Pandamonium

Fellow Playhemers! We have a special threat for you today.

Today we've added the check-ins for the tournaments. This is very helpful for any tournament which has a start time in a few weeks or even a week. Usually when you create tournament starting in a week it has about 40-50% of no shows. It's very convenient to use checkins to avoid that.

You can choose different options for when check-in is going to occur: 10 minutes before the start, 15, 30, 45. This is how tournament creation screen looks like with the check-in option.

Check-in will automatically begin within the time that commissioner set initially. Players who're participating in tournament can check-in during all that time (i.e you have almost 10 minutes for the 10 minutes check-in).

Each of the players participating will see the following:

If player is joining during the check-in period he will pass it automatically and will be ready to play in a tournament. People who've failed the check-in going to be marked as deserters in the list. This is how typical successful check-ins look like:

Few more things to note:

• You can only manually start the full tournament 
• Not full tourneys will start automatically, go through check-in and then begin if there are more than 4 players ready to go
• Prizing depends on the number of people that are joined since the prizing fund is formed based on the entry fee's
• People who joined and failed to check-in will get deserter flag and kick from a tournament plus no entry fee refund

We're running check-ins in a test mode. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or stumbled upon something when running a tournament. Enjoy!

We're excited to give you another bunch of updates related to the tournaments.

Join board improvements

This time we've upgraded the look and feel for the join board which is mainly geared towards bigger tournaments and Starcraft II, but other games players can find few useful things here as well.

From all our experiments table alike view proved to be by far more readeable than blocks grouped by 3. In this way we can also display more info relevant to the game itself. 

Custom prize distribution

This was one of the most requested features. From now on you can adjust prizing for the winners however you want to. For example it's really easy to make so that winner recieves everything or any other variation that's necessary.

We hope you've found this useful. Stay tuned for more.

Another bunch of updates for Starcraft II and tournaments. 

New create for tourneys

As you may know we're gearing up towards huge tournaments as a part of IGN's IPL, that why this part will get far more options in the future. Current concept is to split whole creation screen in two parts: main and secondary. For now date & time is going into secondary, however this may change. Other two additional parts are BO's and Map Pools (for Starcraft II only). 

Map Pools

This is a very specific Starcraft II update. Map pool allows for every commissioner to choose first map for each round of a tournament from a defined map pool.

If you have any ideas about how to spice up other game's tournaments with options specific to them like an ability to choose teams setup for FIFA — this is the time to let us know. 

Map pool that we're using so far (same as IPL):

• MLG Metalopolis
• MLG Shattered Temple
• MLG Shakuras Plateau
• MLG Xel'Naga Caverns
• GSL Cross Fire SE
• GSL Crevasse
• GSL Terminus SE
• SL Tal'Darim Altar

Enjoy and stay tuned.

Playhemers, we've pushed a new update today. It's mainly focused on improving AFK management for tournament commissioners.

If player fails 10 minute ready check — commissioner can handle the match results in the way he wants to. For example give a win to the other guy in the match.

Here is how ready check timer looks on the receiving end:

We're open to any ideas about how to improve this plus make it fun if there is a possibility. Let us know.

Tweet us @playhem or me directly @eventune.

Playhammers!

We're excited to unveil the newest creation coming from out secret lab. Something that we was working on for quite a time. 

Below is the recap of what was delivered on November 18th.

1.2.0.0 Release Snapshot

New tournaments

Big re-work for our core feature. We've made the first version of our tourneys back in a day and it served us really well, but now it's a time to put old tourneys on the shelf and introduce the new harder, better, stronger ones.

What's being improved/added:

• Visual design & user experience
• Commissioner now has a lot more controls for the tourney he runs and this is going to be extended in future
• Up to 16 spots tourneys (was 4-8 before)
• New group chat inside any tournament accessible even on the tournament list
• Real time updates inside the ongoing tourney

Instant messaging bar improvements

Social sites are usually all about the communication & especially the application like we was envisioning needs to have an place where you can play with your friends and trash talk all the way up in easy and natural way. Upon the start of the product development it was initially decided that we needed our own Skype-alike chat. Even more, we decided to put both chat and challenge controls at the same place.

Comparison between old and improved IM Bar

What has changed. Listing only highlights, there was million of small changes and whole user flow was completely re-though from ground up.

• More clean and simple visual design
• Chat is bigger, now there is far more room for communication
• Incoming/outgoing concept was simplified. Now all challenges & requests appear in one list with a maximum of 15 in total
• Chat/challenge itself now contains more information, like time sent, game, game type, incoming/outgoing, name of challenger
• You can now start challenge right away, no need to accept proposal then press i'm ready button. That step simplified challenge creation even more
• Every bid change from any side now is broadcasted in the chat for both opponents
• Extended statuses for players — now it's easier to see if opponent went offline, rejected challenge proposal, won/lost

Head-to-head challenges improvements

Comparison between old and new challenges

• Visual redo
• Faster challenges. No need to go to the separate page and do a step-in-the-middle (accept proposal). Challenge is displayed right on top of the dashboard
• Chat and challenge controls separated and grouped more clearly
• Performance improvements

We hope you are going to enjoy new update as much as we do. Cheers!