Heroscape.org - New Software Support for Heroscape

[caps]

Hmm, that might be a barrier for me also. Would be useful to have email-less players that I manage, for last-minute joiners, etc.

[caps]

Follow-up "issue" is that I have no way to contact players that sign up for the event, so when people use a username that I don't recognize, I have no way of knowing how to contact them if there is any kind of issue.

[Chris Perkins]

Originally Posted by caps

Follow-up "issue" is that I have no way to contact players that sign up for the event, so when people use a username that I don't recognize, I have no way of knowing how to contact them if there is any kind of issue.

What kind of issues are you worried about having? Them not showing up day-of? For that, the TD can mark them as inactive and they won't get paired in. What other issues do you forsee happening?

[caps]

Originally Posted by Chris Perkins

What kind of issues are you worried about having? Them not showing up day-of? For that, the TD can mark them as inactive and they won't get paired in. What other issues do you forsee happening?

I'm concerned about:
1) being able to keep track of who is who
2) how can I contact them to inform them of any updates after they sign up
3) people showing up day-of and having registration issues preventing them from getting matched up

I posted the tournament link in our Discord and already the first signup is a username I've never seen before. I can just ask in the Discord who it is, of course, but as I post the sign-up link more places (like in the thread linked in my signature right now) people I've never talked to before will stumble into it and may sign up without communicating to me. I need a way to tie names to faces.

An encouragement to the user at signup-time to use either a Heroscapers name or a discord handle would alleviate this a little bit, but doesn't address the #3 issue I raised.

[Chris Perkins]

Originally Posted by caps

I'm concerned about:
1) being able to keep track of who is who
2) how can I contact them to inform them of any updates after they sign up
3) people showing up day-of and having registration issues preventing them from getting matched up

I posted the tournament link in our Discord and already the first signup is a username I've never seen before. I can just ask in the Discord who it is, of course, but as I post the sign-up link more places (like in the thread linked in my signature right now) people I've never talked to before will stumble into it and may sign up without communicating to me. I need a way to tie names to faces.

An encouragement to the user at signup-time to use either a Heroscapers name or a discord handle would alleviate this a little bit, but doesn't address the #3 issue I raised.

Thanks for the list, it's quite helpful.

I'm going to be mostly out of contact over the next few days, just a heads up, but I'll think about this some more and probably have more formulated thoughts when I'm back in WiFi land.

[Chris Perkins]

Ok, here goes quite a bit of text.

TDs Adding 'Temp' Players

After a bit of internal deliberation, I have decided to support allowing TDs to add "temp" players for an individual tournament. While this may seem easy, it is anything but, as the existing database I designed doesn't support it. So, I'm going to have to make some database changes (which causes plenty of website changes). It'll actually end up being a pretty extensive change. But I've been convinced that it'll allow a lot of additional local events to potentially use the software, and I think there's a lot of potential it can add that's worth it. @caps - I think this addresses your issue #3, correct me if I'm wrong.

That being said, I don't intend to support every future request; I will be declining some, based on site goals, work load, etc. And I won't always have the time to write out a paragraph about why. I designed this site primarily with ScapeCon in mind, although I do think the above change will let it become viable for many more local events. But, for example, I have no intention of supporting a "round robin" structure; something that wants to run a 6-person round robin event is probably best off not using this site, and that's totally fine. My goal isn't to be a solution for 100% of tournaments, but rather the bigger ones where rematches, power-ranked matchups, and map avoidance is a meaningful goal. And if it happens to work well for any additional groups, great!

Other Questions Caps Had

1) Being able to track who is who - To be frank, I don't intend to do anything directly to aid in this goal. I hope that most people who have Heroscapers accounts will use the same username on Heroscape.org, but I don't intend to add any direct PM-type features at any point. To the extent this becomes an issue, I think it goes away --relatively-- quickly after 1 or 2 events, but either way, solving this issue just isn't going to be in the scope of what I can do.

2) How to Deliver Updates After Someone Signs Up - This one should already be supported. An admin for a tournament should have a box labelled "Make Announcement" where they can enter text in. Clicking the "Announce!" button below will send an email to each user registered for the tournament with the content of the announcement. This is a relatively new feature that's only been up for a week or so. As mentioned in #1 above, I only want to keep messaging via email in the context of Admin -> Group, and not allow Admin -> Individual or Individual -> Individual. There's several reasons for that goal that I won't go into here.

Work Planning

I won't be doing any work on the site over this week, but I plan to try to implement most of the major changes previously discussed during the first week of November, with the intention of testing/using them at the New England event on November 5th.

As a corollary of that, I'm asking anyone who's been considering using this software for one of their tournaments to wait until AFTER November 5th before creating a tournament and/or advertising it. @caps - since you've already created one and had people signing up, feel free to keep advertising the existing link (hopefully this is the only exception I need to make), since the only relevant feature for now for your event is signing up, which does work right now. But know that there's a chance that when I'm actively working on it, it's possible a sign-up might not work (for example, when making changes, for some to take effect, I have to kill and re-start the website server). Just a heads up.

@ryguy266

If I missed anything, let me know.

I hope that post Nov. 5th the site should be much more stable and ready for more use, but I won't know until Nov. 6th for sure.

[caps]

My event isn't until a full month after November 5th so I can delay pushing people to sign up until then. If I end up needing to recreate the event I can even do that.

Thanks for the post explaining everything! An announce feature sounds perfect for my needs

[ryguy266]

Awesome work Chris. Do TDs have the option to delete a tournament? I want to do a "Test" one to make sure I know how everything works, but I'm not sure if that is a permanent thing. With these changes I think I'll use this site for the next tournament if temp player adding is supported.

[caps]

How could I create a "League"

[Knox]

I wanted to suggest (as a low-priority, down the road improvement) the addition of multiplayer tournament maps. They are difficult to find (I can only think of 3-4) but it would be nice if the maps feature of the website could sort between 2 player maps, multiplayer maps, and burnout maps (SirH format).

[Chris Perkins]

Originally Posted by Knox

I wanted to suggest (as a low-priority, down the road improvement) the addition of multiplayer tournament maps. They are difficult to find (I can only think of 3-4) but it would be nice if the maps feature of the website could sort between 2 player maps, multiplayer maps, and burnout maps (SirH format).

This is a good idea.

With regards to maps, my primary goal for right now is accumulating a good dataset (i.e. tracking the right things) so I can do more cool things with them down the road (once the Tournament software is finished).

What I did for now is add another field to the Map's database for number of players (which was 2 for all the maps I had so far). That should support the future expansion that your suggesting.
Example: https://heroscape.org/map/?HeroscapeMap=14

I didn't do anything yet with regards to 'Burnout' Maps, mainly because I don't think 'Regular' v. 'Burnout' is a good enough abstraction. Specifically, there's probably some higher-level distinction to be made there (where do casual, non-tourney maps fit? where do 4x RotV maps fit?). If/when I get a good idea for that better abstraction (or someone figures it out for me, lol), I'll make a change there.

[Knox]

Originally Posted by Chris Perkins

This is a good idea.

With regards to maps, my primary goal for right now is accumulating a good dataset (i.e. tracking the right things) so I can do more cool things with them down the road (once the Tournament software is finished).

What I did for now is add another field to the Map's database for number of players (which was 2 for all the maps I had so far). That should support the future expansion that your suggesting.
Example: https://heroscape.org/map/?HeroscapeMap=14

I didn't do anything yet with regards to 'Burnout' Maps, mainly because I don't think 'Regular' v. 'Burnout' is a good enough abstraction. Specifically, there's probably some higher-level distinction to be made there (where do casual, non-tourney maps fit? where do 4x RotV maps fit?). If/when I get a good idea for that better abstraction (or someone figures it out for me, lol), I'll make a change there.

That's a good point. The way I have my maps organized (I have zip files of my favorites on my computer) is

Tourney Maps (Subfolders: 2 player, 3 player, 4 player, burnout)
Casual Maps (Subfolders: Mini maps, Standard maps, & Epic Maps - Epic being the ones with like 4 RotV).

Of course, whenever you add a filter for the terrain sets utilized by each maps that will sort the casual maps out for you naturally.

For the website it would probably be better to give each map a "tag" rather than a folder so that you can filter by various things: all 2 player maps (both casual & tourney) or 2 player tourney maps (2 filters applied) etc.