Tournaments (etc...)

[IseeBM's]

First off, I love the game... Well done everyone involved on what is, for me, the most absorbing strategy game since Civ4.

Now, I don’t want to see extra territories like the lost city of Atlantis, 3D worlds with atmospheres and drag coefficient calculation on trajectories… flying cows etc. Oh, and ETA counters would be akin to playing a FPS with auto-aim on I believe.

Also, people talk about stats… I think stats for all are a double edged sword. As I noticed in a previous topic that I gave up reading when it descended into childish quote-counter-quote (apologies to those not involved), some people think stats are a good idea, some not. Personally I’d prefer it if people who want to play seriously/competitively/boringly can join a ladder or tournament pool with leaderboards, stats and all that other anally retentive stuff that some of us love. While those who just want to have a quick, fun game after work or school can jump in and irradiate 150 million people before dinner.

I think most of this has been mentioned elsewhere, I have just decided to summarise to make myself look clever.

Anyway, back on topic.

Tournaments

As we haven’t heard from IV about the planned official tournaments --and let’s face it, the game hasn’t even been out for a week yet-- I was looking into what it would take to run one. I came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn’t be such a great idea to use one of the players as game host. Due to the problems some people have with hosting and that if the host quit it would be game over for everyone. So today at work I set up a server and put myself in the spectator slot. I got some players, they all played their game and left.

I started thinking some more about tournaments and the game in general.
3 questions/suggestions.

1. If I want to host a game and not play, must I need authentication!/? If there was some way to start the game up in server mode, where all options were allowed but you couldn't play, this might allow more servers to be set up. Of course the servers would need some way of restarting games automatically, but they need only have fixed settings.

2. Can it be an option that if a player drops, they are not replaced by a cpu player? Maybe there could be an option that all their cities and units remain and they could rejoin if they return (the remaining players could still attack); one that removes all their cities and units if they drop and does not allow them to rejoin or a combination of the above.

3. Can someone tell me the minimum connection speed you would require to host a game satisfactorily? Or how many games you could ‘theoretically’ run on a 512Kb connection concurrently… Just curious is all.

I understand that some things need to kept under wraps, but a bit of info on where we stand with the ‘official tournament’ would be nice. With my limited knowledge of such matters and the way the game works at the moment, I can see a few problems arising.

I could say a load more stuff on the matter but I think that’s enough to be going on with for now.

[xyzyxx]

2. Can it be an option that if a player drops, they are not replaced by a cpu player? Maybe there could be an option that all their cities and units remain and they could rejoin if they return (the remaining players could still attack); one that removes all their cities and units if they drop and does not allow them to rejoin or a combination of the above.

Someone suggested that if someone drops in a Tournament game, the game should automatically pause for a maximum of 5 minutes and give that player a chance to rejoin before being taken over by CPU.

[xander]

1. If I want to host a game and not play, must I need authentication!/? If there was some way to start the game up in server mode, where all options were allowed but you couldn't play, this might allow more servers to be set up. Of course the servers would need some way of restarting games automatically, but they need only have fixed settings.

The game consists of basically three server/client apps, on n+1 machines, where n is the number of players. Defcon always plays in a server/client mode, even in single player (two "apps"). In a multiplayer game, the host controls the server (and their own client), and each of the players controls a client. Lastly, all of the clients and the server must be authenticated by the metaserver. Thus, if you want to host, you must be properly authenticated. I also do not think that running multiple servers on one box is practical -- first, you might have authentication problems, and second, it would require a lot of CPU power, network bandwidth, &c. I think that you would be better suited by either playing the games sequencially, or allowing people to host their own tournament games, and report back to you with results. There is no dedicated Defcon server.

3. Can someone tell me the minimum connection speed you would require to host a game satisfactorily? Or how many games you could ‘theoretically’ run on a 512Kb connection concurrently… Just curious is all.

Your connection should be fine to host a game. As I said above, I think that hosting multiple games concurrently is somewhat impractical, from a CPU standpoint, and may be impossible due to authentication problems.

xander

EDIT: me fail quoting

[IseeBM's]

2. Can it be an option that if a player drops, they are not replaced by a cpu player? Maybe there could be an option that all their cities and units remain and they could rejoin if they return (the remaining players could still attack); one that removes all their cities and units if they drop and does not allow them to rejoin or a combination of the above.

Someone suggested that if someone drops in a Tournament game, the game should automatically pause for a maximum of 5 minutes and give that player a chance to rejoin before being taken over by CPU.

But could the cpu replacement be used to argue that an unfair game was played?

[IseeBM's]

Your connection should be fine to host a game. As I said above, I think that hosting multiple games concurrently is somewhat impractical, from a CPU standpoint, and may be impossible due to authentication problems.
xander

Yes, I can host games with no problems.

So you seem to be saying that, if there were a big tournament, one of the players from each game would need to host. I don't know how you'd run tournaments with defcon, but if you had say 50 tournament games running concurrently (in say the first round), I'd imagine you'd have great difficulty making sure the right people were playing and the outcomes were correctly logged. You could string the games out, but then if a tournament took a month to play... it wouldn't be much fun waiting for the next one if you were out.

[xander]

You could string the games out, but then if a tournament took a month to play... it wouldn't be much fun waiting for the next one if you were out.

I take it that you have never played chess by mail? I once had a game go on for two years. We managed maybe two moves per month, due to the time it took to get letters back and forth. Patience is a virtue.

Furthermore, I don't think that it is too bad. You give each host a list of the people that are supposed to be on their server (and maybe a password to get on), let them play their game, and have them get back to you. If you have everything set up properly from the beginning, it should run smoothly.

xander

[IseeBM's]

I have played chess by mail... a long time ago, before we all had internet connections. Fortunately or unfortunately, things move a little more quickly these days. All I'm trying to do is get my head around how a tournament might actually be set up and played.

I know that people will want to participate in tournaments and I would like to help in some way. But from what I understand at the moment, community lead tournaments would be difficult to organise. From past experience, a game community will happily set up and run events leaving game staff to get on with more important things like patching and making new games.

I understand from what I've read on these forums that the true multiplayer experience is a work in progress, but if the community has to rely on being spoon fed events by the devs, when they move on to the next project, the dedicated fanbase will dry up.

All I'm trying to do is get the ball rolling... I could post in the forums about starting a tournament, but with the information I have at the moment, it would probably cause more harm than good. If I could set up a one server running 10 server apps, it would be a lot easier than trying to find ten people to run a reliable game each.