crossfire usage stats

[cavesomething]

so I happened to pass by the debian popcon (popularity contest) resultshttp://popcon.debian.org/main/by_vote , and of course I decided to take a look at the stats for everyone's favourite packages....

The results are somewhat odd.

Code: Select all

#rank name                            inst  vote   old   recent  
4402  crossfire-maps                    52    25    19     1  
4718  crossfire-server                  36    22    13     1  
5362  crossfire-client                  80    17    60     2    
5867  crossfire-client-gtk              67    14    51     1  
6712  crossfire-client-x11              31    10    20     0
6984  crossfire-edit                    27     9    18     0    
for comparison:
2697  wesnoth                          211    60   114    37
5340  wesnoth-server                    35    18    15     1   
8707  wesnoth-editor                    49     5    39     4    
1772  freeciv-data                     551   129   361    27 
1787  freeciv-client-gtk               512   127   357    27
2077  freeciv-server                   532    97   419    15 
5530  freeciv-client-xaw3d              63    16    44     3 

I picked those two for comparison since they are two games which use a client-server architecture, and which are complex games that take a long time to play (like CF). Wesnoth is similar in style to CF, and has a map editor included in debian. Freeciv has an outdated client that uses a antique widget set in addition to the one that is actually used (like CF), it has a windows port (like CF) and uses GTK (like CF).

Inst are the number of installed copies, recent are those installed recently, vote are those that are actually being used.

First thing that leaps out (to my mind at least) is that cfclient still seems to have some users, this is somewhat baffling to me....

Likewise crossedit still seems to have 9 active users running debian alone. Allowing that one of these may be mikeeusa (if he has this package installed), this still leaves another 8 people who seem to be using crossedit.

final thing is the server useage, cf has more votes for server than it does for clients. This seems odd, by comparison freeciv and wesnoth have about a 4:3 and 3:1 ratio respectively.

T'would be interesting to hear any debian user's comments on this, which of the crossfire packages they have installed and why....

[Aaron]

well, now that i think of it, there is a themeing bug i noticed in the gtk client under *nix (gentoo). It doesnt seem to pick up the gtk theme im using. i find that rather odd, and annoying. is this just a me issue, or everyone?

[edit]
main question: maybe they voted for the wrong thing by accident? when i think of crossfire, i go hmm, cfclient. but i still type gcfclient. maybe they just saw the first crossfire option, and voted? or mikeeusa(mlab) trying to play with the stats?

[Mith]

well, i am using debian and crossfire... but not debian crossfire packages.

comments on these stats:
people install crossfire server+maps and client,
use the debian client and find it unstable, uninstall it, download cvs, compile and forget about the debian client builds (which are not very often updated iirc)

And while they are playing on-line, they also forget about the crossfire server+maps, only auto-updates them. Same applies to the editor.

[cavesomething]

yes, this is another issue, are the debian packages even maintained? unstable seems to only have 1.7.0.

[Leaf]

I'm using an experimental debian gtk client
http://faq.eqenchanters.org/index.php?a ... artlang=en

I haven't used any of the other debian packages (I download from CVS), and I didn't know about this vote feature either.

[cavesomething]

popcon is a package that reads the last accessed times of files in each package to determine if they were used in any given week.

It therefore records usage, not preferences.

It only does this with those who have the popcon package installed however....