FFXIAH.com - HOW?

[Irisjir Callard]

Re: FFXIAH.com - HOW?

I always kinda nostalgically thought the FFXIAH team got SE's permission to put a worm into the AH server that basically synchronised another server with the AH one (kinda like an auto-upated backup.) Then they could run all sorts of queries on the synched server without adding any lag at all, and have nice, clean, shiny data all ready for us to download and view at our leisure. Hence no 'log in' because there's no character to log in, just this nice little data-plug hookup.

I also used to think the Rulude mule by guess which AH who didn't move for 5 weeks straight might have something to do with FFXIAH.com, but I got told he was just a GS money-launderer. And then he moved, and then he dissappeared, but FFXIAH didn't vanish, so I lost my faith in that one.



You know what has me stumped about the AH.com?

The bazaar messages.

I mean, HOW did they get that data compiled? I haven't looked up bazaar stuff recently, but I did notice it last time I was browsing the site for information about siren's hair availability...SOME people's bazaar contents are mentioned.

Is this a subscrption service? I know my 9999999999999999999999gil elshimo frog isn't mentioned anywhere. And I do not think bazaar information, being basically an extension of inventory data, is carried on the AH server.

[Feba]

Re: FFXIAH.com - HOW?

people can sign up on the site to add information about themselves, including items they want to buy or sell. It's not an ingame thing, afaik.

[Cliff]

Re: FFXIAH.com - HOW?

...holy crap you guys have too much time on your hands.

Generally the reason I don't talk about how certain things work is the very real potential for abuse. What I will say though is that in terms of how long it takes for sales to show up, I believe it's down to about 10-15 minutes due to more intelligent algorithms. And yeah, the method used adds virtually no load on the AH servers. In fact, considering how many people now consult FFXIAH instead of constantly checking on the status of auctions ingame, I would suggest that overall we've decreased the load.

The most interesting part of this for me wasn't the method of getting the auction house data but rather the storage and caching strategies. The database currently has over 100 million records and every one of them is live and available to the webserver (and therefore the public) for consumption. Yes, only the newest <x> are actually shown on the site, but that's just for privacy reasons rather than technical.

The way we've got it rigged up it will probably continue to archive and serve auction house data for the life of the game with no degradation in performance. The only real limiting factor is how many people visit the site, and if that ever becomes a problem we can add a RAID 1 harddrive to double the read throughput, or set up a slave db server if needed.

Which brings up the other cool part, ffxiah . com runs on just two plain servers (one web and one db) with non-striped harddrives. The DB server has I think 2 GB of RAM, however RAM turns out to be irrelevent as the query and object cache for that huge table would be constantly invalidated or swapped.

If I ever get around to it (in other words if Parallels ever supports FFXI, and no, 3.0 doesn't) there's one more "killer app" I'm 95% done with for FFXIAH, which actually doesn't have anything to do with the AH except in a technical sense. Have fun with that one.

Thanks for all you guys' support over the years. One day I'll write a paper on all of the stuff I've done with FFXI, but it'll have to wait until it will no longer be a catalyst for mass exploitation that would destroy the game. (until either SE fixes their systems, or the game loses its popularity and noone cares anymore)

-Cliff

P.S. On a personal note, I'm moving to Seattle for a great new job! (No, not Microsoft. How could you even think that?!)

[Feba]

Re: FFXIAH.com - HOW?

oh hi cliff.

...holy crap you guys have too much time on your hands.

Says who now?

[Cliff]

Re: FFXIAH.com - HOW?

Says who now?

Ouch.

Hey, I was doing it for my girlfriend and in the process actually gained a ton of insight and knowledge into exactly how computers work.

What's your excuse?



-Cliff

[Feba]

Re: FFXIAH.com - HOW?

I was doing it because I don't have a girlfriend, and in the process, killed a lot of time

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: FFXIAH.com - HOW?

Bah, I'd like to know a little more about how Cliff & Co. grab the data. -_-

(Knowing it's not limited by host's small RAM capacity is interesting, though.)