Logging

[AF]

Some people ahve complained about NTAI logs fo 1GB.

I say tot hese people that you should delete old log files when you get a new version, the newer versions do not lgo excessively and what they do lgo takes up much elss space, roughly a 90% space reduction fo what gets logged, and a 90% reduction fot he space it takes up, the average log size for a single game goign from 4MB to 20kb.

But inf uture I'll make NTAI stop loggign fit eh filesize goes over 10MB anyways.

But other than that vote in the poll above, do you want nice colourful layed out html log files, or just plaintext files? I guess you could shave about 9kb off of that 30kb logfile if ti where in plaintext.

On the contrary a html log file comrpessed in a zip archive shows a significant compression rate, a 16MB file goes down to 20kb..

[sintri]

Well for the general public who doesn't care what the ai's doing or what's going on txt files might be better. But for debugging purposes, colour coding works bit better. But for windows, txt files don't generate previews, html does.

[renrutal]

Support all three,

[Triaxx2]

Is it possible to log in .rtf format? Color-coding without massive HTML size.

[munch]

Wow I didn't know there was a log file! I've voted for compressed html, but from a practicality point of view, you really want to split the file up into separate log files for each game, instead of one massive one. Otherwise it's impractical to view it anyway. Browsers aren't designed to view pages which are even 10MB never mind 10GB. Split it up into chunks and it'll be much more usable.

Having said all that, I'd add an extra option (4.) which is have logging switched off by default, but available to be switched on for development. Logging really is only useful to you, the developer, not the end user - so why waste CPU cycles and disk space on it?

Just a thought

Munch

[Triaxx2]

Is there a lag on writing to compressed files? If not, then split them into fifteen minute segments. That way you can monitor the progress in measured increments.

[AF]

I might do that, 10 min segments or so saved in a log folder. RTF loggign isnt somehtign I'd liek since I dont know anythign about it. I do know that ocne you've defined the css at the top fo a html log file it's very simp-le to change the colour very quickly with minimal wasted space...

If they're gonna be comrpessed what I'd do si either log then comrpess the logfile when NTAI starts up, or comrpess at the very end, btu if it crashes then it wouldnt be comrpessed using the latter method.

I'm not turning off logging, as it gives me info, and if the user gets a crash then there'd be no information about it.

I've switched to plaintext logging in the next version of NTAI but I refuse to release it untill I've verified something.

In the end I'll end up supprtign all three, but which should be on by default and are there better alternatives.......

[Triaxx2]

I suggested RTF logging, because it gives the advantage of color coding, without the size of HTML. Perhaps making NTAI add the proper coding, so you only have to change the extension to .html, and it's instantly readable?

[Maelstrom]

HTML. Much easier to read. As long as you have scrapped that dark grey from a few versions ago that is.

[AF]

ahem, 0.28.10+ uses a white background

[Imperator]

omg i just deleted a 2.3 GB ailog file from ntai. please dont do that again to my harddrive. i want warez but no ai logs

[AF]

You shouldnt get that with NTAI 0.28.10 unless you play 100 tiems a day for 10 weeks on end.

Or fi you play like 10 times, and on each tiem the engine spams ont he info consoel badstyle so the logs are full of the same error emssages over and over again, at whcih point the infolog.txt spring writes would eb hgue anyways.

But I'll make the installer delete the log file upon installign 0.29/0.3