Introducing Mercurius! Stats and Analytics for Forge

[Guest Mr. Flamegoat]

Announcing Mercurius

 

Mercurius has been around for a few months now, while we've been collecting data, testing, and in general doing our best to handle the immense amount of data that this community generates.

 

Today, we're announcing that Mercurius will be merged into the Forge installer and will be included by default with Forge from 1.11 forward.

 

What is Mercurius?

 

Mercurius collects data about your current client/player/server sessions and reports this back to our central stats server for processing.

 

Is there any personally identifiable data?

 

Absolutely not. Access logs have been disabled for the API ingest and your IP address is not stored with stats data. We have no way of knowing who a row of data belongs to.

 

What data do you transmit?

 

SessionID - Several versions of this exist, including a Client Session and a "Play Session". Generated when you start your client, and a unique ID generated when you start a world or join a server. Generated with random unidentifiable information.

InstallID - This is a unique ID given to a modpack installation, constant through the life of that installation.

Modpack - Name of the modpack you're playing (as indicated by the modpack developer)

Forge Version - The version of Forge you are running.

Java Version - The version of Java you are running.

Minecraft Version - The version of Minecraft you are running.

Start Time - Sent with Client start and Play Session start.

End Time - Sent with Play Session (not currently sent with Client exit)

Installed Mods/Versions - A one time packet sent with the information of all mods installed and their status (enabled/disabled) and their versions.

 

How often do you transmit data?

 

When starting the client, the initial packet is sent to stage the statistics data for your session. Upon starting a world, a similar packet is sent (you may make changes while in the client before starting a world). The client pings every 5 minutes to let us know that you're still connected and sending data. When you stop a world, a small STOP packet is sent to let us know you've exited your world.

 

The largest packet is the initial packets sent that include the modpack information. This should have little impact on your bandwidth, even after long and frequent play sessions.

 

Can I opt out?

 

Absolutely. You can opt out globally by turning the snooper settings off in Minecraft which sends information back to Mojang. Out of courtesy and respect, we've decided that this is something we will absolutely respect as well. Additionally, if there is certain information listed above that you would prefer not send us, you can opt out invididually. Because we value the reliability of our statistics, some options aren't available for you to opt out of indvidually, and do require you to opt out globally.

 

I have more questions!

 

Ask here! I'll be adding questions to this post as we go and I look forward to the feedback (good and bad).

 

Can we see the data?

 

The current front end for Mercurius is a bit bare, as we process stats and we roll up what we have, crank out new SQL statements, caching systems, etc, but you can see the current public iteration here: https://mercurius.minecraftforge.net/

 

We have a few more features that we're currently working on but until those are a bit more polished, we're holding off on making promises or announcing anything.

 

Also, the main page is in EARLY alpha, and some of the stats may not match up, as I'm pushing updates fairly regularly to make things more accurate. Also, taking into account opt-outs, etc, not all counts will be consistent across all fields.

 

Currently we're tracking specific modpacks that have included Mercurius, so these numbers will vary wildly as we roll out further.

 

 

[larsgerrits]

It's sad to see so many people still using 1.7.10...

 

But I like the idea! This is a good thing to see how many people use which MC version, and which Java version (seriously, 1 guy is already using Java 9...).

[LexManos]

One of the main goals of this is to determine what Java versions are used by players. This will allow us to better determine what versions we should care about supporting.

If, for example, after we get a bit of data and we see like <1% is using Java 6, Forge will probably drop support for Java 6 reguardless of what Mojang does. Gracefully with a 'update your java here, or downgrade Forge' message but none the less. It will help us figure out what is best to move forward with.

 

Right now, the stats are extremely biased, as Mercurius is only in some FTB packs, and a couple personal packs. Most of which have other mods that force Java 8. We are working twards getting this packaged/installed with the normal Forge installer so that we can get the best dataset we can.

 

And I just want to reiterate that user privacy is of UPMOST importance to us in this project and we have taken great care to make sure no personally identifiable information is sent anywhere. As well as giving you all of the options we can to allow you to control either you even report things or not.

[Watchful11]

Since this was my first question, the mod source is available here.

[Kokkie]

But with the session id you can login to any account?

[LexManos]

No, the session ID is a randomly generated number based on nothing.

https://github.com/MinecraftForge/Mercurius/blob/master/src/main/java/net/minecraftforge/mercurius/helpers/DataHelper.java#L9

It has absolutely nothing to do with your account information or well anything...

It's just a random number so we can gather stats like average play length.

[Josh Smith]

Can we see the rest of the data? that would be interesting too look over, especially for modded servers

Edited April 30, 2017 by Josh Smith

[LexManos]

We are still working on the backend and getting it all together. Sadly its a slow process as there arnt many people working on it. We're trying to bring on another person but ya, it's slow.

The other side of this, is we don't really collect much data. So there isn't much to actually show.

The only real important thing this has shown us so far is that J8 is by far the java version of choice.

Which is what allowed us to decide to force J8 for 1.12+. Minecraft following suit is just bonus reason to do it

If you can think of a metric that you'd like to see on the public front let us know and we can consider it, If we have the data.

[Bektor]

  On 4/30/2017 at 4:00 AM, LexManos said:

We are still working on the backend and getting it all together. Sadly its a slow process as there arnt many people working on it. We're trying to bring on another person but ya, it's slow.

The other side of this, is we don't really collect much data. So there isn't much to actually show.

The only real important thing this has shown us so far is that J8 is by far the java version of choice.

Which is what allowed us to decide to force J8 for 1.12+. Minecraft following suit is just bonus reason to do it

If you can think of a metric that you'd like to see on the public front let us know and we can consider it, If we have the data.

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I guess the usage of the Java Version would be interesting. So Modders can see how many people are using which Java Version for modded Minecraft.

[larsgerrits]

  On 4/30/2017 at 8:19 PM, Bektor said:

I guess the usage of the Java Version would be interesting. So Modders can see how many people are using which Java Version for modded Minecraft.

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You can already see that, it's the "Java Versions by Install" at the Forge Mercurius sited linked in the OP.

[Exevium]

Besides Java version and PC specs, what other data are you collecting?

 

*puts on tin foil hat*

[TamasHenning]

  On 6/26/2017 at 4:24 PM, Exevium said:

Besides Java version and PC specs, what other data are you collecting?

 

*puts on tin foil hat*

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PC specs are not collected. The only thing that's captured is the OS itself. Beyond that RAM allocation, mods and their versions. Unique session ID's are generated via PRNG and hashed. These are per game install and per game launch and never directly attributed to a user.

 

Full source is on Github if you want to dig into specs

[tfff1]

What happened with this in the end?

I'm quite interested in having a look at some of these stats, but the website seems to be down.

[DaemonUmbra]

Mercurius is installed as one of Forge's libraries, still doesn't seem to have a public panel yet but it does have an endpoint that it's posting the data to.

[larsgerrits]

  On 4/3/2018 at 4:05 AM, DaemonUmbra said:

it does have an endpoint that it's posting the data to.

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Mercurius isn't currently sending anything over. They shutdown the servers for various reasons, one of them being costs.

 

  On 4/3/2018 at 4:05 AM, DaemonUmbra said:

still doesn't seem to have a public panel

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It had one, however that has also been shut down.

[LexManos]

Yes, it was shut down due to progress on the front end not being made. And the server costing way to much to run.

It however served its purpose, to some extent. It gave us the stats we needed to know that <J7 was pretty much useless. 

But then Mojang bumped to J8 in 1.12.2, which means we could as well. So whatever..

But ya it was a experiment, it failed due to many reasons.

If you still have it installed it doesn't send any data anywhere so you're good.