Game start estimation

[ssl]

Hi there,

Yesterday, while waiting for a game to start, I tought about something that would really help me and I guess most of BT players who play on league bots: An ETA value of when the game you are about to join will start.
I really think this is possible to calculate because there might be a strong corralation between time of day and day of week and the amout of time between a game is hosted and the start of this game. If my assumption is correct, I could implement some estimation in the form of: "with 95% propability, the game will start within the next 7 minutes"

I think this system will greatly enhance game expirience!

But I need some data so I can verify my assumtions about the corralation I mentioned above, so I hereby ask the league admins to provide me with as much data as possible about game host times and corresponding game start times of games in the past, if such data is availible.

Please feel free to ask questions or give further ideas on this topic!
Greetings, ssl.

[eSVau]

It's not easy to predict the game start, it depends on day, time, current running games and their ending probability, etc.

You mean something like this? This was/is a straight forward approach just taking the few last games, but i never verified how accurate those values are

Code:

arith. Mittel (last10): 1366.2
harm. Mittel (last10): 803.96160132769
exp. Glaettung (last10): 827.4464890606

Sekunden zwischen gamestarts
Array
(
    [0] => 500
    [1] => 950
    [2] => 1406
    [3] => 206
    [4] => 1323
    [5] => 1250
    [6] => 2002
    [7] => 1235
    [8] => 1546
    [9] => 3244
    [10] => 32239
    [11] => 6202
    [12] => 3564
    [13] => 1255
    [14] => 1929
    [15] => 303
    [16] => 864
    [17] => 608
    [18] => 1178
    [19] => 1148
    [20] => 1291
    [21] => 1278
    [22] => 1075
    [23] => 1581
    [24] => 2009
    [25] => 1577
    [26] => 4002
    [27] => 3590
    [28] => 2107
)

   

Have fun, this sql dump contains an id, ending date and game length (if available), so you can calculate starting times and assume that the next ranked lobby is opened about 10s later

[ssl]

Thank you eSVau, I'll try some calculations with the data and will report back here when finished.

[ssl]

Got a problem: I have a bunch of games where there is no duration (null). I first thought this is because the game is still running, but the "end time" field is set to some value. How is that possible?
Also, there are games way in the past with a null duration... Can you tell me what happendet there so I can make sure I handle them right?

[Velocity2k]

Most of the games have been between 2011-12-26 and 2011-12-28. If you remember there was a "hack" which let botgames crash at start. So these games "started" but never ended because they crashed in the first second.

[ssl]

Yes I remember, but still, why do they have the end time set? This makes no sense in my opinion...

[eSVau]

If length is NULL date contains the start date (to calculate length afterwards)