PrincessJulie [11229] —
Original article
How Torn's most beloved companion came to fruition to steal our hearts.
"I mean at this point... not using torn stats hinders your gameplay. He's created a tool that is basically a necessity to be competitive on torn" - Bones
"Without Torn Stats, I firmly believe that people wouldn't train as hard as they do." - Vulture
"We pretty much use it to it’s fullest capacity. We constantly track member reqs, crimes, competitions and chains with it and require members to join it." - MolonLabe
In the seven years since its creation, Torn Stats has become such a trusted and integral companion to the game that it is difficult to believe it hasn’t always been a part of life in the city. If you were to poll the leaders of Torn’s top factions, you would be hard-pressed to find any that don’t encourage, if not require, their members to sign up to this invaluable tool.
While everyone knows what Torn Stats is - and if you don't, take a look - not many people know the backstory of how the site came to be, or what drives its creator, IceBlueFire, to continue creating and maintaining features that draw in hordes of players. I recently sat down with IBF to pick his brain and to figure out what keeps Torn’s most humble nerd motivated to provide top-notch content in return for nothing but thanks.
Pictured: A common reaction after signing up to Torn Stats
The origins of Torn Stats can be traced back to Milk n Cookies, a faction that merged with Just Fer Assholes to create what is now known as Natural Selection. At the time, IceBlueFire, one of Torn’s longest-serving citizens and the faction’s resident computer whiz, was approached by Myhedin about developing a tool that would track battle stat spies so they could be easily shared amongst their members.
"I kind of took that idea and expanded it as a way to track my own battle stat growth, as well as the growth of the faction's strength. With that structure in mind, and with the intention of making it open to many factions, I designed the personal battle stat history first, followed shortly by faction management, and then the integration of spy storage."
"During that time too, boo was working on something similar for her faction as well...Which allowed me to kind of pick her brain a bit and get ideas for stuff to add to essentially win her away from her own project and use mine instead."
With that, the Torn Stats we all know and love started to take form. It wasn’t always smooth sailing for IceBlueFire while shaping the early version of the website. When asked about the challenges he faced, he lamented how difficult it was to come up with features that would encourage people to sign up and to continue coming back to the website.
After such a collaborative start to the website, it isn’t surprising to know that IceBlueFire had always planned on opening the website to be available to as many people as possible. It may be hard to believe now, but it would be a lie to say that people were clambering over each other to sign up at first.
"I didn't see the point in designing and investing all that time into developing something for just me to use... I wanted to make it worth my time and at least try to get other people to enjoy the stuff I made."
"It wasn't long into the development that I moved [from MnC] to JFK, so many people initially thought it was a ploy for JFK to gain all sorts of information on people. That was the hardest stigma to overturn… But having factions not JFK using it helped, like MnC and TuS. I had a few loud friends that helped push it too."
Pictured: Interestingly, the person who chose these colours claims he never struggled with anything design-wise…
More difficult than that, however, was the task of creating a script that would integrate Torn Stats into Torn. Some of the newer players may not be aware of this, but Torn didn’t always have an API. The original code of Torn Stats was designed to not need it, so there was much more of a reliance on the script to scrape Torn for the necessary data. The text box to submit your stats on the homepage is very much a relic of this. As evidenced when Torn pulls down the API, we take it for granted that this data is now automatically updated daily.
"I found an old script from Conciliator (Don't remember his ID or exact name) who had something from his days in Evo that he developed. With his permission, he gave me a copy of it and I started to butcher it into my own Frankenstein."
"After all the shortfalls of that, and after requesting help from Vinkuun enough times, I eventually just asked if he would be willing to help me and maintain the script himself, for me. With a few conditions, he agreed. After my incompetent attempts at patching and releasing variations of his code, Vinkuun didn't want his name to be tarnished by a bad script, so the condition was that I wasn't allowed to edit the script myself."
Pictured: Luckily, this didn’t happen
IceBlueFire has always strived to stay ahead of the curve when coming up with features he feels will benefit Torn’s player base. At the time when there wasn’t really any alternative to Torn Stats, any new feature that was released just made the website more beneficial to whichever niche of players it was designed for.
It was his forward-thinking that led to him to create one of the first open tools that had an off-site stock tracker. Even before the API was created (coincidentally, by himself, amongst others) he had built this first iteration of a stock tracker using a primitive IRC API that he had found deep within the server. It was, by his estimation, an abandoned project by one of the old developers, and after asking around he got the OK to start using it.
It isn’t a surprise, therefore, to find out that he was also one of the most fervent advocates pushing for Torn to adopt the API many of us now rely on.
"The biggest moment in my time really came when I was pushing for an API (mostly for my own purposes, but also for everyone really), which led to Ched giving the Ok and me setting up a small group of friends and developers (mostly forgey and PMV) to help flesh out ideas and me hosting the original design doc and proof of concept on my server. Ched wrote up the rules, we designed the rest of the page."
"It opened the door to all sorts of creativity (some for better, some for worse...like early mug scripts), but at least most people were on an even playing field now. Of course, that revolutionized my abilities on Torn Stats too. It allowed me to create most of what exists today, with a lot of it being automated. Even if they have their API key entered and get their battle stats updated automatically, a lot of people like to rely on seeing how much they've grown since the last time they pushed that button, but still want consistent data for their graph."
Pictured: What we all wish our stat graphs would do
The most substantial growth in users on the website came when IceBlueFire approached Mauk about a collaboration between Torn Stats and DoctorN. His partnership with Vinkuun had reached the end of its life, so initially, he was only looking for Mauk to help with an alternative to the script that was no longer being developed. Once they were able to mirror the functionality, they started work on the new features that IceBlueFire had been hoping to offer, such as the streamlining of spy and organized crime submissions.
"I approached Mauk and asked if he was interested in working on integrating the two together. He was more than eager to help. He was on the edge of making his own system of sorts, but with me reaching out to him, he was more than happy to not have to rebuild everything for himself."
"At the time, DoctorN was growing, but still a small fish in comparison to what it's become. Turned out to be mutually beneficial to both of us as our user numbers skyrocketed. I think TS was thriving already, but after that, yeah, I think it helped push it to the cornerstone it seems to have become today."
This success did not come without its pitfalls. As the popularity of the site grew, it became more difficult to maintain. At first, these issues were exciting to IceBlueFire, as it meant that the website was gaining traction. If people didn’t see value in the site, they simply would not use it. Legacy code had to be rewritten to optimize performance, servers had to be upgraded, and at times it was frustrating to figure out where the source of the problem laid. As time marched on, the next obvious steps seemed overwhelming.
Pictured: Evidence, as if it were needed, that Torn players love stats and graphs.
After Elimination 2019, the site was plagued by major performance issues. There had been extreme lag, days when the entire site had been unreachable, and the code for certain features had been made obsolete by updates to Torn. From the outset, Torn Stats ran on donations; time donated by IceBlueFire and the others who helped him, money to run the servers donated by extremely generous users. Whenever donations or the minimal ads didn’t cover the cost to run the site, the deficit was covered by IceBlueFire.
It was becoming painfully apparent that the servers could not handle the load. Unfortunately, the next upgrade for the servers was not within reach financially and would have likely still not brought the site up to the necessary capacity.
"I started to question how far I wanted to push the site. The messages were overwhelming, the lag was intense at times, it just didn't seem like it was worth all the stress and effort anymore to try and improve it (or even at this point, fix it.)"
"The trickle of donations was helpful for sure, and it did cover my costs to at least host the server... I tried to throw ads on there to help alleviate some of that stress too. In the end, not that I’m after money, but it just didn't feel like it was worth my time and effort anymore. I know the tool is used (which is why it was having problems in the first place,) but it was just mentally exhausting trying to maintain it with realistically no reason to other than kindness..."
Pictured: IceBlueFire attempting to go incognito after server problems
All this changed one April morning. IceBlueFire logged in as normal, only to see a message from Chedburn. This short but extremely sweet message was inquiring if he would be interested in receiving some official funding for Torn Stats. To say that this was a welcome offer would be an understatement.
"All I know is that it caught me completely by surprise and I'm beyond grateful."
After one final (hopefully) period of downtime, Torn Stats came back live on April 6th, 2020 with increased server capacity. Of the server upgrades, IceBlueFire said “I shouldn't have any latency issues for the foreseeable future (as long as I don't code like dogs**t anyway)” which is excellent news for all of us because he is usually smart enough to not mess everything up.
Pictured: Usually...
When asked for his thoughts on Torn Stats, Chedburn had the following to say:
"I'm very interested to see what exciting things can be done with Torn's public data, and Tornstats is one of the best examples of this. It's an important part of Torn and should be continued."
That brings us to the present day. When I asked IceBlueFire what his favourite part of the project has been, he spoke of the satisfaction he gets from seeing the sheer number of people using and enjoying his project. He also mentioned that what he learned from developing Torn Stats has helped him in his real-life job, and vice versa, as it pushes him to expand on skills that may otherwise fall to the wayside.
"I am beyond grateful to get this far. I never thought I’d reach this point with a hobby project."
So what does the future hold? Well, all I will say is that you will definitely want to stay tuned, as the future of Torn Stats is looking as bright as the person behind the code.
"Without Torn Stats, I firmly believe that people wouldn't train as hard as they do." - Vulture
"We pretty much use it to it’s fullest capacity. We constantly track member reqs, crimes, competitions and chains with it and require members to join it." - MolonLabe
In the seven years since its creation, Torn Stats has become such a trusted and integral companion to the game that it is difficult to believe it hasn’t always been a part of life in the city. If you were to poll the leaders of Torn’s top factions, you would be hard-pressed to find any that don’t encourage, if not require, their members to sign up to this invaluable tool.
While everyone knows what Torn Stats is - and if you don't, take a look - not many people know the backstory of how the site came to be, or what drives its creator, IceBlueFire, to continue creating and maintaining features that draw in hordes of players. I recently sat down with IBF to pick his brain and to figure out what keeps Torn’s most humble nerd motivated to provide top-notch content in return for nothing but thanks.
Pictured: A common reaction after signing up to Torn StatsThe origins of Torn Stats can be traced back to Milk n Cookies, a faction that merged with Just Fer Assholes to create what is now known as Natural Selection. At the time, IceBlueFire, one of Torn’s longest-serving citizens and the faction’s resident computer whiz, was approached by Myhedin about developing a tool that would track battle stat spies so they could be easily shared amongst their members.
"I kind of took that idea and expanded it as a way to track my own battle stat growth, as well as the growth of the faction's strength. With that structure in mind, and with the intention of making it open to many factions, I designed the personal battle stat history first, followed shortly by faction management, and then the integration of spy storage."
"During that time too, boo was working on something similar for her faction as well...Which allowed me to kind of pick her brain a bit and get ideas for stuff to add to essentially win her away from her own project and use mine instead."
With that, the Torn Stats we all know and love started to take form. It wasn’t always smooth sailing for IceBlueFire while shaping the early version of the website. When asked about the challenges he faced, he lamented how difficult it was to come up with features that would encourage people to sign up and to continue coming back to the website.
After such a collaborative start to the website, it isn’t surprising to know that IceBlueFire had always planned on opening the website to be available to as many people as possible. It may be hard to believe now, but it would be a lie to say that people were clambering over each other to sign up at first.
"I didn't see the point in designing and investing all that time into developing something for just me to use... I wanted to make it worth my time and at least try to get other people to enjoy the stuff I made."
"It wasn't long into the development that I moved [from MnC] to JFK, so many people initially thought it was a ploy for JFK to gain all sorts of information on people. That was the hardest stigma to overturn… But having factions not JFK using it helped, like MnC and TuS. I had a few loud friends that helped push it too."
Pictured: Interestingly, the person who chose these colours claims he never struggled with anything design-wise…
More difficult than that, however, was the task of creating a script that would integrate Torn Stats into Torn. Some of the newer players may not be aware of this, but Torn didn’t always have an API. The original code of Torn Stats was designed to not need it, so there was much more of a reliance on the script to scrape Torn for the necessary data. The text box to submit your stats on the homepage is very much a relic of this. As evidenced when Torn pulls down the API, we take it for granted that this data is now automatically updated daily.
"I found an old script from Conciliator (Don't remember his ID or exact name) who had something from his days in Evo that he developed. With his permission, he gave me a copy of it and I started to butcher it into my own Frankenstein."
"After all the shortfalls of that, and after requesting help from Vinkuun enough times, I eventually just asked if he would be willing to help me and maintain the script himself, for me. With a few conditions, he agreed. After my incompetent attempts at patching and releasing variations of his code, Vinkuun didn't want his name to be tarnished by a bad script, so the condition was that I wasn't allowed to edit the script myself."
Pictured: Luckily, this didn’t happen
IceBlueFire has always strived to stay ahead of the curve when coming up with features he feels will benefit Torn’s player base. At the time when there wasn’t really any alternative to Torn Stats, any new feature that was released just made the website more beneficial to whichever niche of players it was designed for.
It was his forward-thinking that led to him to create one of the first open tools that had an off-site stock tracker. Even before the API was created (coincidentally, by himself, amongst others) he had built this first iteration of a stock tracker using a primitive IRC API that he had found deep within the server. It was, by his estimation, an abandoned project by one of the old developers, and after asking around he got the OK to start using it.
It isn’t a surprise, therefore, to find out that he was also one of the most fervent advocates pushing for Torn to adopt the API many of us now rely on.
"The biggest moment in my time really came when I was pushing for an API (mostly for my own purposes, but also for everyone really), which led to Ched giving the Ok and me setting up a small group of friends and developers (mostly forgey and PMV) to help flesh out ideas and me hosting the original design doc and proof of concept on my server. Ched wrote up the rules, we designed the rest of the page."
"It opened the door to all sorts of creativity (some for better, some for worse...like early mug scripts), but at least most people were on an even playing field now. Of course, that revolutionized my abilities on Torn Stats too. It allowed me to create most of what exists today, with a lot of it being automated. Even if they have their API key entered and get their battle stats updated automatically, a lot of people like to rely on seeing how much they've grown since the last time they pushed that button, but still want consistent data for their graph."
Pictured: What we all wish our stat graphs would do
The most substantial growth in users on the website came when IceBlueFire approached Mauk about a collaboration between Torn Stats and DoctorN. His partnership with Vinkuun had reached the end of its life, so initially, he was only looking for Mauk to help with an alternative to the script that was no longer being developed. Once they were able to mirror the functionality, they started work on the new features that IceBlueFire had been hoping to offer, such as the streamlining of spy and organized crime submissions.
"I approached Mauk and asked if he was interested in working on integrating the two together. He was more than eager to help. He was on the edge of making his own system of sorts, but with me reaching out to him, he was more than happy to not have to rebuild everything for himself."
"At the time, DoctorN was growing, but still a small fish in comparison to what it's become. Turned out to be mutually beneficial to both of us as our user numbers skyrocketed. I think TS was thriving already, but after that, yeah, I think it helped push it to the cornerstone it seems to have become today."
This success did not come without its pitfalls. As the popularity of the site grew, it became more difficult to maintain. At first, these issues were exciting to IceBlueFire, as it meant that the website was gaining traction. If people didn’t see value in the site, they simply would not use it. Legacy code had to be rewritten to optimize performance, servers had to be upgraded, and at times it was frustrating to figure out where the source of the problem laid. As time marched on, the next obvious steps seemed overwhelming.
Pictured: Evidence, as if it were needed, that Torn players love stats and graphs.
After Elimination 2019, the site was plagued by major performance issues. There had been extreme lag, days when the entire site had been unreachable, and the code for certain features had been made obsolete by updates to Torn. From the outset, Torn Stats ran on donations; time donated by IceBlueFire and the others who helped him, money to run the servers donated by extremely generous users. Whenever donations or the minimal ads didn’t cover the cost to run the site, the deficit was covered by IceBlueFire.
It was becoming painfully apparent that the servers could not handle the load. Unfortunately, the next upgrade for the servers was not within reach financially and would have likely still not brought the site up to the necessary capacity.
"I started to question how far I wanted to push the site. The messages were overwhelming, the lag was intense at times, it just didn't seem like it was worth all the stress and effort anymore to try and improve it (or even at this point, fix it.)"
"The trickle of donations was helpful for sure, and it did cover my costs to at least host the server... I tried to throw ads on there to help alleviate some of that stress too. In the end, not that I’m after money, but it just didn't feel like it was worth my time and effort anymore. I know the tool is used (which is why it was having problems in the first place,) but it was just mentally exhausting trying to maintain it with realistically no reason to other than kindness..."
Pictured: IceBlueFire attempting to go incognito after server problems
All this changed one April morning. IceBlueFire logged in as normal, only to see a message from Chedburn. This short but extremely sweet message was inquiring if he would be interested in receiving some official funding for Torn Stats. To say that this was a welcome offer would be an understatement.
"All I know is that it caught me completely by surprise and I'm beyond grateful."
After one final (hopefully) period of downtime, Torn Stats came back live on April 6th, 2020 with increased server capacity. Of the server upgrades, IceBlueFire said “I shouldn't have any latency issues for the foreseeable future (as long as I don't code like dogs**t anyway)” which is excellent news for all of us because he is usually smart enough to not mess everything up.
Pictured: Usually...
When asked for his thoughts on Torn Stats, Chedburn had the following to say:
"I'm very interested to see what exciting things can be done with Torn's public data, and Tornstats is one of the best examples of this. It's an important part of Torn and should be continued."
That brings us to the present day. When I asked IceBlueFire what his favourite part of the project has been, he spoke of the satisfaction he gets from seeing the sheer number of people using and enjoying his project. He also mentioned that what he learned from developing Torn Stats has helped him in his real-life job, and vice versa, as it pushes him to expand on skills that may otherwise fall to the wayside.
"I am beyond grateful to get this far. I never thought I’d reach this point with a hobby project."
So what does the future hold? Well, all I will say is that you will definitely want to stay tuned, as the future of Torn Stats is looking as bright as the person behind the code.
Original article
Comments
Post a Comment