Official: SSBPD unsupported; source code released.

[enCouRaging Bear]

loooooool
mango's match history is entirely losses

 

[Max?]

Mango sucks, haven't you heard?

 

[ThatGuy]

See that's the thing, I don't think TIO should be modified (and I don't think nealdt is going to), because it's perfect from a tournament running standpoint. Updating TIO with these features would place the responsibility ultimately on the TO, whose plate is already pretty full as it is.

TLPD has an easier job because all the info required is either public via VODs and replays, or it is easier to assume (ie. people not allowed to offrace in tournaments, map pools are already preset in order of when they should be played, etc). I think that while automatizing the process of collecting data/tracking the data while it's fresh would theoretically be the best approach, it's not worth slowing down every tournament for such a cause. They last long enough as is .

I don't think this is a lost cause, however! I just think that some things should be ironed out, because site architecture will ultimately be defined by how the data is collected, and how much. I personally believe a community-based TLPD/Wiki style approach would work better for data mining than updating TIO. Sure, it's less accurate and reliable (such as if players don't remember certain details or no one feels like updating them), but short of hiring a couple statisticians for tournaments, it's just not going to work out otherwise.

I also feel that the scope of this project should be a bit limited, at least at the beginning. TLPD focuses on proleague and large scale tournaments, because that's what people care about. Not many people will care that JoeBlow57 defeated yoshi_master in the grand finals of an Antartican weekly. I suggest that there be some sort of standard set for the quality of tournaments uploaded to the database.*

This is going to suck and require community participation to solve. Ideally people will have some sort of unique identifier that can be put in tio to solve this but I have no way to make everyone go through the effort of doing that yet.

I wrote a possible solution to that problem, but after re-reading this quote, it seems you have a similar idea (bear in mind that it may also mess around with the currently implemented ELO system!). It does give you an idea of how many obstacles there'll be...there's no perfect way to design software . I do think that you need to implement a solution for this early on...it'll be a big pain in the *** if left alone for too long. In the end though, you're going to have to probably make some sacrifices in terms of accuracy, convenience, and/or depth. It'll all depend on what you feel should be prioritized. Good luck!

*Of course, compared to TLPD, there is the interesting contrast of how AiB allows every random tournament to be uploaded, and I actually support that direction for their context. AiB is a social network as well as a tournament database, and mini tournies help build and reinforce that network between players, whether the relationships be online or live. It's cool seeing how two identical services have such different approaches to catering to their target audiences, and it's something that is worth considering.

 

[FoxLisk]

The smash community is very different than the starcraft community in a fundamental way. We don't have invitationals or pro teams or curated tournaments: everyone can go play in the same tournaments the pros play in. There's much more a sense of the ability of any random player to rise to the top. Allowing anyone to gauge their progress via scores or whatever is, I think valuable for that reason. So JoeBlow57 and yoshi_master can have their tournaments recognized as well.

That said, I am overseeing what gets processed, so it's not like you can upload a hundred files of you beating your buddies and suddenly see your ELO score rise to a million.

 

[Warhawk]

loooooool
mango's match history is entirely losses

Yea this was the first thing I noticed too lol. Gonna be awesome though with more data. It'd also be cool to see a data section differentiating a players win-loss record with the characters used in certain matches, but at the same time that's going to make this much harder to do without getting more people to join in and assist on this project.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

FoxLisk, I would love to implement a Character Ranking List add-on to this. The only problem is a problem that similarly faces the ELO team. We would need to create a TIO plugin that includes the fields we are looking for into the TIO interface and the tio file. Even if said plugin was created, TOs would need to be using it with TIO. If that was accomplished, making a CRL would be no harder than a few lines of SQL code and a display page. The MBR had a team working on some of these issues, but like most things back there, progress is very slow if at all. Havent seen an update in months.

 

[FoxLisk]

FoxLisk, I would love to implement a Character Ranking List add-on to this. The only problem is a problem that similarly faces the ELO team. We would need to create a TIO plugin that includes the fields we are looking for into the TIO interface and the tio file. Even if said plugin was created, TOs would need to be using it with TIO. If that was accomplished, making a CRL would be no harder than a few lines of SQL code and a display page. The MBR had a team working on some of these issues, but like most things back there, progress is very slow if at all. Havent seen an update in months.

I would love this. Given the opportunity I would implement it myself, but I don't have access to the TIO code.
I hope this can come together though, because if I can throw statistics around to shut people up about whether Marth-Falco is 55-45 or 60-40 i will be very happy ^.^

 

[Nintendude]

FoxLisk, I would love to implement a Character Ranking List add-on to this. The only problem is a problem that similarly faces the ELO team. We would need to create a TIO plugin that includes the fields we are looking for into the TIO interface and the tio file. Even if said plugin was created, TOs would need to be using it with TIO. If that was accomplished, making a CRL would be no harder than a few lines of SQL code and a display page. The MBR had a team working on some of these issues, but like most things back there, progress is very slow if at all. Havent seen an update in months.

Yeah, we definitely hit a roadblock there. Also I haven't heard any updates from neal about the new tio in a long time, and if that version of tio never gets released, then the whole plugin thing won't be possible.

Anyway, FoxLisk pretty much did a majority of our project by himself, and it appears to be fully functional. So at the very least we can get a huge database of players and ratings once ZB gets back to us about all of the tio files he collected. The best part is that the database will recalculate the entire ratings database if you add an old tournament or change the ratings algorithm.

 

[Bones0]

When you want to start incorporating ELO, you could just set a minimum number of entrants a tourney must have in order for it to have any impact on your ELO rating. Tourneys with less entrants will still be added to the total statistics, but won't impact ratings to avoid things like you mentioned (people boosting their rating by quantity of tournaments over quality).


If you're going to add functionality for characters, you should add region in there as well. Being able to hover over a TIO bracket and have their state and character pop up would be sick. It'd also let you do things like compare popularity of certain characters in certain states, or compare players' performance in out-of-state tourneys vs. in-state.

Ex. You hover over "Bones" and it pops up with "MD - "

Also, if duplicate names becomes an issue, you could begin forcing people to register an account to get statistics of them compiled. Upon registering, you go through past tournaments (which you will be able to view by region to make it even easier!) and just select all of your tournaments and specify what name you entered as. That'd also make it extremely easy for players to view their own ELO rating and tournament history. Maybe I want to check my past history vs. a certain player; I could just click a "My History" button at the top or something, and then it takes me to a list of all of my tournaments/tournament matches. From there I can search for opponent names, instances where I used a secondary, certain matchups, when I chose certain stages, etc. Obviously this is all in due time, but I got carried away. LOL

 

[Slhoka]

Good stuff, FoxLisk !
I'm gonna make sure that all my tio files are clean (completed, with only one nickname per player), and then I'll upload about 30 of them to fill the database a little.

As for the issues, everything I wanted to say has been said already.

 

[FoxLisk]

Awesome! thanks.

Also y'all need to get on your ****, tarheel just uploaded like 8 norcal tournaments

@Bones yup, i've thought about all that. How to solve all these things depends on other things like how the site gets used, what people want from it, how much data they're willing to provide. I'd like to see all those things but we'll see where it goes from here.

 

[Nintendude]

Is there a way we can see a complete list of players with their ratings? I think it would be cool to have access to the entire list and then be able to filter the list by rating and region.

Also I've already noticed some problems with names. Like, SilentSpectre is on there as SS and Wobbles is listed as Wright.

 

[FoxLisk]

Is there a way we can see a complete list of players with their ratings? I think it would be cool to have access to the entire list and then be able to filter the list by rating and region.

yeah i'll add that probably tomorrow. regions will be harder and require manual help because region names aren't consistent or included with tio data

Also I've already noticed some problems with names. Like, SilentSpectre is on there as SS and Wobbles is listed as Wright.

yeah. i'm gonna add something to let me automatically rename players, again, probably tomorrow if i have time. that just requires people entering names consistently in tio though.

 

[KrIsP!]

Awesome. Someone go collect every tournament since like 2002. Lol shouldn't there be a cut off date so that the results will stay accurate within the past few years. Let's start with pound 3 and try to collectively find all the tio files.

Maybe split up the results by year. Every year it saves the results and starts over so you can see who has done best each year.

i'm quite impressed and I think it'll be great once more files are uploaded, will the top rated be whoever has won the most out of what's uploaded though? I mean if say, one person wins a bunch of uploaded locals while others are only put on the site for national wins, will there be a separation of what's more important?\

Edit: seems to have been addressed and you seem to be on top of it. Nice.

 

[FoxLisk]

Maybe split up the results by year. Every year it saves the results and starts over so you can see who has done best each year.

i wouldnt do that, but in the future i might look into saving scores in such a way that i can graph them. that will take quite a bit of work though so it's not going to happen immediately.

i'm quite impressed and I think it'll be great once more files are uploaded, will the top rated be whoever has won the most out of what's uploaded though? I mean if say, one person wins a bunch of uploaded locals while others are only put on the site for national wins, will there be a separation of what's more important?

thanks ^.^

It doesn't actually make sense to do it that way in terms of how ratings work. I'm hoping there's enough cross pollenation across regions that I don't have to do something like that. e.g. if you just have a lot of local tourneys but then some of your best players go to bigger tourneys and get destroyed, the precipitous drop in their ratings from losing to other players should trickle back down into their region. We'll kinda just have to see how things pan out when we get more data.

 

[Zivilyn Bane]

This is great news. You basically did what we wanted to do in the BR. I have some ideas I'd like to share with you when I have more time. And yes, I have a compilation of .tio files. However I didn't get much participation so it's not a very large database. Several are locals from my area and the Chicago area. They are all already melee singles only.

 

[Nintendude]

I'm fairly confident that we don't have to worry about isolated regions because there's enough nationals and I feel like at least half of high level players travel. What does it matter anyway? The end goal of ratings should really be to seed tournaments in an unbiased manner. If someone gets seeded higher than they should be, they will lose and then their rating will be corrected in time for the next tournament. If someone has a high rating due to inactivity (like Ken, for example), then who are we to assume that the rating is no longer valid without any additional data? That's the beauty of the Elo rating system - it is completely unbiased.

Also something to consider is that we can have pro and amateur brackets based on a ratings cutoff. I think there's some cool potential there.

 

[JonnyW]

This is sick.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

In any case, this needs to be advertised. I'm going to post this in some threads in the MW, but this definitely deserves a featured topic.

 

[tarheeljks]

eagerly await subsequent arguments about player ratings

Good stuff, FoxLisk !
I'm gonna make sure that all my tio files are clean (completed, with only one nickname per player), and then I'll upload about 30 of them to fill the database a little.

As for the issues, everything I wanted to say has been said already.

quoting for emphasis b/c i overlooked it initially. should also make sure that the names are spelled the same way each tournament; many players have unorthodox capitalizations and if you are like me you may not input tags into tio each way the same time

 

[GOTM]

Yo this is sweet. Is this based on Elo? If this takes off and people use it for every tournament, I will 100% get back into smash. I'm anal about correct results and consistent rankings so this would make me happy.

Edit: Also, a sortable full player list would be sweet, same with tournaments. You could probably just pop a JQGrid plugin in there to do something like that.

It seems like you're using an MVC framework, and by the looks of it, might be ASP.NET MVC b/c I think the default template contains those colors. I'd be happy to help out, I like this kind of ****, lol like organizing information, plus I develop full time so feel free to get in touch if you want something to help you work on the site.

 

[CT Chia]

Is there anywhere on that site that lists results of events, or just the results of each match?

What about full ranking instead of just top rated?

This is neat, was planning on making something like this for my new website.

 

[LLDL]

Will be uploading all my tio files to this soon

 

[Dan Salvato]

Are awarded points weighted by the rank of the defeated player? For example, if I were to beat S2J, would that contribute more to my score than if I beat some no-name? If not, players could be unfairly ranked simply by beating a bunch of bad players in local tournies on a regular basis.

 

[Zivilyn Bane]

Are awarded points weighted by the rank of the defeated player? For example, if I were to beat S2J, would that contribute more to my score than if I beat some no-name? If not, players could be unfairly ranked simply by beating a bunch of bad players in local tournies on a regular basis.

Yes, the person you beat weighs in on the points you gain. If you are rated 1000 and beat somebody that is 800, you gain less than you would have if you beat somebody rated 1200.

 

[FoxLisk]

Yo this is sweet. Is this based on Elo? If this takes off and people use it for every tournament, I will 100% get back into smash. I'm anal about correct results and consistent rankings so this would make me happy.

Yep, it's ELO.

Edit: Also, a sortable full player list would be sweet, same with tournaments. You could probably just pop a JQGrid plugin in there to do something like that.

I'm gonna build a full list of players tonight. I'll make it sorted by name and ELO. My experience with JS plugins for sorting data is that you have to abide by their rules a lot to get them to work, so I'll probably just make it a ****ty full page refresh until there's enough data that it slows down.

It seems like you're using an MVC framework, and by the looks of it, might be ASP.NET MVC b/c I think the default template contains those colors. I'd be happy to help out, I like this kind of ****, lol like organizing information, plus I develop full time so feel free to get in touch if you want something to help you work on the site.

haha yep, you nailed it. So far my troubles are coming in the form of having too much data to verify, not too much development work to do, but if that changes I'll keep you in mind.

I actually started this project partly because I was interested in C# and I don't get the opportunity to use it at work, so I'm enjoying the work

Is there anywhere on that site that lists results of events, or just the results of each match?

If you click on a tournament name you can go to its full results. They're not formatted very well but you can find what you're looking for. You can also find all tournaments at www.ssbpd.com/tournament to which there will be a link on the front page soon >.> <.<

What about full ranking instead of just top rated.

See above.


So I already have more data than I have any interest in hand-verifying entirely by myself. WHICH IS AWESOME! you guys rule. But I think I'm going to add two things:

1) Mod controls: allowing players who are mods to rename players, merge player accounts together, download or view the file data, maybe some other things.

2) Allow players to flag players for consideration to merge them into another player's account, to mitigate the burden on uploaders to paranoiacally spell-check every player's name.

 

[Seris]

do you want local tourney files as well?

 

[Scar]

can't the TO's / uploaders just edit their own uploads? and you /mods can approve them if there are no errors? that way we can educate TOs to make sure their files are in the right format on upload, or if enough people have the same problem, you can update the code

 

[FoxLisk]

can't the TO's / uploaders just edit their own uploads? and you /mods can approve them if there are no errors? that way we can educate TOs to make sure their files are in the right format on upload, or if enough people have the same problem, you can update the code

uh... maybe. i havent thought much about this but problems spring to mind:
1) if you upload a file and then it gets processed, it's too late to edit it now, so it doesn't do much good
2) you can give people control over the players at tournaments they uploaded either, because those players will enter other tournaments

@Seris yes, I do.

Got some back-end kind of work done today, will look into surfacing it in the form of building a mod home page, assigning some mods, & implementing a flagging system in the next couple days.

 

[tarheeljks]

can't the TO's / uploaders just edit their own uploads? and you /mods can approve them if there are no errors? that way we can educate TOs to make sure their files are in the right format on upload, or if enough people have the same problem, you can update the code

i like his idea . it's fairly error prone to check names manually, especially when you are used to seeing the names anyway-- extremely easy to overlook a spelling/capitalization errors. i checked and double checked before i uploaded files and am still seeing mistakes when i go back through

edit: to's are going to audit the files anyway, but they'll inevitably miss something

 

[FoxLisk]

Can y'all explain a little more clearly what you'd like to see out of it? Like the flow you could go through in that situation? I'm not seeing how it would deliver value without huge hassle, but it's quite likely I'm just missing smoething

 

[tarheeljks]

no, i was saying to him that i like your proposal

edit: however, do like his idea if you could alter files after uploads had processed. it makes sense for people to have access to files they uploaded, and could save you/mod the trouble of auditing numerous name changes, but if it requires drastically altering the code then it's prob not worth it

 

[FoxLisk]

OKAY mods exist now let me know if you want to help out with double-checking tournaments and stuff!

going to work on the flagging system now...

Edit to avoid double posting:

Flagging system now exists. You can flag any player who you think is named incorrectly by going to his page and clicking 'flag this player' and then indicating what his new tag should be or which player he should be merged with. Mods and myself can see who gets tagged as what, so hopefully this will help crowd-source the obvious naming issues.

 

[Zivilyn Bane]

The updates to the site are great so far. I wanted to thank FoxList for adding me as a moderator to the SSBPD. I wanted to point out a couple of quick things:

For one, anybody checking the site right now will notice some crazy looking Elo ratings. We are already aware of this and Fox will be working to correct it. Some of the issues range from players having insanely low elo's, even as far as in the negative thousands. This will be corrected. Also players like Kels has a very high rating right now, like 13,000. We are going to adjust the formula and may have to make several more adjustments before it's where we want it to be, but for now the numbers aren't really representative of what we will be able to accomplish with them.

Right now I am going through and merging several players that have duplicate names into one player. That will be my focus for the next night or two. So if you're checking out the website please use the flag system. I don't know everybody or all their aliases so I appreciate any and all help with that.

Any questions about the actual Elo aspect of the database I would be more than happy to address, although myself and FoxLisk, as well as other members that were working on the previous Elo project have yet to meet in formal and discuss the exact direction we will go in. However I am certain this project is going to be amazing and will without a doubt change the fate of our beloved game and it's community.

 

[Paju]

Tampora 3, Epita Smash Arena: Junior, PR Biweekly #1, Smashing Grounds to the Future 2, Smashing Grounds to the Future! 1, Is That Tournament? 3, Smashing Grounds: Next Generation 7, Smashing Grounds: Next Generation 4, Smashing Grounds: Next Generation 3, Smashing Grounds: NG 2, SoCal Biweekly 12/30, OC2, Champ Combo: NorCal Edition!

These tournament links wont open / doesn't have any content / has some kind of error.

Edit: Just created few more tiofiles from pool/bracket images and uploaded them. Gamer Meetup STHLM, BEAST 2 and BEAST 1 have only bracket though as I couldn't find pool results.

 

[Nintendude]

However I am certain this project is going to be amazing and will without a doubt change the fate of our beloved game and it's community.

Truth
I can't wait to see what becomes of this thing in the near future.

 

[saska]

I suppose you save each players whole elo rating history to get your calculations right. Right?

 

[Zivilyn Bane]

I suppose you save each players whole elo rating history to get your calculations right. Right?

Each match you play affects your current Elo. So I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that question. But in a way, yes.

Paju: thank you very much for the help. I too had to make a few tio files out of bracket images and it's not the funnest thing to do but we appreciate the help.

 

[FoxLisk]

Tampora 3, Epita Smash Arena: Junior, PR Biweekly #1, Smashing Grounds to the Future 2, Smashing Grounds to the Future! 1, Is That Tournament? 3, Smashing Grounds: Next Generation 7, Smashing Grounds: Next Generation 4, Smashing Grounds: Next Generation 3, Smashing Grounds: NG 2, SoCal Biweekly 12/30, OC2, Champ Combo: NorCal Edition!

These tournament links wont open / doesn't have any content / has some kind of error.

Edit: Just created few more tiofiles from pool/bracket images and uploaded them. Gamer Meetup STHLM, BEAST 2 and BEAST 1 have only bracket though as I couldn't find pool results.

I haven't taken a look at all of those, but I think tampora is like that because it had two players entered as the same name so my parsing barfed on it halfway through., it's possible some of those others are like that too.
I don't know how that happens but it's also hard to clean up, when two players with the same tag enter the same tourney and perform differently. Any advice on how to handle that from anyone would be great.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Is it possible the name of the tournament is an issue? for example the link to SGNG2 is http://www.ssbpd.com/tournament/Smashing Grounds: NG 2

I think in every example in that list there is either a ! ? : # or / which are illegal characters in filenames on many servers