Count number of times a track is played/kart is used?

[Arthur]

Maybe it could be useful to collect some statistics on how many times people use a kart or finish a track. This could be an opt-in feature which could collect and send the data to the stkaddons server. And we could make some nice graphs of it all.

Being opt-in, we should probably not rely too much on the collected data, but it could provide us with some insight on what art assets might need improvements the most.

Just a suggestion I wanted to throw.

[sj04736]

Patches welcome :P

Seriously though, this wouldn't be hard to implement on my end. What would need to be recorded? Track/kart id (probably folder name to generate id?), usage count, ...?

The game could fetch a file from the server (i.e. statcounter.php?action=countrace&kart=tux&track=lighthouse).

This could be very prone to spamming though. Any other suggestions?

[hiker]

Seriously though, this wouldn't be hard to implement on my end. What would need to be recorded? Track/kart id (probably folder name to generate id?), usage count, ...?

I agree, and I have been thinking about this, on the other hand this leaves us pretty much open to spamming/cheating. I am sure within a few weeks there would be a (quite simple) hack that would allow you to push your favourite track/kart - "just leave the following script running over night, provide the name of your favourite track/kart, and see it going up in the list. Ask your friends to participate as well" *sigh* Esp. with more designer doing karts/tracks, so the statistics might become important in order for 'your' track to be seen in a sorted list within STK. Easiest option I see would be to allow people to login with an account (which would need to be created first, ideally within STK), and then allow them to vote once for each track/kart. That's obviously not the same as counting though, and would require more data to be managed inside of the addon webpage (and some code to be added to STK).

Or we could only this statistics extern of STK (e.g. have a page on the wiki showing the stats). Since I'd assume that only a minority of players would look at that list, it would be less tempting to cheat.

*sigh* Yes, we then could add rules (only X votes per day, ...) - but that's error prone, invites people to cheat more cleverly, a lot of additional work, ...

Cheers,
Joerg

[Funto]

Just my opinion: I don't like such a system.
I think we are already tracked enough on the Internet and with all the non-free software that runs on most people's PCs.
To me, if such a system was to be put in place, it should be deactivable by the user and deactivated by default (or at least, the user should be informed the first time he launches the game).

Just my thought

[Arthur]

Funto: totally agree, and that's why I proposed it should be an opt-in feature. Or as it is with the news server: you're asked first time, and it's easy to activate/deactivate it in the game.
If people still might be worried: well, the source is open, so anyone can take a look.