Message Detail
Board: ARCHIVE - SpC2k5 to SC2k6Topic: SC2k7 Oracle Challenge Discussion Topic
From: King Morgoth
Posted: 9/10/2007 11:32:43 PM
So much to comment on....I love it!
Xcarvengerx | Posted 9/9/2007 11:12:01 PM | message detail
Nah, I would rather go to EB and buy one myself... you wouldn't find many PAL games in the States anyway, would you? =/
I'm pretty sure we could find a way to ship it from some online retailer in Europe or something =P
Yeah, we did everything with a spreadsheet up until the Villains contest, when there were less people than now... it still took a lot of time. For summer 2005, I made a MySQL database and wrote a Python script that parses the topic and puts all the predictions in the database. That's why we're so picky about things like percent signs. Entering predictions is MUCH faster than before now. The web site runs of the same database so we don't really have to update the site (just put everything in the DB).
It would be nice to have live updating scores on the site... I'm not sure if Morgoth wants to do any more work on that site right now though. =)
---> A Little Oracle History <---
The real story is that I used a 20MB Excel file back when we had 70-80 people per day and it took roughly 1.5-2 hours updating every day. I couldn't do it alone for much longer, Kaxon came up with the crazy idea of doing something remotely professional since he already knew SQL and Python. Thanks to that and some self-taught PHP (I turned out to be an ok programmer after all...) I wrote the website from scratch, from its very simple beginnings to the 1000 hits/day monster it is now. Entering predictions takes maybe 15 minutes/day now, and that's for over 600 predictions each day! The Oracle wouldn't be anymore if it wasn't for the switch...
As far as live scores are concerned, it's something that would be (surprisingly?) easy to do. The biggest problem is that usually predictions aren't up to date in the database. It's not getting done this week, but it might be a very serious possibility in the future...
Once I fix all those little details nobody noticed except me =P
daniel2424 | Posted 9/10/2007 10:01:13 PM | message detail
Just a random thought that came to my head at 1 AM, but I know a lot of people get unlucky and miss one day and ruin their chances (like I did in either 03 or 04, which ever one I was actually leading in...which is why I always predict a week in advance now) Obviously we can't implement it this year, but for people who just miss one or two days throught the year, what about a base default of giving them a predicion of 25% for all four characters. This would work a lot better with this 4 man format (no penalties) and would save people who sign on an hour late or press enter a few minutes late.
If they rely on this a third time, they could just be out or some baseball reference I dont know, pardon my night time rambling...
We thought about giving half the worst score or something like that at some point but, in the end, advance picks are there for a reason and you shouldn't ever miss a match. And I don't expect you to miss a match that way since you already learned the hard way ;)
Haste_2 | Posted 9/10/2007 10:14:24 PM | message detail
It was that stupid CS&D topic that completely shut out my considerations of Meta Knight competing with Peach. I -never- want to listen to them again...
You're supposed to be entertained by them, not actually listen to what they say >_>
---
Kaxon is a figurehead. Morgoth has all the real power. - Janus5000
SpC2k4 Triple Crown WINNER (Oracle, Betting, Spread Betting)
Xcarvengerx | Posted 9/9/2007 11:12:01 PM | message detail
Nah, I would rather go to EB and buy one myself... you wouldn't find many PAL games in the States anyway, would you? =/
I'm pretty sure we could find a way to ship it from some online retailer in Europe or something =P
Yeah, we did everything with a spreadsheet up until the Villains contest, when there were less people than now... it still took a lot of time. For summer 2005, I made a MySQL database and wrote a Python script that parses the topic and puts all the predictions in the database. That's why we're so picky about things like percent signs. Entering predictions is MUCH faster than before now. The web site runs of the same database so we don't really have to update the site (just put everything in the DB).
It would be nice to have live updating scores on the site... I'm not sure if Morgoth wants to do any more work on that site right now though. =)
---> A Little Oracle History <---
The real story is that I used a 20MB Excel file back when we had 70-80 people per day and it took roughly 1.5-2 hours updating every day. I couldn't do it alone for much longer, Kaxon came up with the crazy idea of doing something remotely professional since he already knew SQL and Python. Thanks to that and some self-taught PHP (I turned out to be an ok programmer after all...) I wrote the website from scratch, from its very simple beginnings to the 1000 hits/day monster it is now. Entering predictions takes maybe 15 minutes/day now, and that's for over 600 predictions each day! The Oracle wouldn't be anymore if it wasn't for the switch...
As far as live scores are concerned, it's something that would be (surprisingly?) easy to do. The biggest problem is that usually predictions aren't up to date in the database. It's not getting done this week, but it might be a very serious possibility in the future...
Once I fix all those little details nobody noticed except me =P
daniel2424 | Posted 9/10/2007 10:01:13 PM | message detail
Just a random thought that came to my head at 1 AM, but I know a lot of people get unlucky and miss one day and ruin their chances (like I did in either 03 or 04, which ever one I was actually leading in...which is why I always predict a week in advance now) Obviously we can't implement it this year, but for people who just miss one or two days throught the year, what about a base default of giving them a predicion of 25% for all four characters. This would work a lot better with this 4 man format (no penalties) and would save people who sign on an hour late or press enter a few minutes late.
If they rely on this a third time, they could just be out or some baseball reference I dont know, pardon my night time rambling...
We thought about giving half the worst score or something like that at some point but, in the end, advance picks are there for a reason and you shouldn't ever miss a match. And I don't expect you to miss a match that way since you already learned the hard way ;)
Haste_2 | Posted 9/10/2007 10:14:24 PM | message detail
It was that stupid CS&D topic that completely shut out my considerations of Meta Knight competing with Peach. I -never- want to listen to them again...
You're supposed to be entertained by them, not actually listen to what they say >_>
---
Kaxon is a figurehead. Morgoth has all the real power. - Janus5000
SpC2k4 Triple Crown WINNER (Oracle, Betting, Spread Betting)
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