forums.marpirc.net

Personal introduction

I'm new to the experience of a tournament organization, though I'm not new to joining in/following some of them, and I examined the development of most of the previous tournaments in here. It's my intention to give out my best in organizing this tournament, in making it enjoyable to the most of you (to satisfy all players might be an impossible mission sometimes), in explaining myself in a clear and grammatically correct way.
I would have liked to introduce major changes in the routine of this gear of tourneys, but I don't like to be too much outstanding too, and like also to maintain some traditions. With a great bit of common sense, I've come out with a compromise between my original idea, and the common MARP Tournament project.
Nothing is so strictly definitive until we put the procedures into effect, so I'm open to read all of your comments and I encourage you anytime to post your ideas in the related topics.

Also, I talk a lot and tend to give substantial explanations to my actions. Forgive me for the sense of eternity

Length/dates of the tournament

The length of this tournament is of eight weeks, from 00:00 GMT of 2014, January 5th to 23:59 GMT of 2014, March 1st.
The tournament is actually divided into two periods of four weeks each, the first from 00:00 GMT of Jan. 5th to 23:59 GMT of Feb. 1st, the second from 00:00 GMT of Feb. 2nd to 23:59 GMT of Mar. 1st.
The coordinator has the right to extend the deadline(s) for bad server reasons.

Game selection

-In each period, the participants are allowed to play between 4 games. Overall, it would be like playing 8 games in 8 weeks, like most of the previous tournaments; though you can play the first 4 games ONLY in the first period, and the second 4 games ONLY in the second period.

-The selection of the 4 games of first period will be performed with a random extraction between the games voted by participants.
From 00:00 GMT of 2013, December 1st to 23:59 GMT of Dec. 14th, MARPers will be given the opportunity to vote for the games they'd like to see in the tournament. On Dec. 1st a thread will be opened by me in MARP to gather all of the votes.
Each participant can pick up to three games. Each game has an equal voting power. ( ==> two or more votes from two different users for the same game will count as one)
After the voting period, the games voted will be gathered into genres (puzzle, shoot'em up, platform, etc.) and the time left to the beginning of the tournament will be of use to discuss whether the games should be catalogued under a genre rather than another, which shouldn't be in a tournament, and so on.
One hour before the beginning of first period of playing, four genres will be randomly extracted, and from each genre one game will be randomly extracted.
By this way, it is impossible that two similar games could be extracted for the same tournament.
More details on games allowed to voting will be given with the opening of the thread.

-The selection of the 4 games of the second period will be performed by choosing 4 titles from a short list of games provided by the tournament coordinator ( ==> ...me). The list will include 8 games of 8 different genres, 8 different years of release date, 8 different manufacturers/software houses. The 4 games that will be picked from that list would be the first 4 listed which do not share the same genre between games of the first period.
By this way, it is impossible that two games of the same genre could be played one in each period.
To summarize, in 8 weeks, 8 games of different genres will be played, half extracted from your votes, half extracted from my selection.
The choice of playing half of the tournament games from a pre-determined list, is a way to avoid any remote attempt of giving too much advantage to specific players. It should be also a way to ensure 4 proper games for the tournament; each choice has been examined (may it be interesting enough? was it played recently in MARP tourneys or my forum tourneys?), tested (has it playbackability/recording issues?), evaluated (is the score system proper for this tourney?), etc. - so I hope you will give me enough trust on the choices made. <ot> (Eventually if you do not like how I choosed them you may bite me. ) </ot>
The list of this 8 games will be sent as a zipped *.txt document in a reply to this thread, after all of the current Time Trial games are revealed (to be sure to not have any game in common), and such document will be zipped with a password. The password will be revealed at the beginning of second period of tournament (February 2nd) and in the meanwhile the document will never be changed. Trust and transparency, this a way to demonstrate that I won't feel to change the plans at anytime, everybody will be able to save a copy of the document and check, as right time comes, that the planned method and choices have been followed.
Plus, I want to stress that these information will remain secret until the period starts. Not even under torture one could know <ot> (so hope I don't get hit by a car, or else you would play only half tournament ) </ot>

Game settings

All games are intended to be played with default MAME settings. If MARP has special rules for the designed game (ex. max 5 lives to use), they will be adopted.
All bios (like for NeoGeo MVS) will also be default MAME settings.
The specific parent/clone ROM to use is a detail you can choose with the votes for games of 1st period, or will be specified in the zipped document for games of 2nd period.
If the chosen titles and settings could lead to a general marathon ( ==> a game that can be played by several players for more than three hours and has no concrete ending), we may opt for a Time Attack, or a limit of loops/time allowed, in which to try to get the highest amount of points. Of course, these troubles should be already avoided with the games of the second period.

Version of MAME used

The most recent version ONLY (currently 0.152) of WolfMAME will be allowed. In case of serious troubles in maintaining the recording speed to an average of 95~100% from one or several participants, it will be allowed to use WolfMAME 0.106, or a later version if the game is not present in the wolf 0.106 games list.

Requirements for participation

Anybody who is regularly registered to MARP, and is allowed to send recordings!

Other rules

Obvious rules are obvious. And so,
-techniques banned from MARP are also banned in this tournament.
-INPs sent that will include use of macros, autofire, 2 players cooperation, altered speed, will be not considered. To be precise about recording speed, it must be included between 95% and 100~101%.
-The score you claim must be done on the first credit of your recording. Failure to do so will result in your score being changed to what it was for the first credit.
-To encourage good sportsmanship, no recording can be uploaded 24 hours after you recorded it. If these periods are violated, then that person's score for that game will be changed to zero.
-Recordings have to be submitted at MARP main site, including the string "T13" in the comment, or here in the forum in the appropriated threads, if you want to conserve an old recording of yours.

Scoring

For each game, the player with best score gets 100 points, always. All the following scores are calculated in proportion to the best score, like a percentage, rounded down to the nearest integer.
For example, the best score in Game 1 among all players is 45.000 points (100 tournament points). A score of 32.500 points in the same game would be 72,2% the best score, and so it's worth 72 tournament points.
Every 7 days from the beginning of the time allowed for playing the games, for each game, a temporary ranking will be created with players' best scores so far, and smaller amounts of tournament points will be given. 12 points to the first position, 10 points for the second, 8 points for the third, and then 7-6-5-4-3-2-1-1-1 and so on for every record registered.
The intermediate bonuses, of course, will not be given also a fourth time in coincidence with the end of the gaming period.
A tournament is won when at the end of the given time period a player has more tournament points than any other participating player. If there are any ties in the leaderboard, it will be declared a tie.


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This is all so far, if I missed to talk about something, please let me know. Any other kind of reply is welcome, there's still some time before to start all the operations.

Rapid resume of the dates:
1 to 14 December - votes for games of 1st period
15 December to 4 January - discussion about games voted
5 January - extraction of first 4 games
1 February - last useful day to upload INPs to first 4 games
2 February - revelation of second 4 games
1 March - last useful day to upload INPs to second 4 games

All times in GMT refer to: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

Ah right. Judges thing. I am a confirmer, and know how to look at the inputs to find out use of autofire and other tricks. When I nominated myself for the tourneys, I imagined I would have had the entire responsability about checking and validating scores...
I don't know well how the judges thing worked in past tournaments. And I don't know how this can be made compatible with my choice of revealing the games that will be chosen only the day that you can start to send INPs.
Indeed one helping hand would be of help, but as said above, I was ready to take all the heavy duty by myself

Why did you call it T13 if we play in 2014?

It's a sequence number, the 13th edition of MAME Tournament.

Not that I have choices though in changing its name

I can't remember if we (plaffey) has control to set t13-gamename's in marp, probably not so we'll have to rely on users to insert t13 in the description of the submission. The reveal of 4 games at a time can be done on the boards, and then the confirmers just have to make sure they check the date range of the submissions of those games to make sure they are with in the 4 game time frame.

Giro-X, not sure if I'll be able to join, but very good rules.

"If there are any ties in the leaderboard, it will be declared a tie."
As suggestion, I'd select a tie-breaker method... maybe something like "points in the end of the 1st period", etc.

I also think that the "password" stuff is not good. I think we can trust on your discretion, no?

Good luck!

Chad wrote:I can't remember if we (plaffey) has control to set t13-gamename's in marp, probably not so we'll have to rely on users to insert t13 in the description of the submission. The reveal of 4 games at a time can be done on the boards, and then the confirmers just have to make sure they check the date range of the submissions of those games to make sure they are with in the 4 game time frame.

Chad, who are the boys that are able to add them? Pat only? Our (not active) friend Gameboy9 was?
Now it seems late, but that would be excellent for TT2013 purposes too.

New day, new eyes and new refreshed brain. I may delete the rule "All recordings made by a player must beat their own personal high score for the tournament." because, rather than a rule, it should be common sense.
Same for the e-mail requirement, it may be an excess. For now I can delete the one said above.

TRB_MetroidTeam wrote:Giro-X, not sure if I'll be able to join, but very good rules.

"If there are any ties in the leaderboard, it will be declared a tie."
As suggestion, I'd select a tie-breaker method... maybe something like "points in the end of the 1st period", etc.

I also think that the "password" stuff is not good. I think we can trust on your discretion, no?

Good luck!

I considered the idea of counting the data after the comma in the rare case of a tie. But as just said... it's rare, to have a tie on a range of 800 max. points
Don't know. If many others do not like the idea of the tie, then I can modify that part, no trouble.

The password stuff... yeah, thank you for the trust I just like to be transparent. Then, of course I don't want to send the message that next coordinators should do such things...

TRB_MetroidTeam wrote: Chad, who are the boys that are able to add them? Pat only? Our (not active) friend Gameboy9 was?
Now it seems late, but that would be excellent for TT2013 purposes too.

I know **PL** can add marp splits "-suffixes", I always assume that means he can split "prefixes-" as well, but I think if this were true he probably would have offered help in previous tournaments. There may be others that can do this, I know I'm not one. Zwaxy of course the creator of this website can for sure, but he's long gone inactive. Now only if we could host this on harp, then it would be a snap : )

Oh! - newest MAME version is 0.151, released just some days ago. I have to update also that.

Nice, I better put it on my calendar.

Now I have a deadline to finish off my cabinet.

All the games that are part of current TIme Trial have been revealed, so now I can finally upload the list of games selected for the second period of T13.
The password to read the list will be given when the second period will begin. This document is a sort of proof that no change will be done in the meanwhile, and no one else except me knows its content.

Regulation modifies

Before entering the games voting phase, I'd like to improve, following some suggestions arrived to me in these days and after some personal thoughts, the regulation of this tournament with some small modifies, which are listed below.

Requirements for participation
This section has been simplified. There will be no disqualification if you can not be contacted through a valid e-mail address (rare event, and anyhow it is supposed that who is playing is following the forum threads and so could receive by that way, at least, notifications about bad INPs sent); also there will be no disqualification if you do not participate in each of the tournament rounds, all the points you would have lost in that case could be considered a sort of self-given penalty if you were aiming to high position in ranking.

Scoring
This section has been enriched with a new rule, to encourage players to have more sportmanship, and to keep more alive the spirit of competiton constantly during the months of playing.
Every 7 days from the beginning of the time allowed for playing the games, for each game, a temporary ranking will be created with players' best scores so far, and smaller amounts of tournament points will be given. 12 points to the first position, 10 points for the second, 8 points for the third, and then 7-6-5-4-3-2-1-1-1 and so on for every record registered.
[By this way, if a player thinks to be so good at the game to reach the first position, he/she is motivated to ensure the first place since the beginning and take 12*3=36 more points. Being absent for three weeks instead, and sending as surprise an unbeatable score for first place at the end of the period, will not give those intermediate bonuses to the player.]

End of changes. As usual, comments/critiques/suggestions are welcome if you have any
All these modifies are reported also in the main regulation post.

In 20 hours I will open the thread for starting to vote games that can be extracted for first period of tournament.

Updated the version of WolfMAME to use for the tournament (that is... 0.152, as you can see. Obviousness has reached new levels )

One week before the tournament starts!