Just an update on where I am at with the tournaments code... this really is taking a lot longer than I expected, it's much more complicated than I thought it would be so sorry for the delay.

There will be four types of tournament:

1. Round Robin (everyone plays everyone else once) - this is only available for 2 player or 2 team games.

2. Swiss System (everyone plays each round, the player who is undefeated in all rounds wins) - this offers the best combination of flexibility and large player number support so I think it will be the default option.

3. Simple Elimination - an elimination tournament which has limited options (same board, same number of players per game for the whole tournament, one player / team advancing, limited number of starting players options to ensure that the tournament is symmetric).

4. Custom Elimination - an elimination tournament where the tournament host defines the board to be played, players per game, players advancing etc etc for each round of the tournament.


The 'Tournaments Home' page is basically done - this allows you to see the tournaments you are in and browse open tournaments to join. It also has a list of the top ranked tournament players and holds your trophy cabinet.

The 'Create new Tournament' page is done for Round Robin and Swiss System tournaments. This works very similarly to the existing 'Create Game' page. I have not yet started work on the page to create the two types of knockout tournaments.

Right now I'm just finishing off the code to set up the initial draw, once this is done I need to write the tournament scheduler which handles updating the tournament results and is responsible for the draw in subsequent rounds and closing the tournament when a winner has been found.

Once that piece is done I'll release to the live site for beta testing purposes. I'll add in the code for the elimination tournaments at a later date once they are complete.

Pretty incredible man. Thanks as always for all your hard work! I can't wait to be able to play a Round Robin or Swiss tourney.

Will there be a limit to the number of tournaments a person can start? Or a limit to the total number of open tournaments?
Will Standard accounts be limited in any way?

No plans to limit... I suppose a good option would be to use IRoll1s game queue code for the tournaments as well.

For Standard accounts, joining a tournament will count the same as joining a game - i.e. 10 max games + tournaments joined at any one time.

Just wouldn't want a tournament taking literally forever to fill up since there a lot of them (since they will take longer to fill up than regular games).

How are Tournament Trophies/Rankings being set up?

Trophy images can be uploaded by the host once the tournament is created. If they don't upload one it'll be a default image.

I haven't quite decided on the rankings part... right now I am thinking it will be a straight points system. Within the tournament you will start with 1000 points and gain / lose points the same as a normal game. At the end of the tournament the points are added / subtracted from your overall tournament ranking score.

Either that or your overall tournament points are brought into the tournament with you same as a normal game.

Or some completely different points system if someone comes up with something better :)

tom wrote: No plans to limit... I suppose a good option would be to use IRoll1s game queue code for the tournaments as well.

For Standard accounts, joining a tournament will count the same as joining a game - i.e. 10 max games + tournaments joined at any one time.

I'm gonna go ahead and suggest there should be some limit somehow.  Only 2 open hosted tournaments or something along those lines for all users (maybe up to 5 for Premiums?).  Definitely suggest some sort of limit though.

Yep I was actually thinking the same thing this morning... 1-2 open tournaments per player seems reasonable.... maybe even just 1.

i could deal with the 2/5 option. tho the 2 would definately count towards the open games limit for the standard member. For example a swiss tourney could eat up all their allotted spots - and would be denied them if they already had games open that opening up a swiss tourney would put them over the limit.

Is there going to be a seperate tab or will they go on the existing games list with a tourney bracket icon?

There's a separate tourney tab but your tournament games will also be listed with a 'T' icon under the Games tab.

Tournament games are treated the same as normal games when it comes to the 10 game limit. There's a premium only setting to allow you to choose whether you want to play multiple games within a tournament at once.

Is there a player limit on tournaments? I know up to 100 players was thrown around (although that seemed low IMO), just curious what the top will be? And perhaps the minimum as well?

Minimum, who cares. 2 rounds just so as not to devalue trophies. Or you could make the trophies proportionately bigger or smaller in the "trophy room" based on # of players or rounds.

Max, call it 128? Allows plenty of space.

asm wrote: Minimum, who cares. 2 rounds just so as not to devalue trophies. Or you could make the trophies proportionately bigger or smaller in the "trophy room" based on # of players or rounds.

Max, call it 128? Allows plenty of space.

As for the Minimum, you hit the reason for the question.  A Trophy for a 4 player tournament shouldn't be the same as Trophy for a 128 player tournament, but if they were the same, then it could lead to potential "abuse" by players creating "Ranked" games as Tournament games.

128 still as the max?  256 on WF were sometimes okay.

Also will there be an option for Private tournaments (unranked, although potentially have a Private Tournament Trophy count as just a simple player Stat)?

Yertle wrote:

128 still as the max?  256 on WF were sometimes okay.

with the auto skip in place 256 is reasonable.

I do see an issue with limiting a player to 2 open tournaments at a time if a person's tournament lasts a year or more (like some of the tournaments I've joined on wf). If 2 is the limit it should definately be higher for premium players.

- I haven't decided on a maximum yet - it's really governed by the active player base of the site. 100ish is probably a reasonable number for now, no use having lots of tournaments sitting open waiting for joiners. This number will be adjusted upwards as the site grows.

- Yes there will be Private tournaments.

- The minimum number of players will be 8 for round robin tournaments.

- Andernut, the limit I mentioned is for 1-2 OPEN tournaments per person - i.e. tournaments that you are hosting that are still waiting for players to join so they can start.

Ya, that's what I meant by limits as well.

tom wrote: -

- Andernut, the limit I mentioned is for 1-2 OPEN tournaments per person - i.e. tournaments that you are hosting that are still waiting for players to join so they can start.

Ah yes, I misread your statement.  1-2 seems good then, and the option to cancel your tourney before it fills would be handy.