Armagetron Fortress League organization thread

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Lucifer
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Armagetron Fortress League organization thread

Post by Lucifer »

Ok, this is obviously not the same as Luke's tournament since his is single-player.

I want to organize a fortress league. I want it to be an ongoing affair, with a Fall Season and a Spring Season, and playoffs and championships, and of course champions. I'm looking for server admins who would be willing to run an extra server and folks generous enough to get involved with the league organization itself.

First let's talk about the league organization. We'll organize with Me as Lord Almighty Dictator over the league. :) Basically that's just to avoid design by committee, which I hate with a passion more than that which is reserved for luke's shenanigans. So I'm shooting for 4-6 people, including myself, who will be well-versed in the league rules and processes, both of which will be as thin as possible anyway. We'll set a schedule, so each scheduled game will be set in stone, and the entire schedule has to be made before the first game plays, obviously, and with enough lead time for people to mark their calendars. Each team should play once a week, sometimes more, and should get at least one break. I'll probably make the schedule myself and run it by the other organizers for review. After the games start, organizers have to track the games themselves and their results, mediate conflicts between teams, and generally do whatever is needed to keep the games running smoothly and as fun as possible. We'll schedule the playoffs early in the season, possibly even before the season starts, but we obviously can't fill in the slots with team names until the season is played. So in short, we'll know everything we need to know before the season kicks off, and there should be enough organizers kicking around that should one or more of us fall off the face of the earth for a little while, the league will continue.

I'd like to have server admins either setup another instance of the server for the league (which will be used for actual games). If not that, then they should come up with a way to keep players off a server during a league game. Dr Joe Tron suggested we setup an alternate network, provide an alternate client for league players, and have our own master server. That solution looks pretty good, we'd need people to volunteer to make packages. I'm willing to go that route, and Joe is willing to host the master server for the league in that case.

Team captains will be responsible for organizing their teams and representing their teams in mediation if need be.

We'll have an awards ceremony after the championship. The exact mechanism for it is yet to be determined. Maybe we'll all meet up in a freeciv server. :) (That's a joke, luke!)

I want to run a short season in July, with abbreviated playoffs in August as a dress rehearsal. We'll start the first long season in September or October, aiming for playoffs in early January, NFL style. Then the second long season will start in February and run for about 4 months. Summers off, or we do an all-star season then. I'd like the July season to be free for all to join, but I'm interested in requiring a per-team entry fee for the long season. The collection of these fees will pay for whatever support costs are needed for the league. I'm not in a position right now to give in detail what those costs will entail. We'll try to capitalize as much as possible on the league, mainly to pay for itself. I don't think this community is quite large enough to support it as a business, so it'll run as a non-profit (like most local sporting leagues anyway). Teams will determine amongst themselves how to make the entry fee, either by splitting it amongst the players, or maybe one generous individual wants to put it up for the whole team, whatever.

So, this thread is to get people who are willing to volunteer to be organizers and/or server admins that want to participate in the league. Interested team captains are welcome as well, and pretty much anybody else who has something productive to offer, of course. I'm particularly interested in SPOON veterans, especially SPOON and LADLE veterans, because I'm drawing from some spoon experience here.

A lot of players have been wanting to run another spoon but fix the problems the spoon actually had. I see this league as providing those fixes, I think the spoon ran like it should have been league play, and here is what I want to do from there.

So far, people that have volunteered, with level of commitment ranging are:
Me
DrJoeTron
Ghableska (with his own caveats, weird guy)
Your_mom expressed some interest and I think we can shanghai him in :)
wrtlprnft expressed interest too, but had to run off. I think he'll be interested after reading this post and/or further discussion.

Haven't spoken to any server admins yet (besides me and joe being server admins, of course, and wrtlpwned, who had to leave pretty quickly)
Last edited by Lucifer on Fri Mar 16, 2007 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Z-Man »

Count me in as a server administrator, at least for the summer season. I can't say how long I'll be able to use the university computer.

Instead of a super-special client, we could equip the regular client with an "Alternative Networks" menu that works like the server bookmarks menu, only that people can enter and connect to custom master servers there. They would probably come without the redundancy our main masters have, because I'd be too lazy to implement multi-server bookmarks.
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Post by Lucifer »

This would be targetted at 0.2.8.3? Is there a good chance it would be released before, say, June?

Another advantage to having a super-special client is to protect players from themselves. :) I screw with my settings a lot, and it would be nice to have a client that's specifically configured for league play. If I were playing, which I won't be. Not that I can't just build in another directory...

I think such a menu would have general utility, though, so I'm for it. :)
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Post by Z-Man »

Lucifer wrote:This would be targetted at 0.2.8.3? Is there a good chance it would be released before, say, June?
Yeah. I'm currently wrestling with myself over whether network recordings should be implemented by then (immensely useful, they'd allow to play back individual rounds of a long server session on a client, making debugging server side debug recordings that much easier, plus they'd play back with more than just one version of arma. OTOH, they'd be a bit hacky to implement) and about the utf8 thing.
If it doesn't work out, we can always release that special client. That extra safe configuration is a good point, but it's also a risk: suppose a problem turns up with your configuration, you fix it for your regular client, but forget your league play client... so I'd tend to make it use the regular configuration, only store the server list under a different name, and of course to use that alternative master.
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Post by Ricochet »

I would be able to help out, I've got a fortress server that noone uses so I can put that down for it.

...but isn't this going to be a bit like Lacka's kings of the grid?
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Re: Fortress League

Post by wrtlprnft »

Lucifer wrote:wrtlprnft expressed interest too, but had to run off. I think he'll be interested after reading this post and/or further discussion.
Correct :D

I can host a server, but please don't schedule any TUI matches on there, I don't want to hear too much whining.
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Post by Luke-Jr »

z-man wrote:Instead of a super-special client, we could equip the regular client with an "Alternative Networks" menu that works like the server bookmarks menu, only that people can enter and connect to custom master servers there. They would probably come without the redundancy our main masters have, because I'd be too lazy to implement multi-server bookmarks.
Why not just replace the master.srv file?
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Post by Jonathan »

master.srv management isn't that great.
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Post by Z-Man »

Yep. In the master.srv replacement scenario, the UI would involve dropping and possibly renaming an alterend master.srv file that you get from the alternative network maintainer somewhere. Entering a bookmark is easier to explain.
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Post by Lucifer »

Since 0.3.1 is unlikely to be out by the summer, the master.srv replacement still has to be done for folks wanting to run 0.3.0 in the league.

So, more specific. :)

Who wants to help by administering a server?

Who wants to help by being an organizer?

Maybe I should create a wiki page now. Maybe I should do it after my physics class. :)
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Post by Ricochet »

Uou can add me to the list if you want Luci, I've got a server you can use (12 players is its stable limit, it can take 16 but it gets a little laggy) and I've had plenty of ladle experience. I'd be willing to help out with the organisation as well, if you like.
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Post by Luke-Jr »

Lucifer wrote:Since 0.3.1 is unlikely to be out by the summer,
It should have been out months ago. There is no reason we can't just slap a 0.3.1 sticker on today's trunk and release it.
Lucifer wrote:Who wants to help by being an organizer?
I already said I do.
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Post by DDMJ »

I can help :roll:.
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Post by Ghableska »

Right, I think I'm willing to try this out...
..but I'm still not sure how much time I'll have to do this in the first place.
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Post by 2020 »

if i manage to get regular connection
i would like to offer my assistance :)

and once i get a steady job
i could provide a server...
hold the line
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