Armagetron Competitor's Club.

A place for threads related to tournaments and the like, and things related too.

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Lucifer
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Post by Lucifer »

It's become something of a convention to say "family forums" instead of talking about sex.
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TiS
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Post by TiS »

All I know is I like the sound of tournements, there's nothing wrong with a little healthy competition. Im going to be the greatest ever!!!javascript:emoticon(':!:'). Yeah..!
Don't sweat the petty thangs, pet the sweatty thangs.
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KamP
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Post by KamP »

gotcha

but come on
the ACC
on the other hand, when i said the whole thing about skimming, i decided to go back and actually read a few
Most everyone is saying that this is a bad idea, but they're looking at it from the perspective of the rankings, not of actually playing and having some fun.
That's real true, the rankings are and have always been the fun and games part, the game is the serious part :)
And don't reply to this, just think about it some.
sorry tank program, it wasn't so much a real read as it was a deep skim :)
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Lucifer
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Post by Lucifer »

What I'd like to do is run a competitive league, and fortress play makes that a real possibility. I'd like to run a deathmatch competitive league also.

The idea is that people would pay (heh heh) some dues to join the league, and maybe if there's enough I could make the championship game worth some money. Probably not a whole lot at first, would depend on how many people were interested.

Some of the money would go to setup a dedicated server on a better connection, like with one of the coloc providers and/or rent a server from one of them. Then it'd be a high-performance server on a good internet connection, right? Ideally some of it would go into the pockets of people that are needed to run the thing (I could run it single-handedly up to a point) and some of it back into the pockets of the players as game prizes of some sort.

Anyway, since people prefer to complain about lag and bitch about how the developers don't care rather than put up some money to fix the problem (since that's the only way they'll get it dealt with, even then it won't be satisfactory for a few, but they can keep their money), I don't think it'll ever happen unless someone does it as a volunteer thing, and I certainly don't have the time to volunteer to run a competitive league.
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KamP
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Post by KamP »

Lucifer wrote:What I'd like to do is run a competitive league, and fortress play makes that a real possibility. I'd like to run a deathmatch competitive league also.
yep, that's what trying to go down... you like fortress a lot huh
Lucifer wrote:The idea is that people would pay (heh heh) some dues to join the league, and maybe if there's enough I could make the championship game worth some money. Probably not a whole lot at first, would depend on how many people were interested.

Some of the money would go to setup a dedicated server on a better connection, like with one of the coloc providers and/or rent a server from one of them. Then it'd be a high-performance server on a good internet connection, right? Ideally some of it would go into the pockets of people that are needed to run the thing (I could run it single-handedly up to a point) and some of it back into the pockets of the players as game prizes of some sort.
I have to say that's a real good idea. Now i doubt that anyone here would cough up any amount of money to play a game who's greatest allure is the fact that it doesn't cost a cent and can be installed easily on school computers
Lucifer wrote:Anyway, since people prefer to complain about lag and bitch about how the developers don't care rather than put up some money to fix the problem (since that's the only way they'll get it dealt with, even then it won't be satisfactory for a few, but they can keep their money), I don't think it'll ever happen unless someone does it as a volunteer thing, and I certainly don't have the time to volunteer to run a competitive league.
Well, development is a volunteer thing. And the developers don't care at all, i last saw a developer just sitting in a coffee shop sipping tea thats not even tea and looking apathetically at a fly on his arm. I hear one of them cared so little that his arm fell off and he didn't even notice, and when someone told him what had happenned, he tried to shrug, thugh of course it looked awkward seeing as his arm was gone.

hehe
man, i say some crazy stuff :)
the developers are fine by me, and i'd volunteer some time at least, to run a server that's actually on a good connection as opposed to run off some random person's home computer in chicago... or worse germany
no offense to z-man but man, i die on german servers. I thought i could handle lag but germany to miami is whole new levels of lag that i just don't get on miami to chicago

last but not least, this ACC (man what a great name) isn't the league anybody in particular wants, but it is a league that everyone does want somewhere inside, no matter how much they believe (oh so apathetically, they must be developers) that there's no way to rank players in tron.

if that last sentence made sense to someone, you gotta tell me
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Post by Lucifer »

It makes sense. I think what people want (and I could be wrong about this) is some sort of human oversight to the scoring, enforcing penalties (if there are any, but nobody likes people that play dirty, except people that play dirty), and generally making sure everyone behaves with sportsmanship and so forth, and that's the time commitment I'd need to make to run a competitive league. There would also be ranking, but it wouldn't be seemingly arbitrary, it would have a definite start, definite end, build to playoffs and a championship. And it would use long-established methods of ranking teams and players, and involve tracking additional statistics that an automated method may not catch (assists to capturing the zone, attackers defended, that sort of thing). And then the time it would take to aggregate all this into something readable, scheduling the games (and administering the games), scheduling alternate games when people don't show up, that sort of thing.

Teams would need to put in some extra time as well, either time spent practicing or something. Team captains would need to make calls on who does what when, and would need to manage who plays and who doesn't (a team should have some extras in case someone's sick, can't make it to the game, or whatever, so they can still play at full strength, and the extras should be in spectator mode and come in when the captain tells him to).

Anyway, that's the idea. Regular competitive league, just like little league, or a bowling league, or whatever.
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Jonathan
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Post by Jonathan »

KamP wrote:Now i doubt that anyone here would cough up any amount of money to play a game who's greatest allure is the fact that it doesn't cost a cent and can be installed easily on school computers
Sorry, but I'm getting really tired of how often it's, its, who's, whose, they're, their, etc are misused, even by native English-speakers.
KamP wrote:the developers are fine by me, and i'd volunteer some time at least, to run a server that's actually on a good connection as opposed to run off some random person's home computer in chicago... or worse germany
no offense to z-man but man, i die on german servers. I thought i could handle lag but germany to miami is whole new levels of lag that i just don't get on miami to chicago
Lucifer, teach him how to play with a myth! :) Miami to Germany isn't much different from Netherlands to Texas.
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KamP
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Post by KamP »

Jonathan wrote:
KamP wrote:Now i doubt that anyone here would cough up any amount of money to play a game who's greatest allure is the fact that it doesn't cost a cent and can be installed easily on school computers
Sorry, but I'm getting really tired of how often it's, its, who's, whose, they're, their, etc are misused, even by native English-speakers.
.
That's true
and i am ashamed

in punishment i'll use incorrect grammar and punctuation for the rest of this reply

Besides that, you're pretty much correct Lucifer. What the people want is some manner of authority, it's pretty natural to want that. By creating an elite group they are making that kind of authority, though it doesn't have much power. what we need is a revolution...

gnn.tv talk aside

It makes sense to make just a small league. Stats, I guess, could be kept track of by spectating volunteer arbiters, though it'd be assumed that these arbiters would forgo the opportunity to play in the league themselves. For good measure neither could their family members... hehe

As for teams taking extra time to practice or play or something, well that would be up to the team and can be done on their own on their own home server :) . The problem of the scheduled match and the server to play it on is a tough one imo. The rest can get figured out if anyone bothers to write a set of rules. Maybe a wiki of rules?
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Post by Lucifer »

I've been doing alright lately on Fortress. :) Texas to Germany, you know. Of course, z-man's got it running on a server close enough to the backbone that my ping there is about the same as my ping to Swampland, sometimes less. But yeah, otherwise going over the pond kills pings. Still, I was able to single-handedly win two rounds for my team while suffering a spike of 900ms worth of ping (I took the winzone twice in a row, heh. Just paced and hoped I didn't kill anybody, then took the winzone when it appeared).

Anyway, I would be interested in putting together a set of rules people would be willing to play with, but as with any sport, how the rules are applied will make a big difference.

First couple of problems: no way to control scoring by a human. It would be nice if we could do that in realtime. Not a big deal, refs could keep tally sheets if they need to. Set the game server to no points for a kill, refs track it, keep a log and use what the game auto-detects to sanity check kill scores. (It's pretty damn good, it's only occasionally when it screws up, but that could mean the difference between winning and losing the match, so a competitive league needs to be able to compensate for it)

Rules? Hmmmm.............

1. No team kills. Accidents are fine, intentional team kills should be penalized. Point penalty.

2. No adjusts. :) Actually, more like "1 adjust only". So if you make two adjusts, you're penalized. Penalty is points if it wouldn't affect the outcome of the round, or replay the round if it would.

Not sure what other rules are really needed. The server should have (now) some way to correct for excessive 180s automatically. Aaaahhhhhh............

3. No lag attacks. So excessive turning that creates lag gets a penalty. If done by the winner of the round, replay the round. If done by the loser, point penalty. Actions that are to be considered: silly's way of playing goalie should be allowed. It's not a lag attack. But Lucifer's lag attack shouldn't be allowed (I have such a beast, but I only whip it out when people complain about lag). Lag attack is defined solely as excessive turns made for the purpose of creating lag on the server. Lots of turns by itself doesn't constitute a lag attack, if there's an obvious reason for it.

4. Specific versions allowed, custom versions banned (including Jonathan's hacked version). How to enforce this? Player should be kicked if he connects with a non-approved version of the client. If he does it twice, kicked from the league (no refunds for this!). But how to enforce this?

5. All players must record and turn in their recordings within 30 minutes of the game ending. Refs and the server will all keep score as well. Refs and the server can both be modified, within reason. The idea is that if Jonathan wants to be a ref and he hacks his client to give him special features to make it easier on him, then he should be able to use it, right? It's in everyone's best interests to have good refs. If a player's recording should be significantly out of line with the server's (no idea how to check this), then he's booted. So he can't modify his recording before turning it in. But this isn't intended to check fairness, this is intended to be used to construct a movie or something of the match.

Scoring: I like the scoring on Fortress a lot. No idea how to assess point penalties right now, but I'm sure we'll come up with something. If I run the server, I could write up a little script to put scores in and have it give scores between rounds (since I'd be moving away from the server's scored).

When the game is over, the score logs need to be published on a webpage somewhere along with the relevant refs comments about how they actually scored the kill. Preparing this on a private wiki page is fine, then protecting it when it's done.

That's it, I'm out of ideas and suffering from gas that may turn out to be solid.
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KamP
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Post by KamP »

man i don't know how you deal with that, but hey, you've been playing helluva lot longer than i have

What's an adjust?

You think a ref should announce their calls in realtime? might be distracting to the teams playing

All in all it looks like the server itself should automate as much of this as possible, because it seems like the checking recording business would get very tedious, very quickly.

besides that, i don't know if i've ever suffered or made a lag attack :-/ guess i just got eliminated from ref status :) on the other hand i'm going to try and instigate lucifer into doing his "beast" of a move

as for hacked clients. Well i can't help you, i don't even know how the server list manages to tell me that i should upgrade my client

There's also the problem of ref to client ratio as well as team size
i'd say a team ought to be somewhere between 7-9 people but then how many refs
If two teams dish out 7-9 people then that could be between 14-18 cycles running around perhaps breaking the rules and causing havoc. At the very least there'd have to be 5 refs, and at the most the same amount of refs as there are people. Unless there's a better way to watch people than follow a person. I don't know.
One thing's for sure, a league like this would need a donation stream to account for the cost of the server for all this.

Making a movie of the matches is a good idea, i swear it. You could make something like a highlight reel, make a "wall-gem" kind of thing maybe every two weeks, probably longer. Put some music in the back, show it to all the people that make those anime music videos. Be good advertisement. Everyone likes good advertisement.
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Post by Phytotron »

Geesh, talk about involved. Do we need to establish an IAAAA—International Armagetron Advanced Athletic Association? Split it up into divisions (e.g., Div. I-A and I-AA, Div. II, Div. III) and conferences? Officiating regulations? Each conference with its own officials, with inter-conference play refereed by either a combo of officials or home-team officials?

I'm not mocking it. I find it kind of amazing that anyone would take the game this far. But hey, if youse want to figure out how to do it all, by all means, I for one would be curious to see how that would work out. In fact, I say, if you're going to do it, go for it full-out in a way similar to what I alluded to above.

(Just so long as good servers aren't being constantly closed off for tournaments and whatnot. That wouldn't be cool.)

By the way, I was playing the old Tron arcade game the other night and realised you get a ranking depending on your performance. How about that.
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Post by Jonathan »

Lucifer wrote:4. Specific versions allowed, custom versions banned (including Jonathan's hacked version).
Not that mine affects gameplay directly. I think the change that affects gameplay most is that it renders non-predicted cycles.
Lucifer wrote:How to enforce this?
You can't unless the client behaves differently as seen from the server (duh). It can't see whether I use another cam on an incam only server. It can't see my HUD map. It can't see rendered projected paths if I'd add them. It can only see the game itself, so, for instance, it would be able to see a client that tries to push tolerable limits (not to be confused with pros).
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Post by Lucifer »

The only solutions I'm coming up with involve a special client, but of course if I made a special client, I'd have to give you the source code. So some way to add some actual program authentication to the protocol in a way the source can be distributed without compromising the authentication...... (certificates may not work, you could just stick the CD in, find the certificate, patch the source for the custom client, and you're done)

Anyway, it probably doesn't matter a whole lot right now, but when/if the stakes got high, it's a guarantee someone would hack their client (or have it hacked) to try to give them an advantage in-game. Virtual steroids, anyone?
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Post by Lucifer »

adjust: def, noun. When a person grinds a wall to kill someone, but that someone beats their grind. The person in front will tend to adjust against the wall to try to kill the other guy. Not automatically a bad tactic, but when abused it counts as "dirty play".

Checking the recordings can probably be done automatically. You just want to check who killed who and when and make sure you're in range with what the server says (not that it matters a whole lot). To be honest, checking the recordings falls under "limited returns". Use them, certainly, to make a movie or something, but unless you can automate checking them, then you only go back to them when someone contests something. It's like looking at instant replay. Now, how to get instant replay available in real time?

I think refs should be distributed the same way they are in sports. One for each goalie, then one for each offensive line. There's very little reason to try to watch each player, half of the refs would sit out half of each round completely bored.

silly: we're too small to have more than one conference for fortress play, but we might be able to run several conferences for single deathmatch play. Depends on how it's organized, really, but we could have a European conference, and at least two American conferences. There might be enough room for two European conferences. Each conference with 8 players or so, choose the one you want to play. So we could urge MBC to run a conference and send their top player to the championship, and I could run a conference and set our top player, and so forth. Then the championship as a series of matches hosted by each conference with each conference providing their own scoring and settings and determining a ranking of players somehow. Then use some ranked-based voting method to rank all of them (so the conferences each count equally). Anyway, I don't imagine that'll happen anytime soon.

I'm not entirely certain people will be interested enough in a competitive league with refs and stuff, especially if they have to put up money for it. I'm pretty jaded about the subject now. I've had numerous people tell me they'd give up money this way or that way if it was to help the server and what do I have to show for it? Some google ad revenue for which I still haven't received a check, it's so low. Not even worth mentioning. So if 100 people showed up and said "We'd pay for a competitive league", I might believe 2 of them.

So if you guys want me to run a competitive league, you need to show me you're willing to pay for it before you *say* you're willing to pay for it. If you're not willing to pay for it, you are, of course, free to organize your own competitive league. But that's exactly what this thread was started for, isn't it? The only thing is, there are many people objecting to it.
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Post by Tank Program »

Lucifer, you should just write a book, and call it "The Big Red Book of Tron."
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