Heroscape.org - New Software Support for Heroscape

[Sir Heroscape]

Not sure how well this can be implemented (maybe pretty hard?) but I like that feature more if it was an SMS. That is, would it be possible - assuming a phone number is on the profile - to send out these same notifications, but via SMS? I could see that being a lot more convenient say, for when a TD sends an announcement, or when the Event rounds timer ends or if there are updates or whatever the case may be.

Email works fine...but I could see SMS just being a lot more "smooth"

[Chris Perkins]

Originally Posted by Sir Heroscape

Not sure how well this can be implemented (maybe pretty hard?) but I like that feature more if it was an SMS. That is, would it be possible - assuming a phone number is on the profile - to send out these same notifications, but via SMS? I could see that being a lot more convenient say, for when a TD sends an announcement, or when the Event rounds timer ends or if there are updates or whatever the case may be.

Email works fine...but I could see SMS just being a lot more "smooth"

SMS is not an option

[caps]

Regarding your question my answer would be C most of the time, but I could see A being useful, particularly for larger events.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Chris Perkins

For #1, this happens because the map allocation algorithm is a bit greedy. More specifically, it works with only a subset of the pairings at once (everyone in the top group of players, by record, who have not had their game assigned yet, trying to get the best map pairing for them) and has no backtracking built-in (i.e. sometimes there are multiple equally good allocations for the top bracket, but only one of them avoids re-match maps later on down the swiss ladder, and if the wrong one is arbitrarily chosen there is no backtracking to find the preferred alternative.

To some degree, this is just a limitation of the implementation of the algorithm I used (and my direct decision to avoid the use of backtracking to both (A) simplify the algorithm, & (B) guarantee that it will also arrive at a final pairing, i.e. backtracking has the potential to introduce side cases (bugs) where it might keep try backtracking forever if I mess up the algorithm. Basically I decided simplicity was a better approach to perfect backtracking.

I might re-visit that algorithm in the future, but it probably won't be until after ScapeCon III (barring severe need) because my primary goal right now is to increase stability (and altering core algorithms has the opposite effect).

For #2, I had actually been thinking about this limitation recently as well. I think I want to somehow add the non-used maps below the pairings list (visible before the round is published), but I haven't settled on how I want to do it yet. This one I might actually get around to before ScapeCon III if I can come up with a good solution that I like, as I think it's a pretty isolated change and (fairly) unlikely to break other things due to unintended consequences (it's also something that's easier for me to test in isolation, which reduces the probability of adding additional bugs).

So I understand your explanation, but I feel like it still doesn't address what I'm seeing. When I tell players that have been assigned a map that one or both of them have already played, they're usually able to manually find a map that neither of them have played and is not being used. It seems like the algorithm should be able to do that.

--

Regarding #2, my idea in terms of UI would just be to add additional rows to the table with the players blank but the maps set; kind of like how players with byes show up at the top, except I'd put the maps at the bottom.

[Chris Perkins]

Originally Posted by caps

So I understand your explanation, but I feel like it still doesn't address what I'm seeing. When I tell players that have been assigned a map that one or both of them have already played, they're usually able to manually find a map that neither of them have played and is not being used. It seems like the algorithm should be able to do that.

It is supposed to have handled that specific case.

Can you point me to a specific game where that happened at one of your events? I'd like to trace through the map distribution to see what happened in that case. Ideally a link to the tournament page with a round number & map name (or player names) where you observed an unused map being strictly better. I'd like to trace back through it; it would be helpful.

Originally Posted by caps

Regarding #2, my idea in terms of UI would just be to add additional rows to the table with the players blank but the maps set; kind of like how players with byes show up at the top, except I'd put the maps at the bottom.

This is fairly similar to what I have been thinking about as well, fyi.

[Sir Heroscape]

It's been a month...I know it's not your day-job hahah...so I know I can't expect updates all the time....just curious if there's anything new to share and/or coming down the pipeline soon?

Friggin' loving everything about this website and just excited to see more features implemented.

[Chris Perkins]

Originally Posted by Sir Heroscape

It's been a month...I know it's not your day-job hahah...so I know I can't expect updates all the time....just curious if there's anything new to share and/or coming down the pipeline soon?

Friggin' loving everything about this website and just excited to see more features implemented.

Nothing new at present.

Expect some small tweaks in the next month, but probably nothing big.

[Chris Perkins]

Originally Posted by caps

There is no way to change the maps to ones that weren't in the list of pairings; Colorado events almost always have more maps than we need, so there are usually multiple unused maps in any given round. It would be nice to be able to swap an extra map in in place of one of the assigned maps

I finally got around to implementing this today.

Each map that wasn't assigned to a game is now listed in it's own row in the matchups table shown to the TD before publishing/starting the round, and you can drag/drop those map names into existing game map slots.

[caps]

Originally Posted by Chris Perkins

I finally got around to implementing this today.

Each map that wasn't assigned to a game is now listed in it's own row in the matchups table shown to the TD before publishing/starting the round, and you can drag/drop those map names into existing game map slots.

Awesome! Thank you!

[Chris Perkins]

Just removed the 'Beta Testing' label from the site's homepage.

It's not bug-free yet (there's still a few stability issues that I'm working to track down), but most of the issues that have been observed have been fixed at this point, and it just ran (mostly) successfully at HexiCon over the past weekend.

A few things that came up at HexiCon:
- A request to re-order the games of the current round by record of the players (implemented)
- A request to add a link to the tournament page in the pairing emails (implemented)
- A bug where both players in the finals of a bracket were assigned a 'bye' instead of being paired against each other (fixed)
- A bug where the rankings for the overall convention were not appearing at first (fixed)
- A request to grey-out the name/army of any player who is currently inactive (dropped, either permanently or temporarily, from an event) (implemented)

[Doop]

So I'll just drop this here because I see you want to have map data and it'll probably save you/others a ton of time if you can just import base data from this spreadsheet (specifically the Map Data sheet would be the one of interest): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...vxp0BWui1WDKs/

Map names, set requirements, and download links were the only thing I ever 100% filled out, other info like player counts and thumbnails I never got around to finishing.


Original thread with some more details here: https://www.heroscapers.com/communit...ad.php?t=57289

[Chris Perkins]

Fyi, I'm working on a series of (smaller) changes to the site over the next few days.

Plan to post a (hopefully) comprehensive list when I'm done.

But wanted to give a heads-up here in case anyone notices anything that was working as different and/or buggy in the meantime (I don't test in a separate environment from the main site, so updates can break stuff while I work on implementing them).

Originally Posted by Doop

So I'll just drop this here because I see you want to have map data and it'll probably save you/others a ton of time if you can just import base data from this spreadsheet (specifically the Map Data sheet would be the one of interest): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...vxp0BWui1WDKs/

Map names, set requirements, and download links were the only thing I ever 100% filled out, other info like player counts and thumbnails I never got around to finishing.


Original thread with some more details here: https://www.heroscapers.com/communit...ad.php?t=57289

Dang, that's a ton of data.

My first reaction is I'm not actually sure if I'd want 3,000 maps on the site; honestly not sure if that much data might slow down a few of the pages or not. But I'll have to think about it some more.