New TB Features in the works

[sixty_something]

i've been following this thread, but it hasn't made much sense until having the experience of actually running a tourney as i did yesterday for the first time with the "Sunday Special" .. now, i'm bubbling over with ideas

first, i'm curious what you mean by schedule .. i assume it's an every Sunday, 1500 UTC, type thing .. it would  be great to have TDbot handle that, too, making set-up each week almost automatic .. although it makes me wonder if fully automated tourney's which seems to be where you're heading here might not suffer from bot like personality problems .. we have enough bot personality dysfuntion issues already, don't you think? worse still, what happens when something inevitably comes up that needs human intervention?

for example, socksey really makes a huge difference in all the stuff she does with "Mini-Matches" .. as do all the regular hosts of the other tourneys .. LuckyDice, for example, saved yesterday's Sunday Bago when the regular director was not logeed in at registration time .. stuff like that will always happen, sometimes even with bots .. but folks like socksey and LD are rare .. regardless, i suspect the tournament director's personality, ownership of, and responsibility for an event really can make an important difference in a tourney's success .. so, i offer an apprehensive warning about overly automating the whole process including scheduling

regarding spam, by which i assume you mean shouts by TDbot and the tourney director, something i'd like to see integrated into scheduling and expanded on is promotion .. fibs tourney schedules are *very* confusing .. it took me months to figure it out and i still screw it up from time to time .. therefore, i'd like to see TDbot shout out alerts to upcoming events synchronized to the time of an upcoming tourney

for example, shout hourly notices synchronized to appear one and two hours ahead of a scheduled time and at the scheduled time itself for a couple of days before the scheduled tourney .. this might help catch the attention of players who log on at regular times each day rather than inhabit fibs 24/7 like some of us do .. additional and increasing levels of alerts should also kick in during the 12-24 hours before the event itself

while possibly annoying, this would really be a good way to spread the word about tourneys (especially new ones where my thinking is at the moment) amongst new and old fibsters alike .. with a little thought these ads, err notices, could be simple and capable of expressing basic info as well as the personality or character of the tourney itself .. additionally, a TDbot maintained URL with references for scheduled events would also be nice

on the subject of promotion, i used my javafibs friends list which i use for almost everyone with a good reputation near my player rating and a programmable button to send out invitations to over 200 players for this first "Sunday Special" .. my wrist still hurts from all the mousing around required to do that .. i received a lot of positive feedback on this - primarily from folks who couldn't make it, but were glad to be aware of the new tourney .. i'll likely do this again a time or two for the "Sunday Special" and a "Midnight Special" i'm also considering hosting, but it was rather a pain in the old arse, not to mention wrist .. seems as if TDbot might be able to help manage a task like this too .. of course, the delicate balance of information, promotion, notices, ads, and true spam has to be weighed very carefully here too .. frankly, it can't be as bad as JokeBot can get .. also, if it came as a shout from something other than TDbot, say TDads, anyone annoyed by it could always gag it

on handling forfeits, socksey's comments below, my experience with 2 forfeits yesterday, and common sense suggest forfeits are an area where a human tourney director *must* be involved .. to spend time trying to automate that process may not be worth the effort and could create as many problems as it attempts to solve .. one or two bad forfeits by TDbot could do a lot of harm to TDbot's reputation which must aim toward perfection and be as transparent as possible, imho

however, since it is a time issue, here's a couple of suggestions on forfeits  .. whenever TDbot sends a notice of a next match to the players, include a UTC time stamp ... further, CC: that match notice to a log for the tourney (another TDbot idea) as well as to the tourney moderator(s) in a Tell .. thus, a reference time is automatically available for matches not started promptly .. all we'd have to do then is check the server clock to determine a valid time to forfeit when a dispute arises .. this would be far preferable, i think, to having it done automatically .. there will always arise exceptions to a precise 5 minute limit which need to be accommodated, e.g. smoke breaks for resh

yesterday, one of my forfeits in the "Sunday Special" involved a very reliable player, Bonnita, losing connection and being unable to reconnect or communicate with us until after the tourney .. thus, the semifinal match was sitting in idle .. fortunately, socksey was watching the match, timed the delay, and let me know about it .. thus, it was a quick and easy call to forfeit the match .. however, without socksey being on top of it, i'd have had a hard time making the call without adding even more time, perhaps another 5 minutes, to the delay .. not sure how TDbot might be able to help in that situation other than by monitoring and reporting (on request) a player's idle time to the moderator .. but from what i've seen of idle time reporting, it doesn't appear to be consistent enough to trust - maybe i just don't know how to retrieve it

regarding player registration limits, i set the bar a little higher on reputation yesterday and will experiment next week with setting it higher still .. i used a RepBot threshold of 5000 rather than zero whcih socksey uses in "Mini-Matches".. next week i'm going to increase that to 10000

my thinking is that this will not only encourage responsible RepBot use, but it just makes a nice screen door to keep varmints out .. if ever a player rejected in registration would really like to play and communicate that with me, i have the ability to give them a one time vouch for the event only which would bring them to the 10K threshold unless i'd already vouched for them or they were negative

i have several other ideas (i think), but this is way enough for now

thanks for your email reply from which some of these thoughts arose and i look forward to helping anyway i can with tourneys and using TDbot in future "Specials"

sixty

[Tom]

first, i'm curious what you mean by schedule .. i assume it's an every Sunday, 1500 UTC, type thing .. it would  be great to have TDbot handle that, too, making set-up each week almost automatic .. although it makes me wonder if fully automated tourney's which seems to be where you're heading here might not suffer from bot like personality problems .. we have enough bot personality dysfuntion issues already, don't you think? worse still, what happens when something inevitably comes up that needs human intervention?

for example, socksey really makes a huge difference in all the stuff she does with "Mini-Matches" .. as do all the regular hosts of the other tourneys .. LuckyDice, for example, saved yesterday's Sunday Bago when the regular director was not logeed in at registration time .. stuff like that will always happen, sometimes even with bots .. but folks like socksey and LD are rare .. regardless, i suspect the tournament director's personality, ownership of, and responsibility for an event really can make an important difference in a tourney's success .. so, i offer an apprehensive warning about overly automating the whole process including scheduling

I have a bot running on Yahoo in Advanced Ave that manages 15-20 tourneys
a day and runs mostly with no TD. I do have additional player commands
that help the bot decide what to do.

In many ways FIBS gives a little more information about players so in
some ways it will be easier to do here.

I also think that near term limits of say 4 per day is max.
Basically no matter where you live you will have a chance to play at least one a day.

regarding spam, by which i assume you mean shouts by TDbot and the tourney director, something i'd like to see integrated into scheduling and expanded on is promotion .. fibs tourney schedules are *very* confusing .. it took me months to figure it out and i still screw it up from time to time .. therefore, i'd like to see TDbot shout out alerts to upcoming events synchronized to the time of an upcoming tourney

for example, shout hourly notices synchronized to appear one and two hours ahead of a scheduled time and at the scheduled time itself for a couple of days before the scheduled tourney .. this might help catch the attention of players who log on at regular times each day rather than inhabit fibs 24/7 like some of us do .. additional and increasing levels of alerts should also kick in during the 12-24 hours before the event itself

while possibly annoying, this would really be a good way to spread the word about tourneys (especially new ones where my thinking is at the moment) amongst new and old fibsters alike .. with a little thought these ads, err notices, could be simple and capable of expressing basic info as well as the personality or character of the tourney itself .. additionally, a TDbot maintained URL with references for scheduled events would also be nice

The players are confused when they can not predict when there will be
a tourney, that is one thing the league in Adv Ave worked very hard
to do manually, adding the bot made it much easier.

My goal is to run a handful of tourneys every day at the same times.

Yes a page and/or command to display the schedule would help.
For example if you tell TDBOT schedule list all
You will get a list of all the scheduled tourneys

I also want to get greater integration with one or more fibs clients.
I am talking to JavaFIBS developers, now. It seems to be the only
one with some interest in adding features.

on the subject of promotion, i used my javafibs friends list which i use for almost everyone with a good reputation near my player rating and a programmable button to send out invitations to over 200 players for this first "Sunday Special" .. my wrist still hurts from all the mousing around required to do that .. i received a lot of positive feedback on this - primarily from folks who couldn't make it, but were glad to be aware of the new tourney .. i'll likely do this again a time or two for the "Sunday Special" and a "Midnight Special" i'm also considering hosting, but it was rather a pain in the old arse, not to mention wrist .. seems as if TDbot might be able to help manage a task like this too .. of course, the delicate balance of information, promotion, notices, ads, and true spam has to be weighed very carefully here too .. frankly, it can't be as bad as JokeBot can get .. also, if it came as a shout from something other than TDbot, say TDads, anyone annoyed by it could always gag it

Maybe I could add a spam list that will send out one every hour and rotate to the next...
Like JokeBot... but I also very much like the TB Subscribe list, where we could send more info
or maybe next few scheduled events when a Subscribed player logs in, etc

on handling forfeits, socksey's comments below, my experience with 2 forfeits yesterday, and common sense suggest forfeits are an area where a human tourney director *must* be involved .. to spend time trying to automate that process may not be worth the effort and could create as many problems as it attempts to solve .. one or two bad forfeits by TDbot could do a lot of harm to TDbot's reputation which must aim toward perfection and be as transparent as possible, imho

I have done this before... in the other bot players had the following commands:

Code Select Expand


+LOST ( to report a loss)
+CLOCK (to put their opponent on the clock)
+BACK (to tell the bot is back online and maybe playing)


This way players can tell the bot what they think is going on.
It was not that hard to teach them.

However, since it is a time issue, here's a couple of suggestions on forfeits  .. whenever TDbot sends a notice of a next match to the players, include a UTC time stamp ... further, CC: that match notice to a log for the tourney (another TDbot idea) as well as to the tourney moderator(s) in a Tell .. thus, a reference time is automatically available for matches not started promptly .. all we'd have to do then is check the server clock to determine a valid time to forfeit when a dispute arises .. this would be far preferable, i think, to having it done automatically .. there will always arise exceptions to a precise 5 minute limit which need to be accommodated, e.g. smoke breaks for resh

yesterday, one of my forfeits in the "Sunday Special" involved a very reliable player, Bonnita, losing connection and being unable to reconnect or communicate with us until after the tourney .. thus, the semifinal match was sitting in idle .. fortunately, socksey was watching the match, timed the delay, and let me know about it .. thus, it was a quick and easy call to forfeit the match .. however, without socksey being on top of it, i'd have had a hard time making the call without adding even more time, perhaps another 5 minutes, to the delay .. not sure how TDbot might be able to help in that situation other than by monitoring and reporting (on request) a player's idle time to the moderator .. but from what i've seen of idle time reporting, it doesn't appear to be consistent enough to trust - maybe i just don't know how to retrieve it

Adding a time stamp is a good idea.
When I add clocks there will be commands to show player status,
last active time, idle time, on of off clock, etc

The bot would also be able to have it's own idle time as time since last
joined the match or other events, not just raw idle time. Time not playing the tourney match.

regarding player registration limits, i set the bar a little higher on reputation yesterday and will experiment next week with setting it higher still .. i used a RepBot threshold of 5000 rather than zero whcih socksey uses in "Mini-Matches".. next week i'm going to increase that to 10000

my thinking is that this will not only encourage responsible RepBot use, but it just makes a nice screen door to keep varmints out .. if ever a player rejected in registration would really like to play and communicate that with me, i have the ability to give them a one time vouch for the event only which would bring them to the 10K threshold unless i'd already vouched for them or they were negative

Yes RepBot can help a lot; but we need to encourage it's proper use.
I also want to get better integration between RepBot and javaFIBS

I think we really want to avoid Negative repbot limits. But we need to make it easier for people to use.
We need to start using the Friends features of repbot also... but that is a different forum...

The bottom line, there are a number of great features already in fibs that just need to get knitted together a little.
(OMG I wish Yahoo had a RepBot - you have NO idea... or maybe you *do* already!    )

i have several other ideas (i think), but this is way enough for now

thanks for your email reply from which some of these thoughts arose and i look forward to helping anyway i can with tourneys and using TDbot in future "Specials"

sixty

[socksey]

My goal is to run a handful of tourneys every day at the same times.

Do you mean on Fibs?  This freaks me out!      Fibs is too small to support anything like that.     We are only around 100 players at any given time give or take.  I have seen as low as 80 something players to as much at 157 (the max I've ever seen).  If you run any conflicting tourneys at same time, you will have poor participation for one or the other.   

You mentioned elsewhere that you had in mind 4 tourneys per day which might not be so bad, but they couldn't interfere with the current regularly scheduled tourneys.     That means there could not be 4 tourneys on the days of the already established tourneys.   

socksey



"People say that money isn't the key to happiness but I figured if you have enough money you can have a key made." - Joan Rivers

[Tom]

Do you mean on Fibs?  This freaks me out!      Fibs is too small to support anything like that.     We are only around 100 players at any given time give or take.  I have seen as low as 80 something players to as much at 157 (the max I've ever seen).  If you run any conflicting tourneys at same time, you will have poor participation for one or the other.   

You mentioned elsewhere that you had in mind 4 tourneys per day which might not be so bad, but they couldn't interfere with the current regularly scheduled tourneys.     That means there could not be 4 tourneys on the days of the already established tourneys.   

socksey

Maybe what I said was confusing..

I meant to say run tourneys at the same time each day, maybe up to 4 different times.

Thinking globally, that is 1 tourney every 6 hours

Of course I was not thinking about conflicting with anything existing.
Frankly I am a programmer and want to provide tools for others to use.
I have no desire to start a new league, etc. I am just expanding upon what we already have...

Tom

[sixty_something]

Tom, as a burned out ex-programmer, i see a lot of your enthusiasm and skill in your ideas and experience .. sharing it here to get user feedback before rollout is a tool i never enjoyed when i'd crawl into that little design space i still enjoy .. kuddos to you for using it .. but, as you probably know well, too much design and too many new features can be as fatal to a programming project's success as too little .. i'm *not* challenging your programming skills or ability to implement them, but i think socksey's concerns and mine reflect a need to also, perhaps most importantly, think locally, keep it small, and keep it simple

as i said in the emails we've shared earlier, fibs is an eclectic place, to say the least .. fibsland is much more akin to a dirt road back street than an "Advanced Avenue" .. as a small town Texas boy, i appreciate and love that about this sometimes nutty place .. therefore, trying to introduce too much regularity, efficiency, and routine just makes no sense to me either

first, it would likely result in a landslide of good natured but hyperventilated criticisms and put-downs that would undermine the validity of already well run tourneys and further conflict with that "special" nature of this little corner in the "vast wasteland" of cyberspace .. worse, fibsters could start twitching and moaning about TDbot tourneys, regardless of their efficiency, as much as they do about don, droppers, politics, and countless other things ..  we have more than enogh of that, imo .. finally, tourneys, especially, too many of them, will never be able to compete with the eclectic social structure many folks here find as appealing as playing backgammon .. if ever present tourneys droning on with bot like efficiency interfered with that aspect of the fibs experience, they would be doomed to failure regardless of their efficiency

for me, fibs is more a mom and pop storefront or eatery than a wal*mart or mcdonalds .. i drive out of my way for places like that just to avoid the sterile efficiency and infernal predictability of big box retail and the ever predictable "would you like fries with that?" .. in Austin there's a group of old and new hippies, artists, and artisans with the motto "Keep Austin Weird" .. well, "Keep FIBS Weird" works for me, too .. that's why i'm inclined to fully support socksey's concerns on this one .. sometimes more is less, sometimes much less

on reflection, i don't think it's a design or ease of use issue we're even talking about here, but rather a concern over your vision of how it might be implemented .. so, maybe this is just much ado about nothing regarding TDbot design, but, thanks to fibsboard, we have the ability to express it and get it out there for the community to also consider now or for years to come
 
so, for TDbot, imho, keeping it simple and keeping it a little quirky may be best .. let's just get it out there and start using it .. as a new tourney director, i can't wait to see and benefit from some of the features you have in mind

great work, man, keep it up, but stay open to socksey's sense of the fibs landscape and big picture .. your ideas and ability to implement them is awesome .. i'm truly impressed by your decication and the many contributions others have also made and continue to make to this little hometown .. but let's not replace the back roads with paved superhighways or mom and pop's barbecue joint with a super-sized whatever just yet

best regards,

sixty

[sixty_something]

and now a new idea for a TDbot feature - improved and expanded tournament reporting .. as i was thinking about ways i'd like to start reporting on my new "Sunday Special" tournament, i quickly began thinking about ways TDbot could help implement that .. in no time i forgot about reporting results of Sunday's tourney and began this not so little wish list based on my first "Sunday Special"

Proposed enhancements for TDbot shouts during tournament play

Upon starting play shout a list of players in seed order with rating,

"Sunday Special" Tourney #2058 Seed order:

    1. don (1823)
    2. blotsalot (1759)
    3. LuckyDice (1722)
    4. nixo (1710)
    5. Buso (1696)
    6. Gusssss (1674)
    7. sixty_something (1698)
    8. sarah (1683)
    9. breadfruit (1680)
   10. iowcoops (1672)
   11. socksey (1658)
   12. sunray (1657)
   13. bonnita (1604)
   14. moyang (1599)
   15. cassandra (1595)
   16. Sixta_II (1546)
   17. teyakis (1537)
   18. rollingfool (1532)
   19. Marcus (1500)
   20. patapouf (1500)
   21. njofra (1491)
   22. rossa (1491)
   23. zbilbo (1477)
   24. zulu (1473)



Also, advise each player his/her seed rank in a private tell, as

   You are the #7 seed of 24 in today's "Sunday Special"
    Good luck and thanks for playing!


Upon sending match notification rather than TourneyBot's somewhat cryptic:

   Message from TourneyBot: T2058R1M2 (3-pt): moyang (1599) vs. sixty_something (1698)

which is mostly noise, instead say:

   Round 1 "Sunday Special"  #14. moyang (1599) vs. #7. sixty_something (1698)

Upon start, shout out a list of all pairings, ordered by seed number:

   Round 1 of 5 in "Sunday Special" Tournament - 3 point matches (1522 UTC)


   # 1 don (1823) 3-2             vs. #12 sunray (1657)     
   # 2 blotsalot (1759)            vs. #20 patapouf (1500)   
   # 3 LuckyDice (1722)          vs. # 6 Gusssss (1674)   
   # 7 sixty_something (1698)  vs. #14 moyang (1599)     
   # 9 breadfruit (1680)           vs. #17 teyakis (1537)
   #10 iowcoops (1672)           vs. #11 socksey (1658)
   #15 cassandra (1595)          vs. #19 Marcus (1500)     
   #16 Sixta_II (1546)             vs. #18 rollingfool (1532)

   byes:  #4 nixo, #5 Buso, #8 sarah, #13 bonnita,
         #21 njofra, #22 rossa, #23 zbilbo, #24 zulu

   Good luck to all .. let the games begin!

Upon completion of each match, shout and tell all players:

   Round 1 #19 Marcus (1500) def. #15 cassandra (1595)   3-0  1539 UTC


Upon completion of each round, shout the results by order of finish:

   Results from Round 1 of 5 in "Sunday Special" Tournament complete at 1554 UTC:

   # 6 Gusssss (1674)           def. # 3 LuckyDice (1722)   3-0   1536 UTC
   #19 Marcus (1500)            def. #15 cassandra (1595)  3-0     39
   #20 patapouf (1500)         def. # 2 blotsalot (1759)     3-0     42
   # 9 breadfruit (1680)         def. #17 teyakis (1537)      3-0     42
   #16 Sixta_II (1546)           def. #18 rollingfool (1532)   3-0     43
   #12 sunray (1657)             def. # 1 don (1823)           3-2     46
   # 7 sixty_something (1698) def. #14 moyang (1599)     5-0     48
   #10 iowcoops (1672)         def. #11 socksey (1658)     5-2     54

Upon assignment of new matches, shout and tell:

   Round 2 "Sunday Special" #6 Gusssss (1674) vs. #13 bonnita (1604)


Substitute Semifinals and Finals for the round number when appropriate.

Shout the scores of each game in the finals with tells to all registered players. At the conclusion of the match shout and tell a customized congrats. Then, shout out the standings for the tourney.

Finally, the seed list, round results, and standing should also be sent to a simple text log file which could also be emailed to the tourney moderators and players with a registered email subscription for TDbot statistics.

IMO, such features would not only provide players with a ratcheted up level of excitement and interest while  playing, but ensure their interest in playing in a tourney again next time. Non-players would likely sense and catch on to this excitement, as well. Who knows, in no time we might have 4 or more tourneys running every day! 

Think you could have this ready by next Sunday, Tom? 

sixty

[socksey]

The "other" concern I'm having, is will all this shouting and telling slow Fibs down any?  I have noticed more lag on Fibs of late and I wouldn't want any of this to add to that problem.   

socksey



"So they're showing me, on television, the detergents getting out bloodstains.  I mean, come on, if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstains all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem right now." - Jerry Seinfeld

[burper]

I also want to get greater integration with one or more fibs clients.
I am talking to JavaFIBS developers, now. It seems to be the only

There is also the FLiPS or FibsCompanion solution, which would make your new features available to *any* client.
See http://stepfibs.sourceforge.net/OtherStuff.html

As far as spam goes, why not go with opt-in tells, like RepBot does?
Better yet, register valid IM handles and use libpurple. That way there is no fibs bandwidth used, and
you have a more robust communication medium and toolset. Another stepfibs sub-project I have going
is a libpurple protocol plugin for fibs (see the stepfibs svn).

[Tom]

great work, man, keep it up, but stay open to socksey's sense of the fibs landscape and big picture .. your ideas and ability to implement them is awesome .. i'm truly impressed by your decication and the many contributions others have also made and continue to make to this little hometown .. but let's not replace the back roads with paved superhighways or mom and pop's barbecue joint with a super-sized whatever just yet

I hear your points and maybe I am looking too far in the future of possibilities.
Let me say this... The features I implement will avoid anything that will LIMIT what can be done.

We'll let the community figure out what fits best, which may even change over time...

tom

[Tom]

and now a new idea for a TDbot feature - improved and expanded tournament reporting ..

There are a lot of good ideas in there.

I think some of the crypticism is from testing and then leaving it because it worked and nobody suggested anything better

I share socksey's concern about fibs bandwidth but... it can be a lot prettier...

FIBS is line oriented, so maybe longer lines of text would help maybe like:

Sunday Special Round 1: don vs sunray winner plays nixo, blotsalot vs patapouf, LuckyDice vs Guesssss winner plays sarah etc

It might tends to be more compact

You see FIBS requires a specific delay between commands as a form of self protection (DOS etc)

In the Tells I like

Round 1 "Sunday Special"  #14. moyang (1599) vs. #7. sixty_something (1698)

But maybe we could also do something like say

In Round 1 of Sunday Special you play sixty_something, please start your match ASAP!

There are pros and cons of listing all the seeding and ratings, we won't go into that right now...


I also like this

Upon completion of each match, shout and tell all players:

   Round 1 #19 Marcus (1500) def. #15 cassandra (1595)   3-0  1539 UTC

esp the TIME!

tom

[Tom]

Just an update as to what I have been up to.

I have added automatic player clocks for drops and not starting matches.

This is taking a lot of testing with some test ids.

Then I need to consider how to handle slow play...

I was thinking about adding a command a player could send to tbot to have tbot Watch/UnWatch the match every few min to make sure the game it still moving and maybe if it found a player had not moved in two visits then clock them.

I am not sure I would want to do that to every match, as a player that could be annoying.
starts watching/stops watching/starts.../etc

Does anyone know a better way to tell a player has made a move?

tom

[burper]

Use look instead of watch.
Why not do a look to every match periodically?

[Tom]

Use look instead of watch.
Why not do a look to every match periodically?

I did not see that one!

Thanks!

[socksey]

I also like this

Upon completion of each match, shout and tell all players:

   Round 1 #19 Marcus (1500) def. #15 cassandra (1595)   3-0  1539 UTC

esp the TIME!

I like this too, but would prefer it be in "tells" only to the Tourney Director.  Or, is TDBot going to award wins for time?  If so, then, I would prefer that be in only "tells". 

I think we should try to keep as much information as possible out of "shouts" so we don't detract from the conversations going on there, when at all possible.  "Shouts" is an important part of the charm of Fibs and I think we should try to preserve that at all costs.

socksey



"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make," -- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

[Tom]

I like this too, but would prefer it be in "tells" only to the Tourney Director.  Or, is TDBot going to award wins for time?  If so, then, I would prefer that be in only "tells". 

I think we should try to keep as much information as possible out of "shouts" so we don't detract from the conversations going on there, when at all possible.  "Shouts" is an important part of the charm of Fibs and I think we should try to preserve that at all costs.

I am going to look over the shouts we use.

One thing I have thought about is to use TELLS to players of the tourney for most of the info

I have a bit more to do on clocks (look command - thanks burper) and then the cosmetic stuff...

The 'time' mentioned there was the time of day the match was finished.

And yes the bot will be able to track clocks and award wins when a player times out.

Remember theses things are all configurable...

if you do not define a timeout then the TD can manage the clocks manually.

tom

[burper]

Another option is for players to use FLiPS with the Rooms plugin, including TDBot.
Those players currently in TDBots' Room would hear whatever announcements TDBot made in that Room.

[Tom]

Well I have player clocks implemented, starts clock when player drops offline, leaves match or just sits there without moving (not idle, just not moving - I watch the board via Look - thanks burper)

Takes you off clock when you resume the match or start moving again.

If you time out it will automatically advance your opponent and send a tourney shout so everyone knows what happened.
(in email log too)

I have a little more testing to do but hope to run a tourney at 1600UTC  a few days this week (Mon-Thur)

I have not made the match shouts more people friendly yet, as those are just cosmetic changes and I need to get the logic tested...

thanks for all your future help testing! 

[Tom]

Well things are still moving along.

Matt and I have been talking and he needs to move it to a different server.
Because of all the code I have been adding he suggested I start hosting it.

I am testing my environment and now have tdbot running 24x7

When we do the switch the tourneybot will be down for a bit while we move the database.

If Matt can wait until after 1/1 it may be best because I think there may be a lot of people
on vacation at this point...

Of course I am also on vacation (but painting my house)...

Tom

[MadMatt]

Well things are still moving along.

Matt and I have been talking and he needs to move it to a different server.
Because of all the code I have been adding he suggested I start hosting it.

I am testing my environment and now have tdbot running 24x7

When we do the switch the tourneybot will be down for a bit while we move the database.

If Matt can wait until after 1/1 it may be best because I think there may be a lot of people
on vacation at this point...

Of course I am also on vacation (but painting my house)...

Tom

Hi, I can wait, my current hosting expires on 31 Dec, though. I have the new server already up and running, but I'd rather not go through the trouble of setting it up for TourneyBot if you're going to start hosting it ...

M.

[Tom]

I have been very bust as of late, but have finally gotten back to tourneybot...

I have created a new tourney type "single" to replace "bracket" in the future which works better with my bracket posting code.

The bracket code had a problem of calling the Round 1 matches M1,M2,M3 even if there were a number of bye's

The new code will correctly place the r1 & r2 matches where they belong for proper tourney matches.

Another important addition is it will sort the players for seeding by Rating & experience, more like regular tourneys.

I have some more testing to do, but wanted to let you all know of the advances!

Are there any other (useful) sorting methods?

tom