Any Interest in a Community League Site?

[CerealKiller]

Hi guys, I'm thinking about passing the time till November working on a community website for organizing GT5 leagues. Been thinking about it for awhile and started on a bit of code but wanted to put it out there and see what people thought initially. The process looks pretty tiresome to do via forums as most people do today, and having seen what iRacing can do I got to thinking the GT community could use their own version of such a site.

I realize it's a bit of a gamble, if PD were to release with really rich league features in game or perhaps even an external website, this would largely be a waste of time. I suspect however that their efforts have been focused elsewhere. There have been minor remarks made about creation of teams and clubs but I'm betting these features would be quite rudimentary if present at all because frankly, it's a tricky problem to solve particularly from a console. There could still be value in a community solution tailored to the features we want particularly when you look at organizing something at the scale of the GTP registry.

High level functionality I had in mind, allow users to create leagues both public and private (requring league admin approval to join). A league would run a wide variety of Seasons open to it's members. League admins would be able to define the Events that compose each season (time, location, rules), after which league members could opt-in to events they plan to attend. The Event could have more participants than could fit in one race, and at some scheduled time the Event would be finalized, the field would be broken down into individual Races. For each Race a host would be selected (I envision a full system on the site where Users could specify if they can host and how many, and eventually others could leave feedback/ratings to identify poor host connections), and all particpants would be emailed connection details. (they'd likely need to add the race host to their buddy list, so hosts would have to do some buddy list management)

Because this site would presumably have no direct link to an API to fetch race results progrematically, the results would have to rely on community reporting. I was thinking of a system where any race participant could report race results, and then a league admin/auditor could view all submitted results and enter the final version. If by some miracle of nature PD does include some sort of a way to publish race results, then all the better.

I'm still very fuzzy on how to implement the actual scoring system given Events could break down into multiple races. Lots of details to sort out but I envision a fresh start every Season for scoring, but also an overall divisions system to help match drivers of similar skill that would have to exist across all Seasons. Plays into a lot about who gets matched against whom when an Event is finalized, and whether the winner of a lower rated race should receive as many points as a higher rated. Anyhow I'm sure there could be a lot of discussion about this if the site looks like something people are interested in so feedback welcome. The iRacing system could be an interesting one to look at.

Also fuzzy on how to match participants based on geographic region and maintain scoring, as well as deal with timezone issues. Seasons might be optionally region limited, but again something to worry about later.

Once some core functionality was in place I suspect there are lots of social features that could be added, league blogs, race comments, teams, stats, registered spectators, etc.

So what do you think? Would you use such a site? If so what would you want out of it? I'd be especially anxious to hear feedback from any GTP admins if they'd be interested in leveraging such a site for the official leagues, as I'd be happy to build it around GTP's needs from the get-go.

 

[grog]

Doesn't this site have that covered already? the forum is tiresome (maybe) but its already established and has good traffic.



https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=117

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=198

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=75

 

[CerealKiller]

This is true, to me it looks pretty tedious for small leagues but an outright impossibility to organize something really big. My primary use case would be to build a way for the entire GTP registry to compete and be ranked together:

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=115424

Something of that scale would be brutal to do organize, break down, and score with static forum posts.

 

[grog]

I know there is an I phone "ap" that keeps track of rankings from gt5p. Maybe that or something similar could be used to get official times and other info to this proposed site.

 

[waggles]

I like the idea. What would be awesome is if it weren't restricted to GT5, and other racing games, like F12010 or rFactor, could also be organised.

 

[alba]

Speaking of which, I want to work on integrating some sort of team builder functions for GTP WRS with steven for the release of GT5 Can't wait to get around to that!

 

[Snaeper]

I would definitely like to see this if PD doesn't introduce anything themselves. I was planning some racing series and would love to collect feedback to really help the your site take off in the right direction.

 

[SUfan21]

I've been waiting for someone to come up with an idea like this! This is a brilliant idea. The core feature of the "GTPlanet league" could be perhaps 4-5 different "ladders" of competition: A road racing ladder, a JGTC ladder, a NASCAR ladder, an F1 ladder, and a WRC ladder. Each ladder could perhaps comprise of 3-4 different series with 16-32 drivers per series. This idea is great because each ladder would have a "top-level" series that would provide a place for the very best, say, NASCAR drivers on the game to compete for a bona fide Online Championship. I can envision the top series on each level having their races broadcasted so other, perhaps less skilled drivers, and just general fans can watch the races. These "top level" leagues would be considered the most prestigious series on the game. With all the traffic GTPlanet gets, I'm sure this could work out. The NASCAR Daytona 500, the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco, etc could be advertised on the news page. I love this community idea and Id be more than willing to contribute to getting it started.

I'll shut up now

 

[Jordan]

I built a similar piece of software a few years ago as a proof-of-concept/learning exercise shortly before Prologue was released, and I've been tinkering with ideas for a more robust system to manage events in GT5 similar to what you've described. As you mentioned, the problem is that there is still too much that we don't know about the game's built-in community features. I hope these features are disclosed sooner rather than later for those of us who want to build complementary software around the game.

 

[scope72]

Hi guys, I'm thinking about passing the time till November working on a community website for organizing GT5 leagues. Been thinking about it for awhile and started on a bit of code but wanted to put it out there and see what people thought initially. The process looks pretty tiresome to do via forums as most people do today, and having seen what iRacing can do I got to thinking the GT community could use their own version of such a site.

I realize it's a bit of a gamble, if PD were to release with really rich league features in game or perhaps even an external website, this would largely be a waste of time. I suspect however that their efforts have been focused elsewhere. There have been minor remarks made about creation of teams and clubs but I'm betting these features would be quite rudimentary if present at all because frankly, it's a tricky problem to solve particularly from a console. There could still be value in a community solution tailored to the features we want particularly when you look at organizing something at the scale of the GTP registry.

High level functionality I had in mind, allow users to create leagues both public and private (requring league admin approval to join). A league would run a wide variety of Seasons open to it's members. League admins would be able to define the Events that compose each season (time, location, rules), after which league members could opt-in to events they plan to attend. The Event could have more participants than could fit in one race, and at some scheduled time the Event would be finalized, the field would be broken down into individual Races. For each Race a host would be selected (I envision a full system on the site where Users could specify if they can host and how many, and eventually others could leave feedback/ratings to identify poor host connections), and all particpants would be emailed connection details. (they'd likely need to add the race host to their buddy list, so hosts would have to do some buddy list management)

Because this site would presumably have no direct link to an API to fetch race results progrematically, the results would have to rely on community reporting. I was thinking of a system where any race participant could report race results, and then a league admin/auditor could view all submitted results and enter the final version. If by some miracle of nature PD does include some sort of a way to publish race results, then all the better.

I'm still very fuzzy on how to implement the actual scoring system given Events could break down into multiple races. Lots of details to sort out but I envision a fresh start every Season for scoring, but also an overall divisions system to help match drivers of similar skill that would have to exist across all Seasons. Plays into a lot about who gets matched against whom when an Event is finalized, and whether the winner of a lower rated race should receive as many points as a higher rated. Anyhow I'm sure there could be a lot of discussion about this if the site looks like something people are interested in so feedback welcome. The iRacing system could be an interesting one to look at.

Also fuzzy on how to match participants based on geographic region and maintain scoring, as well as deal with timezone issues. Seasons might be optionally region limited, but again something to worry about later.

Once some core functionality was in place I suspect there are lots of social features that could be added, league blogs, race comments, teams, stats, registered spectators, etc.

So what do you think? Would you use such a site? If so what would you want out of it? I'd be especially anxious to hear feedback from any GTP admins if they'd be interested in leveraging such a site for the official leagues, as I'd be happy to build it around GTP's needs from the get-go.

In regard to the bold, we could just upload the race replay to youtube.



Also, a good way to organize the events would be this. Create leagues based on typical times that people are free. Example shown below.

Sat Noon GMT League

Sat Midnight GMT League

Sun Noon GMT League

Sun Midnight GMT League

Have qualifying during the Week. Essentially making a time trial all week that people could submit to Youtube.

Also, allow for people to form teams if the participation is high. And if we get a livery editor, that would become really cool.


Edit: @ Jordan, having you on board would bring a lot of credibility and really help. Plus, I don't think this website built itself.

 

[CerealKiller]

I built a similar piece of software a few years ago as a proof-of-concept/learning exercise shortly before Prologue was released, and I've been tinkering with ideas for a more robust system to manage events in GT5 similar to what you've described. As you mentioned, the problem is that there is still too much that we don't know about the game's built-in community features. I hope these features are disclosed sooner rather than later for those of us who want to build complementary software around the game.

That is the real kicker isn't it. Could they possibly be planning in-game league support for leagues larger than one race worth of participants. Could they be planning a rich website hooked into PSN and GT5 to organize events. Instinct says probably not because it's so complicated, but it also doesn't seem like it's impossible. It's also something they could may add post-release. I wonder if it would be possible to get a straight yes or no from PD/Sony so we could know whether or not to proceed.

 

[CerealKiller]

I know there is an I phone "ap" that keeps track of rankings from gt5p. Maybe that or something similar could be used to get official times and other info to this proposed site.

That would be awesome. This theoretical site should definitely expose an API so third party apps could integrate, I'd love to have an Android app to hook into a race schedule and make reporting results easy.

I like the idea. What would be awesome is if it weren't restricted to GT5, and other racing games, like F12010 or rFactor, could also be organised.

Good idea, no doubt GT5 would be first but building it out to support other games in the future would be a very wise decision. Probably would host those with the same code but on a separate website to prevent diluting the site too much like you see with things like gamebattles, which looks like a bit of a UI mess to me.

I've been waiting for someone to come up with an idea like this! This is a brilliant idea. The core feature of the "GTPlanet league" could be perhaps 4-5 different "ladders" of competition: A road racing ladder, a JGTC ladder, a NASCAR ladder, an F1 ladder, and a WRC ladder. Each ladder could perhaps comprise of 3-4 different series with 16-32 drivers per series. This idea is great because each ladder would have a "top-level" series that would provide a place for the very best, say, NASCAR drivers on the game to compete for a bona fide Online Championship. I can envision the top series on each level having their races broadcasted so other, perhaps less skilled drivers, and just general fans can watch the races. These "top level" leagues would be considered the most prestigious series on the game. With all the traffic GTPlanet gets, I'm sure this could work out. The NASCAR Daytona 500, the F1 Grand Prix of Monaco, etc could be advertised on the news page. I love this community idea and Id be more than willing to contribute to getting it started.

I'll shut up now

Nice! If you consider the objects listed originally, League, Season, Event, would your Ladder roughly relate to a Season? I'm thinking one league would have multiple seasons running concurrently, one for NASCAR, rally, F1, etc.

The top level leagues issue is interesting, that somewhat plays into the divisions aspect and who's competing against whom. Tricky stuff.

In regard to the bold, we could just upload the race replay to youtube.

Also, a good way to organize the events would be this. Create leagues based on typical times that people are free. Example shown below.

Sat Noon GMT League

Sat Midnight GMT League

Sun Noon GMT League

Sun Midnight GMT League

Have qualifying during the Week. Essentially making a time trial all week that people could submit to Youtube.

Also, allow for people to form teams if the participation is high. And if we get a livery editor, that would become really cool.

Yeah the youtube upload would be an interesting way to report results, especially if it includes a final results screen showing everyone's time. If all participants had to upload a video that might be a bit too bandwidth intensive for some but hard to say what the video upload feature will look like.

Indeed could be useful for quali too, depends a lot on the quali features of those online lobbies though. Can the race host manually define the order of the grid? Or would qualification be something built into the lobbies meaning you'd need to qualify during a short pre-race session? To Jordan's point, soooo many unknowns...

Breaking the racing out based on availability time is a good idea, perhaps with seasons rather than leagues like above. I was thinking it would be nice to have all regions competing but if you can't race against one another due to timezone issues, scoring points against each other probably isn't fair so you're right, it may be best to split them up.




Thanks all for the feedback. Feels like the first thing is to do some more thinking on whether or not this is likely to get completely obsoleted by work PD has done. I might take a stab at asking them outright if I can find some contact point.

 

[yossigab]

I think is idea is g-r-e-a-t !!!!
It would be very fun to organize small leagues as well as be participated in the "GTP League".
This kind of site is a must for this kind of epic game.
Since you want to start (and you right, there is a lot of work here) and so much is unknown regarding the community features in GT5, you start building the management skeleton. Things like organizing races, schedule, list of races for that league etc. Those are probably will have small impact when the GT5 detailed info will be published.

 

[JDM-GT5]

I think this could be a great idea! Ive always wanted to be on a team/leaderboard. This could be a lot of fun!

 

[Chadwicksracing]

Keep me posted on the progress of this. Myself and others have begun development of a Nascar League. We would be interested.

 

[Blitz187]

^^^^ OOOHHHH sounds interesting.... Need a mechanic??

 

[FoolKiller]

Overall, I think this idea is a bit complex and I am glad someone else is taking it on. It could be very useful and a great addition to the community and game.

Because this site would presumably have no direct link to an API to fetch race results progrematically, the results would have to rely on community reporting. I was thinking of a system where any race participant could report race results, and then a league admin/auditor could view all submitted results and enter the final version. If by some miracle of nature PD does include some sort of a way to publish race results, then all the better.

I do want to just caution you on what you do in this area. If there is no direct way to connect to the game data that is openly provided by Sony I don't suggest trying to see if you can. Sackbook.com attempted to do this with LittleBigPlanet and Sony eventually got them taken down indefinitely. To avoid that kind of thing it is best to not try to access data Sony isn't handing you.

 

[SUfan21]

Nice! If you consider the objects listed originally, League, Season, Event, would your Ladder roughly relate to a Season? I'm thinking one league would have multiple seasons running concurrently, one for NASCAR, rally, F1, etc.

The top level leagues issue is interesting, that somewhat plays into the divisions aspect and who's competing against whom. Tricky stuff.

Yes, it would definitely relate to a season. Think of your league site as a Sanctioning Body like the FIA. Within the FIA , you have many different forms of motorsport operating under one roof, such as Formula racing, Rally racing, GT Racing, etc. Think of the road a driver takes to get to F1. They start out in Karts, go up to GP2, then F1. Our league would be the same way. Our Stock Car ladder, for instance, may have Muscle Cars racing on small ovals to start off, and the top drivers would be offered test runs with teams on higher "rungs" of the ladder as it goes up all the way to NASCAR Cup Series cars. Hopefully PD includes feeder series like NASCAR's Nationwide Series, F1's GP2 Series, etc as this would give aspiring drivers great ways to show off their skills. I've raced in what is widely considered the most prestigious and competitive NASCAR 09 league on PS3 for almost 3 years, the league is called the ROCS (www.therocs.com), so I have a great sense of how this stuff works.

 

[Neal]

^^^^ OOOHHHH sounds interesting.... Need a mechanic??

I thought you'd retired You'll have to change your avatar to this though

Fingers crossed PD announces details on their support soon so Jordan etc can build something like this. I agree with with FoolKiller though, I'm glad it's not me doing it

 

[nasanu]

Hi guys, I'm thinking about passing the time till November working on a community website for organizing GT5 leagues.

What do you code in? I have a site (www.consoleracer.com) which already has all the car and track info for prologue and PSP GT, and will be up to date when GT5 launches that support for that game also. Plus I have a full working teams system allowing people to create, apply for, leave, kick etc to and from teams. Plus I have rankings, applying those algorithms to teams within leagues would be no problem. I think such a league system and my setup site could go hand in hand. You could even have things like official race setups linked directly to the setup engine that is already there.

 

[CerealKiller]

What do you code in? I have a site (www.consoleracer.com) which already has all the car and track info for prologue and PSP GT, and will be up to date when GT5 launches that support for that game also. Plus I have a full working teams system allowing people to create, apply for, leave, kick etc to and from teams. Plus I have rankings, applying those algorithms to teams within leagues would be no problem. I think such a league system and my setup site could go hand in hand. You could even have things like official race setups linked directly to the setup engine that is already there.

Very nice looking site nsanu.

I'm coding in Ruby on Rails currently. Looking at your site I see that it appears to be .NET? Unfortunately I do not know ASP and even worse I don't run Windows on my systems (aside from a clunker hooked up to my TV I use for iRacing until GT5 lands), so I wouldn't even be able to learn it without making some serious life compromises.

To be honest with myself though I know I'll never maintain the motivation to get it done via ASP/Windows. If you think you could find the manpower to build it I'd be happy to help get the specification nailed down however.

Thoughts?

 

[Obli]

Any Java / J2EE developers here?

 

[CerealKiller]

Any Java / J2EE developers here?

By day yep.

 

[nasanu]

To be honest with myself though I know I'll never maintain the motivation to get it done via ASP/Windows. If you think you could find the manpower to build it I'd be happy to help get the specification nailed down however.

Thoughts?

Do you know PHP? My hosting does support that (my database is mysql). I'd rather have you handle the coding since its your project but I think I could get it done plus the other features I want to add to the site before GT5 launches.

 

[CerealKiller]

Do you know PHP?

Not really no.

 

[CerealKiller]

Given everyone's feedback I'm still feeling motivated enough to keep coding and see what comes of it.

The first big hurdle I have, with no idea how to solve, is the scoring. Anyone really good with numbers or have experience with organizing a large racing league able to suggest something to solve this?

The crux of the problem, in a league with many members of various skill levels, how do you split them up into races such that they're pitted against similar skill levels, but distribute points to the winners of each race based on some formula that factors in how difficult the strength of the field was.

I am assuming just assigning everyone randomly into the races is not a great idea, we should match based on skill to offer people better racing experience. However everyone should ultimately be able to compete together, so *anyone* could rise to the top provided they demonstrated the results.

As an initial example, lets say every season is a fresh start, so for the first event of a season there are no skill considerations, all participants are split into races randomly. Winners of each race would be awarded exactly the same points.

For each subsequent event, the races could be based on championship points at that time, so the leaders race each other, and so on throughout the field. Everyone with the same points (i.e. racers who have yet to score a point) would be randomly split up into races at the appropriate level. Obviously the winners of the higher ranked races should receive more points than the winners of the lower races, and at this point I have no idea what a fair points system would be. Any thoughts?

An alternative approach, using skill based "divisions" similar to the GTP registry today. How drivers are split into divisions TBD but probably based on past season results. Could this be leveraged within a season to decide who races whom, with the same problem needing to be solved with how many points the winners of each race should receive. To complicate things, if a division 1 driver entered the season and performed poorly, they should start getting matched lower and lower until they found their correct spot on the ladder? This question makes me think divisions may not be useful here, except as an optional entry criteria to "elite" seasons or leagues.

For consideration, the iRacing system is somewhat more geared to a "race many times throughout the week" setup, which is different from what this site would be able to offer unless we had a strong API to hook into GT5. However their system essentially has all drivers carrying a skill rating (iRating), which goes up and down depending on who you beat, you essentially "take" points away from other racers. Every race the field is split based on iRating and when it comes to championship points, these adjust dynamically depending on the strength of the field you just raced. Unfortunately the formula kinda looks like secret sauce, I can't find it documented anywhere and it may not even be relevant for this setup, but it's something to think about.

I have absolutely no experience with any kind of system like this so I'm pretty lost with what to do with the numbers. Anybody out there have thoughts or experience to share? Thanks!

 

[SUfan21]

The key is to have 4-5 divisions within a league that are different from one another. The most skilled drivers get to drive the most glamorous and difficult cars (ie NASCAR, WRC, F1).

Also CerealKiller you should check out Race Points Manager ( http://www.racepointsmanager.com/ ). It is a type of Online League Management system that tracks and store all types lf race information and league information. We've used it on NASCAR 09 for 3 years in The ROCS

 

[CerealKiller]

I have a prototype of the site up and running now for testing / feedback at: http://97.107.129.93:3000/

Please note that this is not GTP affiliated, and as far as I know will not be used for any official GTP events/leagues. It is however a place where anyone can setup a league with friends, or something larger if you desire.

Today you can create leagues and other users can join (right now, for testing, every member on the site will be autojoined). League admins then create seasons composed of events. Once an event is scheduled the entire league membership is split up into individual races (if it is larger than 16). Results can be submitted once the race is over, and there is a very rudimentary scoring system and leaderboard within each season. There is a permissions system dictating who can do what within a league and eventually those roles will be given out to help share the load of administration. (today the first user to create a league is the only admin, and all users are granted permission to host races)

A lot of this is building blocks that will hopefully can be used to build larger more complex racing organizations as discussed in the original round of posts.

The About page has a lengthy description of the design and planned features. It is still very rough around the edges and yes, it looks absolutely terrible. The scoring system needs a great deal of work and I'm not yet certain how to solve that problem. Additionally I'm not yet sure how to solve the problem of larger organizations who wish to (a) have various concurrent leagues for different types of racing, and (b) wish to segregate their membership based on skill. These are two of the biggest outstanding unknowns for me at this time.

Please feel free to check it out, create some dummy accounts and leagues and see what you think. Feedback is welcome. Thanks!

 

[dessy]

Hi - this is an area I've been interested in for some time... great to see people are making some moves.

Don't know if this will help or not, but some time back Game Battles ran a competition in MAG. At the time there was no way in MAG to co-ordinate inter-clan matches. Instead of the usual method for running a competition, GB used people's PSNid to track their change in XP earned over a time period. To do this they were granted direct access to the Zipper Interactive servers to get the information.

What I'm basically saying is that there is a precedent but it involves getting access to the Polyphony Digital servers to extract the information. The language barrier here is going to be huge and unfortunately I really do think Sony will be of little assistance in getting this to happen. I truly hope I'm wrong about that!

 

[PKR_KARTRACER96]

Jordan has all the people here to run one, and I have been a member of one that has spent the last 2 years using GT5P as a testing ground. So there are some out there that are ready to go on Nov. 2nd.