[EN] Latest Updates and Status Report

Day 3,200, 06:09 • Published in Germany Germany • by Master_rg
Table of Contents
0. Intro
1. Battle Watcher and Player Stats Update
2. Company Calculator
3. Basic Stuff about the unofficial eRepublik API
4. Issues with AdBlocker
5. Next steps and future


0. Intro

Hello citizen,

as I hate to spam the shoutbox with small updates, I want to give you a short summary of the latest progress of eRepublik-Deutschland.de

Some players mentioned that there aren't that many new tools like in the past and also that there aren't many visible improvements of the current tools. Even though a look into the changelog shows, that there is still a lot of work done, I would like summarize the most important stuff in this article. 

In case you hate to read, feel free to close this article 🙂


1. Battle Watcher and Player Stats Update

One of the most important things is (or was) the refactoring of the Battle Watcher. As eRepublik didn't give us access to the Battle Heroes of both sides of a battle (after a round has finished), we weren't able to show you the correct Battle Heroes in certain circumstances.

This also lead to the issue, that we couldn't really display the latest BH- or CH Medals of a player, like the good old Battle-Watcher did it in the past, as we couldn't guarantee that it's the correct BH / CH.

Long story short: Thanks to the latest battle update (thank you Plato) we are now able to gather all these information. Due to this update we also did a first refactoring of our Battle Watcher, which took quite some time BUT it was worth it (at least in my eyes):

- Battle Watcher loads faster
- We reduced the rendering time ~20%
- We reduced the code ~30%
- We reduced the serverload ~15%
- We display the correct BH and CH
- We are supporting Sky Battles

But, of course, that can't be everything, right? `What about the Player Stats` you ask? 

You remember the BH and CH list of a player I mentioned before? 
They made it into the player statistics some minutes ago.

Just visit the playerstats of a player (e.g. this one), scroll to the bottom until you see the History section, and choose Battle Hero or Campaign Hero. There you will find the latest 100 BH and CH Medals of the specific player.

But what if the battle isn't finished yet? 
No need to worry, you also see the current BHs and CHs of a player even if a round or a battle isn't finished yet, but: They are highlighted red.

So in case you don't like a player and want to steal his or her BH / CH Medal: You are now able to keep track of them easily.

However, we also have a small downside: We can't update battles before battle 84190 as older battles don't support the new battle-console feature. But at least we got that feature for new battles after ~1 year of development *yay* 😃

In case you find bugs: Don't hesitate to send me a message or post a comment below.

All this was possible due to the latest update of eRepublik - so sometimes Plato seems to listen (..to the right feedback.. hi @ Maverick Pack 😛).


2. Company Calculator

With the latest economy update of eRepublik the current company calculator became more or less obsolete: Of course you are still able to use it but it isn't that handy as it was before and it doesn't support regions and the new aircraft industry.

Even though I knew that this is also a needed tool for some of you (especially right after the introduction of the new industry and the region stuff), I wasn't able to update it as it is really a bigger project and sometimes I'm still needed somewhere else besides eRepublik (but at least you got the regioninformation which should help you a lot).

However: You won't see an update of this tool within the next week, but maybe in two or three weeks. 

I am planning to create a completely new company calculator which supports different Holdings and Regions. So instead of manually adding and calculating everything for your 200 companies and 10 holdings you are able to create different Holdings, save them, and play with the values like pollution and taxes.

Basically it's just like in eRepublik - (even though it isn't as fancy as in-game.. but at least you don't have to pay if you move or assign a company 😛).

So I hope you see that this is a bigger project, but I'm sure it will help a lot of people when it's finished. In case you got more ideas or wishes about that tool: Feel free to leave some feedback and I'll try to implement it.


3. Basic stuff about the unofficial eRepublik API

This is just to keep some of you informe😛 Right now we got more than 60 active API users (and some of them are already hitting their rate limits from time to time). It's nice to see that there's still an interest in an eRepublik API and that many people are creating their own tools, apps, websites or spreadsheets with it.

In the following days I am going to add an interface for organizations which will give you a basic overview like the owned cc and gold (including the monetary marked).

Furthermore I am also planning to unify the API data with the data used on the normal website. Long story short: Both systems will show the same data in future. What that means? Well, that means you get also access to statistics with the help of this API - so you don't need to create your own database related stuff and think of update intervals etc.

Basically everything should become quite easier for you in future, however: Some returned values of the API may change due to this bigger update, so please check the documentation regularly in order to prevent problems with your apps. 

In case you never heard of our API and you want to take a look at it: Check out this link to see what I am talking about.

Last but not least: If you need access to data which is not provided by the API don't hesitate to send me a message, I will then try to implement it in a future update.


4. Issues with AdBlocker

As I mentioned in an article some weeks ago, we are partly blocking AdBlockers. Even though the created script works as intended, some users have issues and see an infomessage even though they disabled their AdBlocker on the website.

I did some investigations about this issue and created some tipps in case you are experiencing this problem:
- In case you are using ScriptBlock or NoScript, make sure to allow "Google.com" and "doubleclick.net"
- Depending on the used AdBlocker, make sure to allow the websites mentioned above on "eRepublik-Deutschland.de"
- In some cases your Anti-Virus program is acting as an AdBlocker and blocks Google AdSense (like Avast and Avira do)

In most cases we are able to fix the problem by referring to the 3 points mentioned above - so in case you got problems: Feel free to try it and leave some feedback in the comments.

It's also an important topic as the Anti-AdBlock script will start to work on other pages besides the marketplace and battle-watcher in future. Furthermore I want to thank everybody who disabled their AdBlocker on eRepublik-Deutschland.de. Even though I still don't create enough money to finance the server with this project, it's at least a small support for me - and I really appreciate that.

And to give you some statistics: Before we introduced the Anti-AdBlock Script only 15% of the visitors allowed ads. After the implementation we are at a value of ~40%.


5. Next steps and future

You are still reading? Phew.. I'm not sure if I would have read all the stuff - but thank you! So, what are the next steps?

As already mentione😛
- Updating the Company Calculator
- Extending the API (support for organizations and an unification)
- Extend the usage of the Anti AdBlock Script

What else needs to be done:
- Refactoring of the website in order to improve the overall performance, reduce loading times and used bandwidth
- Create new articles on the website with more up-to-date information
- Further improvements of our IRC Bots
- Optimize the current Worldmap
- Extend the Region- and Countryinfo in order to show more data
- New round for translations

Especially the refactoring of the website is an important topic. Even though the current performance is quite good, I am planning to optimize all the local JavaScript files and Stylesheets. In the end your browser will only request like 4 to 5 files from the server and is able to render and run the website.

Furthermore all the files will be minifie😛 That means we reduce the filesize by removing e.g. comments, whitespaces or linebreaks. In the end the website is (hopefully) going to be 65% smaller and way faster than it is right now.

Even though it sounds quite technical it should be clear that there'll be a huge benefit (especially for mobile users). But that's something that won't be implemented within a week - we are, more or less, talking about months for such an implementation. We already optimized a lot of stuff during the last updates but there's still a lot of work to do until we can start with this "minification"-process.


That's it for today: You see that there is still a lot of work to do. 

Please feel free to leave feedback, ideas or wishes - and in case you find bugs: Please report them! The website offers more than 28 tools and at some point I'm not able to monitor every tool on a daily basis.

Thanks for reading an😛 Thanks for your support!


Best Regards
Master_rg