Online Tournament Help

Introduction

Currently we have the Monthly Duplication as the only online multiplayer game room. This game mode is causal which allows an individual to play at any time. However, many members request an online game mode that like those in a club's competition event. As the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading across the world, many of the Bridge game lovers cannot gather together to play bridge in the club. We decide to develop the Online Tournament (Refer as OnlineT/event in this document) that is a real-time competition event.

How does it work?

Holding an OnlineT is a complex matter. First of all, we need to have an organizer, in the game we called the organizer as the Game Creator or Game Owner. Then it needs a private room for the event, a number of tables and pre-dealt boards. More important is we need to have online players to participate in the event. In OnlineT, the minimum participants requirement are 8 or 2 tables. The game will undergo a number of stages which it will be described in more detail.

The Stages

Creating Stage: A player (the creator) needs to create an OnlineT event. After creating the event, a game room is also created, which all the participants should change to this game room for the event.
Enrollment Stage: Participants entered into the room and enroll for a seat on the event.
Selecting Schedule Stage: After the enrollment, the owner will select the schedule which includes movement, number of rounds and number of boards per round.
Gaming Stage: The stage composes of rounds which the movement is controlled by the schedule selected.
Break Stage: There is a short break between each round.
Paused Stage: During the Break Stage, the creator can decide to pause the game room activity for a longer break for a meal or afternoon tea.
Completing Game Stage: After all rounds have been played. There may be incomplete games due to players' quitting or overran in the Gaming Stage. This stage allows these incomplete games to be finished.
Posting Stage: After the Completing Game Stage, if there still have incomplete games. Robot will complete them automatically. The game score will be calculated.
Closing Stage: The game records and participants ranking will be posted online. The game room will then be closed by the timer.

Notes

Every stage got a time limit, see notes in individual stage sections.

Creating Stage

To create an online tournament, login to the online game room. In the option menu, select "New Online Tournament", the following dialogue will be popped up:

onlinet_create_dialog

Creator: The player who creates the tournament.

Host Club The club that hosts the event. By default all players are the members of WeWeWeb. You can create your own club to host an OnlineT.

Join Unit: The type of unit that a party represents in the tournament.

Inter Location: To represent a location.
Club Versus: To represent a club.
Member Only: Only the members of the host club can enter the OnlineT room and join the event. To select this option, the owner must be an officer of the "Host Club"

Party Size: Number of players in a party.

Team of Four: 4
Pair: 2
Individual: 1

My Balance: The gold balance of your account. Note that if the Join Unit is set to "Member Only", "My Balance" refers to the Club's account.

Setup Fee: The gold required to create this tournament. It is non refundable even if you cannot complete the event. In the beta testing stage, even you have insufficient fund, you can still create a online tournament.

After creating the event, a new game room will be created. The creator or the participants must enter into this game room in order to continue the event.

Tips: To change the game room, in the "ROOMS" tab, tap on the room you want to change. If you are unable to see the OnlineT room on the list, try to press the "Refresh" button.

Notes

Time limit for the whole event is 24 hours, if the event cannot complete within this time limit, the game room will be automatically closed.
Note that gold is the virtual currency to control the use of the server's resource.

Enrollment Stage

The is the stage for player to join the OnlineT. The players (participants) can click on an empty seat to join, or click on the his own joined seat to leave.

For the creator, besides the function as a normal player, more options are available. He can kick someone from an occupied seat, and he can add or remove tables for the OnlineT. Note that the minimize table number is 2 and it cannot be removed anymore. The maximum number is determined by the movement schemes available on the list.

Once all players are properly seated and all the tables are filled in the enrollment. The owner can press the "Next" button and move to the Selecting Schedule stage.

Notes

The time limit for the stage is 30 minutes, if you are unable to find enough participants on the event, it will be closed automatically after the time limit is elapsed.
The OnlineT does not encourage to use robot as it will affect the record in a certain extend. However, we provide a maximum of 3 robots in order that the odd number (1-3) players can still form a table. In the beta testing stage, the minimum human required to start an OnlineT is 2, that is 6 robots are provided.

Selecting Schedule

There will be a pop-up dialog for this stage. The owner are required to select the schedule for the event. Schedule selection includes "Number of Rounds", "Number of Boards Per Round" or sometimes "Movement Scheme". It is represented as a list and is sorted in ascending order according to the estimated time required for the selected schedule.

After selecting the schedule, the dialogue will be closed. The owner can then press the "Next" button to pop-up a dialog to confirm the selected schedule. A positive confirmation will move to the Gaming Stage.

Notes

The time limit of the stage is 3 minutes. If the time is elapsed, the system will automatically select the schedule that requires the shortest time to finish. Then it will automatically move to the Gaming stage.

Gaming Stage

The stage uses the same screen as the "Monthly Duplicate". Each Gaming stage represent a round in the OnlineT, which each player stays on a table and play a number of boards. If a table has finished all the board assigned for the round. The table will be closed and players will stay on the game room to wait for the next round.

During this stage and the subsequent stages before the Posting Stage, the owner can remove a player from a seat or assign free player to an unoccupied seat by tapping on a seat in the Participant Section. Note that if you are assigning robot instead of human player, the server will check whether the maximum number of robot allowed has been reached.
onlinet_assign_remove_player

Notes

The time limit for the stage is calculated as 7.5 minutes per board per round which the system will automatically end the stage. If every table is finished before the time limit, it will automatically proceed to the next stage (Break stage). The owner can also end the gaming stage and move to the break stage earlier.
Any unfinished boards will be played in the Completing Game stage after all the normal rounds have been ended.

Break Stage

This gives a break for players. It has a time limit of 3 minutes. If the owner decided to do a longer break (say a lunch break or tea break), he can press the "Next" button for a choice of the PAUSE option or proceed to the next round (back to Gaming stage) .

Pause Stage

The stage does not have time limit, which all players can leave the application and enjoy their lunch/tea and come back later. However, the event's 24 hours overall time limit is still applied even in the Pause stage.

Completing Game Stage

If there are uncompleted games during the normal rounds. Players are required to finish them in this stage. The system will automatically form tables if there are players available for a uncompleted game. However, for implementation simplicity, the uncompleted game must use the same table as the normal round. That meant the board, players, table should be matched in order the uncompleted game can be started.

In the creator's screen, the "Incomplete Games" section will be shown which tell the creator what are the uncompleted games, and which players are missing for these games. The diagram above shows many robots, it is for demonstration purpose. In production, only a maximum of 3 robots will be provided.

Notes

The time limit for the stage is calculated as 5 minutes per uncompleted game. When the time elapsed, the tournament will be closed and result will be calculated.
If there are no uncompleted game, the stage will be ended automatically.
The owner can end the stage earlier if he recognized that there is no players available for the remaining uncompleted games.

Posting Stage

The playing stages are ended. Tthe system will automatically complete the uncompleted game and calculate the score. Once the score is calculated, the stage will be ended and the result page is available and be viewed by using a browser. There is no time limit for the stage as the server is doing internal computation.

Closing Stage

Result has been posted. The game room is waiting to close after its 5 minutes time limit . In this stage, players can press the "Result" button to view the result.

Award & Penalty

Since it is something new, beta testing are in progress. We need to smooth it before considering any award (like Master Point) or penalty on the game mode.

Exclusion of Liability

The software and service are provided as-is. We are not responsible for any inaccuracy, lost of data.... For details, see our license terms/terms of service in our products and website respectively.

Last Modified: 27-Aug-2020