of races have all 16 drivers. I have 5 drivers and 4 drivers in 2 of my secondary accounts, 6 in my primary, and 1 driver in the host secondary account. If all my accounts are used there are exactly 16 drivers. In races with less than 16 drivers it is always missing drivers from one of the accounts. This seems to be split equally between the 3 accounts. I believe this is an issue with the server. It doesn't always register that a particular group of drivers is free fast enough for the next race. If I'm home and notice that a particular group of drivers is missing I occasionally go down and stop the race. So far that user's racers are always available for the next race.

From what I hear about the updated widget it seems like it could help with this issue. It would allow adding extra secondary account drivers so that even if one of the secondary accounts is skipped there will be extra drivers from others. I don't know if it will fix the issue where the primary drivers are listed as unavailable even though they are finished the previous race.

This brings me to my question. Is there a way with the updated widget to make it wait until certain drivers are available? I see that it has a list of drivers for "Always Use", but I'm not sure if it will wait for these drivers if they are listed as unavailable or not. What would be beneficial to me (and likely other users that are using a secondary account to host races for their primary account) would be to set the widget to wait until the primary account's drivers become available.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to describe what I was currently seeing before asking the question I had.

 

[odyss3y]

Hello all. I have a question about the version 2 grinder. Please bear with me as the backround information is a bit lengthy, but I think it's necessary to the question I'm asking.
{snip}
Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to describe what I was currently seeing before asking the question I had.

There is definitely a bug that is causing some drivers to be skipped completely. I'm not sure why. I'm nearly useless at coding but I'm looking through it anyway. As far as I've got with the poking around is that for some reason the widget thinks that it can only pull from a limited pool, and does so.

 

[dannyg77]

yonis could you send it to me now please ?

For those of you who share this sentiment I offer these words. Send Yonis some beer money. He's earned it.

Thank you,
Sancho

 

[BAZZ]

Very long, and good post.

Have you tried to start a race through a browser and selecting the same drivers as the Widget is having problems with? I've found that I sometimes don't seem to be able to select some of the drivers directly after a race when I'm using the browser.
Heck, sometimes I can't even load any of my drivers but I have to take them offline and then back online in order to not get the "Driver X could not join.."-message in the browser.

Just thinking that if you got that problem, the Widget might work fine and dandy. Could be worth a try?

Sidenote, thank you, Yonis a LOT for this Widget. Eagerly looking forward to the new version!

 

[GTP_FastM3]

Have you tried to start a race through a browser and selecting the same drivers as the Widget is having problems with? I've found that I sometimes don't seem to be able to select some of the drivers directly after a race when I'm using the browser.
Heck, sometimes I can't even load any of my drivers but I have to take them offline and then back online in order to not get the "Driver X could not join.."-message in the browser.

Just thinking that if you got that problem, the Widget might work fine and dandy. Could be worth a try?

Sidenote, thank you, Yonis a LOT for this Widget. Eagerly looking forward to the new version!

Yes this is the problem that I'm having. Sometimes a certain user's drivers won't be available. What I was asking is if there will be something in the new version that will only start a race once they become available. I saw that there was a section for "always use" drivers. I was wondering if there was a setting for something similar to a "must use" driver category. Where a race wouldn't commence at all unless certain drivers could be used. That would be ideal for those of us who are running the widget on a secondary account and want all of our primary drivers to be involved in every race. Now with the trading limit it really doesn't benefit to earn credits in my secondary accounts. I run the widget for the sole purpose of earning XP and credits for my primary account. For that reason it's really pointless to run a race if my primary account isn't involved.

Yonis, I hope this doesn't come off as complaining. Your widget works extremely well, and I am very grateful for your efforts in developing it. It has proved very useful for me. I only ask about this feature as it would make the widget even more productive for me.

 

[Dennisch]

For those of you who share this sentiment I offer these words. Send Yonis some beer money. He's earned it.

Thank you,
Sancho

I just emptied my Paypal account, it wasn't much, but I think he can buy at least one beer.

And kudoos for Yonis.

 

[GTP_FastM3]

As an excercise I wanted to quantify how many races had a full complement of drivers and how many were missing. I have four accounts I'm currently using

A - Primary - 6 drivers
B - Secondary - 4 drivers
C - Secondary - 5 drivers
D - Hosting

I looked through the last 20 races. I found 10 had 16 drivers and 10 had less. Here's the breakdown:

4 races missing B only
3 races missing C only
2 races missing A only
1 races missing B+C

I noticed that the servers are very streaky. It seems like there will be 4-5 races out of 6 that are missing drivers then a few in a row with 16 drivers. As has been pointed out, it seems to be an issue with the servers falsely reporting a certain users drivers as unavailable. I thought Singapores servers might be better, but they seem to be about the same as the US servers.

The new update will fix it so that I can have excess drivers and label them as random users. That will make sure that all the racers get 16 drivers. The 2 races where my primary drivers were missing will likely still be an issue.

Not much of an issue in the grand scheme considering only 10% of the races were missing my primary account.

ps: Had 2 more races since I collected this data. Both races were missing my primary drivers. Go figure.

 

[Watto]

Where do you glance thru the log? On PS3 in GT5 or is this viewable thru widget/text file? Or is this in Beta 2.0 version only?.......snip

Under the GTLife --> Community --> Log I just have a quick look through my friends logs to see how many times my name popped up as a host.

snip..............This brings me to my question. Is there a way with the updated widget to make it wait until certain drivers are available? I see that it has a list of drivers for "Always Use", but I'm not sure if it will wait for these drivers if they are listed as unavailable or not. What would be beneficial to me (and likely other users that are using a secondary account to host races for their primary account) would be to set the widget to wait until the primary account's drivers become available..........snip

v2.0b1 has a "Driver Reservation Delay" of 1 to 25 seconds. I've left it on the default which is 1. I'm not sure if this will help your situation.

 

[architype07]

I've been unning v.1.1.3 for a couple of days and I gotta say Thanks to Yonis for this magic widget. All my bobs are having a great time running through the day and night. Well not all of them. I haven't noticed any issues with the widget but instead, with GT5.

Not sure how but, some of my drivers had been removed from their 'share with Firends' status. Missed out on a whole nights grinding. I noticed a couple of times during remote racing (before using the widget) that the system would state that some of my drivers were unavilable. This would last for approx 30 secs then they would all become available again.

Not sure if there are any settings on the GT5 side that need tweaking.

 

[odyss3y]

As an excercise I wanted to quantify how many races had a full complement of drivers and how many were missing. I have four accounts I'm currently using

A - Primary - 6 drivers
B - Secondary - 4 drivers
C - Secondary - 5 drivers
D - Hosting

I looked through the last 20 races. I found 10 had 16 drivers and 10 had less. Here's the breakdown:

4 races missing B only
3 races missing C only
2 races missing A only
1 races missing B+C

I noticed that the servers are very streaky. It seems like there will be 4-5 races out of 6 that are missing drivers then a few in a row with 16 drivers. As has been pointed out, it seems to be an issue with the servers falsely reporting a certain users drivers as unavailable. I thought Singapores servers might be better, but they seem to be about the same as the US servers.

The new update will fix it so that I can have excess drivers and label them as random users. That will make sure that all the racers get 16 drivers. The 2 races where my primary drivers were missing will likely still be an issue.

Not much of an issue in the grand scheme considering only 10% of the races were missing my primary account.

ps: Had 2 more races since I collected this data. Both races were missing my primary drivers. Go figure.

I hadn't been having this problem while others had and then suddenly yesterday started getting it almost every time and with multiple accounts running the 2.0 beta. I'm finding that it has nothing to do with the server, since I can login at the same moment and see that my friends have plenty of drivers available. So I picked the widget apart and added a bunch of debug output and I'm finding that it isn't even requesting the info about any of the other drivers other than the first initial 2-3.

 

[notbugsbunny]

Still can't get this to go past reserving drivers :/

 

[odyss3y]

Still can't get this to go past reserving drivers :/

You can PM me your username/password and I'll test it for you and see if I can help.

 

[notbugsbunny]

You can PM me your username/password and I'll test it for you and see if I can help.

No offense but Im not giving my username/password to a random guy on the net lol.

I've tried it on 3 machines now

OSX
Server 2008
and Windows 7

 

[gtuned]

Try not reserving any in the options, or make sure you have them online.

 

[notbugsbunny]

Try not reserving any in the options, or make sure you have them online.

Tried.

I just flicked the logon server to Japan and the first race has started fine. This seems rather temperamental.

Will see if it runs another race after this. If so, i'll leave it running tomorrow and see how it goes

 

[doctorrg]

I think there are probably a lot of factors involved here, not just the server you're using, but also the path you are having to use to get there, which may well in part depend on your internet provider, and who knows what else. It seems I'm one of the lucky ones, as since I've switched to Singapore, I've had very little issues. I've switched the widget on about 16 hours ago, and it's been running nearly flawlessly. I saw a few instances where it went from loading race straight to race ended, but it corrected itself each time within a few tries. I haven't gone through the entire set of results (too many), but the one's I've spot checked all had 16 drivers in them as well. Widget's been very good to me recently.

 

[odyss3y]

No offense but Im not giving my username/password to a random guy on the net lol.

I've tried it on 3 machines now

OSX
Server 2008
and Windows 7

None taken, your loss

I think there are probably a lot of factors involved here, not just the server you're using, but also the path you are having to use to get there, which may well in part depend on your internet provider, and who knows what else. It seems I'm one of the lucky ones, as since I've switched to Singapore, I've had very little issues. I've switched the widget on about 16 hours ago, and it's been running nearly flawlessly. I saw a few instances where it went from loading race straight to race ended, but it corrected itself each time within a few tries. I haven't gone through the entire set of results (too many), but the one's I've spot checked all had 16 drivers in them as well. Widget's been very good to me recently.

If it was a problem with your internet provider, you'd be noticing problems all over the net. The difference that matters between switching countries is that you will go to 1 of 3 different servers, either Europe, Asia, or the US servers.

I did a test between Asia and the US servers for 40 races and found that the only difference was that it took longer for the server to reply to my driver reservation requests. I had no higher of a success rate.

 

[notbugsbunny]

None taken, your loss

If it was a problem with your internet provider, you'd be noticing problems all over the net. The difference that matters between switching countries is that you will go to 1 of 3 different servers, either Europe, Asia, or the US servers.

I did a test between Asia and the US servers for 40 races and found that the only difference was that it took longer for the server to reply to my driver reservation requests. I had no higher of a success rate.

Now using the Japan login and its working lol...

 

[doctorrg]

If it was a problem with your internet provider, you'd be noticing problems all over the net.

Or, alternatively, these aren't as noticeable for some uses, and seem to cause issues for others. There are whole communities dedicated to discussing how one internet provider is better than another, exactly because of all the cases where little differences make all the difference. Not saying that is the case here, but I don't think it's just an issue with what server you're using. If it was, I think we should be seeing a little more consistency in between people using the same server, particularly if they're connecting from the same country. It could well be nothing but the exchange that's to blame, but who knows?

Sorry, didn't mean to go off-topic, I simply wanted to throw in that it can't all be just the server you're using.

 

[odyss3y]

Or, alternatively, these aren't as noticeable for some uses, and seem to cause issues for others. There are whole communities dedicated to discussing how one internet provider is better than another, exactly because of all the cases where little differences make all the difference. Not saying that is the case here, but I don't think it's just an issue with what server you're using. If it was, I think we should be seeing a little more consistency in between people using the same server, particularly if they're connecting from the same country. It could well be nothing but the exchange that's to blame, but who knows?

Sorry, didn't mean to go off-topic, I simply wanted to throw in that it can't all be just the server you're using.

Yep, I could make a login on the same computer/internet/everything fail, with a simple difference being the number of friends on the PSN/GT5 network.

 

[doctorrg]

Yep, I could make a login on the same computer/internet/everything fail, with a simple difference being the number of friends on the PSN/GT5 network.

Absolutely.

Edit: Mind you, and just to be clear, that doesn't mean that what fails for you (in terms of the number of friends and all) doesn't work for another, connected to the same server, and even connected from the same country. Just to make sure I didn't give the wrong impression with my "Absolutely."

 

[snowxdadx3]

For those of you who share this sentiment I offer these words. Send Yonis some beer money. He's earned it.

Thank you,
Sancho

did. now there's enough for 2 beers!!




psn Tober4233

 

[turbogeit]

I think that's an issue with the GT5 My Home page taking a while to update rather than the widget. I've noticed a number of times that it hasn't updated for several hours after I've spent a million or two.

I had the same impression already before using the widget.

 

[Bonker]

Some messages tonight:


Welcome to Yahoo! Widgets 4.5.2 (build 10A50) on 03/25/11 00:47:42.272

Type '/help' for help.

Loaded Widget 'B-Spec Grinder' from C:\Users\******\Documents\My Widgets\B-Spec Grinder.widget
03/25/11 00:47:51.013: RAW STATUS: Ready.
03/25/11 00:49:29.285: Race has started.
03/25/11 01:12:15.023: Race has started.
03/25/11 01:35:31.885: Server sent bad data. Retrying. (Attempt 1)
03/25/11 01:35:31.983: Server sent bad data. Retrying. (Attempt 2)
03/25/11 01:35:32.286: Server sent bad data. Retrying. (Attempt 3)
03/25/11 01:35:32.288: Could not successfully retrieve data! Will try reconnecting in 1 minute.
############################
############################
############################

--------------------------------------------

https://us.gran-turismo.com/us/api/gt5/remoterace/
job=7&replay_save=0&_=
Connection:close
Content-Length:971
Content-Type:text/html;charset=utf-8
Date:Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:35:37 GMT
Set-Cookie:JSESSIONID=377710EB08F6DE3A25E193DCCCCBE8D8.worker12; Expires=Fri, 01-Apr-2011 07:35:37 GMT; Path=/
Set-Cookie:JSESSIONID=377710EB08F6DE3A25E193DCCCCBE8D8.worker12; Expires=Fri, 01-Apr-2011 07:35:37 GMT; Path=/
Vary:Accept-Encoding
###########################
Could not load URL with POST
############################
############################
############################
03/25/11 01:35:32.361: Resetting state. Waiting for 1 minute(s). Will reauthenticate.
03/25/11 01:36:48.188: RAW STATUS: Ready.
03/25/11 01:38:04.378: Race has started.

 

[JTT]

Any idea when u gonna release new grinder with those lats options ?

 

[Dennisch]

What does the reciprocate option do? I googled it, but my lack of intelligence stand in my way

 

[soniae74]

What does the reciprocate option do? I googled it, but my lack of intelligence stand in my way

It will race those who have recenlty raced you - a sort of 'pay back' option. However, I believe this option is still a work in progress.

 

[shinronin]

Still can't get this to go past reserving drivers :/

in my experience if the server you've set the grinder to connect to is otherwise reliable (singapore) that error means your friends don't have any drivers free for your grinder to reserve.

leave 1 driver free! 👍

 

[lmanion]

in my experience if the server you've set the grinder to connect to is otherwise reliable (singapore) that error means your friends don't have any drivers free for your grinder to reserve.

leave 1 driver free! 👍

Ive done this exact thing but still have the problem despite having more than enough friends with more than enough drivers available. I know this because my second account wasnt selected in some races despite my first account being the only account it was connected to.

 

[ypmud]

i have that problem a lot and find that if the person has not logged into his/her ps3 for a while it will not pick it up on the site and the site says that person is not on your friends list (this is when i really find the problem happening)