4. Cb and ranking module

[*DAMN Mauti]

Today I gonna start with the last missing piece of the *DBL 2.0: the clanbattle and ranking module.

It can be splitted into 3 parts:

1. submitting and approving cbs
2. (re)calculating ranks and points
3. viewing rankings

It's a big and complex module but as soon as it is done I only have to clean up the code, put together the start page and the *DBL is ready for launch and a first public hands on.

Bye,

Mauti

[PUNiSHER™]

Playing GHR in the Ghost League just reminded me how much long seasons suck.  Part of the reason I hate it is because they only let you CB each clan 1 time.  I hope *DAMN does a lot of tournaments.  Some of the older games like GHR and RvS would probably be better off with tournament ladders than full season ladders.  I can't see clans coming back to play full seasons of GHR anymore.  Every GHR clan on Gameranger is gone.

[Tin]

Depends on the rules. If you're only allowed to play each team once, ofc a long season will be boring. Since there are always teams you like to play more than others or simply can't due to the different time zones. But I don't think tournaments are the solution to this. Because of the different time zones, a tournament requires all teams to be online at the same time which is almost impossible at the current state of activity. A 2-3 months season gives much more open room to the teams to make their own match schedules. Anyway, I think we should have both. Kind of like Clanbase, they have regular seasons and every 4 months cups/tournaments. Speaking of CB, I like how Clanbase deals with scheduling matches.

16. Arranging matches

   1. The deadline for reacting to a challenge is 7 days after the challenge or 7 days before the war, whichever is later. If by the deadline the opponent still hasn't reacted to the challenge, they get a penalty of 5 points. If the ladder leader ignores such a challenge, they will lose their position to the second clan. You can set an earlier deadline for accepting the challenge, but then there is no penalty if the opponent doesn't react in time.
   2. You can only refuse a challenge from another clan in the following cases:
          * Reschedule: You want to reschedule the match to another date. This date has to be within 14 days of the original challenge.
          * Unequal match: There is a gap of 10 ranking positions and 100 points between you and your opponent, or you have more than 1100 points and it's your opponent's first match.
          * Busy in this ladder: you already have 2 or more matches in this ladder in the next 30 days.
          * Custom maps: the opponent selected custom maps.
          * Declinable matchrule: the opponent selected a declinable match rule in the challenge form.
          * Hibernate: you want to set your clan as inactive in this ladder. You lose 32 points but after that you can decline all challenges. All your scheduled matches are cancelled when you go into hibernation. Hibernation ends automatically when you play an official match for this ladder again.
      These options are only available for the ladder leader:
          * Unequal match: The challenging clan is not ranked in the top 5 of the ladder.
          * Resign: Using this option will make the ladder leader lose it's position in the ladder to the second ranked clan.
      If you don't want to play the match for some other reason, you'll have to contact the other clan (e-mail, IRC, ICQ) and persuade them to cancel their challenge.
   3. A scheduled match can be cancelled until 12 hours before the starting time on the Agenda. The side that wishes to cancel the match will either have to request a reschedule or go into hibernation.
   4. When both clans agree not to play a match it can be cancelled for any reason after its scheduled starting time. Just choose the 'Match was cancelled' option on the result form.
   5. If a match is played without being arranged on ClanBase first, then both sides are depending on each other's sportsmanship to accept the result afterwards. We will not force match results when there was no accepted challenge for that match.

[*DAMN Mauti]

Seasons and events will be there. In the current setup events can be done anytime no matter if a season is running or not. To get the *DBL going again I plan todo some tournaments or short events. As soon as I'm done with programming I'll get back to this question.

Thanks for the posting Tin. The challenge feature won't be there from the beginning but will come sooner or later. My idea was that clan A posts 3 dates and times and clan B can pick one or just suggest an alternative date.

In the ladder season settings I have already added everything for it. There will also be a challenge limit so you can only receive a certain amount of challenges at a time. Also it can be turned on and off per ladder.

Demand and activity will show which missing features and rules gonna make it first.

Bye,

Mauti

[*DAMN Mauti]

Just a short update:

I'm currently working on the ranking page and I'm fighting with the problem that each game needs different columns for their stats.

What all cbs have in common is that their is a winner and a loser(Team and FFA) and that a clan or player gets points. No problem so far, but all other stats change from game to game: most shooters will have kills and death or even assists as player stats while strategy games might have  won and lost units and buildings.

What stats would you like to see but are also bearable to enter manually after each cb? What's important for you? Or are you satisfied with the stats we had in the *DBL so far?(just won and lost cbs and won and lost games)

[Tin]

I find entering the right score already annoying. 
No really, try to keep it simple. Nothing is more annoying than browsing after a long match through all your screenshots to get the stats right. For more stats players should be able upload demos and screenshots for every match.

http://clanbase.ggl.com/news_league.php?wid=8552014&lid=8338

[*DAMN Mauti]

That's the way I have planned it from the beginning. I don't know why I suddenly felt like I had to add as many stats as possible.

However everything is coming along very well guys. Tomorrow morning I gonna finish the different ranking pages and start and hopefully even finish the cb submitions.

If so I might give out a handful of sneak preview accounts already later this week(more about that in an own topic as time comes).

Stay tuned. I need some sleep now,

Mauti
ps.: as usual thx for any links and references. It's always a good idea to look beyong one's own nose.

[*DAMN Mauti]

Alright,

the ranking pages are done for the moment. There are some minor TODOs. The only thing I wanna add before launch but after finishing the cb submition part is an automated tournament layout. Right now you can only see a list on tournament ladders. I haven't done it yet because the way I save the tournament data might change until launch.

The ranking page is pretty forward. You can see the ladder season settings, season dates and sign up policy. One big difference to the *DBL 1 is that you can easily switch between seasons(events) and view old standings without any problem.

It seems yesterday I was a bit quick with my wishes and hopes to finish the cb submitions already today, but tomorrow is another 10hours+ programming day 

Good night,

Mauti

[*DAMN Mauti]

I don't know why but somehow I forgot that just submitting the cbs isn't enough. Of course you(or at least an admin) need to edit the score, view a matchlist and some other things. Arg.

At all the coding isn't very difficult, but I still have only two hands so it's just a matter of years ;-) Nevertheless my previous statement about a sneak peak by the end of the week still stands. So far...

Good night,

Mauti

[*DAMN Mauti]

GRRRRRRr, just wasted two hours of my life searching an image resize bug. The script just aborted, no error message nothing. The script memory limit of my local PHP installation was set to 8MB and as soon as I tried to resize an image larger than 800*Y it crashed. GRRRRR.

At least the HS Ladder submittion works more or less now. I thought this and the COOP calculation would be the easiest part but to the contrary it turned out to be the most complicated one because a HS or COOP Ladder consists of 1 overall score ladder and several mission ladders.

For each mission rank you get points and you win a HS or COOP ladder with the highest overall score. So as soon as I have a new personal mission record, the script not only updates the mission ladder it also has to recalc the overall score and if the ladder also has an overall season it also has to update the mission and overall score ladders there.

So far my script is super fast and usually I only have between 7 and 9 MySQL queries per page, but to submit a HS or COOP cb I have up to 30 queries in the worst case. At least the queries are simple and so I hope it will scale fine.

As an additional feature I have now also added an image resize for the proof screenshots. So you can just upload a screenshot without rescaling as long as you don't exceed the upload size limit. Same will be added for uploading your avatar. It also crops your picture, if required, so your pic doesn't get stretched.

Alright there is still enough to do. So more news later.

Mauti
ps.: I already have sent an email to my webhost to upgrade my account to MySQL 5 so there is no additional delay when I want to upload the sneak peak.

[*DAMN Mauti]

Beside the HS ladder the COOP ladders are now fully operational.

Everything from submitting, too editing, deleting, uploading proofs, leaving comments, see the latest cbs(by Laddertype, clan, ladder, season and/or mission) works.

All updates will automatically added to the overall ladder, which is as said in another post, always open. Of course for COOP and HS ladders it will only make sense to make a season with missions that haven't been played on the overall season already.

About the ranking:

Usually appr. 5 missions are selected for a HS or COOP season. For each mission rank you gain you get points. The sum of all mission points is the overall ranking. The season winner will be the player or clan with the most overall points while holding a mission record will also be awarded as soon as the award module has been integrated into the *DBL.

The tiebreaker on these ladder are:

For a mission record always the older submitted record stays on top.
For the overall score the newest high score stays on top.

Alright now I try to get the TEAM ladder module done so I maybe can add it to the sneak peak as well.

Bye,

Mauti

[*DAMN Mauti]

Alright since a lot of smaller and bigger sneak peak bugs have been fixed I'll work again on the team ranking module.

[*DAMN Mauti]

Another update: finally the team ranking module has been finished. It was a pretty difficult one for various reason. Especially the setup with the overall ladder. All cbs from tournaments and seasons will be automatically added there as well and the ranking includes all cbs you have played so far for this ladder.

There are still some ranking systems too add. Right now only the elo ranking works. The tournament and advanced setup will be added once I'm back from sweden.

Alright I gonna add it to the sneak peak for testing purposes tonight or tomorrow morning.

[*DAMN Mauti]

Today I have added detailed season stats. Whenever you view a cb info you can see how many times the two clans already played vs. each other in the shown season and overall. Also winrate and current streak can be seen.