BattleGrounds Player Tracker

1. What is it?

The BattleGrounds Tracker takes logs from The Battle Grounds and other Half-Life Modification Dedicated Servers, extracts player information, and enters it into a database. The result is what you see before you. The site can be used to track player's activities, their aliases, their IPs and SteamIDs, and is an invaluable tool to keep track of cheaters.

2. Where do logs come from?

The logs come from The BattleGrounds League (BGL) match logs, regular server logs, and people like yourself. Anyone with FTP access to their server can help contribute to the BattleGrounds Player Tracker.

3. How can I add my own logs?

There are two ways:

1) If you have a lot of logs from the past (doesn't matter how old they are), you should get in contact and send them to me. It's best if you zip them all up into one file. Please refer to #9 on this page for contact information.

2) If you have a server now and you want to begin helping the project, you can log remotely to the Tracker by adding these lines to your server.cfg file (or whatever default cfg file you are using):

log on
logaddress_add log.battlegroundsleague.com 6666

That's all you have to do! Your server will automatically log to the Tracker and it will take care of the rest.

4. Won't you be able to see my rcon password and other sensitive information?

Yes, I could if I wanted to. However, the whole system is automated, I never have to actually look at any of the logs. In fact, after they are parsed into data that is usable by the Tracker, they are deleted to free space on the server. Chances are the logs will be parsed and deleted and I won't even notice.

5. Why are some results highlighted in red?

Generally, this mean the player is a cheater. Specifically, it means the player is currently banned from the BattleGrounds League (BGL). For more information on why that player is banned, please refer to the BGL Ban List.

6. How can I get someone marked as a cheater?

The only banlist the BG Tracker currently uses is the BGL Ban List. If you want to get someone marked as a cheater on the BG Tracker, they will have to be marked as a cheater on the BGL Ban List. Luckily, the The BattleGrounds League (BGL) bans cheaters regardless of whether or not they played in the league. Anyone who can be proven a cheater in BG will be placed on the BGL Ban List.

However, there must be proof for the BGL to ban anyone. A demo of the player cheating is necessary, but not always sufficient. You should type the command "status" in the console after you begin recording the demo. This will log player information within the demo which can be used later to make sure we are banning the right person. In addition, you may include screenshots and any other evidence, but the demo is an absolute must. Please refer to #9 on this page for contact information.

7. Why are some results highlighted in yellow?

This means the player is listed on Jackhammer's Lamer List (JLL). It is an independently run list for server admins to keep exploiters, impersonators, racists, porn sprayers, and general "lamers" off their servers. It does not nessesarily mean they are a cheater, but if you want to only allow clean players in your clan for example, you may want to use caution. In order to get someone added to the JLL, you have to contact Jackhammer. You should post on the official JLL thread on the bgmod.com forums, located here. The official website of JLL (with the complete list) can be found here (Internet Explorer Only).

8. How was the tracker made?

First, logs are collected by a program listening on port 5555. The program is written in PHP and runs from the command line on an old Pentium2 400Mhz machine running Slackware Linux. Game servers with the appropriate logaddress_add entry will automatically broadcast log messages via UDP to my Linux machine. The program listening to messages determines the address of the sender, strips off unneeded header information, and writes the line to a log file locally. A new log file is started every time a log file is started on the remote game server, so logs on the game server and logs on my Linux machine will be identical.

Next, a parsing program runs once a day, automated using cron. This parser is also written in PHP and runs from the command line. The parser recursively searches through the specified log directory and reads all logs, taking out all nessesary player information, and building an array of relevent data. Date is always noted, as well as IP address (if available), SteamID, and name. Any time one of the player's attributes changes, it is marked as information to be logged. After parsing a log, the parser both sends all relevent data to a local and remote MySQL Database. After this is done, the log file that was just read is deleted from the system. If log files end up taking too much space over the course of a day, the parser will be set to run two or more times daily.

Lastly, the frontend- this site. This site is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database. The code here to search for information within the database is very simple, the least complex out of all the Tracker code.

9. Who made this site?

I, Slash, coded and maintain this site. I also run the BattleGrounds League (BGL). Inspiration for this site came from the many TFC Trackers, but all the code that makes this site possible was made from scratch. You can find me in #bgl on GameSurge or QuakeNet IRC Networks.