I'm happy with this, Jeff's game must be left to the last possible minute to be included so as to give him time to log in and submit himself, although i see this an unlikely event at this point.

Good to hear from you bluntblade, i hope you get your pc fixed soon. Nice game Amalric!

here's my submission for the round:

Character: The Blind Bandito
Years: 4
Race: Krynn
Type: Cultural
Points: 11,800
Difficulty: Crippling
version: v1.80e Dark Avatar
submitted to MV: 12/17/2007 11:21:13 PM

Ah yes, that does make sense. Thanks for explaining the reasoning behind it. I guess nobody has heard from him at all...doesnt bode well.

Sentient species taste better...

Actually to be technical the captain currently does *not* have the right to submit a game for a member of their team. This has never been discussed as a potential rule nor does it have any kind of precedence for it's use.

What does have precedence is for a single game that fits the rounds criteria that has been posted to the metaverse but *not* submitted to the league to be accepted "automatically" as the league submission. IIRC this was done in round 2 or 3 with TGE. In that case there was no submission time bonus to be affected but the decision to admit that game was in fact made slightly after the round finished.

As I mentioned, this condition has been discussed in the AltMeta MVL thread but only in conjunction with the concept of "auto-selection" of MV games by software. This discussion covers a very large part of the 182 posts that are in that thread. In all honesty I don't really recall the precise conclusion that was reached in that thread, but I re-read some of this discussion and it seems that selection of games by captains was not something that was widely supported. Also since we are currently in the middle of a round this really isn't the time to start a discussion of what we should do in this case.

What is clear is that in a case where a player has a single game that is posted to the MV that fits the rounds criteria but for whatever the reason does not get submitted to the league then that game is obviously the players intended game and will be taken as the league submission but only at such time that the round ends, therefore the submission occurs at the last possible moment. This is consistent with the ruling Neilo has made and consistent with precedent.

So technically PlayJeff's game is not submitted but will be the moment before the round ends unless he himself shows up to submit before then. Certainly this all can be discussed and decided in detail once the round is over but otherwise submission by the captain is a case not covered by rule and not previously allowed and since we can't change a rule in the middle of a round can't be done.

The point is slightly moot since the effect of this will be the same, however additional subtlety comes into play in the case the player has multiple submitted games to the MV and none submitted to the League. In this case I would be fairly adamant that it isn't the captain that gets to pick the game but the commissioner or vice commissioner that would have to randomly select among them. I think the current rules are relatively consistent on this.

It's getting close to the end here and I know a lot of folks like to check out what they think the score will be. I have a list that I've used in the Team A private forum for this purpose which summarizes the current state of the round. I figured I'd share it here for folks to use for their own purposes. This is by no means official or even gauranteed to be correct.

In the following, each members name is a link to their MV character page. The data is simply the game length and the score. If the game has been submitted to the league then in parentheses is the rank submission order followed by the post number in this thread that the submission occured. Any game that is listed that does not have the submission information has not been submitted to the league although it has been submitted to the metaverse.

Hopefully people find this list of use. Also please point out any errors that you see.

Team A

DethAdder - 2 years 7700 (13 - 209)
Bluntblade -
Mumblefratz - 8 years 39550 (9 - 136)
Piznit - 5 years 22000 (15 - 213)
TheGreatEmperor - 3 years 6600

Team B

MarshallONeil - 10 years 27200 (11 - 173)
Berzelius - 7 years 2550
Defcon13 - 4 years 10200 (8 - 122)
CornhuskerMac -
Ghostwes - 8 years 6600 (7 - 107)

Team C

FireBender - 2 years 8600 (16 - 214)
Amalric - 3 year 5800 (17 - 220)
Dystopic - 4 years 11800 (18 - 227)
Elwood011 - 2 year 8225 (12 - 208)
Ferrel - 1 year 9600 (14 - 212)

Team D

KzintiPatriarch - 2 years 7200 (3 - 42)
GalenEvil - 4 years 5400 (6 - 70)
PlayJeff45 - 4 years 11200
RexDaddy - 3 years 6300 (10 - 171)
Thebutterfly -
ShadowWorrior -

Team E

Silverbeacher - 1 year 5600 (2 - 33)
Iztok Bitenc -
MottiKhan - 6 years 25025 (5 - 65)
Neilo - 3 years 6800 (1 - 30)
Pndrev - 4 years 3600 (4 - 48)
Velkyn Kyil -

Hi!

Very. So much that I'd suggest you to include it in the first post.

BR, Iztok

Exceptionally helpful....thanks Mumble.

Sentient species taste better...

Ferrel likes.

Nice Work mate, and very helpful.

Yes. This is probably a good idea to provide the links to all the members character pages in the OP of the round.

Actually, I only linked to the top screen of each persons character menu because I wasn't totally sure everyone always uses the same character for their League games. It does seem that everyone is good about using the same character so this list should probably change to go directly to the person's defined MVL character.

I assume everyone knows but just in case, it's usually easier to right click on the link and select "Open in New Window" if you want to check up on a bunch of folks.

Also note that besides PlayJeff there are two other people that have a single game posted to the MV that fits the rounds criteria but hasn't yet been submitted to the League (TGE and Berzelius). By precedent if it stays this way all three games should get "auto-selected" at the same moment just prior to the rounds expiration. Given this there is no team in danger of losing any points due to a non-submission.

The above is a very reasonable thing to do but in general I would hope that people do manage to come back in time to make their own "official" submission. It causes some concern by your teammates when you don't and it simply isn't good for the league if this practice becomes widespread.

Another point that this list shows is that we probably don't need to go through the upset of a reorganization, however it does highlight that the current 5 teams are rather closer to 4 per team then the 5 or 6 we originally started out with. Neilo's previously expressed concern about no-shows is valid and we should probably go over the member lists once the round is over.

I'm sure everyone agrees that we want to be as open as possible and encourage any one that missed a round here or there to feel welcome to return, but I think we also need to be a little more concerned about simply leaving someone's name on the team roster simply as a placeholder.

So, we are to assume that they have submitted?

Btw, that list is really helpful. Thanks.

As an addendum we should further discuss the Captains right to submit a game for a teammate once the round is over. There certainly is some reasonable argument for allowing this, it's just that in the middle of a round isn't the time to begin such a discussion.

In the case of a single game like all three cases we currently have it's basically a no-brainer. There's no choice and no one could reasonably argue that the players intent would be other than to submit the only game they have posted to the MV.

The real discussion comes into play when there are potentially multiple games to select from. In this case some may argue it's the captains right to select the best possible submission for their team but others have argued to opposite. In any case this is a matter to discuss once the round is over.

One final point of order. We have had a decent but not stellar turnout for the MVL Tiebreak Criteria Vote. If you haven't voted, please do so before the beginning of Round 6. We do have a clear choice but it's far better if pretty much everyone casts their ballot. If you really don't care or have no opinion just post an abstention. Even an abstention helps validate the result because without it there's the wonder that the result might have been different if everyone had voted. So please vote.

The future pluperfect tense. They "will have been submitted" the moment prior to the ending of the round.

I'm sure the concern is how this would be treated for submission bonus purposes and in this we are on shaky ground with no precedent to go by. I would propose that it be handled in the following manner.

Let's assume that Iztok submits a game shortly. A reasonable assumption since he has just recently responded. In that case he would be the 19th submission. Then let's assume that nothing happens and all three games get "auto-selected" the moment before the round ends. In this case I would then propose that all three be considered the 20th submission for the submission bonus calculation. This seems fair. If one of them shows up and submits their game in this thread even at 11:59PM on the 13th then they would become the sole 20th submission and the other two would be tied at 21st submission.

As I said there is no precedent for this case and so I would expect that we really need the Commissioner to make a ruling on this.

you know, when we talked about the average submission time as a factor for getting a team bonus, for some reason i thought we'd use the timestamps on the forum posts, and actually calculate time (rather than calculating place, as in a race). it seems a much more accurate measure of "average submission time" than mere placement. if this were an individual competition, a merely ordinal place system would be fine, but since we're trying to go for an average (arithmetic mean), we should be using truly numerical values (in other words, number of days/hours/minutes each game took from the time the round's rules are announced).

not something i feel this need to push for this round's scoring. heaven knows i wouldn't want you to have to go back and figure this all out again. if it's something we decide to do in the future, however, i don't think it'd create any additional work - the time stamps are all readily available, and an excel sheet could be set up to do all the math automatically (i'm sure i'm not the only one who could figure out how to do that, but for the record i'm confident i could and offering to do so if there's any interest, though with the alt meta integration being worked out, i imagine it mightn't be necessary).

I had made this same assumption about an average time interval instead of average submission order but this was the method that Silverbeacher instituted the first time and so for consistency sake we shouldn't change this now. I do believe he mentioned at the time that this method was a bit easier to implement and he felt that ties would be less likely. Not sure I totally agree about the ties part but I don't think his method is all that bad. Given that it's the same for all players it's by definition fair. However I do agree that it doesn't totally make sense becasue if someone submits one second after someone else they should in all reality be virtually tied, a time based average reflects this whereas a rank based average doesn't, whether someone submits a second after or a week after someone else doesn't matter.

As you kind of mention, I felt this was simply better left alone until we (hopefully soon) move the scorekeeping and display of results to the AltMeta. Clearly the ability to use a time based system will be easier to implement there. However, we do need to discuss whether most people would prefer a time based average over the submission rank average.

Anyway, I still owe the League a first cut write up of how I think the move to the AltMeta should occur. It's just that I'm trying to slip in one of my gigantic games between rounds here. I have let this commitment slide a bit, but I haven't forgotten about it. Again this is only a "rough draft" to start off the discussion but given how long it took to make what little progress that was made the first time, I feel it's better if we at least start out with a unified plan that we can then hopefully modify only the parts that people feel strongly about. At least that's the plan.

i was at least trying to imply that i didn't want to change anything this round. breaking ties in this category would only matter for team averages, which are exponentially less likely than individual ties. i think rank order was probably easiest to implement on the fly. i was merely trying to suggest that making a note of who submitted in what order doesn't seem like much less work than making a note of who submitted when, assuming a program like excel does the work of figuring out durations (i'm also thinking in terms of excel 2007, which has -IFS functions that allow you to specify multiple criteria for average, sum and count in a single function -- it's handy for simplifying things).

I had assumed the same as Mumble & Dystopic, that submission time wouldn't merely be based on submission order, but upon actual submission time-stamp. I like the time-stamp method much better, as it is much more precise in measuring the speed at which games are submitted.

Sentient species taste better...

Oh yeah, you are indeed correct. I had in essence been doing the same thing in my list which was to put down the one he was most likely to submit. Then when I copied my list here I forgot he did have other games that qualified.

In any case I agree that your reasoning is correct when you say it won't matter in regard to any bonus points as to which of his games are selected. Also for that matter whether his submission actully occured when you made your post or at the last possible moment doesn't make any difference either since Team E will be 1st and Team D will be 2nd in submission no matter what the order from here on out (opps, sorry didn't mean to let the cat out of the bag so to speak).

I'm glad that PlayJeff's game doesn't make a difference because I do believe that by current rule neilo/FB should probably randomly select one of the 4.


I agree this is a legitimate argument but not necessarily everyone agrees. We do need to resolve this in the time between rounds, just that now is not that instant.

In some sense the 4 year 11200 game is a no brainer choice since all other choices are either longer games and/or lower scoring games, so who in their right mind would choose a game other than that. What we have done in the past is to try and intuit the players *intent*. When there is but a single game it is clear they only intent the player could have had was to submit that game. One could reasonably argue that between the following games there really is only one logical choice.

4 year 11200
5 year 9600
4 year 8800
5 year 7400

On that basis I could support the argument that PlayJeff's intent would obviously be to submit the 4 year 11200 game.

Where I would have a problem is if there was a 1 year 4000 game in there. That case is much more difficult to argue because it takes what should be a negative for the team (a player's non-submission) and turns it into a potential positive (the choice between either a potential speed bonus or potential score bonus).

Again I think you made the same argument for captains choice in the AltMeta MVL thread and IIRC the bulk of the opinion was agaist this. Still I have no issue with opening up this and deciding this anew because the previous discussion was in the context of the AltMeta and this subtly different, however we do need to wait until the round is over.

We should get a ruling from Neilo about which of PlayJeff's 4 games should be counted. As I said I do see only one logical choice and it won't matter anyway, but neilo should either approve this choice or make a random selection himself. Certainly if it were only random selection we are asking for FB could provide that but the ruling to accept the "obvious" choice should come directly from neilo.

Of course PlayJeff could spare us all this consernation by merely showing up and submitting. Essentially all the discussion about "auto-submit" is trying to find a balance between divining the player's intent versus giving the team an undeserved advantage.

This is how i see it too, and so shall it be.





I agree that Playjeff would have submitted said game and i am happy for that game to be submitted. In instances such as this where there is a clear choice among played games i think it is fine to leave the submitting upto the team captain. If though there was a 1yr 4000 as in Mumble's example then perhaps a random selection between the two (or however many) games.

IIRC though this is in contradiction to the agreed upon method for the AltMeta. Did we not agree that captains can make a selection in the dying moments of the round? I'm sure it was a point you and i conceded Mumble as a compromise to the auto selection???
If so then perhaps that's the way we should go.

In any event i think this point could do with some discussion before the next round. But for now the game Kzinti submitted for Playjeff is fine.



Would not both methods result in the same answer? How to go about Avg submission time was discussed by myself and Silver and the method used was by far the easiest to implement...i prefer the current method.
Though as always if there is a need to discuss and change that, which it seems there might be, i am more than willing to go with the majority.

I forget. I did read through some of the stuff there but frankly didn't have the patience to find the significant info. What I did read seemed to indicate that captains selection really hung on the crux of that issue of being able to tweak the speed/score choice at the last possible moment and thereby seemed to take something that should be bad (i.e. a non-submission) and turn it into a benefit for the team. Clearly this is tempered by the desire to not be in the business of punishing folks for things they possibly can't control like a teammate having a real life event.

As I said I think we should rethink this aspect as it realtes to current rules as opposed to as it relates to AltMeta because they are slightly different discussions. Also now that folks have seen how it really plays out in a round perhaps more people will be interested in participating in the discussion. Anyway the fact that it has come up means we should explicitly deal with this in the rule thread between rounds.


I don't think both methods result in the same answer. In rank order the extremes are highly exaggerated. It's easily possible that the 1st submission could happen in two weeks and the 20th submission in 4 weeks. The ratio in this case is 2 to 1 in a time base system however rank order makes being 1st 20 times more valuable than being 20th not twice. Also there is the point about there being no difference in beating someone's submission by a second or beating them by a week which is the case in rank order. I agree that conceptually rank is easier than time but if all the data is going into excel anyway it's not that much more difficult. Really the data collection is somewhat less because with rank order you need to list the post number and then put the posts into rank order whereas time is simply the timestamp of the post. I do agree that you end with more characters to record it but using ctrl-c from the previous post to get January 11, 2008 17:31:14 was pretty easy.

Wow, go to class for a week and you get completely lost and you have people nitpicking your scoring systems

My argument for the ranking system for the submission time was based on trying to minimize ties as much as possible and for ease of use and checking by other players.

Obviously, this would be much better handled and organized by the AltMeta system but currently, we have to make due with human operators.

1) Why I didn't use Date Submission Time: If for example, all of Team A and all of Team B submitted on Day 15, then you have at least 8 players receiving the earliest submission. I really wanted to limit ties, and Date Submission chances it too much in my opinion.

2) Why I didn't use Time Stamp Submission:
a) Who determines at what interval are submissions no longer considered to be submitted at the same time? 1 second? 5 minutes? 1 hr? This is a debate in and of itself. This is the most pressing reason that Time Stamp, outside of the use in the AltMeta isn't very practical.
How do you start categorizing and quantifying the use of the time stamp? If Mumblefratz submits at 11:00:00am on Day 15, Dystopic at 11:01:00am on Day 15, and Piznit at 1:30:00pm on Day 16 it equals the same as to using Mumblefratz as #1, Dystopic #2, and Piznit #3; why make it more complicated than it needs to be?


EDIT: Ok, so after going back and rereading Dystopic's first post on what he thought the system was. Its doable, and I plan on using both methods to see where everything lands. The only thing that y'all seem to think is easy, is the ctrl-c (copy) of the timestamps...its actually not quite that easy as I have to convert the actual date into the distance from the starting point, and then further break down the day into minutes as the basic unit used for computation. (which the time stamp does since it uses military time, thank goodness)

This in turn will make a ranking system no matter what, as Day One is 1, and the last day will be 30 (or thereabouts) or turned into Units: 1440 and 43200 respectively.

You can NOT use a comparative of 12/15/07 to 1/11/08 mathematically because the computer only recognizes the numbers, not their meaning (in that its Dec. 15th, 2007 and Jan. 11th, 2008).

What this WILL do is give me the relative average time that a team submitted, a numerical value. It does NOT however, discount the value of being first or the drawback of being last.

As an example I just copied the timestamp of the OP followed by the timestamp of Neilo's post and then the timestamp of my post.

I then summed my timestamp and neilos timestamp then divided by two for the average and subtracted the start time and placed the result at the bottom of the column and changed the format of that cell to a number with two digits of accuracy. The result is the following.

12/5/2007 18:39
1/11/2008 17:31
1/11/2008 18:48
36.98

This says that the average time of our two posts was 36.98 days. Elsewhere I converted each timestamp into relative days from the start and saw that neilo's timestamp is 36.95 days from the OP and mine is 37.01 so the average make total sense. In a rank order system any result with two people will always come up with the same result of 1.5. Clearly 2 samples is an extreme example but any system that results in the same answer every time for two samples regardless of when the submissions occur is probably not a good choice of a system to implement the comparison of 5 sets of 4 samples.

Sorry our posts crossed in the night, but excel does take the post timestamps directly into a date and the only thing that is necessary to do ordinary math on it is to subtract the average of submissions from the initial OP starting timestamp to get an interval measured in days to however many digits of significance is needed. I think two digits is probably enough but experience will tell.

One point is that I really didn't feel that it was necessary to go into this at this point and was perfectly willing to leave this until we get into the AltMeta in which case numeric calculations will be far more natural. I still think this is the best approach to take.

[edit] Agreed that a timestamp system doesn't change the fact that being first is better than being last. It *should* be better to be first than last. However a timestamp system doesn't accentuate the difference. The rank order is actually like a mercator map projection that makes greenland look bigger than australia. It's not. [/edit]

Also regardless of what people think the rank order system *must* be used for this months score calculation because that is the method supported by precedence that was in place at the beginning of this round. Since we cannot change rules in the middle of the round this discussion is really premature. Let's withhold this discussion until the round is over and then discuss *both* issues, rank order versus submission time and captain selection of games, in the rule thread *after* the round is over.

Hi!
I have a big problem with my game. I can not post it to the metaverse. Server keeps rejecting it because "application serial number does not match the number at metaverse server".

I've tried updating the serial, updating the game, re-registered the game with the serial I've just received from StarDock, deleted the sig.bin, updated serial through SDC... Nothing worked. On the metaverse accound under registrations I see the serial for my DA and DL, but both are the same, despite I've recived from SD two different ones.

Suggestions please?

I can zip and e-mail my savegame to a trusted person to check what's wrong or to post it for me.

BR, Iztok