AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

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BeligerAnt
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by BeligerAnt »

I thought about increasing the number of robots, but to be honest the limitation is not the software but the time available at an event!

Even with the smoothest run event, fitting more than 254 fights into one day would be a challenge. That would be about 50 more fights than at the last AWS! I would rather see the number of robots per team reduced to remain within the 128 robot limit than end up with an event that cannot easily be run in a single day.

As soon as the event spills over to 2 days the running costs double, most people's entry costs increase significantly so the number of entrants drops significantly - making a bigger field and a 2 day event unnecessary...

It is quite possible (although quite a lot of work) to expand the double elimination table to 256 robots, as 8 groups of 32 or as 16 groups of 16. When the codeis in a usable state it will be hosted on GitHub as an open source project so anyone can modify it to support more entries or whatever...
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by Remote-Controlled Dave »

Could you not have been more creative with your example names? :-p
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by BeligerAnt »

Ha ha! No I couldn't Dave :)

Team Alpha deliberately has robots called Ant A*, Flea A* etc. That way it's easier to check that the logic is correctly separating robots into groups so that teams don't have to fight themselves.

Names A1, A2 etc are much less typing than calling them Aardvark, Apple etc... And I daresay team Xray may be limited to very few robots that way... ;)
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by joey_picus »

Xylophone, Xenon, Xenophobia, Xena Warrior Princess (walker), Xanatos (flea), Xylocaine (nano walker)...:P

I suspect the issues with 128+ robots are a large part of why a lot of less friendly competitions have qualifying rounds and seeding (and also that I imagine, from an organisational point of view, 129 robots might even be harder than 256 without lots of group rejigging?).
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by BeligerAnt »

Someone had to Joey! :D

You may be right about qualifiers, and I hope we don't have to go that way...The logistics of running a one day, all-comers event are enough for most people... Seeding doesn't actually reduce the number of fights it just gives an (unfair?) advantage to the top-ranked entries - something we should avoid like the plague IMO.

Once the tabes have been calculated it's actually just as easy to run any number of entrants as any other. It's just that with 129 (or 65, 33, 17, 9) entrants there are two unlucky souls that get one fewer byes than everyone else...
AntLog2 used separate tables for each group size as it was copied mostly from Peter's original paper charts. However, each group size is actually a 16-way group partially populated and with all the byes removed. The entries have to be fitted into the group in a particular order to ensure that the byes fall out as early as possible, but it means that AntLog 3.0 uses only one huge table and automatically propagates the byes. It does mean that a 16-robot event starts with round 3! (This might get hidden so the rounds always appear to start at 1 regardless of the size of the field!)

The only problems with running more than 128 entries are 1) validating the logic in the table, and 2) the length of time required to run the event.

Just to put it into perspective, 128 robots = 254 fights = 4.25 hours if fights can be run one per minute (every minute)...
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by joey_picus »

Yep, that's why I said 'less friendly' - in my (biased) opinion any sort of qualification would be preferable to seeding but both are against the real DNA of the AWS and the 'go anywhere, fight anywhere' ethos of antweights in general.

This might be the impossible question, but when do you think v3.0 would be ready for a full field test? I'm wondering if any of the non-AWS events over the summer would work (or if the SAC could make a comeback - I miss Brighton!)
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by Hogi »

we could test it at antweight open this year but that wont be until late november.
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by BeligerAnt »

Dan I was thinking of AntweightOpen as it's a manageable size and we could run AntLog 2 in parallel just in case...

I don't think I can really commit to any sooner as there will be a lot to sort out in terms of documenting the setup and installation. To really get the benefits of the client-server architecture the setup is somewhat more complicated than AntLog 2 which only requires OpenOffice.

Anyway, time to get back to Role-Based Access Control...
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by BeligerAnt »

Data editing rules are proving "interesting" in AntLog 3.0...

Since my idea is that the database may contain details of more than one event, there are restrictions on when robots and teams can be edited and/or deleted so that the database relationships don't get broken or history rewritten!

So far all the rules regarding creating, editing and deleting teams have been implemented.

Teams can be created by anyone ( = user signup)
Teams can be renamed even if they appear in the fights table
Renaming a team also changes the associated username
Teams can only be renamed by the team owner or administrator
Teams cannot be deleted if they contain any robots
Teams can only be deleted by the administrator
Deleting a team will also delete the associated username

Next on the list is robots...
Each team can log in, and once logged in can update their own team/robot details. The administrator can update everything.
A robot that appears in any event cannot be deleted or edited, but there is no limit to the number of robots associated with a team so it's not necessary to delete retired robots. I may add a current/retired flag to the robot data to make it easier to view only current robots.
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Re: AntLog - double elimination result logging tool

Post by BeligerAnt »

Tonight's progress has been to get the access control for robot editing sorted :)

Robots cannot be edited if they appear in the fights table
Robots cannot be deleted if they appear in the fights table
Robots can only be edited by Admin or own team
Robots can be added by Admin or own team

The idea of "retiring" robots still needs to be worked on.
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