You A Programmer? (in General)

We need tournies so bad it hurts, let people take out their frustrations on each other in a basically level playing field.

I wonder are there any super-programmers here who can help with it? I know Jon would usually make these kinds of posts, but I figured I would ask, since every now and then a great mind wanders in here.

I know I want them, but my TCL skills kinda suck. :)

Perhaps the admins can put up some repossessed goods as a hiring bounty?

If you complete this, you will be taken care of.

If you are capable of doing this please get in contact with Verifex so he can pass you along to Jon for the final on you getting a developement access.

I have a vast array of programming experience. What is actually required, so that I know if I have the time.

Is this offer no longer standing?

I would email Verifex to find out what they need if in fact you're willing

Read the part where I said get in contact with verifex.

What would be required is a total tourny system built from the ground up using what CB already utilizes for it's engine and backend. This means you can not use PHP, MySQL, Oracle or (insert anything else off the wall here).


Also, when the work is submitted and put into action it becomes property of CB/Jon. So even if you leave CB down the road, your work will remain in use.

And yet another delightfully nasty response from Special J... You said get in contact with him. Responding to the thread which he started is a valid way to do so. It also has the nice side-effect that others with the same question can read a single answer, making things less confusing.

Regarding the work required, that is an extensive undertaking, but not unfathomable. I'm guessing it has to be done entirely in tcl. It would require some thought.. hmm.. I could definitely help significantly. A clear timeframe and statement of work would assit in determining if I can make the time committment. I don't think it's a question of whether I could do it, but more if I have the time. I don't like committing to things that I have not the time to complete.

Verifex, when are you available to discuss particulars?

I would send a CM to verifex, and my response was as far from nasty as they come.


I just don't want people getting involved that don't understand what they are taking on :)

Well Nightstrike, TCL documentation is available here. And it would be very useful if you could write SQL using Postgres. If its a matter of time, you can probably have as much time as you need. As long as you can write solid code, then it shouldn't be a big deal.

It's too bad, there used to be a few people around here who remember and played in the old Tournies and who could remember how they worked, and how people would like them to be again. But alot of them left, and they were programmers no less. So, I hope someone steps up.

Yes it would be nice if someone who recalls the old system would post how it worked.

From character creation to tourny completion.

i remember them but i never really played in any of them but why cant jon just use the code from cb1?

As far as recalling the old system, I think I have a good idea how that works.

You create a new char, it asks if you want it to be tourney or not tourney.

If it is tourney, it cannot have anything transferred TO it from anyone except auctions, but it can transfer things away from it.

Tourney chars started at 0, and they usually had to advance as any other regular char, but usually the tourney captian or whoever was running the tourney had rules on how the characters could be created. And most of those rules were not enforced by the game itself, but by people watching all the characters participating in the tourney.

If someone could make a system that allowed for system-level restrictions of things in tourney's that would be sweet. But just regular old 'self-police' style would be ok too.

What I do remember:

When you created a new character, there was an option to make it a tournament character.

I believe there were options on the backend to limit BA usage on the characters created for tournaments.

Items and money could be transferred off of tournament characters, but nothing could be transferred to them.

I believe tourney characters were auto-retired at the end of a tourney, but the usual 4-9 day window applied to them for un-retirement, I could be wrong about this.

That's about all I can remember.

Sarah Conner?

Anytime I start a big project past a certain magnitude, I prefer to use the spiral method. You start small, and add functinoality exponentially (the phrase "walk before you run" comes to mind.) When I get home tonight (around midnight EST), we can go over some things. I don't care at this point how it should work or what the process should entail. Those design details come later.. they're the easy part. What's important is the system used and the path taken to get from A to B. Where B actually is can be determined once we have a viable vehicle setup. With knowledge of that vehicle, its parts, and its capabilities, I'll be able to tell you if I can drive it for you wherever you need it to go. If you're around tonight, we can discuss it, and determine if I am a suitable chaffeur.. or at least a good mechanic.

I was a tourny admin the last month or so of Cb1, lets see what I remember...

1) New characters could be selected to be tourny characters (similar to selecting a NCB)

2) BA limit/time limit on the tournies was set by the tourny admins, and rules were posted and enforced by them as well.

3) Tourny chars had 2x rewards of a normal character

4) Tournies had their own realms, so stats could be monitored easily

5) Items/Money could be transferred from a tourny char, but not to them

6) Tourny chars could not use the buy now option on an auction for a certain amount of time after the auction began

7) Chars were auto-retired, and could not be unretired after the tourny ended

8) Rewards came from transfer fees and gear from player resets some times


There were also general guideline rules that applied to all tournies, as well as the individual rules (if you want the guidlines you can just CM me and I'll post em here : ) )

9) tourney chars could not be attacked from non-tourney chars, only tourney chars could fight each other

10) tourney-chars had a 15 minutes cooldown on items spawned in the stores (so no camping with tourney-chars was possible, also one day s.b. managed to get an EC from the store with a tourney char, was a big laugh about sleeping campers ;-)

Can anyone address why the CB1 code base is entirely useless? At least I am assuming it is useless, since this thread sounds like things are starting from scratch.

I understand that CB2's under-pinnings are quite different -- battle dynamics, etc. But there are still battles with a winner, loser (or draw), and rewards. Assuming that a fight in CB code is something like:

DoFight(char1, char2)

Why does everything need to be re-written? I am asking because I am quite good with databases, but know nothing about TCL and quite little about HTML/web design. But iof their were existing code to tweak, that is something I could give a shot.

So, can we get an idea of why the original code base is of no use? CB1 tournaments were quite elaborate toward the end: battle limits, stat criteria, etc. Some things were administered manually, but Jonathan did a lot of work to make the administration more automatic. Surely all of that code isn't meaningless now?

You're right, sutekh. The old tournament code is somewhat bit-rotted, but it wouldn't have to be done from scratch.

What Almuric wanted to code (back in the day) was something very different, and the old code wouldn't have helped much there. But that doesn't seem to be what people are talking about here. :)

Jonathan, thanks for the response.

Would giving me a peek at the old tourney modules code help me understand things, or would I need to know a lot about AOLServer and the TCL interface to it? I would like to look at as much as possible "offline" so that I don't waste anyone's time saying I can help with this but then be useless. I know my strengths and definitely know my weaknesses, so if the old code glazes me over, I will know to bow out. *smile*

Sent you an email, sutekh.

I wish I knew TCL, I would so help out...

I would ask what has changed so much from CB1 to CB2, was CB2 a total rewrite?

Just to stir up the idea cauldron a bit, what exactly did Almuric want to do with his version of a tourney system?

Almuric's tourney discussion and ideas thread

I have battled the source.

"Fight.tcl defeated Sutekh after 1 round of combat"

Looks like I need to train some "TCL Knowledge" and "AOLServer Programming Techniques" skills...

*smile*

Hehehe, yes, it is a beast is it not?

I played some tourneys in CB1.

Yes Fight.tcl is a beast...

I was busy last months but I can help to code tourneys... We will have to discuss it thrown the mailing list.