User:Rupert

I am a stats junkie. I wrote my own Javascript/PHP page that scrapes search results from the HTML as I play Urban Dead.

News

No updates, most of my alts are dead. --Rupert 06:37, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool! Bargain Hunting doubles your odds of finding something in a mall, even if the mall is ruined! This means the best place to find first aid kits when everything is ruined is still a mall. A ruined mall beats a lit hospital. Ha! --Rupert 04:01, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Most of my alts are now revived. I'm seeing some strange things with the odds since The Dead have trashed most of Malton. On March 24 all my alts suddenly had an obscene success rate for finding syringes. And what's with the high success rate in dark malls? --Rupert 05:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I continue to find First Aid Kits at an amazing rate. --Rupert 03:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

No updates. Stopped playing when The Dead were around because I felt the changes to the game's search odds were a violation of the spirit of the game. Let The Dead win, Kevan, don't change the search odds in an attempt to stop them. I've been playing again lately, as zombies, and it's fun. No searching though. I've been collecting stats on zombie attack rates instead (debarricading, equipment smashing, mauling, biting). If anyone resurrects any of my alts, I'll look into the new drug store search odds. I hope the drastic reduction is true. --Rupert 21:24, 16 October 2008 (BST)

The odds of finding a syringe have dropped:

item	percent	AP	building	inside	cond	lights	shopping	bargain
syringe (now)	8.71%	11.48 AP	necrotech	in	okay	lit	-	-
syringe (old)	12.58%	7.95 AP	necrotech	in	okay	lit	-	-
first-aid kit (now)	19.69%	5.08 AP	mall_drug_store	in	okay	lit	shopping	bargain
	18.23%	5.48 AP	hospital	in	okay	lit	-	-
first-aid kit (old)	56.08%	1.78 AP	mall_drug_store	in	okay	lit	shopping	bargain
	17.87%	5.60 AP	hospital	in	okay	lit	-	-

--Rupert 22:43, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

The odds of finding a syringe are back up to 13%. Generators don't make any difference. I added Confidence Intervals to my data. Consider the binomial likelihood function: L = (n choose y) * p^(y) * (1-p)^(n-y), where n is the number of searches, y is the number of successes, p is the predicted search rate and L is the likelihood that the predicted search rate is correct. To compute the 50% confidence interval I throw away the first and last 25% of the area under the curve. This interval contains 50% of the likelihood. If p=10% and the 50% confidence interval is -1/+2 then there is a 50% chance the true search rate is in the interval 9% to 12%. --Rupert 03:02, 12 April 2009 (BST)

Zombie Attack Odds

The results of my zombie attack rates are this: percentages are as advertised. Debarricading averages 25% at most, most of the time it seems like 20%. It varies quite a bit per zombie. A good basher is around 30%, a poor basher is below 20%. I occasionally find myself getting the zerg flag for no reason, perhaps someone in the same suburb on the same subnet? Zerg flags are obvious: 30 bashes at less than 10% success. No other attack is susceptible to these erroneous zerg flags. If I use a proxy myself, the problem goes away. Equipment bashing is at least 50% and often 75%. Maul: 53% or so. Bite: 30%. These are fully trained zombies by the way. This is based on several thousand combined samples, but I kept each day separate and guessed at the combined average (too damn lazy). --Rupert 05:18, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, okay, fine. I combined all my samples. I was shocked at how many I had, I guess I've been playing zombies for a while!

maul=6213/12114 = 51 %

bite=312/1131 = 27 %

bash=802/3181 = 25 %

equip=86/194 = 44 %

Latest

These results were collected starting April '09 or so. --Rupert 02:48, 12 April 2009 (BST)

By Building

building_type	cond	lights	searches	item	count	percent	50% confidence	90% confidence	AP
auto repair	okay	lit	226	nothing	172	76.1%	-2.1/+1.7%	-5.0/+4.3%	1.3
				crowbar	13	5.8%	-0.8/+1.3%	-2.0/+3.2%	17.2
				spray can	12	5.3%	-0.7/+1.4%	-1.9/+3.1%	18.9
				fuel can	11	4.9%	-0.7/+1.3%	-1.8/+3.0%	20.4
				bottle of beer	5	2.2%	-0.3/+1.1%	-1.0/+2.4%	45.5
				newspaper	5	2.2%	-0.3/+1.1%	-1.0/+2.4%	45.5
				fire axe	5	2.2%	-0.3/+1.1%	-1.0/+2.4%	45.5
				toolbox	3	1.3%	-0.2/+0.9%	-0.7/+2.1%	76.9
		dark	241	nothing	190	78.8%	-1.9/+1.6%	-4.7/+4.0%	1.3
				spray can	14	5.8%	-0.7/+1.3%	-1.9/+3.1%	17.2
				crowbar	13	5.4%	-0.7/+1.3%	-1.9/+3.0%	18.5
				fuel can	13	5.4%	-0.7/+1.3%	-1.9/+3.0%	18.5
				newspaper	5	2.1%	-0.4/+1.0%	-1.0/+2.2%	47.6
				toolbox	3	1.2%	-0.2/+0.9%	-0.6/+2.0%	83.3
				fire axe	3	1.2%	-0.2/+0.9%	-0.6/+2.0%	83.3
factory	okay	lit	454	nothing	337	74.2%	-1.4/+1.3%	-3.5/+3.2%	1.3
				length of pipe	33	7.3%	-0.7/+1.0%	-1.8/+2.3%	13.7
				fuel can	22	4.8%	-0.5/+0.9%	-1.3/+2.0%	20.8
				crowbar	19	4.2%	-0.5/+0.8%	-1.3/+1.9%	23.8
				portable generator	16	3.5%	-0.4/+0.8%	-1.1/+1.8%	28.6
				toolbox	16	3.5%	-0.4/+0.8%	-1.1/+1.8%	28.6
				fire axe	11	2.4%	-0.3/+0.7%	-0.9/+1.6%	41.7
hospital	okay	lit	1280	nothing	951	74.3%	-0.9/+0.8%	-2.1/+1.9%	1.3
				first-aid kit	329	25.7%	-0.8/+0.9%	-1.9/+2.1%	3.9
		dark	1323	nothing	1059	80.0%	-0.7/+0.8%	-1.8/+1.8%	1.2
				first-aid kit	264	20.0%	-0.8/+0.7%	-1.8/+1.8%	5.0
necrotech	okay	lit	447	nothing	345	77.2%	-1.5/+1.2%	-3.5/+3.1%	1.3
				syringe	62	13.9%	-1.0/+1.2%	-2.5/+2.9%	7.2
				DNA extractor	24	5.4%	-0.6/+0.9%	-1.5/+2.1%	18.5
				GPS unit	16	3.6%	-0.5/+0.8%	-1.2/+1.8%	27.8
		dark	458	nothing	365	79.7%	-1.4/+1.2%	-3.3/+2.9%	1.3
				syringe	59	12.9%	-0.9/+1.2%	-2.3/+2.8%	7.8
				GPS unit	19	4.1%	-0.4/+0.8%	-1.2/+1.9%	24.4
				DNA extractor	15	3.3%	-0.4/+0.7%	-1.1/+1.7%	30.3

Mall

building_type	cond	lights	bargain	searches	item	count	percent	50% confidence	90% confidence	AP
mall_drug_store	okay	lit	bargain	678	nothing	563	83.0%	-1.0/+0.9%	-2.5/+2.3%	1.2
					first-aid kit	115	17.0%	-0.9/+1.0%	-2.3/+2.5%	5.9
			no bargain	724	nothing	660	91.2%	-0.8/+0.6%	-2.0/+1.5%	1.1
					first-aid kit	64	8.8%	-0.6/+0.8%	-1.5/+2.0%	11.4

Result Set 2

User:Rupert/Results2

Result Set 1

User:Rupert/Results1

Methods

I play every page of Urban Dead through a Javascript page on my home computer that I coded up using the Prototype Javascript library (awesome) that uses AJAX HttpRequests to a php proxy (super awesome). That's because Javascript can't contact urbandead.com directly due to the security sandbox, but it can contact php on the same machine and php can contact any website it wishes, so it's more of a two-level proxy, sometimes three. I can then over-analyze the HTML with Javascript till my heart's content, extracting all sorts of information, as well as auto-searching (a fire-and-forget time saver). Javascript is surprisingly good at this and fun to program.

Each search result scraped by Javascript is sent via another AJAX request to a similar php page that stores the data in a MySQL table with these columns:

+--------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field              | Type                | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| name               | char(25)            | NO   |     |         |       |
| date               | date                | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| building_name      | char(40)            | NO   |     |         |       |
| building_type      | char(20)            | NO   |     |         |       |
| inside             | tinyint(3) unsigned | NO   |     |         |       |
| building_condition | char(10)            | NO   |     |         |       |
| building_light     | tinyint(3) unsigned | NO   |     |         |       |
| has_shopping       | tinyint(3) unsigned | NO   |     |         |       |
| has_bargain        | tinyint(3) unsigned | NO   |     |         |       |
| item_found         | char(40)            | NO   |     |         |       |
| has_necro          | tinyint(3) unsigned | NO   |     | 0       |       |
| has_necro_lab      | tinyint(3) unsigned | NO   |     | 0       |       |
+--------------------+---------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

When I'm done playing, I run a SQL script that copies that data into a temporary table, transforming all items named "pistol(*)" to just "pistol" because I don't care about the odds of pistol ammo right now, same for "shotgun(*)". Then I transform "NecroTech syringe" and "revivification syringe" into just "syringe", "rusty knife" and "pocket knife" and "hunting knife" into just "knife". Then I count identical rows. This condenses the table from thousands of rows (one per search) to only hundreds, at which point it looks like this:

+-------------+----+-----------+-------+----------+---------+-------+-----+----------------+-------+
| building    | in | condition | light | shopping | bargain | necro | lab | item           | count |
+-------------+----+-----------+-------+----------+---------+-------+-----+----------------+-------+
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        0 |       0 |     1 |   1 | bottle of beer |     2 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        0 |       0 |     1 |   1 | crowbar        |     1 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        0 |       0 |     1 |   1 | fire axe       |     1 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        0 |       0 |     1 |   1 | fuel can       |     4 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        0 |       0 |     1 |   1 | nothing        |    34 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        0 |       0 |     1 |   1 | spray can      |     3 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        1 |       0 |     0 |   0 | bottle of beer |     1 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        1 |       0 |     0 |   0 | crowbar        |     3 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        1 |       0 |     0 |   0 | fire axe       |     1 |
| auto repair |  1 | okay      |     1 |        1 |       0 |     0 |   0 | fuel can       |     2 |
+-------------+----+-----------+-------+----------+---------+-------+-----+----------------+-------+

Then the script builds up a second temporary table populated by three queries on the first temp table:

1. all non-mall and non-necrotech rows grouped by building type, light, and item
2. all malls and mall substores further grouped by has_shopping and has_bargain
3. all necrotechs grouped by the same as (1) but also by has_necro and has_lab (because the odds appear to be different)

Then I order the table by building and condition to get the "By Building" table, and by item for the "By Item" table. Then I execute a php page to get the html tables to paste into this lovely wiki.