[PBPG] Tournaments and Ladders
 

What does it do?
This is a tournaments and ladders plugin for my Play by post gaming mod. The basic premise is to run tournaments within a forum thread. As of the current version, the only tournament format supported is Single Elimination with no support yet for ladders; however more formats will be included in future releases.

What can I use it for?
This mod is used for running tournaments of any kind. Gaming forums can use this for running tournaments for pretty much any game from snake to TF2. Forums with different themes for example writing or role playing can pitch members against each other in head to head write offs or in character spars.

Live demo
I've now installed this mod on my own forums; a live demo can be seen here:
http://www.giveupalready.com/showthr...ess-Tournament

Features

• Javascript powered tournaments interface within a forum thread.
• Members have options to leave and join the tournament
• Gamesmaster (Person who posts the thread) has options to start the tournament and adjust and options the admin has left open.
• Once the tournament has started the gamesmaster can post results of games and have tournament standings update in real time.
• Tournament formats included:
  • Single Elimination
  • Swiss
• Admin options
  • Set max players
  • Set min players
  • Set/force* players
  • Set/force auto start full tournaments
  • Set/force tournament type
  • Set/force results posting type
  • Options for automatic tournaments (Threads for a plugin eg chess will be auto posted for players; results will be gathered from the plugin)
• Member options
  • Opponant verified score posting
• Support for auto posting game threads (for pbpg games)
• Support for auto harvesting results (for pbpg games)

Planned Features
[s]Struck[/s] out items; are completed and will make the next release.

• Admin options
  • Option to decide what happens in the event of a draw in an automatic tournament
• Games master options
  • Kick players
  • Assign other games masters
• Member options
  • Challenge player (ladders only)
• Tournament formats
  • Basic ladder
  • Round robin
  • EOL ladder
  • Double elimination
  • Swiss-seed (swiss for x rounds, top n players go into seeded single elimination)
  • 'Football' style ladder
  • 'Prediction' ladder (requested feature)
• Support for player seeding (by games master, admin or previous performance)
  
• Player stats (eg wins/positions/average rank) globally over all tournaments
• Create tournament from tournament - take the results of a tournament and use them as the basis for another tournament (eg seedings or tournament for top x players only)
• Admin help
• player FAQ's
• Phrasing
• UI improvements (esp when the number of players is high)

Installation
1. Install Play by post gaming core product
2. Upload contents of upload folder.
3. Import product file.
4. Select the Manage plugin configurations option from the play by post gaming menu
5. Against Tournaments and ladders, select the create new configuration option.
6. Fill out the settings and save.
7. Create or edit an existing forum and assign the configuration you just created to it.
8. Posting threads in that forum will now show a drop-down list to select a confiuration to play; select the configuration you created in 6 and post a thread to start a tournament.

Upgrading
1. Ensure that Play by post gaming core product is upto date. (Beta 3 is latest version as of writing)
2. Upload files overwriting as needed
3. Import product using the allow override option set to yes.
4. Edit any existing configurations and set defaults for the new options.

Uninstallation
1. Edit the forums that have a configuration of this plugin assigned and remove it from the list.
2. Now uninstall the product.
3. Delete the tournaments directory in pbpg_plugins.

Changelog

• 4.0-0.1 a3
  • Added automatic tournament options
  • Added auto result harvesting from pbpg games
  • Added ability for members to post results for games; verified by the other player
  • Requires beta 4 of core.
• 4.0-0.1 a2
  • Fixed bug with javascript in IE.
  • Plugin will now not install if you do not have core product installed and upto date.
  • added max/min players admin option
  • added autostart admin/gamemaster option
  • added players admin option
  • added tournement format: swiss.
  • added tournament format setting for admincp
  • added force torunament type for admincp
  • very defensive install/uninstall code
  • minimum core version now 4.0-0.1 b3
• 4.0-0.1 a1
  • Initial release

Notes

• You need at LEAST version Beta 4 (4.0-0.1 b4) of pbpg core for this product to work; unfortunatly vb's dependancies system dosn't allow me to enforce this.
• Set/force means that the admin setting this up can set something as a default, there is also the option to force that default so that it can't be changed by members.
• In large tournaments (32 players+) the swiss tournament format may in some instances be unable to find suitable pairings in later rounds. If this happens, please report it as a bug so I can fix the issue.

A bit of a demo can be seen here: http://vb4.giveupalready.com/forums/...t-tournament-2 bear in mind, this is a development board so it may go down/not work from time to time when i'm working on updates.

nice.. installed when stabill

Added some screenshots of the mod in action on my dev board.

How are you doing with this mod? Is it stabile at this time? I've been wanting a tournament/ladder mod for a really long time, I hope you stay motivated.

At the current time, there are no known bugs with this mod.

It is released as alpha not becuase I think its unstable but because I do not know how well it will work 'in the wild'

1. All advertised features work on my development board.
2. It has only really been tested on my development board; it may conflict with other mods, it may not work if you have certain settings set on your board that aren't set on mine.
3. There may be bugs that i've not found yet.

I work on mods based on their activity/popularity. Mods with lots of installs, people replying to the thread asking questions, requesting features, even just posting that it works great on their board, get most of my attention when it comes to new releases.

It doesn't look like it works properly in IE.

Other than that, nice work on the mod and hopefully you can continue to make it better.

thanks a lot I'm setting up my test board later for vb4 I think this will be usefull :D

Confirmed; its affecting all the pbpg games :( I think i've got a fix though, will be in the next release.

I'm in the middle of updating my live site to 4.0 but as soon as I get some time I will be bringing this to my test site. I tested the other ladder tournament mod but the guy flaked afterwards. Here was the list that I gave him about add-ons, does your app already do this?

I went ahead and put it up on my test site, however when I go to upload the product I receive thie DB error:

Invalid SQL:
SELECT * FROM pbpg_plugin WHERE dir='tournaments';

MySQL Error : Table 'tactical_testforums.pbpg_plugin' doesn't exist
Error Number : 1146
Request Date : Wednesday, January 27th 2010 @ 10:59:39 PM
Error Date : Wednesday, January 27th 2010 @ 10:59:40 PM

Did you install this product: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=232900 first? It provides the framework that this mod runs on top of. (including the database tables)

I've currently only programmed (1) tournament type amongst the planned tournament types is the swiss-seed tournament, which works in a very similar way, however instead of a ladder you get a swiss style tournament. I could probably fairly easilly create a ladder -> single elimination type as well, or i might make this possible in other ways eg a 'create a tournament based off this tournament' button.

not something i'd thought of but as i've not written a challenge system yet, this is deffinatly something I can include when I do. I also need to include a method to add a tournament description.

Already in the planned features :)

Alright I was able to install it, I did not realize that the other mod was required.

So everything looks ok except for when I go to create a thread using the mod. The "configuration" that I made is there in a drop down but then nothing else works. The "set options", "join" and "start" don't do anything but enter those words in the quick reply box. Also the "configuration" in the admin panel only consists of the event name.

That is as designed; you can add a comment if desired and then post the reply - the concept behind these mods is 'Play by post' :) Start won't do anything unless there are two players in the tournament - theres not much point in having a tournament with yourself.

the current version of this mod has no admin configurable options. The next release however will; in order to fix the bug in ie, I needed to update js files in all the pbpg releases and I wanted to add features to both of them before releasing the next update. I plan to get beta 1 of the core product out tomorrow, with releases for this mod and the chess mod following sometime over the weekend, all being well.

Ok but where do you set the type of tournament you want to have?

That will become both a user and admin option once there is more than one type avaliable. (One of the features I want to add to the next release is the swiss tournament type)

Update version now avaliable. Huge number of changes, see changelog for details.

Make sure you update the pbpg core product before installing/upgrading as this requires the latest version.

Not working in IE8 !! Firefox seems ok

I just wanted to say that this looks like a really cool mod and I'll probably install it soon. Thanks for making it!

Installed the update and it is working on IE8 now.
As the World Cup is coming soon, it would be nice to have a "Tipping competition" in the forums, participants picking up the winning teams before due date, and the winner gets certain points on a ladder. Is this possible?

If you check the change log; one of the things I fixed was some javascript issues on chrome and IE :)

There are no ladders as such avaliable yet and the ladder you describe is quite specialised, but once the worldcup is getting closer if there is enough demand I may add a prediction league tournament type

That would be great, I will keep on checking your releases.

Me too that would be a superb addon!!

My brother runs an online english football prediction league (mostly predicting Derby county's results) So, if I ask nicely I may be able to reuse some of his code to speed things up :p When is the world cup starting?

I think my next planned tournament type is going to be the ELO based ladder, but I may be able to work on the prediction type after that.

LOL thats must be pretty easy predicting their results..loss... loss...loss I have family who are Derby fans and they are often ranting about the team :) good result for them last weekend though!

I used to run this mod on vb3 so I'd love to see a ladder mod working on vb4. Once users join a tournament/ladder would they be able to input their own result or does the admin have to do it all?

At the moment, the gamesmaster has to enter results. (gamesmaster = threadstarter) The code exists to allow for player entered results, but i've not got the javascript for it working yet. It may make the next release, or the release after that.

Alpha 3 released.

Features include automatic tournaments for pbpg_plugins which support it and the ability for members to post results (verified against each other) in addition to the gamesmaster.

pbpg_install_lib missing. Please install latest version of pbpg core

this is the error im getting and i installed the core from the other post