Sometimes, your participants will be so evenly matched and highly-skilled that they end up being tied at the end of a stage. This can only happen in non-elimination stages, meaning Round-Robin Groups, Leagues and Swiss Stages.
Author: ToorAdmin
How to organize your first tournament
Whether you’re a tournament organizer at heart, or have participated in tournaments and now wish to move forward and organize your own, Toornament is the platform to go, with a huge range of settings and possibilities for you to create your dream competition.
In this article, we’re going to see how to create and run your very first tournament, nice and steady.
Version 2 is LIVE!
After months of relentless work, we are proud to release the new version of our platform! Participants and Organizers are now able to discover for themselves what changed and how we made it evolve.
The whole is going to look a lot like the ancient version, but based on a brand new tournament engine built from scratch on a new database running on a new servers infrastructure, allowing much more traffic than what was previously possible.
Tournament Size
The maximum size of a tournament goes from 256 up to 4096 thanks to the new tournament engine and infrastructure.
New Structure System
More freedom, more flexibility! You are now 100% free when it comes to creating a tournament and its structure. You can have several stages played together, of different size, with participants coming in and out at any stage of your tournament.
Learn more about the Structures
New Placement System
Along our new structure system comes a brand new way of placing participants into your stages. The seeding and the placement were merged into a single interface to allow for a clearer experience, with new options for you to choose who plays where.
Learn more about the Placement
New Widgets
Another field that needed attention were our widgets. They are now clearer and more user-friendly, and just as beautiful as the rest of the site!
Other Changes
Many other aspects of the platform went through some sort of change, among which:
- Organizer Dashboard now has the same stylesheet as the other parts of the website, and an increasing compatibility with mobile
- A few changes on the API (namely a page system for matches and participants, revisited matches and stages endpoints, no more schedule)
- Game stats (as seen in LOL, DOTA2, CS:GO or Bloodbowl 2) won’t be available immediately upon release. They will be back, with all previous data restored, as soon as possible
- Some least used features disappeared, to simplify the tool and make it the most efficient it can be
What to expect next?
The Version 2 being out means that we are going to go back to working on new features and improvements, after having spent those last few months dedicated to the task at hand.
We already made good progress towards some of the most requested features from our organizers:
- Tournament and match check-in
- Match chat system (first available on the web platform, on the mobile app next), as seen below:
This is just the beginning, so stay tuned for a whole lot of new features and exciting stuff to come in the future, because we’re only getting started!
Developers: Version 2 and API Modifications
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V2 Release is scheduled on the 31st of May, and all changes listed in this article will then become effective. |
Introduction
With the new version just around the corner, it is time for us to address organizers/developers using our API on what’s about to change for them.
First of all, we’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the Toornament API is still in a beta state, and a constant work in progress, changes are bound to happen, and all feedback is, as usual, appreciated and taken into account.
To the users of our Scheduling Tool or CS:GO Bots (eBot and AdminBot), nothing to worry about, those will still work perfectly fine, the bots just won’t be able to send stats for a while, but without creating any issue.
New pagination system
Two endpoints now have parameters pagination:
- GET
tournaments/{tournament_id}/participants - GET
tournaments/{tournament_id}/matches
now has 100 items per page
now has 256 items per page (no change for tournaments with less than 256 participants)
Changes in the “Matches” endpoints
- ALL
/tournaments/{tournament_id}/matches/...
In all endpoints, the timezone property now returns null in matches and does nothing if you try to send Timezone information.
You have to use the one situated in the tournament’s endpoint.
The date properties are now returned with the Timezone setting of the tournament.
- GET
/tournaments/{tournament_id}/matches - GET
/tournaments/{tournament_id}/matches/{id} - GET
/disciplines/{discipline_id}/matches
When set to 1, the with_games parameter will no longer return participants information. They can be found in the match opponent properties.
Deprecated feature: Schedule
- GET
/tournaments/{tournament_id}/schedules
We are not talking about match schedules here, but the Schedule feature, used to create events linked to the tournament.
This one goes down the drain entirely, and the endpoint returns an empty array.
Stages endpoints
- GET
/tournaments/{tournament_id}/stages - GET
/tournaments/{tournament_id}/stages/{number} - GET
/tournaments/{tournament_id}/stages/{number}/view
The tournament engine has been rebuilt from scratch and now uses a brand new staging system.
The current stages API endpoints will no longer be working, a new version of the endpoints will be released soon.
Game statistics
Upon the release of the new version, game statistics as seen in CS:GO (when a bot is used), DOTA2, League of Legends and Bloodbowl 2 won’t be available.
Their return is a priority to us. In the meantime, all endpoints properties related to specific game statistics (opponent lineup, pick&bans etc.) will return null.
The API used to write statistics with the CS:GO bots will return code 200 responses, but with no action attached.
The API documentation will be updated with all these modifications when the V2 is released on the 31st of May.
Use Case: Super Evil Megacorp (Vainglory)
Last week-end was played the first ever Western Unified Tournament in Vainglory, with teams from both Europe and North America competing for the honor of being the first champion, and their fair share of the $60.000 Cash Prize.
In case you missed it, all the results can be found on Toornament:
We’ve been working hand in hand with Super Evil Megacorp from the get go, in their attempt at making their game a huge esports title, and it’s time to take a look back at the long way already made, and what’s still to do.
First things first, please introduce yourself and your company
Hello! My name is Heini Vesander, and I am the Executive Producer for esports at Super Evil Megacorp. Super Evil is a game studio based in San Mateo, California. We build soulful, beautiful core gaming experiences for the next generation of gamers on touch screens.
Could you present your game Vainglory?
Heini: “Sure thing! Vainglory is a MOBA for mobile, and the world’s #1 mobile esport. We launched the game in July 2015, after an early release phase, and we’re excited about how enthusiastic our community is! Vainglory is a full-on MOBA for iOS and Android. Players play on a team of 3 against another team of 3 and the goal is to destroy the Vain crystal in the opponent’s home base. The game is about outplaying your opponents real-time using powerful heroes and perfecting team coordination. The game is free to play and download – and there’s no timers or energy mechanics. So players can play as much as they want.”
Vainglory is a mobile game, built with Esports in mind, what is your take on Esports on mobile?
Heini: “Vainglory was built with the aim to build a deep, meaningful player experience on mobile. A game that’s community-driven and fun to play with friends. We built Vainglory ground up for mobile, without trying to casualize the MOBA genre – nor make a direct port from another platform. In doing so, we built a game that is competitive and fun to watch. We dreamt that the game would become an esport, but honestly, the community surprised us by organizing competitive tournaments way before we even said “esports”. Based on feedback from the community, we added a spectator mode and later a built a spectator client that runs on a mac to empower esports.”
The Western Unified Championship stage, in London – ©ESL UK
“And so, we believe in the potential of mobile esports. Especially if you look at the numbers – 700 million PCs out there, and 3 billion smartphones. Some day soon, mobile esports will become big. Weather the leading title will be Vainglory or something else remains to be seen. We’re super excited about the growth of our competitive scene, and we’ve welcomed amazing teams like Fnatic, Cloud9, Echo Fox, TSM and G2 esport. We’ve also seen homegrown teams like Hammers and Gansktars succeed. It’s still early days for mobile esports and we’re very excited about the near future.”
The Western Unified Championship Trophy, lifted by the winners, 
Cloud9 – ©ESL UK
How did you discover Toornament?
Heini: “The very first Vainglory community tournaments were run by VGL (vaingloryleague.com), and they were using the Toornament platform. It proved to work really well. What we really like is how easy the tournament brackets are to share on social media and especially on websites. VGL inspired us to use Toornament for our Vainglory8 broadcasts!”
What are the features you use most on Toornament?
Heini: “What’s really great with Toornament is how easy it is to organize and handle big tournaments. It’s also very easy to share access to the many people involved. The platform’s simple design works both for desktop and mobile, and the app is an easy way for teams to follow the status of the tournament.”
What feature would you like to see added to Toornament?
Heini: “Our first wish is a feature that allows us to schedule multiple matches and series to specific dates and times. Currently, each match needs to be reported manually, which makes the process complicated and slow when the brackets are big. Our second wish is an improved way for teams to report their scores and screenshots of end-of-match.”
We’d like to thank Super Evil Megacorp for their trust in our platform, and especially Heini Vesander for having taken the time to answer our questions. As for his wishes, one has already been almost fulfilled, with our Scheduling Tool that allows organizers to batch edit their match schedules on a single page, and many more things possible thanks to our API.
We will keep improving the experience of our users, organizers and participants alike, and we take into account and study every feedback that’s made to us!