Nerd-Dungeon.net

So hopefully, assuming we don’t all get too lazy, there will be some changing happening to the site shortly.  Stay tuned.

Brohammer is a busy dude trying to get season 2 off the ground, while also getting playoffs settled, and doing his regular job (supposedly) somewhere in there. So here is an update from your neighborhood medic.

Regular season play is all finished up, so I thought I’d post the standings. Sadly, brohammer hasn’t done the standings including the last week of regular play, so here are the standings for when we went into week 7:

And, here is the bracket for the finals. These should be some super exciting awesome games, so keep an eye on the steam group to find out when to tune into the SourceTV servers to watch.

Yep ok I got a bit lazy and didn’t post the results after week 3. I can live with that on my conscience. Here’s a look at things after week 4 though. It’s really interesting to see how the divisions are shaping up. A few are very very close and others, not so much.

Every once in a while, I sit down and try to think about the issues that came up in the past couple weeks that would need to be removed or adjusted for future tournaments. When I first put together the set of rules we play under I hadn’t really expected to have the amount of participation that we ended up with so I probably left a few more loose ends than I probably should. The end result of this is that the 90 minutes I spent in my fiance’s car writing up the rules on the way to Vancouver one morning has left me with a few holes to fill. In my defense I have to say that I did the best I could given that I’ve never organized something like this before. Live and learn right! So that all being said here’s the first of the ‘gotchas’ I’ve run into.

• Our four divisions should be split into two conferences: This is pretty straightforward. In the interest of making figuring out tiebreakers for our playoffs I should have created two separate conferences to pull the pool of playoff teams from. Up until today I was going to retroactively make this change but I’ve decided to hold off.

• Map times for Granary and Well: Currently the rules have each round on these maps end after 5 wins or after 45 minutes. I had settled on 5 with the idea that it can take a bit for a team to get their feet under them, and I wanted to give that slow starting team(s) a chance. As it turns out in all of the Granary matches I’ve seen in organized play I’ve without a doubt never seen a team come back from three down and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen one come back from two down. To compound this the vast majority of the scores that came out of our week in Granary were 5 - 0, 4 - 0 and so on. I was considering changing the Well rules to limit things to 4 or possibly 3 rounds but after thinking some more I want to leave it be for this tournament to see if the week of Well turns out the same. It should be interesting to see if it’s the same.

• Achievement Points: Of all the things I took a roll of the dice on I feel like this one has been the most fun. Because we have some teams that are very serious about playing and others that are more casual I was afraid that we were going to have very very clear lines in the standings between the haves and have nots. In an attempt to blur these lines a bit I created a system where each week losing teams would be able to gain points via an objective. Most have them been in the vein of awarding the losing teams with the most point captures but I’ve changed to focusing them on an individual’s performance rather than the team as a whole. This all being said while I like the concept a couple things were amiss in the execution.
  • This one I can’t take credit for since it took a coworker and I arguing over it via Steam before it ended with us essentially agreeing with each other. Currently achievement points count just like regular points if I tiebreaker were to occur. This was an oversight on my part. Next time around these points will still effect a teams rank however in the case of a tie with another team these points will be thrown out.
  • The first few achievements were awarded to the team who scored the most points on a given map but still lost. The problem with this is that in the instance that two very good teams play the very good team that just barely lost will benefit and that flies in the face of the whole idea of the point to begin with. The actually came up from a pretty specific situation that occurred a couple weeks ago. The current rules should make for an interesting outcome with teams getting in the playoffs however next time around I’m going to try and keep the achievements as player specific as possible without being overly complicated or convoluted.

• The Playoffs: Ugh. I don’t have a ton to say here except that I should have spent some more time thinking this part through to the end. At the time it was probably far enough out that I didn’t consider it enough. As we get closer to the end of the season I’m worried about a lot of ties coming up. I haven’t looked at our current standings in the overall playoff picture, that’s for tomorrow, but part of me is afraid of how it’s going to turn out.

So there it is. My current bug list with the rules. Without a doubt there will be some other changes that occur for the most part though things are going to play out exactly as they do now.

I’ve been meaning to post some non-tournament related items here but just haven’t had time in the past week. With regards to this blog my good intentions could probably pave a 4 lane highway. Regardless though for the 6 people who look at this site I’ll be posting less cut and dry things in the near future. The problem is that ideas always seem to come to me when I’m on the bus.

So week 2 is in the books and it was a bit surprising. This weeks map was Gravelpit which I think most people consider to be one of the better maps, if not the best map for tournament play. That being said I did make a mistake in our ruleset and only had teams play one round (each team on offense once) which ended in some pretty short matches. We’ll be playing Gravelpit again in week 6 and I’ll be adjusting the rules to have teams attack twice. This week’s achievement point went to the losing team with the most captures and before the matches started I was almost positive that it would be divided between enough teams that no one got it. As it turns out I was wrong and only 3 teams all lost with two captures. So that being said here are our the results from last week’s matches.

ArenaNet v Monolith    Winner: Monolith (3-1)
PopCap v Surreal I    Winner: Surreal (3-1)
SCEA v Blizzard I    Winner: Blizzard I (3-1)
Sensory Sweep v Red 5 Winner: Red 5 (3-0)

Blizzard II v Crystal Dynamics    Winner: Crystal Dynamics (3-1)
EA LA v Amaze    Winner: EA LA (3-2)
LucasArts v THQ    Winner: LucasArts (3-2)
Surreal II v Valve    Winner: Valve (3-1)

Blizzard III - Bioware    Winner: Bioware (3-1)
Carbine - Midway Austin    Winner: Midway Austin (3-1)
Gearbox I v Rainbow    Winner: Gearbox I (3-1)
Kingsisle v Threewave    Winner: Threewave (3-1)

Midway Chicago II v Raven    Winner: Raven (3-2)
EA Montreal v Harmonix    Winner: EA Montreal (3-1)
Midway Chicago I - Gearbox II    Winner: Tie (3-3)
NCSoft v Ubisoft Montreal    Winner: Ubisoft Montreal (3-0)

And here are the current standings (click for big):

So with the final week 1 match being played to a tie last night I wanted to post the current tournament standings. Since my last post two things happened.

• Rainbow and Kingsisle played and as I alluded to just two sentences ago they ended in a 1-1 tie.
• Since they ended up with the most captures of the losing teams ArenaNet took away the week 1 achievement point.

And without further ado here’s the current standings in hot hot Excel 2007 form. Click on the image for big.

We’re just about through week one and have had some pretty interesting match results. With a few matches left to play tonight, and one next week here’s what it looks like so far.

Blizzard I - Sensory Sweep    Winner: Blizzard I (5 - 0)
Monolith - SCEA     Winner: Monolith (7 - 0)
Red5 - PopCap     Winner: Red 5 (10 - 0)
Surreal I - ArenaNet     Winner: Surreal I (4 - 3)

Amaze - Surreal II     Winner: Surreal II (3 - 2)
Crystal Dynamics - LucasArts
THQ - EA LA
Valve - Blizzard II     Winner: Valve (11 - 0)

Midway Austin - Gearbox I     Winner: Gearbox I (4 - 0)
Bioware - Carbine     Winner: Bioware (3 - 1)
Rainbow - Kingsisle
Threewave - Blizzard III

Gearbox II - EA Montreal
Harmonix - Midway Chicago II     Winner: Midway Chicago II (19 - 0)
Raven Software - NC Soft     Winner: NCSoft (5 -1)
Ubisoft Montreal - Midway Chicago I     Winner: Midway Chicago I (1 - 0)

With a few matches left to play it’s interesting to see some of these scores.  Initially we had a few blowouts (my match included) but things started to calm down a bit once more teams played.  Hopefully this was just a matter of getting the early bugs worked out but I remember my first match and how much I wasn’t expecting what happened so there could be some of that too.  Once the rest of the matches are competed I’ll post results as well as the current standings.

After a few months of planning, too many emails to count and the longest To Do list I’ve ever had season one is getting started on Monday. We have 32 teams from the US and Canada competing for TF2 supremacy and of course the bragging rights that come with victory.  I should add that while all of us identify each other by the studios we work for our use of their name isn’t meant to imply that those companies are sponsoring, or endorsing us in any way whatsoever.  They’re simply identifiers.  That being said here’s the divisional makeup.

North West Division

ArenaNet
Red 5 Studios
Blizzard I
Surreal I
Monolith
PopCap Games
Sensory Sweep Studios
SCEA Bend

Western Division

LucasArts
Blizzard II
Surreal II
Amaze Entertainment
Valve Software
EA LA
THQ
Crystal Dynamics

Central Division

Gearbox Software
Kingsisle Entertainment
Threewave Software
Midway Austin
Rainbow
Bioware
Carbine
Blizzard III

Eastern Division

Ubisoft Montreal
Harmonix
EA Montreal
Midway Chicago II
Raven Software
NC Soft
Gearbox II
Midway Chicago I

And here are this weeks matchups:

North West Division

Blizzard I - Sensory Sweep Studios
Monolith - SCEA
Red 5 Studios - PopCap Games
Surreal I - ArenaNet

Western Division

Amaze Entertainment - Surreal II
Crystal Dynamics - LucasArts
THQ - EA LA
Valve Software - Blizzard II

Central Division

Midway Austin - Gearbox I
Bioware - Carbine
Rainbow Interactive - Kingsisle Entertainment
Threewave Software - Blizzard III

Eastern Division

Gearbox II - EA Montreal
Harmonix - Midway Chicago II
Raven Software - NC Soft
Ubisoft Montreal - Midway Chicago I

For the first week we will be playing 1 round on CTF_2Fort. Each match will have a time limit of 45 minutes with the winner earning 1 point in the overall standings.

In addition to the point going to each winning team there will also be 1 point available to the losing teams in the form of a Weekly Achievement. This weeks point will be awarded to the losing team with the most intel captures. In the case that multiple teams are tied that point will be split up among them, up to five teams.

I felt like having these points available to losing teams will a) keep those teams vested in their match despite being down and b) keep the standings from devolving into a few top tier teams with all the points and then an equal amount of zero point teams. I’m particularly interested to see how this will pan out over the course of the next couple months. Ideally I’d like to see some close match ups in the divisions with fractions of a point separating teams. We’ll see how it turns out though.

There was a point in the beginning of December where I was SURE that we’d never see the end of our first studio tournament. I figured with the holiday break and differing priorities that things were going to come to a screeching halt with matches left unplayed. Thankfully I was wrong, Surreal had something to prove and they got around to playing Valve.

I’d like to say that this was the match of the century and that all other matches coming up will pale in comparison and we might as well all quit any form of contest now because the pinnacle of human sport has been achieved but, well, I can’t. That’s not to say the match was bad, not by any stretch, it just wasn’t great.

Here are some videos of both rounds on Well and Granary. Again, no sound because Fraps doesn’t seem to want to record it on my PC and they’re very very large files. I really need to get a better compression system in place. If you have any suggestions by all means email me.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

And since I’m sure quite a few people haven’t seen this here is the bracket we followed for the tournament. As you can tell it’s pretty low rent, what can I say we were in a hurry.

Like the title says, [LTH] and [NC] had a little throwdown the other night to size up the competition. Thankfully both captains were nice enough to record demos of the match. They played rounds on Granary, Gravelpit and Well and while I haven’t had a chance to check out the files I’m sure the matches were good.

Because both teams hack.

A lot.

These first ones were recorded by [NC]smurphur

NC v Lith on Granary
NC v Lith on Gravelpit
NC v Lith on Well Part 1
NC v Lith on Well Part 2

And these were taken by [LTH]Valfaroth

Lith v NC on Well
Lith v NC on Granary

If you’re not sure how to play a .dem file just drop them in your C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\%USERNAME%\team fortress 2\tf folder they type ‘play %FILENAME%’ into the console when in TF 2.