Actually this concept and research was done three years ago, but today I found time to publish some results. The initial idea was about identifying fake accounts playing Space CTF by rendering their portaljump technique like a fingerprint. But later I found, that heatmaps of the entire map are more informative.

Since from demos we have 5 axes (X, Y, Z, yaw, pitch), we can draw 10 projections, but I chose three the most interesting of them.

Each another player rendered in this way would get some annotations from me, so this article could have a lot of text, but at the end I decided to put all annotations directly onto the image.

You may send me demos if you want them to be converted into such pictures. But be sure the whole demo was recorded from POV of a one player and without switching teams. I almost didn't draw another maps and didn't compare obvious fakes, since have not much time to stalk and record.

Initially Quake doesn't allow you to define multi-stroke bindings easily -- it needs some jumping around configs.
Binder was a tool doing it for you. A config such as this:

q s : say_team QUAD SOON!
q 1 : say_team QUAD in 10 seconds! // 10sec
q 5 : say_team QUAD in 5 seconds! // 5sec
q r 1 : say_team RED POWERUP in 10 seconds! // 10sec
q b 5 : say_team BLUE POWERUP in 5 seconds! // 5sec

\ d 1 : say ^7DA uDu Tbl HAXyu OT MEH9 6**** ^4(c) ^7coolle^4R
\ d 3 : say ^7Try it without Guillom (c) rail

\ c s : callvote shuffle

\ c 1 : callvote teamsize 1 // ts1
\ c 2 : callvote teamsize 2 // ts2
\ c 8 : callvote teamsize 8 // ts8

\ c m s : callvote map spacectf
\ c m 6 : callvote map campgrounds

transforms into several configs and you shouldn't bother to know how do they work.

The first version of Binder was made by me three years ago as offline executable. Now I decided to make it available online here: http://naki.pro/binder/
It already has some tutorial, but any discussion is welcome here in comments.

It works for Quakelive and probably Q3A, etc. Theoretically I can adapt it to any another game, which can /exec configs.

I'm glad to announce the first public release of the tool named QL Buddy.

It is for those, who don't want to miss cool QuakeLive servers, which are currently online, but also don't want to spend time at quakelive.com, keeping eye on serverlist or buddylist.


The tool is actually a Google Chrome Extension. It's not necessary to be logged into quakelive.com from Chrome, because it gets data anonymously (but actually, if you log in, the browser will provide cookies, which may influe results a bit).
While the QuakeLive site can display only one search filter at once, it allows you to keep eye on several searches simultaneously.
Also it can produce sound notification, if some of specified buddies are detected on any server, found in search results.

Manual

Open this webstore page in Chrome and install it. The extension's icon immediately appears, and you are ready to use the tool. It uses Chrome Local Storage to save your presets, and at first, they are obviously empty.
So now you have to open the quakelive.com (refresh the page if it was already opened in any tab), click "Play online" and do some server search (it would be better, if you do the search with non-empty results – it will be easier to learn, how this tool works). After that without going away from current page click the extension icon and then the button "Add current search filter to this list". Less than in 10 seconds you'll see results if click the icon again. You may add up to 10 searches, but keep in mind, that it may cause network lags each 10 seconds, if you have not enough wide connection.
You may "DELETE" any search – the last one will take its place instead. Also you may click the button "Details" which is similar to when you move mouse onto server at quakelive.com to see details. The extension icon displays a 'badge' – a number, saying, how many servers are currently found by all filters. If you want some search results to be excluded from the counter, check the checkbox "Don't count" next to search filter.
If you see some bug, try to reproduce it, to ensure, that it's not your fantasy (for example, search list changes need up to 10 seconds to take effect). Then click the button "debug", copy contents of the tab that just opened, and send it to [email protected] with nice explanation, what went wrong.
P.S.: try not to search with parameter "In your vicinity" – the extension works anonymously, so it's unable to determine your location, so you'll get USA servers, unless you are currently logged into quakelive.com in Chrome.

About authors

Idea and extension itself (JS) – Victor Maslov aka Nakilon
Design (HTML/CSS) – fraggedICE
Betatesting – URAZ, Enonatan

Links

Email for techsupport, thanks and feature requests – [email protected]
Webstore download/install link – plgmlnocppdoaolgkklhnomfbofjbepb
Wiki – https://qlbuddy.fogbugz.com/

UPDATE (17 Jan 2013)

Since first public release, there are new features in v.0.5.0:
– finally the 'buddy detection', which highlights servers and makes extension icon green;
– showing ip:port, team scores, each player score;
– nicknames are now clickable;
– each search filter is now titled with automatically generated description.
Screenshot has been updated.

Hey, I've spent this night to make 'TOP500 players' listing for Space CTF.
https://sites.google.com/site/spacectfratings/
I'm gonna make ratings for all CTF maps, but will need help in calibrating, because I don't really know players' skills on anything except ctf4, lol.

UPDATE 2012-10-03 https://sites.google.com/site/spacectfratings/23-09-2012
9142/1506 players are parsed/ranked
Added M_Z_H as top-9, Nekojiru_sou as top-35, NastyTime as top-65, and others.

UPDATE 2012-11-28 https://sites.google.com/site/spacectfratings...h-nov-2012
Here are 8 new draft versions. I'm making a new version, based on the same September snapshot data. To choose, which way to go further, I would like to get your advise. Those, who have own opinion about how ranking should look like, please vote for one or more from 8 versions.

Hi, quakerz! I’m gonna present you a useful tool I’ve created a year ago – QL Stats Viewer (yeah, I can’t invent better name for that).
Its main purpose is getting quake stats (and other info in future) without leaving game window. Now you’ll need to press only 2 buttons to see someone’s stats!

It helps a lot to organize good shuffle before match started. Also you can use it for tierslumming, lol, but please, don’t do that.

It can show either one player’s stats, or stats of all players on server. How to use it?
0. /cg_chathistorylength 20, /bind h “+chat”
1. download exe anywhere to your PC – current client version is 0.2 and is located here https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3BLwu7Vb2U-UzZhaDYxd1lYVkU
2. launch it – I believe there are no viruses in it, lol
3. start/join any match – you may just start Practice match to test the tool
4. type in console: /condump enonatan.stats
5. type in console: /exec printstats
6. you may need to repeat step 5 until you see your stats printed – depends on your internet connection and server status (it could be down)
7. type in console: /exec saystats
8. type in console: /exec sayteamstats
9. repeat step 4 for any another nickname and then try steps 5, 7 or 8
10. bind F11 "players; wait 150; condump all.stats"
11. bind F12 "exec printstats"
12. press F11, wait, press F12, press H
13. try again steps 7 and 8
14. bind 7, 8 steps to keys also
15. PROFIT!!!1
(Here is a Google Doc with almost the same content, if you need it https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3BLwu7Vb2U-UVF2TlFrWUlqR0k)

It has been tested on my Windows 7. I hope it works well on Win XP and Linux/Mac. If not – provide me details.
Current version is the freshest one. You may encounter some bugs, which are not known for me yet – likely it would be enough just to ignore them and try again. All such bugs will automatically send (I hope) a bugreport, which I will read when find free time.
There are a lot of fixes and features I’m gonna implement. I’ would ilsten with pleasure all your feature-requestes and advises. You may e-mail me on [email protected]
Currently the only known “issue” is some error message about “encoding”, when you start the program – just ignore it. (spotted and experienced only by FraggedIce)

So again:
1. just launch tool in background while playing
2. bind somekey “players; wait 150; condump all.stats”
3. bind somekey “exec printstats”
4. bind somekey “exec saystats”
5. bind somekey “exec sayteamstats”
6. also use “/condump nickname.stats” in couple with the same binds from steps 3, 4 and 5

7. Have fun!

Thanks to FraggedIce for a bit motivating and to QL staff at #quakelive, who helped me with baseq3 folder detection.

UPDATE

This thing doesn't work currently, because I don't pay for VPS.