THE SPOON

A bunch of players organise themselves to meet on existing servers, competing in Fortress teams, until the final team wins THE TRONIC SPOON. Feel free to add to the list under any category and please remember that all editions are constructive.

=preparations= This version of tronic is a matter of organising ourselves rather than requiring any technical assistance from developers. It is about us as players. If we put in the preparation, advertise what we are doing on the forums, in clan forums too, advising people what the plan is, the day should run smoothly enough.

Discussion is currently scattered. The best place for discussion is on this page's talk page. The most common place for discussion is this forum thread.

To join in the competition, there are two levels of signup required. The first is to signup for a team. Each team manages their own signup. The second is for the team to signup for the competition. For this, a minimum of 5 teammates is required and a deadline for team signup is in place. (Note: the current deadline for team signup is a working date, there is not yet complete agreement on it)

The competition itself is intended to be self-organizing. So we are creating a framework under which this and future competitions will be able to self-organize. Because of this, the competition itself is in a state of flux. Hopefully it will be worked out in time for the games. :)

team formation
Most Armagetron players have had experience playing in teams, though because of the intensity of the game, a few players with good skills, have been intimidated out of the Fortress. One of the most important goals of the day is to develop teams. This means that players are supported by their friends and teammates, and any abuse that comes at them will be from opponents, which is kind of expected from some people. And the best way to deal with this intimidation is to gel as a team, play well, and respond by winning. So, there are a few ways of finding your teammates...

'The deadline for forming a SPOON Team is March 31, 2006. When it is April 1, 2006 in all places on the globe, it will be too late to signup.'

To join a team, you have to signup for the team and they have to accept you. The primary way this is handled is through the Team List. This is a general-purpose page provided for all teams to use as a signup page. Some teams prefer to put signup on their own page here on the wiki. If your team is one of them, you should make sure to link it from the Team List.

To start a new team, go to the Team List and add your team to the list. When you have 5 players, you need to add your team's name to the list on this page in order to participate in the competition.


 * Team List - Specific team signup page
 * finding your team - General guide to forming a team

SPOON Teams
After your team has a minimum of 5 players, to join the competition you must add your team name here.


 * Knights of Ni
 * mbc-clan
 * anarchic wanderers
 * Team somethingsomething
 * Lobster Mafia
 * [Crazy Tronners]
 * fe   --Lucifer: Are they going to play?  They have 5 teammates, but they've been a little slow to organize.  I'll put them here to make sure they get in if they want.
 * ~"Xzl.Accel -- Sorry, I was hoping we could play, but it looks likt we can't. Too bad. Self Destructo 07:54, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

server allocation
A server that has volunteered to host the competition needs to do several things. First, the admin needs to put their name, their server's name, and the name their server will have for the duration on the here. Each server should use a clone of CVS Fortress settings, and those settings ship with v0.2.8 of the server. While variations are probably allowed, the players will generally prefer very little variation, so if you vary too much from those settings, you will likely not get to host any actual games. You might want to set TEAM_MAX_IMBALANCE and TEAM_MAX_IMBALANCE_PERM to high values to make team organizing easier.

Second, you should put in your everytime.cfg a notice for players that you are hosting for the SPOON competition and that players not participating will be expected to leave at any time should two SPOON teams show up to play a game.

Finally, you might consider giving your admin password to SPOON players so that they can use it to ban players not participating in the competition during actual play. Note: The banning features support time limits, so banning players that join is a reasonable response. You might edit your language file to reflect this if you like. Maybe you'll get lucky and Lucifer will make a package server admins can use to set themselves up. You might also consider being there for the games yourself so you can set MAX_CLIENTS when the players have gathered to start playing.

SPOON Server List
These are the servers that have generously offered to host games for the SPOON.


 * Swamplords on Crack, by Lucifer. Will be called Swamplords SPOON during the competition and will run stock Fortress settings as ships with 0.2.8.
 * Crazy Tronners Spoon Fortress by ed. Stock fortress Settings. Now upgraded to make use of shuffle.
 * Z-Man's Spoon Fortress by z-man. Settings like CVS Test.

=the event=

The event itself is almost finalized. It will be a month-long tournament that runs April 1-30. All games must be complete for final ranking by the time it's May 1 everywhere on the globe. The tournament will be a round robin tournament.

The tournament consists of several rounds, described here:

Seed Round
In this round, each team will play each other team. A winning game earns them 1 point in the ranking, a losing game earns 0 points. There are no tie games in Armagetron.

'All Seed Games should be completed on or before April 16.'

While it's conceivable that some playoff games may proceed if it's clear the teams' brackets will not be affected by further seed games, every team must strive to play all games by April 16. Games not played that hold up progress on the playoffs will automatically be forfeited by the teams involved.

Please post results of seed matches here -> Seed Results

Playoffs
The playoffs start when the seed round is finished. Each team will have their seed points added up, then they will be ranked in order of number of wins, descending. The team with the most will play the team with the least, and so forth. Standard round robin procedures apply.

There are enough teams to push the playoffs to 3 rounds, with the third round deciding final tournament ranking. The teams playing for first and second place are also playing for the championship.

It would be nice if someone inserted a nice picture here describing how the playoffs will work

Other options
At time of writing, we're just 3 days from the start of the tournament. There is consensus on most of what is here on this page, but not for all of it. Please take this discussion to the forum thread referenced higher up on this page, and quickly. If nothing has changed by April 1, then what you see is what you get. So if you have a problem, take it to the forums and talk about it.

= Game Organization =

The competition is self-organizing. Teams are expected to join together and determine for themselves when to play the games. If the tournament is a round-robin tournament, every team is expected to play every other team once. So decide where you're going to meet. You can do this just by talking to the other teams during game play and then telling your own team how you'll meet.

Before the game, a minimum of 5 players from each team must arrive in the staging area they have agreed on. When the teams are ready to play, then they can go pick a server from the list and join it.

'The current working deadline by which all teams must have played the games is April 16. IF THIS IS NOT MET FOR ANY REASON, all players are invited to play from 9pm GMT on 15/16th April weekend -- see FUN -- all in one day'

Useful links:


 * organising a team on CVS test server - Instructions for how to take over a server for the SPOON. Remember that there's a list of servers where this will be considered acceptable behavior, please make sure you only do these things on those servers.

Discussions of different ways to organize the tournament. Further discussion can be had on the forums. Note that until a consensus has been reached, the dates aren't final and neither is the procedure. But take part in the discussion and help push it to fruition. :)
 * FUN -- all in one day
 * traditional knock-out
 * self-organised pairings

= The Games =

The rules of the games themselves have yet to be determined. There is a strong push towards playing 3 matches and taking the best 2 out of 3 for each game. Other methods are here to be discussed, this area should be replaced with the final text before the tournament begins.

feasible round-period timing
How many matches will determine the winning team? Depends if we are playing a round-robbin event, if we take 8 hours, 2 hours, or a whole weekend to conduct the event.
 * basic 1/2hour rounds

=other ideas which don't fit the categories that well= Feel free to create any new categories as well list ideas and mechanisms that don't fit the format above. Make use of the discussion options for each page, and use the forums to voice ideas to see if anyone else has been thinking the same things you have been...