Yet Another Hatchery

[osmarks]

CURRENTLY UNAVAILBLE

See notice on site or my latest post for details.

 

Yet Another Hatchery

A modern, open-source hatchery. Visit it here.

 

It's a hatchery. You put dragons in it. They then get views. Hopefully they will then hatch or grow. Also, be nice and keep a tab open so that others can get views (though I have no clue if it still works in a background tab or not).

 

Features:

• You can only input by code. Is this an actual feature? This is unlikely to change unless my request for an API key comes back okay and I spend ages complicating the code. Also, I find it more convenient (when I'm only putting in one egg, anyway).
• Sick dragons (and ones outside of safe view limits) will be hidden from the hatchery until they're not sick. Frozen hatchlings, fogged things, adults and dead eggs will also be removed, though obviously all (hopefully) hatcheries do this. This is checked every 5 minutes - if there's much more traffic, I may have to increase this interval to stop ridiculous lag every 5 minutes.
• Fast refreshing which doesn't mess with the displayed egg images, so you can enjoy snooping on people's eggs and keep viewing. It will also view eggs whilst you're on the manage dragons and about pages.
• Mostly runs client-side, and so uses (slightly) less bandwidth than most others.
• A bit mobile-friendly!
• Cats. Yes, really.

 

Coming Soon:

• A really fast autorefresher for NDing. I have no clue how to stop misuse, though.
• Code interesting-ness checker, if there's demand.
• Prioritization of eggs/hatchlings based on their need for more views (will probably only happen if it gets significant traffic and displaying everything doesn't work out).
• Automatic notifications when eggs are sick (this is kind of out of scope, though, and would take ages, so don't count on it).
• Someone has suggested "egg cycler" image links (which apparently EATW had) which would display a random egg from the hatchery when viewed. This may happen - again, don't count on it.
• Add multiple codes at once, comma/space-separated - should be quite easy to do.

 

Feel free to make suggestions or report bugs; I aim to respond within a day. If you have any ideas for other useful fansite-y stuff, they might be added too. If you know Elm and/or JS, please do submit pull requests if you see issues you can fix. For emergency fixes, I am available on Discord (and email, which I never check).

 

Currently, as traffic is low, this is not suitable as the only thing to use on your eggs, though it's good to boost views if you have lots of unique views. Also, it's probably filled with bugs, given that it was started on last week and brought to a usable-enough state yesterday. It has been tested by users on the unofficial DC discord, though, and all the bugs noticed by them are now (hopefully) fixed. The amount of views given probably will also need fine-tuning.

 

JS (for making the frontend work at all) and a modern browser (for fetch, which supports no-cors HTTP requests, which is necessary for my fast viewing system) are required.

 

Available support badges (BBCode for them may be provided later if you can't just paste them and add links to the hatchery yourself):

https://dc.osmarks.tk/userbar-1.png

https://dc.osmarks.tk/userbar-2.png

https://dc.osmarks.tk/userbar-3.png

https://dc.osmarks.tk/userbar-4.png

https://dc.osmarks.tk/logo.png

https://dc.osmarks.tk/logo-tealbackground.png

(Credits to (͠≖ ͜ʖ͠≖)/Pikachu2204 and Don't Hug Me. I'm Scared/EternalAether of the DC discord for those and the logo onsite)
 

 

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by osmarks

[pinkgothic]

2 hours ago, osmarks said:

(though I have no clue if it still works in a background tab or not)

Looks good.

 

That said, some advice for Chrome users (for any fansite, really): Visit chrome://discards/ and Toggle the tab so it isn't auto-discarded. This is a per-tab setting, not a per-site setting, so you'll have to do that every time you want to give views. (Alternatively, you can visit chrome://flags/ and turn off Automatic tab discarding altogether, but this means Chrome won't clean up other background tabs for you if you haven't visited them for a long time.)

[osmarks]

After a few dragons got sick, I've implemented a safety thing to hopefully stop them getting sick in the first place. That took out 40 of the ones in there, which is slightly worrying.

 

EDIT: clarification: I mean that 40 dragons were removed by the safety checks, not that 40 had died, which would be very bad.

Edited September 8, 2018 by osmarks

[Ruby Eyes]

I don't know much about web coding, but since @pinkgothic already looked at it:

 

What is caniuse.com and why does the site use it?

(just asking because all I see is 2 URLs as long as I let noscript block dc.osmarks.tk - dragcave.net and caniuse.com)

Edited September 5, 2018 by Ruby Eyes

[osmarks]

1 minute ago, Ruby Eyes said:

I don't know much about web coding, but since pinkgothic already looked at it:

 

What is caniuse.com and why does the site use it?

(just asking because all I see is 2 URLs as long as I let noscript block dc.osmarks.tk - dragcave.net and caniuse.com)

I have set it up so that if your browser does not support an important JS feature it will link you to that to view a browser compatibility table.

[Soulsborne]

I prefer adding the scroll via name instead of putting in single codes. Do you plan to implement this feature or not? (overall the site seems to work, will test a bit more over the next days)

[osmarks]

13 minutes ago, Soulsborne said:

I prefer adding the scroll via name instead of putting in single codes. Do you plan to implement this feature or not? (overall the site seems to work, will test a bit more over the next days)

That's detailed above. I am waiting on API access.

 

EDIT: Good news! You can now submit/delete multiple dragons at once - put their codes in the box separated by spaces.

Edited September 5, 2018 by osmarks

[osmarks]

Unfortunately, it is unavailable, possibly forever, because (according to an email):

Thank you for your request to access the Dragon Cave API from host dc.osmarks.tk. 
At this time, your request could not be granted, for the following reason: You have, through your own admission on the forums, done the exact thing that got EATW banned from the API.
This may be a non-permanent issue; feel free to re-submit your request after correcting any issue(s) listed above.
Thanks, T.J. L

and presumably due to this my server and computer (yes, I shouldn't have a server on the same IP as my computer, whatever) can no longer access DC. Whether this is due to sickness checking, scraping, or using EATW's approximation for optimal view count I know not, but oh well. Due to going against the unwritten rules of DC (yes, this is why I was complaining about ridiculous T&C issues) this hatchery is now nonfunctional. Service may be restored if I actually get some notification about what exactly the problem is and undoing it will not make the whole thing pointless. This was at least a fun learning experience for me - I got experience writing complex webapps.

 

Would a polite "hello, please stop" not have been okay? Also, I was under the impression that EATW shut down due to viewbombing, so I'm not entirely sure why it's talking about their API access being revoked...

The text at the bottom is quite funny, though.

 

Another EDIT: Someone on the discord didn't know what scraping was. This is probably common, so I'll explain: you can access DC data via the API, which is designed for access by automated stuff and uses less bandwidth, or "scraping" - downloading pages and extracting the data from them - this is generally worse, but can be done without API access and allows me to get extra stuff the API won't say, like sickness, and also avoids the somewhat weird design of the API.

Edited September 6, 2018 by osmarks

[Aalbiel]

I also thought EATW had been shut down due to viewbombing? This is confusing.

[osmarks]

3 minutes ago, Aalbiel said:

I also thought EATW had been shut down due to viewbombing? This is confusing.

Either:

• It was shut down due to viewbombing for a bit but couldn't come up again due to API access.
• They just used scraping for ages.
• There's some weird confusing conspiracy and the posts will quickly be vanished.
• Something else?

Edited September 6, 2018 by osmarks

[HeatherMarie]

EATW had issues with TJ and issues with blatantly going against the T/C. I know nothing about their API access but I do know they were not allowed to advertise in this fansite section because of those issues. If you are using code or coding strategies or whatever that EATW used, chances are you are doing something that shouldn't be done. From what you have said in this thread about sickness-checking and 'safety margins', it does sound like you might be doing something to try to calculate what stats are needed or what stats won't lead to sickness, which would be in violation of this:

 

Reverse Engineering

Users of the site agree not to reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to derive any processes or formulas used by the site’s internal calculations.

 

This is all just guessing on my part of course, I know absolutely nothing about coding or APIs or whatever, but that's what it sounds like to me.

[Confused Cat]

Didn't AOND temporarily lose API access because of their sickness check? The API doesn't provide information about sickness, so you'd have to parse the actual HTML page to find out, which is not allowed. (I can't find this in the TOS, but I'm quite sure I read it somewhere. Possibly in the forums. Or maybe in the API documentation?)

 

EATW on the other hand most likely still had API access when the viewbombing started. (Otherwise their inbred checker and possibly other features would not have worked.)

Could @TJ09 have accidentally written EATW instead of AOND?

 

 

[Ruby Eyes]

That could be it. 4 letter words and all

But yeah, hatcheries trying to be too smart won't go well with TJ.

[osmarks]

Then this weird and slightly ridiculous policy should be documented somewhere. And involve, say, warnings.

 

I doubt anyone cares much, but the optimal view stuff is actually from archived pages of EATW - I filled in the missing stuff with guesswork then twiddled the numbers a bit when a few hatchlings were sick.

[Fuzzbucket]

On 9/7/2018 at 7:04 AM, Confused Cat said:

Didn't AOND temporarily lose API access because of their sickness check? The API doesn't provide information about sickness, so you'd have to parse the actual HTML page to find out, which is not allowed. (I can't find this in the TOS, but I'm quite sure I read it somewhere. Possibly in the forums. Or maybe in the API documentation?)

 

EATW on the other hand most likely still had API access when the viewbombing started. (Otherwise their inbred checker and possibly other features would not have worked.)

Could @TJ09 have accidentally written EATW instead of AOND?

 

 

 

No. EATW was indeed shut down by its owner over the viewbombing. But it was banned from advertising here for the issue mentioned by TJ - and for the owner's distinctly cavalier attitude to the rules in posts. It did have API access when the bombing started.

 

AOND did recently have issues with the sickness mechanic - but that was part of a revamp there, and bbik took sickness out as it wouldn't fix, while they were still working on the stats and other things that went pearshaped recently. It has never (well, not in my time !) been banned here.

 

And the reference by TJ is presumable to the link in this post:

 

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by Fuzzbucket

[osmarks]

@Fuzzbucket If it was only banned from advertising, how come the email I got mentions an API ban? This is confusing.

Edited September 8, 2018 by osmarks

[Fuzzbucket]

I assume that EATW already HAD API access and when it was removed, found a way to work around that from info they already had.

 

But you now know what the issue is - the EATW info you used. So you know what you need to do if you what your site to run.

[osmarks]

3 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I assume that EATW already HAD API access and when it was removed, found a way to work around that from info they already had.

 

But you now know what the issue is - the EATW info you used. So you know what you need to do if you what your site to run.

That's not actually confirmed, there's been basically no communication, and if I took automatic safety removal out it would defeat half the point and probably cause sickness because mine runs on very fast viewing cycles.

Edited September 8, 2018 by osmarks

[Fuzzbucket]

TJ has told you what you don't get to use. It's up to you to find another way. Other hatcheries manage without it. He said "on your own admission on the forum," and you had quoted the EATW script.

[osmarks]

1 minute ago, Fuzzbucket said:

TJ has told you what you don't get to use. It's up to you to find another way. Other hatcheries manage without it. He said "on your own admission on the forum," and you had quoted the EATW script. 

That's a bit vague - I also mention automated sickness checking among other things.

And sure, they do manage fine, but this sort of thing is probably quite helpful for, say, hatching ER eggs, and does reduce the need for stuff like separate ERs and regular egg rooms which are used to get around it.

It just seems a bit weird to go around shutting down fansites without warning because they happen to do something you disagree with which makes players' lives slightly easier.

(also also, technically, the script is not EATW's - it's mine, based on their data, with a few guesses for parts not listed, though this is mostly irrelevant)

[Fuzzbucket]

You used their data - which TJ objected to. And he has every right to shut down a site which does not stick to his ToC.

 

All the fan sites carry the risk of sickness. It is up to us as players to keep an eye on what we put in there. And there are all sorts of ways to hatch ER eggs quickly. Email TJ to find out exactly what you may or may not do if you still aren't clear.

[osmarks]

I respect that he is perfectly allowed to break sites he doesn't like regardless of their T&C-following-ness (I can't exactly read the T&C now, in any case, except on my phone's internet connection). I cannot respect his lack of clarity and lack of warnings, however.

 

You don't particularly carry much risk of sickness with existing fansites as long as you don't get viewbombed and put eggs in when they're somewhat lower-time. I have attempted to make hatching lower-time eggs a bit easier using fast viewing, but that turned out to be kind of unsafe without some sort of maximum view checking, so I used some data from EATW found by someone on the discord, filled in missing data based on guesswork, then twiddled it a bit. I can't really see the problem.

 

TJ09 has been mentioned here, and surely knows that this thread exists, given that to complain about its contents they must have read it, but is ignoring my queries in it.

[Fuzzbucket]

No doubt a mod will pick up in the end.

[osmarks]

1 minute ago, Fuzzbucket said:

No doubt a mod will pick up in the end.

Trouble is that they tend to not know exactly what TJ09 wants either.

[Fuzzbucket]

They have his ear. And he has told you that the script you were using wasn't OK. Try changing it and showing it to him first ?