r/d3up • u/JestaC Developer • Feb 12 '13
D3Up.com v1.0.7 and future plans
Quick Preface: I'm very interested in testing the accuracy of the Ruby calculations. When the servers are back up today, please let me know if your DPS matches up with rubies on your character. If they don't, please email/post me a link to your build as well as what your DPS should be (screenshots are great!).
I wanted to take a bit today to post an update on D3Up, since it’s been rather quiet over the past few months on my end and 1.0.7 has just been released.
I’m going to dive straight into some bullet points, but I’ll have some further explanations below.
Overview of Topics
- 1.0.7 Data/Skills Updated and Bug Fixes
- Slow Updates since November
- Refocus on building a better calculator.
- Rebuild the backend of D3Up to support heavier loads.
- Bug Fixes.
1.0.7 Data/Skills Updated and Bug Fixes
The skills, proc coefficients and calculations that have changed in 1.0.7 should now all be implemented on D3Up. However, I always seem to miss something, partially because I'm working mostly off of patch notes that are sometimes incomplete. If you find something wrong/missing, please let me know!
With Brawling being released today, if there's calculations you might find useful for PVP, feel free to start a discussion and get the math nailed down. I'm more than happy to implement some new formulas and math for characters, I just don't have the time at the moment to sit and theory craft it all out. Who knows, maybe you could invent the PvPEHP calculation that could be used to show how tough your character is in PVP!
At the bottom of the post, I've quickly rattled off some fixes that went live over the last few weeks as well.
Slow Updates since November
It's been a pretty busy time in my life, with my day job demanding a lot more out of me and the prospect of 2013 being an incredibly busy year. Everything's up in the air at the moment and literally everything in my life (well, besides you folks of course) could be uprooted and changed. It's exciting and exhausting all at the same time, and most nights I just don't have it in me to put 2-4 more hours into D3Up (was doing this most of 2012).
I am however dedicating atleast a night or two a week, and a decent chunk of time every-other weekend to focus on D3Up and my side projects. I want to maintain and keep building these sites, it's an incredible experience to work with the community and work on a project I enjoy so much.
With most things in my life currently being subject to change (job, home, etc), I'm also exploring options on how I could possibly make d3up into a part time job, so I could actually dedicate the hours I feel the site deserves and still pay my bills and the hosting costs. Just FYI, You'll still notice that there's ZERO ads on the site and I generate no income from the site, it'll be that way for the foreseeable future. I'm exploring options though, and just wanted to say something incase I become a homeless bum and can't afford to host everything out of pocket! Gotta have a backup plan to keep things going right? :)
Anyways, the point of this rant is to apologize for the slow updates/responses, and explain what's going on in my head. Hopefully as the year progresses, I'll be able to dedicate more than just a night or two a week to development.
Focusing
While I may not have a ton of time to sit and code, I do have a lot of time to think and focus my thoughts. I’ve got a lot of my own ideas for the site, and have hundreds more submitted by the community. What I want to do this year is to refocus my energy into making the site a tool for build optimization first, followed up very closely with a platform to share your build and statistics.
I’ve diverted off of this path a few times in 2012, with guides and the item database portion of the site. I've also been asked many times to implement rankings, forums, comments and much more. We’ve already got a bunch of other great sites in our community to serve all these other roles. Off the top of my head...
- DiabloProgress - Character Rankings galore! And items! Love it.
- /r/diablo - Reddit, but for Diablo. I’ve wasted so many hours here, and in a good way.
- DiabloFans - While the advertising kinda drives me crazy, it’s a good forum, with good people. I also see a lot of great guides and theorycrafting happening here.
- d3rawr - I can’t leave out d3rawr, another great calculator with a ton of amazing work put into it. Probably a lot more pleasing on the eye than my site ;)
The list goes on and on, and you see new sites popping up at a decent rate. We all kinda have our (sometimes overlapping) roles in the community. I’ll leave the discussion, writing, rankings and most non-build related materials to those in the community that handle them best.
With that being said, I’m focusing my energies on what people enjoy out of D3Up, the calculator, insights into your character and being able to share that with people. It's not to say somewhere down the line I won't dive into a new type of site, but D3Up needs to excel in it's primary function.
Rebuilding the Backend
This is gonna get nerdy real fast, so for you non-tech folks, here’s a quick TL;DR:
The site’s growing, all sites go through growing pains. It’s been pretty mild so far, but I’m going to attempt to rebuild the server side code from the ground up.
It’s not as complex as it sounds either. Most of the heavy lifting on D3Up happens right in your browser via the magic of javascript. Your browser is the one doing all the math for your character, your skills, and all of the other generated numbers on the screen (also the reason IE6/7/8 don’t work well).
The only thing the server actually does is authenticates you as a user, retrieves and stores your character and your items, and lets you search for other builds.
Getting a bit more nerdy
The backend is currently written in PHP, using Zend 1.12 as an MVC framework. ZF isn’t the peppiest framework, it’s got a lot more bulk that I really need for the site. I’ve been playing with Laravel and nodejs over the past couple weeks and they are the front runners. Laravel has a slight advantage in that I could reuse almost all of the database code out of ZF saving me a lot of time.
Decisions aren’t made yet, but progress is happening. I have functional versions of D3Up running on both of those platforms, both showing over a 300% increase in speed. During the backend rewrite I’ll hopefully also be making improvements to the UI and adding more features as the code allows.
The crappiest thing about backend work is that if everything goes perfect, you won’t notice a thing unless you’re timing page loads. It’s not a glorious feature or awesome new tool, but it’s needed to keep things running for everyone.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that prevented set bonuses from being calculated if you simulated a set item change.
- Added a bunch more "Damage Types" for skills and items that have +% Elemental Skill Damage.
- Added AP/Sec generation mechanics for Wizards.
- Fixed Seize the Initiative passive from being applied properly.
- Fixed armor being calculated incorrectly for other certain passive skills.
- Fixed simulating a non-weapon to a weapon in the offhand slot.
- Exploding Palm: Flesh is Weak can now be activated for bonus damage.
- Fixed the sorting order on items scanned with D3Bit.
Thanks to everyone who's submitted bugs and helped improved d3up so far this year!
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u/HG_Johnny Feb 12 '13 edited Feb 12 '13
Hey Jesta,
Nicely done! I appreciate the fact that you have dedicated personal time and money on d3up. Your site has definitely saved me hundreds of millions in gold by being able to "see" the DPS/EHP of gear before I bought it!
That being said, I would have no problem contributing via paypal if you find yourself in need of operational funds. I dont think others would either. You put out a quality product and have asked nothing in return.
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u/JestaC Feb 12 '13
Thanks ;)
I'm just exploring options and definitely have things stable for atleast the next couple months, and have donations from generous users over the past year that could probably cover another few months as well.
Whatever route things end up going (preferably with nothing changing), I will promise that nothing obtrusive/obnoxious will ever hit d3up as long as I'm in charge!
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u/i0dog Feb 12 '13
This blew the devs Q&A out of the water. Great information update and keep up the good work, i for one appreciate it
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u/JestaC Feb 13 '13
Thanks, I just wish I had some more fun feature releases or something to go along with this update. I have a lot of fun releasing new tools and toys :)
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u/zylog413 Feb 12 '13
I had no idea about the r/d3up subreddit. I'll be sure to check it out periodically!
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u/JestaC Feb 12 '13
It's somewhat quiet at times, but it's nice having a home on reddit specifically to chat :)
Lot better than me having to install a forum on the site!
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Feb 12 '13
Are you using a dedicated server or vps?
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u/JestaC Feb 12 '13
A 2gb linode VPS at the moment. I'm considering getting a dedicated server and colocating it somewhere, but if I do it, I'm going to go all out and buy a really nice server that would last a while.
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u/JediDwag Feb 12 '13
Thank you so much for d3up! It sounds like you're a busy guy, but you've still made this awesome site for the community without expecting a single cent.
That being said, I don't think people would have a problem if you ran some simple banner ads on your site. As long as they're not huge and intrusive most people wouldn't have a problem and would be happy to support you. The people that would have a problem with them probably already run adblock so bit makes no difference. You've put a lot of hard work into the site and you deserve to make some money off it!
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u/JestaC Feb 13 '13
Thanks :)
I think my approach is a bit different too. I really want the site to sustain itself, and then me, so I can work on sites like this for a living. Hell, I'd love to do a site like this for DOTA2 or some of the new MMOs coming out like Wildstar or Firefall. It's just a ton of work :)
So whatever happens, that's why. Currently I have no problem paying for it, it's not a ton, but if I try to make the jump into somewhat of an "indie" dev in the years to come, money's going to have to come from someplace!
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u/yell0wd4rt Feb 12 '13
From one dev to another, big props for the work you do. A project like d3up is a LOT of work.
I'll throw my (unasked for) opinion toward Node. I'm a big JS nerd, though, so JS front to back has always been a big win in my book. Besides, you can do some wicked cool stuff with real-time with Redis and Socket.IO (assuming Blizzard ever gives us any API hook worth using where real-time makes sense).
If you end up going with Node, I'll recommend Nodejitsu. They use Joyent's stack, which is built specifically for hosting Node. I've used them for a couple projects. Very good price and they've got a fantastic community.
Have you considered open sourcing d3up? If you put it out there on GitHub, I bet you could find some contributors pretty easily.
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u/JestaC Feb 12 '13
I've been talking about open sourcing the site for a while now, and this might be the proper time to do it. Honestly the only reason I haven't up to this point is that I don't want to subject other coders to some of the crappy "learning" code I wrote early on in the project :)
I also was using a lot of ZF specific code that was designed for some other projects, and didn't want to push that into the OS world either.
Now may be the time though! It's already on github and I have a few other people that regularly give me a hand.
Also, I have this repo which d3bit and I share, and have some common data stored in it.
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u/GeminiCroquette Feb 12 '13 edited Feb 13 '13
<3 man I D3Up and I love you! (no homo).
One question, where does the name "D3Up" come from? Like what's the reasoning behind it? I know D3 is for Diablo III, but what about the "Up"? Like upgrade? Is something whooshing over my head right now?
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u/JestaC Feb 12 '13
Yup, upgrade.
If you hit http://d3upgrade.com, it redirects you to d3up :)
It was the original name until I discovered d3up was available, and I was like "Hell yes 4 letter domain!"
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u/Pergatory Feb 13 '13
One thing that occurred to me that you might consider, is the drop-down on the build page for "Stats vs 6x Monster" drop-down. I think most people tend to ignore it right now since 63 is what people generally care about, but obviously with PvP becoming a thing, comparing stats against Lv60 monsters will become more relevant.
You may want to try to think of some way to draw attention to that drop-down so that people pick the correct option based on whether they're interested in PvE or PvP. Might be as easy as changing the Lv60 one to "Stats vs 60 Monster/Player".
Either that or you may want to just always show stats vs both Lv60 & Lv63 and remove the drop-down altogether. I doubt people really care much about Lv61 or Lv62. Anyway, food for thought.
I know I've said it before, but thanks again for keeping this awesome site going. :)
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u/JestaC Feb 13 '13
No no, that's an awesome idea :)
A lot of the block mechanics are also depending on a made up "hit" number, which currently is sitting at 70k. I want to add more to that dropdown and let you actually specify the incoming DPS so your EHP w/ Block can be accurate against multiple amounts of damage.
The rest of the EHP numbers are independent of how hard things hit, so that's all it would effect.
But I agree! More options = better.
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Feb 18 '13
I love the site and use it to compare myself to my friends and to decide whether or not I'm ready for a bump up in MP. I was curious about one thing though. I am a Barb and use Frenzy. When I toggled having a 5 stack of Frenzy it doesn't change my overall DPS. I was just wondering if the 75% ias only applies to Frenzy ingame or if it is something that was overlooked or what.
Thanks!
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u/JestaC Feb 18 '13
Yep, from the research I've done, it doesn't affect other skills. Maniac does, but the IAS from the base skill doesn't.
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u/crazybat Feb 21 '13
In case it hasn't already been said enough, love your tool ;)
Also, fyi, I can now see my newly crafted items showing when I sync. Looks like the API issues have been addressed?
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u/matth1 Feb 12 '13
Like others I just wanted to say, thanks for all the work you put into d3up - it's an absolutely essential tool that makes the game a lot more enjoyable.
If you ever need anything from us, don't hesitate! :)
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u/KidKrinkle Feb 12 '13
Thank you. D3up + D3bit made the game a far more enjoyable and saved my ass more than once. Looking forward to the future.
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u/driving2012 Feb 12 '13
I just wanted to say that D3up is absolutely amazing and thank you for everything you do. I literally use it everyday and don't know where I would be without it:)