Hello dudes,

I just thought I'd put the feelers out to see if people would be interested in some form of league, mini or otherwise. I'd prefer a NH tbh but happy either way


I have been involved in a couple of the previous seasons so have a degree of experience with the requirements. It would just be entirely for fun.

Would we be able get a hold of something to the effects of tom we could use/log into etc or mebs use the current dormant one?

Have a fair bit of spare time off uni atm so could do some graft with it

cheers

red

The league would need to work differently from SO5. It would also need significant development of both the SO6 application and TOM (TOM would probably need a rewrite). The means a big delay and lot's of investment of time which is not available right now.

I'm currently mulling a few ideas over. Right now it looks like a possible back to basics approach with a very simple league that could then be developed. From day one it would work differently from previous leagues. That way at least people have some races to look forward to. Maybe every two weeks or so. Initially TOM may not be used. This will speed up the process. The important thing is to start automating horse entries and submissions. I am also thinking about ditching the replay file option and maybe having races available through an online channel such as Twitch TV. The advantages of that are the replays will be better (less glitchy and 100% accurate - a problem in previous leagues). The replays will look nicer (rendered with full detail etc.). Also you would then be able to watch them on your mobile or any other internet device. The downside is each race will have to be recorded and uploaded by volunteers with high spec gaming machines capable of rendering decent visuals plus recording in real time (via FRAPS or similar).

Right now no decisions have been made. These are just ideas to get things moving but once they have I'll post here.

I suppose you could have people email you horse files and you could run them in your CK. You'd still need some kind of recording software so you can upload the races.

That would be a very basic way of running a very simple league. But obviously no TOM and you'd have to put each horse in the race and get the right ones etc which would be a bit painstaking if you have a lot of horses.

For me last season was the best ever by far open honest fair competitive great schedule something for everyone
great fun very little hassle on the forum unlike other leagues.

A Bit shocked with how much work needs to be done to get another one started i personally know how much work and
time Leon put into the last version of TOM i remember him saying he hoped it would be good for at least a few years.

Apart from the new graphics i really cant see a massive amount of difference between so5 and so6 so abit surprised such a huge
overhaul is required but then again i wouldn't have a clue about that side of things.

To me it sounds like the next league will be watered down a heck of a lot and just reading Marks Remarks it does sound like a huge
backwards step from what we all managed to put together in the last couple of seasons of SO5.

TBH Anything is better than nothing though and do understand the situation fully

It Does seem a long long way away now more than ever

I agree with a twitch style upload, that would be cool. I'm also of the opinion a league could be done well enough at a basic level to enjoy - perhaps a few weeks of racing leading to Cheltenham/Ascot


We could set up something simple yet effective like SuperCat stated, until a more sophisticated method has been devised. I have multiple hours spare now so can definitely put time in.

I'm not too sure on handicapping the horses and how to do it fairly, but I can definitely do the old fashioned CK method of running races and uploading etc.

Paul I think the answer to your question is here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=10497 (last post)

The point is the league has only ever appealed to a very small minority who don't mind having to manage horse exports and email files around and grind out through hundreds of seasons. It’s worked the same since so2.

It needs to work fundamentally different. This is why it needs an re-write. The first step is to automate certain areas and make it more friendly. The problem of grinding is difficult and for further down the line. The league could be run as previously without much work at all but it needs to change. The only way to get something going in the short term is to do it in small steps and start with a simple setup.

I moved that reply back to this thread. Not sure how it ended up in the wrong thread.

I do hate it when people post in the wrong thread!

I obviously would be very interested in a league. Best case scenario, considering recent occurrences, one that would make cheating all but impossible. That said, I would take part in whatever is being decided on/is possible. All in all, I regret having discovered SO5 so late.



I wonder what that would look like. Integrate everything into the SO6 client? Would be perfect, but I cant even imagine the workload that would include.



While I understand how easy it would be, I don't like the current CK. If I run 6 horses at a time in-game the results are way more consistent than they are in CK when it comes to horses that are close to each other skillwise. A 80% winrate for the best horse ingame opposed to at most 35%-40% in CK. It does feel a bit to random. Maybe that is confirmation bias, as it is something I have suspected for the entirety of SO6, and variance obviously might skew results, but I feel CK needs some work. It is possible though that the AI horses running style make the results more predictable if they change how the race unfolds.

I look forward to see where you will go with this.

Cat if only 16 people want to play the league then it's probably not worth it, a lot of time and effort goes into making it happen and I don't think it would be worth it with so few people wanting to play it.

I don't think we could beat the 3rd and final league season of SO5, all the wrinkles had been sorted and there was something for everyone.

Agree it was very special

The current foundations are poor (not with TOM but the in-game kit). The more you add to it the more it is likely to fall down. Like I said it goes back almost a decade. I could see how even a new simple and basic setup could be more enjoyable quite quickly but time will tell.

The small league numbers are down to the issues mentioned (user friendliness primarily but also grinding). Having said this I would prefer to keep the league small initially because there will be a lot of testing and ideally we need to keep the races per week or fortnight to a minimum until it all works smoothly.

League development needs to be funded. That is part of the problem. There are many exciting possibilities. For example, the jockey mode is working well now (next patch will further improve things) and it would be nice to see everyone have the option of riding their horses in real time. Technically this is not difficult but would be time consuming on the development side. When we start to talk about client/server setups and additional servers we need to work out ways to fund it all without becoming a money grabbing fest that online horse racing games seem to turn out being.

So once any news is available it will be posted in this forum.

I have no interest in riding my horse in a live stream I don't ride my horses now I just like the management side of the game if this is what the future holds then I will not be interested in any league in the future mark and to get people all online at the same time in our busy lives I can't see many riders has for funding I have no problem with that but again if it means controlling my horse I wont bother I played GI Jockey on the ps3 Online and you couldn't get enough players online to play.


Gray