I would join as a competitve member (I hate programing) but you would need to be in at least division C in Clan League and have a strong strategic base and/or people who are motivated to learn.

That would be a long way off, right now it's about developing the software that's available to us. Building a general clan will be way after that! ;D

Well, I know little about programming (just the basics) but I'm still learning. I'd be happy to get in with my alt and give you some feedback :)

I know Python, Java, C, assembly, VHDL and MATLAB(if it counts)

I'm not what the exact aim of this project is but it sounds interesting. Message me and I'll send you my alt's info.

Not sure what you're going for, but I screw around quite a bit with Python and Java, so if needed I could help.

I don't think you can say CLOTs haven't taken off. I know ps, unknownsoldier and Krzychu have done some successful CLOTs back in the day.

The randomized bonuses CLOT has about 1800 games so far and still sees regular activity. Can the framework be used by someone who has no software development experience? Probably not. It still is bloody awesome though!

This response comes from someone who is into strategic games. If the OP was from a diplomacy game perspective, please skip my entire post!


"""
So Optimum exists. The point of Optimum is to develop features like:
Automated real-time matchmaking for members
"""
This could be a nice feature. Depends on how you plan to implement it though. I think this needs to be warlight wide, not via a clan.




"""
Interesting leagues run with minimal human effort
"""
Interested to see what you come up with here. Definitely a pain point today.




"""
Regular user-tracking to monitor growth and maintain awareness (for clan leaders)
"""
I don't get why you would need this. Why does a clan need to track anything? Once you admit someone into the clan, as long as they stay active and are not offensive/cheats, they are part of your community. Please stop judging them ;)




"""
A more straightforward learning environment
"""
I don't think it is that hard to improve your skill level in this game if you are really interested. The ladders provide a great platform to learn. In my opinion the problem lies with the individual not being proactive enough to improve. I've seen some great examples of players who wanted to learn, ask what they could have done better and are great players today. Most top players are quite open to playing random games with anyone who invites them with the aim of getting better at the game. Have you tried inviting someone better than you to a game?




"""
A stronger community platform
"""
Clans of today offer quite a strong community. I'm in two of them. We have great banter and are always learning something off of each other. Most players on Warlight always speak highly of their clan and it's community. I know you're looking for fancy features, but just a chat game and an internal forum can be enough to have so much fun on Warlight.




With that being said, I wish you well with what you're trying to do. I'm not trying to dampen your spirits. I just think you've not yet experienced the sort of clan you're actually looking for. And believe me, it is out there!

CLOTs/etc. are still used by a very small minority of players and there hasn't been a proliferation of ladder alternatives.

Honestly, the framework isn't that hard to use- in fact, someone could just fork your repo and modify some very trivial things (could even be trivially modified to have a single file storing that data and everything else reading that file). The issue is that it takes a lot to make it do some rather simple stuff; also I disagree with quite a few of the design decisions (like using webapp2 or tying it to Google App Engine) and don't think they contribute to the quality.

@japan77: if you have a GitHub, I could add you to the repo. Things should pick up in there starting tomorrow night.

Sounds 2 Spooky 4 Me

^
A funny troll.

A rare sight indeed.

I don't get why you would need this. Why does a clan need to track anything? Once you admit someone into the clan, as long as they stay active and are not offensive/cheats, they are part of your community. Please stop judging them ;)

It's not about monitoring players as much as identifying roadblocks in their growth. You also get a nice dataset that lets you use previous members' growth patterns to identify where current members are and how you can help them, etc. I think it's important for clan leaders to have awareness of their membership so they can make sure the clan is useful and worthwhile for everyone, changing things if need be.

I don't think it is that hard to improve your skill level in this game if you are really interested. The ladders provide a great platform to learn. In my opinion the problem lies with the individual not being proactive enough to improve. I've seen some great examples of players who wanted to learn, ask what they could have done better and are great players today. Most top players are quite open to playing random games with anyone who invites them with the aim of getting better at the game. Have you tried inviting someone better than you to a game?

That's not for me (fortunately, after a couple of years on here I've managed to figure things out :P) but for all the players who never figure all this out. Also, we don't have learning-specific environments, etc. I'll elaborate on this more as I develop this stuff.

Clans of today offer quite a strong community. I'm in two of them. We have great banter and are always learning something off of each other. Most players on Warlight always speak highly of their clan and it's community. I know you're looking for fancy features, but just a chat game and an internal forum can be enough to have so much fun on Warlight.

True. I'm not out to replace those features, only supplement them.

The main part of what I'm working on isn't a clan but instead a set of leagues- so I'm not trying to solve any personal pain points as much as build an argument that clans could do a lot more than they do today, mostly through trial and error.

foolish goyyim

I'm interested in joining. How do I do it?

I've programmed in Java, C#, Visual Basic, Javascript, ActionScript (and also Lingo when Macromedia Director/Shockwave was still common), and C/C++ back in the day, plus dabbling in a variety of other languages here and there. I'm not that productive of a programmer honestly, but I'm good at software architecture/design (esp. object-oriented design), algorithms, debugging, refactoring, automated testing, and lots of random stuff like that. To be totally honest, I would probably be most helpful in discussions and reviews/feedback and just generally 'figuring out how to do stuff', though I would definitely still be interested in doing some actual programming if I get the chance. I just don't want to oversell myself.

mail Knyte.

Its how we roll. Watch this space

@wct: I've sent you an invite! I could definitely use help on the programming end; I'm really trying to get more people to help with code because I'm barely making progress at this stage due to other obligations.

Fleecemaster: it's nice to have dreams, aspirations, a vision, objectives, whatever you want to call it. but if you're working on something then the goal should be clear and attainable, else you wont have a focus, it's harder to convince people to join your group when you don't have specific things rolling. without a goal you also incur the risk of giving up halfway when not seeing any finish line in sight.

knyte: i'm reluctant to join for two distinct reasons, the first is lack of free time, same reason i gave up managing the CLOT ladders i used to manage. the second is that i'm not yet convinced this inititiave of your will gain any actual traction beyond the usual clot project cycle of initial interest and then growing forgotten due to lack of visibility. and i doubt many users beyond your test base would really install user scripts to get the extra functionality. i believe any such kind of project needs fizzer on board at some level, even if it's just following what you're working on and giving back some feedback. but i fear your attitude towards fizzer (as i have read from many of your posts in other threads) is not very... understanding of his position, let's call it that. so i reckon even if he was involved, it wouldn't really work out. i could be wrong ofcourse. hope so in this case since i do believe this work could be beneficial to the game and the community if it goes forward.

so, i guess what i'm saying is that please add me on github to snoop around and see if there is something i can help with, but i'm quite reluctant at this point in time that you'll manage to make this work. i'm psenough on github.

one thing you mention that i do think has good grounds for working in practical terms without much Fizzer intervention is realtime ladders for specific templates, being able to create public auto games and displaying a rankings table. i used that for a realtime greece ladder, and it was working quite decently despite a few issues (not detecting games expiring, API limitations to create game, missing proper database structure) but the most critical problem remains: lack of CLOT ladder exposure. i don't see how a user script that only a minority of the users will have installed will really fix that last point.

the CLOTs for clan league and 20 proving grounds and promotion/relegation league also seems quite welcome, just a matter of someone bothering to code it, wouldn't be more then a couple days to implement the core for me but it would be a bitch to test, debug and maintain. which is why i never bothered. don't have time to invest in that.

Edited 11/10/2015 17:37:21

If nothing else, it would be nice if you joined just to discuss the hurdles that you faced and what people with time can expect.