[Organizers] Yes, you can (run your tournament from a smartphone)

Here’s a question we get on a regular basis : can my team and I run Toornament from mobile devices ?

Of course you can. And here are some tips to make the most of Toornament on the go :

image

As for now, our dedicated mobile app is a consumer product, meaning it’s designed to bring up scores, results, streams links and schedules for all of our users. It’s not meant (yet) to admin a tournament.

We picked this path simply because our website is 100% responsive and totally mobile compliant. Running it from any mobile device will be a breeze. We used for example a single iPhone to enter on site all the scores and infos of the Redbull Kumite !

Here are a few tips before you jump in :

– Make sure your wifi doesn’t block any connection port

– Double check every action you make on the site

– Set up your device so that it doesn’t go into sleep mode too fast, mobile browsers are sometimes a bit harsh on cookies and can log you out.

– Going all mobile on your team can be a great time saver, as long as you’re organised enough so that everyone take care of a very precise matter (match score, editing participants etc.)

– Don’t fear for your battery life and data usage, Toornament behave as as simple web service, so no hidden tasks, geotagging pings or constant notifications !

Whether you run online leagues or offline tournaments, using mobile devices offers great flexibility admin-wise. Feel free to try Toornament on your regular smartphones and tablets !

[Organizers] How to run larger than 256 participants tournaments

Toornament max participants number currently tops at 256 players.

The main reasons behind this choice are to prevent a huge, unreadable structure with a visual footprint spanning over several web pages high and wide. For example, here how looks a 128 player single elimination bracket :

image

Check the full resolution here.

Finally down there? You just scrolled through HALF of a 256 players simple bracket! It already is massive, and we didn’t even pick a double elimination structure!
But if you run a large scale tournament, there are still way to build them on Toornament, with a quite simple method : divide into sub tournaments.

Each one acts as a branch of the main tournament.

Let’s take for example a 1024 players Street Fighter IV tournament. You can split it into four 256 players tournaments where the top 32 players are qualified. You can even run these pre bracket to their finals, to get seedings in the final bracket.

In your Toornament dashboard, just create 4 tournaments named “My huge Street Fighter IV Cup – Sub Tournament A”, all the way to the letter D.

The top 32 players from each 4 sub-tournaments will qualify and thus, build a final 128 players bracket.

Here how the method looks :

image

This method is as straighforward as flexible, allowing you to handle huge tournaments and leagues with a better organisation. Of course, keep in mind that large tournaments are timing nightmares, so always keep in mind if you’ve checked all the boxes to handle them, from time to admins and gaming stations!

A Toornament case study : ESWC COD 2015

Last week end, the ESWC held its first COD exclusive tournament at Le Zénith Paris. This top tier event was a great opportunity for us to showcase all the tools and new features recently released on Toornament.

We first worked with ESWC tournament director Sylvain Maillard to set up the formats, structures, seedings and the permissions for his admin and referees teams. The pools were generated from the initial manual seeding and all matches were played from three spots : the two gaming stations and the main stage.

image

The ESWC COD 2015 is the first event using our new Toornament TV (see all details here). A Toornament TV display was put in the heart of the gaming zone, helping everyone (admins, players, medias) passing by to get all the necessary informations in the glimpse of an eye.
Later, Toornament TV was also used on the streams, to provide with in-between matches contents.

image

Our mobile app is now out for iOS and Android and was used by admins, players and a few in the know spectators. As expected, the mobile app will bring great informations in real time for everyone, everywhere. It worked so well during the event that we’re about to build a solid score ticker offer in the next few days, bringing all the major tournaments and games results on Toornament !

Download Toornament for iOS (free)

Download Toornament for Android (free)

image

All in all, we’re very happy with the way Toornament handled all the needs from ESWC. Our goal is to provide an exhaustive array of features, all tightly packed in a smooth experience, whatever the screen it’s used on.

At the time of writing, our team is now at Dreamhack France, another great Esport event using Toornament !

Here’s the new Toornament TV

Our public display and in-between match content solution has been updated !
image

This new version embeds a live info strip, based on a Twitter feed and hashtag. Toornament TV is also customisable through its main elements :

  • Background picture
  • Main layout picture
  • Border color (CSS)
  • Text color

You can check it Live on this page.

The ESWC CoD 2015 starting this week end will be the first tournament to use the new Toornament TV.
Toornament TV is still underwork and thus, not directly available from your dashboard. If you’re interested, feel free to contact us !