TRONICv1.4

TRON International Competition: TRONICv1.4. Major revisions: concurrent tournaments, multiple game-styles, streamlined team-registration.

idealistic objective
1,000,000 players in a year's time self-organising a tournament of Fortress to be held in one day, the champion team winning THE CUP and £16,000 per player, with post-dated funding of server admin, programming-developers, and game-designers.

meta: contributor's guidelines
Since all pages on the wiki are editable, all contributions must be constructive and additive: alternative solutions are explored like the growing branches of a tree. Visitors are invited to contribute to to the expansion of any idea, comparing different branches of solutions. Arguments, contention, are conducted in forum, chatroom, or informally through PM's, emails, or telephoney eg skype. Alternative steps to arriving at the idealistic objective are presented as alternatives on this page below. Clicking on any item or heading opens up a page which allows further elaboration, more precise definition, and more practical eventualities.

timeline
Mainly through the input of rain, the various levels of Tronic are run concurrently. There isn't much point in working out all the solutions for the final 1,000,000 player competition for obvious reasons. Players are encouraged to provide solutions for the current objective with a sense of the idealistic objective to make their solutions future-proof. That is, instead of merely producing a solution which can only work for 100 players, it is built to be able to deal with 100 players now, with the potential for the system to be extendable up to the final target. That is, the developmental process remains organic.
 * weekly SPOON with any number of players
 * monthly LADLE with 100 players
 * seasonal BOWL with 1000 players
 * annual CUP with 1,000,000 players

the spoon
Every week players turn up and play, with the finals of the Spoon at 9pm GMT. Players may already be part of clans or teams that have signed up earlier in the week, or they can simply slot into a free position on a team on the night. There are multiple game-styles from classic Fortress to speeder-style, etc, depending on what servers are prepared. The event is played over a few hours. We are currently setting up a league.

the ladle
On the first sunday of every month, instead of the Spoon, players compete for the more prestigious Ladle. There is a little more preparation involved since there are potentially more players. The standardisation of the categories, Fortress or speeder-style or whatever, is more strict and the rules of entry more defined. Because Ladle has evolved from Fortress settings, Fortress players possess valuable experience in how to self-organise. The next Ladle is on Sunday 1st April 2007: Ladle-10.
 * Ninth Tronic Ladle winners: Team Something Something
 * Eighth Tronic Ladle winners: Tronners Under the Influence
 * Seventh Tronic Ladle winners: Speeders
 * Sixth Tronic Ladle winners: something something
 * Fifth Tronic Ladle winners: Tronic Monkeys
 * Fourth Tronic Ladle winners: pron00bz
 * Third Tronic Ladle winners: Anarchic Wanderers
 * Second Tronic Ladle winners: Anarchic Wanderers
 * First Tronic Ladle winners: Shadow League

the bowl
On the first sunday of each season, players compete in the Tronic Bowl. This event is only run if there are more than 100 players taking part in the Ladle. The rules of registration are strict, the rules of game-play, and the timing and brackets defined exactly.

the cup
The most prestigious of prizes. Every year, all players of Armagetron are invited to take part in the Tronic Cup. With winning teams for all kinds of category style, everything about organisation for the day of the competition is locked down before the event, teams have prepared optimum strategies, and players are psyched up to perform their best through a grueling schedule of games.

ruminations
Ideas, philosophy, personal and social; share your thoughts here. If we encourage players to leave their thoughts here, ego may be left out of the self-organising required to achieve the idealistic objective. We may be familiar with jargon such as rubber, grind, grid, etc, and we can take this a step further by encouraging players to share their own favourite phrases or terms, eg woot, pwned, hold the line. If you are an Armagetron addict, have you wondered why, why you keep on playing game after game? How deep does this game go...?

previous versions
The original idea (TRONICv1) was presented to Wolverine, Ghableska, and Mazuffer through Skype in order encourage immediate feedback. Initial responses included disbelief, practical considerations, and enthusiasm. A week later, the same group met to discuss more details (TRONICv1.1). Responses included the formation of a network of developers, and the inherent importance of enabling uninterrupted playy. The group disbanded after serving its purpose, to initially receive the idea, and to open up the idea to the community in general. The original format of TRONICv1.2 was designed to encase any formulation and alternative branches, but it was subsequently changed to accomodate the working solution for the spoon competition. TRONICv1.3 went as far as the Fourth Ladle before a major revision was made by ˚˚rain and 2020. This version (TRONICv1.4) has so far not been condoned by the developers; it is purely player-led.