Ok, so we had a system before where we had points and turkeys and other shit before we determined a “match winner”. Shit got weird and complicated and my coder wnated to make it easier, so we’re going to break it down in a way much more similar to real world Tennis. Hilariously real world tennis scoring isn’t as simple as I remembered, but I think that’s because it’s just trying to be obtuse from the outside. So this post is me working out how to make our game work in the same pacing as that game and hopefully it’ll make sense to at least me and maybe ya’ll.
We’re going to have ROUNDS, HEATS, and MATCHES.
To win a ROUND you have to have eliminated all competing players. If it is a FREE FOR ALL that means you are the last player standing. And if it is a DOUBLES game then that means both of your opponents are eliminated.
To win a HEAT you have to win a predetermined number of ROUNDS. By default the number of ROUNDS to win a HEAT is 2. If it is possible for a team or player to win the HEAT in the next ROUND then it will be announced HEAT POINT X where X is the team or player that could win the HEAT.
By default the game will be set to WIN HEAT BY 2 so that the winning player has to win both the predetermined ROUNDS and ALSO be ahead of the other players by AT LEAST 2 points. To simplify this in situations of 3 or more parties only the winningmost party AND the second winningmost party will be spawned into the HEAT POINT matches leaving 3rd and/or 4th place time to sit and contemplate better strategies until this is resolved. 3rd and 4trh place will balso be encouraged to root for 3rd place because then they will be able to “get back into the game”.
And to win a MATCH you have to win a predetermined number of HEATS. By default the number of HEATS to win a MATCH is 2. If it is possible for a team or player to win the MATCH in the next ROUND then it will override the HEAT POINT X announcement for MATCH POINT X where X is the team or player that could win the MATCH.
This forgoes a lot of interesting detail where there are TIEBREAKER SETS and ADVANTAGE SETS. Wimbledon has a pacing strategy where the first sets are all TIEBREAKER (e.g. quickly finished with a completely differently scored game) and the final set is an ADVANTAGE which can go forever - an interesting war endurance. I think we actually only model ROUNDS/HEATS/MATCH to POINTS/GAMES/SET and forgo an entire tier, but I don’t think I can make 30 minute Combat Jr matches to be a thing… yet…
As a way to maybe get the pacing for TIEBREAKER vs ADVANTAGE sets from Wimbledon, I might add an option so that it’s not a boolean “WIN HEAT BY 2” but it’d have 3 options: WIN BY POINTS, WIN BY 2, “FINAL HEAT WIN BY 2”. Essentially the WIN BY 2 is a way to force ADVANTAGE SETS in while TIEBREAKER is discrete. So if FINAL HEAT WIN BY 2 is selected that means that the first few HEATS everyone can win fast, but the final game breaker heat HAS to be won by 2 ROUNDS to slow down whoever is in first place.