Thank you tons MadFax7 for being the first response.


(for you others, copy and modify this list with your info)


Well that's why my version of StarCraft's been acting up... any known causes for this or expected patches by either Blizzard or Apple?


Well for entire group, with the exception of prophile (whose preference is unknown), Brood War is preferred.

I'm back from vacation and ready to get started with getting some games set up. Anybody in the first game (Dogbert, Mad, and Blue) available to play this Tuesday 6/24, around 9 pm EST? I'm fairly flexible most days, but any games will have to be at night between 8-11 EST.

_bomb

Since bluemanrocks is only a member of this board because of this thread, it might be a good idea to PM him (if you haven't already). And thanks for responding, do you know when you'll be able to play within the dates that I specified in my PM (since I kind of asked everybody to respond...)?

The PMs have been sent. Hopfully we can get Game 1 at some point this week. I should be on battle.net for a while this afternoon and evening. Need some practice before the tourney.

_bomb

There's a thread about it on Blizzard's forum, but no word on a fix as of yet.


Any night this week works for me, so long as I know what's happening by early afternoon the same day.

My best day for availability is Tuesday this week. Dogbert's available after 10 pm on tuesday, so I'm thinking about 10:15 PM EST tuesday, (tomorrow) pending hearing from blue. Of course, if he doesn't check in at some point today/tomorrow we'll have to look later in the week.

_bomb

i wasnt sure how long this is going to take, so i listed my open times until august 4th tongue.gif

open times (all of this is EST):
12:00PM-12:30AM until the 30th (maybe a little earlier to begin, and a little later, to end)
nothing from the 30th to the 11th (july)
12th-19th not quite sure, possibly in the afternoon
20th-4th (august) afternoon only (not sure specific time)

sooo any night this week with the exception of 6:30-9:00 on tuesday

also, a request is that i get notified of the time as far in advance as possible, because my schedule is subject to change somewhat, so i dont wanna end up scheduling something at a bad time

So that would mean everyone is available after 10:15 PM (EST) tomorrow, Tuesday the 24th of June. Sounds like we have our first game then?

It certainly appears so. Pending final confirmation from blue and Dog we should be good. If the game is on we'll meet in channel ASW.. I should be on around 10 and we can all agree on a map.

_bomb

Reminding everybody that we're on US East, unless otherwise specified.

EDIT: Please post your results when you have them in

It turns out that the camping trip that I was going to be on was cancelled, so I'm available from now to the 30th. I'll be gathering what information I have and see what works for my games.

EDITx2: I still don't have information from MadFax7 and prophile, so after I get their information, I'll be PMing you all about what will work.

me/madfax7 lost to dogbert/bomb, map was (dont actually remember, it was in blizz oldladder and was a 4 player map). im sure one of the other 3 will be able to give a more detailed report, as i gg'd within like 5 minutes =(((((

Game 1: bomb(zerg)/dogbert(terran) def. madfax(terran)/blueman(zerg)

Map: Crusader

Game Time: 35:00 (approx)

Summary: Blue and Bomb trade opening salvos of six zergling rushes, with Bomb's ambushing Blue's and proceeding to attack Blue's base. Blue repels attack and along with MadFax, attack Dogbert's main base. Dogbert uses bunkers and clustered marines to repel the attack. Bomb then counter attacks Blue's base, resulting in the eventual destruction of blue. Blue is allowed one vespene assimilator to observe the remainder of the game. The combined forces of bomb and dogbert then proceed to attack MadFax, who by now has superior technology and has turtled in several tanks within his base, resulting in the annihilation of the attack force. With a pitiful economy Bomb is forced into quick building mode and is an easy target for MadFax's tank drop which is deflected by Bomb's drones in an act of desperation. Bomb then destroys BlueMan's remaining vespene geyser, as Blue has overlords still floating around spying on the map, most notably where Bomb has just been tank dropped. (Blueman later stated it was unintentional )

Dogbert continues to expand his army, constructing a small group of siege tanks and wraiths, while scanning MadFax's base to scout out his defenses. MadFax begins to build large numbers of tanks and ghosts, with the construction of a nuclear facility extending his considerable technological lead. Bomb settles in to recover his damaged economy and begins expanding across the map. Eventually a second attack with tanks/hydras fails to break MadFax's defenses and he begins to expand out, with his mineral reserves beginning to dwindle down. His expansion's defenses are nearly setup when Bomb destroys it, alerted by dogbert's scanning. From then it is a drawn out battle as Bomb and Dogbert build up their forces to overcome the technological advantage and using wraiths, guardians and devourers, destroy MadFax's remaining forces.

In other words, a good game.

_bomb

Edit: Thought I attached the replay the first time. Should be there now.

If I could please get the replay on that (by PM or edit would be best), that'd be great. When MadFax7 and prophile get back to me, my groups can get started.

I'll be available from now until 8 AM tomorrow morning and then from 1 PM until 7 or so PM tomorrow afternoon. I also should be around this weekend any time.

Ok, we'll be playing tomorrow if I can contact prophile by then... that's West Coast time 10 AM - 4 PM, East Coast time 1 - 7 PM, and for prophile, 6 PM - Midnight. Hopefully it won't take that long. More details to follow...

Unfortunately, I have run out of time to host any of my StarCraft games, but I may just have time to set up tentative dates in July when we can play.

So, anyone want to play a game today/tomorrow/tuesday?

I was under the impression that most of you guys couldn't play due to SC being broken due to 10.5.3?

Let me know on irc if and when anyone wants to play.

I downgraded one of my computers to 10.5.0, so I'm able to run it now. I can play a game today if we set it up fast... I'll be here all day (and it's only 8:30 AM) for playing games, but I can't host anything.

I'm supposed to host a game amongst the four of us, (Cham, Rebelious, MadFax7) anyone want to try to play it this week? Let me know what times are good.

_bomb

The only time I could do it is today, then I'm unavailable until the 17th. Anytime now would be great!

Unfortunately, I'm at work right now so I can't play. If the other guys can play we might be able to work something for tonight. Possibly. I've got some things to do but if we have plans set I can try and work around it.

_bomb

I know Cham is on IRC right now, I'll talk to him and see if he can do it later. Remember, we're Pacific time, so "tonight" for you is "tonight - 3 hours" for us, so playing later isn't a problem.

EDIT: I just thought of a dilemma in rewarding points: what if a team member dies, but his teammate ends up pulling out the match? I was thinking that the teammate that died gets 1 point, the survivor gets 2, and the opposing team gets nothing. Does that sound fair?

EDITx2: For clarification, in a normal match winners get 2 points and the opposing team gets nothing.

EDITx3: Fixed time.

I'll be here all night. Also tomorrow, and some of Wednesday (until about 4 PM).

If bluemanrocks, prophile and Dogbert are available I could get one of the games I was supposed to host out of the way. Anybody?

I've been unable to contact prophile at all, so good luck on that. Also, I just updated my website with the first game replay and a leader board. (click the "StarCraft 2: Immortal" link in my sig for details)

EDIT: Another thing, we have to make sure that everybody that's going to play this game doesn't have OS 10.5.3, or else we can't even play.

Feezo
US West
Early morning
Skill - 3
Host - yes
Rush - yes
Speed - fastest
Version - SC
Other - prefer Blizzard maps

Welcome aboard, Blackdog. Unfortunately, we can't include you in the current tournament, seeing as it's already started, but I'll be sure to PM you when the next event comes along. Also,

*adds Blackdog's info to first post*

Unless they're on a PowerPC Mac, like me, then it's fine.

Dangit, I thought that applied to all Macs, so I downgraded my old PPC to accommodate... arg, time to upgrade again...

EDIT: 10.5.4 Just released! I'll see if it fixes it...

EDITx2: Nope. No fix.

I'll be on and in channel ASW until 9:30 PM EST. So if everybody sees this and wants to come on, we can probably have our match. Sorry about the short notice, I just got home and was able to get on.

_bomb

Hopefully others see this, I'll make sure Cham knows, and I'll be on myself in about half an hour.

EDIT: Shame that didn't work out. Oh well, we'll have to do it another time. I won't be available again until the 17th, so if you can plan your other games before then, we can wrap it up when I get back.

It helps if you guys are on irc too. Easier to get games started. Also, I usually stick to channel Levo on bnet. I'm sure you understand why.

As far as dying, yet your team still winning, that's still a win. So full points should be assigned.

Cham

But what about the following scenario: You trade opening rushes, but you manage to damage your enemy's economy. Because you spent so long watching your zerglings (or whatever unit) destroy a drones, you fall behind in the tech and are wiped out when the terran player brings out his seige tanks. Then your ally, who's been building Carriers, wipes everybody else out. Clearly you had little to do with the victory, although you did do some, but here's the point: you still lost, yet you won.

I think in that case the player should only get one point.

And here's another scenario: the opponent is so busy building solely guardians that you bring in your own guardian force and wipe out both of their economies - and they can't do anything, so they counter with their guardians and you get knocked out before you can finish them. Then your teammate, who's been building up Valkyries accordingly, wipes out the guardians and wins the game. Now in this situation, you set up your friend for a victory, yet you couldn't finish them off.

I think perhaps that scenario would be a reason for getting 2 points even though you died.

(I know those scenarios are ridiculous, but they're just examples)

So what do you guys think? Maybe if you make it more than half way through the game (meaning that you may have been close to winning, but got rushed or something) then you should get 2 points, and if you don't make it half way, then you only get one?

Easy way to solve this problem. When someone gets wiped out, allow them one useless building with no units left. They turn on shared vision for everyone (but not vice versa) so they can be seen at all times by the other players as being derelict. At the end of the game, if your teammate wins the game naturally, you win with him. If your teammate loses, you lose with him. Simple as that.

You can never really assume someone had nothing to do with victory, even if they never moved a unit. It would still take the enemy time to destroy the person (though if they never moved a single unit, they'd probably be docked any points for being an idiot ) and in that time, your ally could be amassing a force and win the game. So technically speaking, your distraction helped to win the game because without it the large winning force never would have been built. Now, in the unlikely scenario in which a player never even interacts with the opposition or his ally, making no contribution of any kind and his ally wins, it'd be a cheap two points. But the chances of that are near to zero.

_bomb

Ok, I see what you guys mean. Two points for the winning team, even if one of them dies.

Hi, I'm new here. I stumbled upon this thread when googling for people who play Starcraft for fun, rather than just to simply win as fast as they can. I've noticed that's all they do on Battle.Net, just play to win, and about a 3 minute game is pretty average there. Things weren't much better when I was told about ICCUP; people there were just as competitive and boring.

Well, it's kind of a coincidence that I ended up on this forum, since it was a simple google search. I say this because I, too, am a Mac developer, frequently hanging out in #macdev on freenode, and I'm starting my own company, Giant Robot Software, this autumn. So, with such a busy life, I don't have the time, energy, or interest to devote in playing Starcraft as a sport, rather than a game. So, it's nice to see other people here who just want to have fun!

My nick on bnet is "sephknows"
Timezone: GMT-6 (central time)
Can play: Most nights I'm available, although I won't be playing more than a few days in a row, at a time.
Skill level: 1 (possibly 2, but probably not)
Can host / Rushes: Sure / Not good at rushing :'(
Speed: Fast-Fastest
Preference (BW vs SC): StarCraft, but I will play Brood War
Other Info: Any kind of map is fine with me, I suppose.

You should drop by #ev3 on irc.ambrosia.net, might be easier to get a game for fun. Antihero, and I occasionally play as do some others. As for our little tournament, that's already started, but no reason why we can't play other games.

Cham

Welcome aboard Steven, enjoy your stay here . As I'm not dedicating tons of time to this league (don't get me wrong, setting up this tournament was quite a challenge and a lot of work), you may have to find out people for yourself to play any games. I'll be adding your information to the first post shortly.

As Cham said, there's a few people on #ev3 who are more than willing to play a quick game or two, and I'm even on there sometimes.

And as for the tournament, I'd like to hear from you guys when you can play in the next week (from the 27th through the 2nd), so if you guys could post when you'll be available for that, I (and others) will be able to set up games at that time. Hopefully those dates work for you guys! I'll be available from 8 AM to 10 PM PST, so please figure your times accordingly.

EDIT: I just learned that prophile will be unavailable at all this week, so the only game that I can host would be with me, MadFax7, Bomb, and Dogbert. I'll be PM'ing you guys shortly.

Unfortunately the only computer I have access to is an Intel Mac with 10.5.4, so no StarCraft for me. At least until I get home, which will be after the 2nd of August.

Anything after the 5th should work, however.

I'll see what works at that time and get back to you on that. Anybody else played any games? We need to get at least a few done soon!

Change of plans, I won't be home until the 11th. After that I will be pretty much wide open for the next few months.

Ok, this obviously isn't working. We've played one game out of the 14 scheduled to go, and it took forever just for that one to work. I want to host some sort of tournament, but obviously my plan has not worked in the slightest.

One idea I had is having regularly scheduled (or semi-regularly scheduled) hosting times where whoever makes it, makes it. This would be an ongoing "ladder" of sorts just for us. Wins would count for 1 point, losses for -1 (for a 1v1). You can't go below 0, but you have to "repay" all -1s with wins for your score to go up. More on this to follow.

Another idea I had is that maybe we could have a tournament where we would host as many games as possible within a certain amount of hours, and the person who comes out of that with the highest win/loss percentage wins. To break a tie, the person who played more matches gets the win (aka, if somebody only played one game and one it (1/1) but somebody else played two and won both (2/2), the latter wins. At my discretion, I can break apparent ties or call a close ratio a tie (like 3/4 is close enough to 4/5)).

Another idea that I had is that was can have tournaments where the brackets are divided into regions (West US (which would consist of PST and CST), East US (consisting of EST and MST), and Europe (which consists of the only two timezones of people that we have in Europe, IIRC (GMT and GMT+1)). The winners of those brackets would then go on to play a round robin against the winners of the timezones (maybe 2nd place advances as well, but I don't know about that). Sound good?

Anyways, what do you guys suggest? Do we try to keep going with this, although if only one person is gone, 7 of the matches are unplayable, or do we figure out a new way to work these tourneys?

I'm available all day every day until the end of August. After the 3rd of September I'll be available in the evenings on weekdays and all day on weekends, given enough warning.


An ongoing ladder might be interesting in addition to occasional tournaments.


So if a player has 11 points and loses a game, will they have to win 2 games to get their score back up to 11 (one to "repay" the loss, and another to get their score up), or will a single win get it back up to 11?


I dislike the idea of a tournament based on percentage of wins. It doesn't encourage people to play, indeed it is detrimental to your score and risky to play more. If you play your first game and lose, you might as well consider yourself out of the tournament. If you play your first game and win, might as well quit there while you're ahead.


Given that everyone has such vastly different schedules, I don't think breaking it into timezones is going to make a difference. Time of day hasn't been the problem, but rather dates.

Yeah, I have school starting Monday. As in this Monday. So I don't know, with the starting of school, if we'd ever be able to get any games in.


Thanks for the input, the more I thought about this, the more I liked it too.


One win. Your number is a differential of wins to losses (wins - losses = score). The only thing is that I don't want negative values, so 0 is the minimum score. So if you have a score that would be -3 and won a game (so you have a real score of 0), you would have a score that would be -2 (and still have a real score of 0). Get it?


Yeah, me too, but I don't know how else to do this. Maybe I could rig some sort of formula where (in an 8 person short tournament) a win over the first place person would get you 8 points, second would get 7, etc. After each game, the leader board would be sorted according to points. This way, the 1st place person couldn't just accumulate wins over the 8th place person that would count the same as a win over any other player. If that didn't confuse you, nothing will. Example:

Beginning:
A -> 1st (has 3 pts)
B -> 2nd (has 2 pts)
C -> 3rd (has 1 pt)
D -> 4th (has 0 pts)

A beats D for 1 point because a victory over the last place player is only worth 1. C beats A for 4 points because a victory over the top player is worth X points, X being the number of players.

After those games:

C -> 1st (has 5 pts)
A -> 2nd (has 4 pts)
B -> 3rd (has 2 pts)
D -> 4th (has 0 pts)

Now if C beat A it would only be worth 3 points, since A is in 2nd and not 1st.

Hopefully that makes sense.


While that's true, splitting it into groups and playing 1v1s instead of 2v2s makes it easier for people to schedule. 2v2 is a bad idea because for any given layout, half of the games can't be played if one person can't play at that time.

My internet has been spotty of late. However I now have reliable internet at my apartment so my availability has increased significantly. I'd be willing to try and kick-start this thing if we decide that enough people have decent availability. Otherwise, I'd say just start a league with ongoing ladder matches.

_bomb

If nobody else has anything to say, then I'll set up a ladder tournament.

Also, I haven't played Cats vs. Mice in oh-so-long, I'd be more than willing to set up some kind of tournament for that, if enough people would be interested. So let me know what you guys want! If I don't get much of a response out of this, I'll be PMing you guys to make sure you know what's going on.

Yay! C&M!!! Honestly, I haven't been playing much melee lately. Mostly UMS maps. I probably really suck at 1v1 or whatever by now. Hope we won't be playing fastest though. =P Maps like Python would be nice. Anyway, I don't really care that much, so don't be bothered by me.

Like I said before, I'm on irc most of the time, just send me a message there "Cham" and I'll get back to you asap.

1 vote for Cats vs Mice, anybody else interested? 2 people doesn't exactly make an interesting game unless it's a pro mouse and a noob cat...

Cats and mice sounds fine to me. Although i wont be able to play any games till next weekend.

This isn't going to be for at least a week or two, I still have to organize and decide how to figure out a winner, so you're safe. If I get 1 to 2 more people, we could safely have a tournament.