So I've been playing the pugs for a few months now, and I was thinking that it would be awesome to have a web based interface for the organization of the pugs. I've written some design ideas down, and a database diagram that would work with my design. I'll also be posting a flowchart on the functionality of the website later.

If the admins think this is a good idea and would like to have the project hosted on their site, I'd like to pick up a few people that are interested in helping. I'd minimally need someone who is fluent in ASP.net and someone who is good at web design. I have very little experience with web coding other than a little html, but I can code (vb).net and I'm good with databases and software design. Thats why I'd love if someone fluent in those other areas or a couple people were willing to help.

Of course once I've got a beta version of the website, I'll need help from all of the community testing the software.

Please reply to this thread with any opinions, additional ideas, design, etc... and/or if you'd like to contribute to the project

Spug Website

Technology

ASP.NET (c# or vb?)

Ajax based interface

SQL Database (or mysql)

 

Admins

• Add GameServers to Game Server Library
• Add Vent Servers to Vent Server Library
• Add Maps to Map Library
• Manually add new users if needed
• Grant Manager Permission to a Player
• (also gets all powers managers and all players have)

Managers

• Start a new pug
• Cancel current pug
• Special permissions
• • Assign Captains
  • Move Players

All Players

• Can Join an existing Pug (before it starts) after Login
• Check 3 checkbox(es) off of a list to specify their top 3 classes for the evening
• Can Volunteer to be a Captain when pug starts

New Pug Settings

• Set all of the below settings, then click Create New Pug
• • Auto Lock Registration at [ 11:30pm est  ]
  • Start Captain voting if there aren’t any volunteers in [ 5 ] minutes
  • Choose if we’ll be playing 7’s or 6’s or 9’s or 10’s
  • • Team Size [ 6,7,9,10 ]
  • Pug will automatically lock if theres >= 12,24 or 36 players (set by admin – could be changed at any time before the pug starts due to amount of people joining) and it’s past the time set by the captain (or >= 14, 28, 42 if 7’s)
  • • AutoLock after [ 11:30pm est  (read only setting)] when there's [ Enough ] players
      
  • Choose the game servers to be used
  • Choose the voice server to be used (will default to last used or the only voice server if there's only 1)
  • Choose which maps to be played from the library, or allow the players to vote for the maps
    

Captains

• The appropriate # of captains (depending on player and server count) can volunteer to captain
• Once the pug starts, theres [ 5 (setting) ] minutes for captains to volunteer otherwise the remaining slots are filled with random players / Either that or (double the available captain slots) people are picked at random, and there’s a vote held as to whos captain, and then the top voted players become captains
• Each captain gets to pick a team name

Choosing Teams

• each captain gets to click a button to get a random number between 1 and 5000 and to show that they’re ready to pick teams
• Each captain is assigned to a server in order from who has first player pick to who has last player pick when all captains are chosen
• Picking players goes in a standard rotation (last guy gets to pick 2 people, then it moves up instead of down in the list, then the first guy gets to pick 2)
• Once all teams are picked, the sites job is done and everything stops

Available Players would show up in a sortable grid  to captains, like this

Player Name	# of Pugs Played	1st Class Pick	2nd Class Pick	3rd Class Pick
Fake	25	Soldier (12)*	Medic (8)	Scout (5)
Album	34	Demo (20)	Sniper (10)	Spy (4)

* The number in parenthesis represents how many times they've been picked to play that class by their captain

• Once players are picked they get removed from the grid (or grayed out and always stay at the bottom)
• When players are picked they get moved into their team which above displays the
• • Server Info
  • Team Name
  • Captain’s Name
• Once all teams are picked, the sites job is done and everything stops

 

Here is the Database Diagram I whipped up:

 Storing everything in the database would give the ability to have stats and reports.

This sounds pretty awesome. I think it should be done.

holy shit dude. That's a well-drawn out plan.  I would love to run something like that.

The thread title made me think of back when the pugs first started and we had whoever was running it (usually Lancer or GA) make a thread about it and what maps we were doing beforehand as well as having people volunteer to captain in those threads.

The rest of the post made me think "holy crap, that's awesome."

Quote:
yea i remember those days of WORK. Jesus. All these young whippersnappers forgetting abotu the OG's!

meh, I used to make those posts, everyone would show up and be like "what maps are we playing?" and no one would post in them.
I'm pretty sure that's why people stopped making them

on to the topic at hand,


Cool idea, I'd love to get involved as this is something i've often thought of doing. By the way, they're trying to set up a new gather that isn't as fail as the current gather, if you get a team together to do this you should look into making the site design versatile enough to handle that as well, as it'd see a loooot more use that way(and I think you'd be more likely to find people willing to work on it)

Few questions:

Do you intend to just setup a website and some stats tracking that appears to be largely done by manual entry by captains/admins or do you intend to tie this into the game servers themselves somehow?

another way to put it would be how far do you want to take it, are you looking to have the website setup the servers for you once everything is completed or do you just want a handy way of admining the pug from a website and then the actual server side stuff and making sure everyone is where they're supposed to be is handled the way it is right now. (EDIT: you answered this in your OP i'm just blind)

How are you planning on handling registration? What's to stop someone from registering on the website and then forgetting about the pug? How early could you register? Are you going to require people to make accounts on the site because honestly i think that would hurt participation.

Few problems:

One of the advantages to our pugs is the ease with which it is to get started in them. I admit that they aren't run incredibly efficiently or consistently and we have fat kids. But we also don't require you to use IRC, to register an account, to do anything but have vent and be in it on time, really. I think that low barrier to entry is what makes our pugs what they are.

OTOH, as a pro-fatkid guy, I can't really say that raising the barrier to entry bothers me very much, but whenever I say things like that I'm told it's against the "spirit of our pugs", they're probably right

Ohhh i want to be in this sounds like fun

This is really good.

Just need someone to implement this =)

+1, I think the idea is really cool, and I'd love to help, though I only know a little C# and nothing about asp.net

Quote:

Not a bad idea, does the gather bot do other games as well? I think that would be an option, but would also be a lot larger of a scale of a project. It might be good to make the TF2F version keeping the design of the software versatile enough that it'd be easily matured into a larger scaled application. It could be improved and refined over time while keeping it local and then pushed out to a more public scene once everything is working nicely. Plus if it's a big success -- then it'd bring new members into the TF2F community (hopefully good ones) and could definitely build the community here.


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I thought that game server automation would be cool (and there's also example source code by valve to admin a server with .net) so I figured that'd be an option for sure if people wanted it. Of course there would still have to be server admins uploading the config files and maps and whatnot that the pug bot would execute commands against.

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I was thinking that site registration would maybe be a barrier as well, but I think the benefits it gives in stat tracking and other security related reasons might outweigh the trouble that having that barrier causes. And when you think about it, people actually pay money to use a service that requires you to register twice and run a windows desktop application to even do anything on it (ESEA) so I don't think registering to play for the pugs is any more unreasonable or difficult than registering to post on forums. 

On a side note, depending on how custom we wanted to get (and what kind of forum software you are using) we could possibly use the forum login account as the forum account and pug account if we could read the database the forum is using and edit the source of the application to allow the forum login to authenticate the user for pugs as well. That way everyone that has a forum account automatically has a pug account and can join and play pugs. This is just a concept though, I don't know if its possible cuz I don't know anything about your DB/forum software setup. (is the forum software open source, what db type do you use? etc...)

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I think if it's coded and planned well, it could be very easy and intuitive, as long as theres heavy focus in simplifying user experience for the people that are just coming to play. The Managers and Admins would have to endure a little more complexity - but I don't think it will be very hard to use at all as long as there's a lot of focus on the UI's usability. I think the voting systems would get the users involved and would make it a desirable way to join up pugs. It's also benificial to the admins and managers because it takes some of the pressure off of them for getting things going. Ideally the bot could run the servers itself and you'd only need managers to come and start up pugs. I think if it was done well, it would be a nice system.