Mana Games

[anaum91]

hey i have a question about the qualifiying in grand slams, because in the real tennis world atp has 16 qualifers and the wta has 12 qualifiers in the grand salms. I have tried to change the Tourcategory WTA folder so in the womens tour will be 12 qualifiers in all 4 slams. i changed so it will be 24 seeds in the qualifiying draw, absoulutlly in the real tennis world, but the problem is that all 24 seeds has a bye in the qualifiryng draw, best of three rounds. What should i do. Please i hope someone can help me.

anaum91

[manutoo]

Hello,

unfortunately, qualification draw size must be a power of 2 (ie: 8, 16, 32, 64), so you can't do what you want.

[marco]

Hello manutoo,

I have investigated this as I came across the same problem and your explanation is not entirely correct.
The problem is only when you have different qualification draw than the main draw, e.g. GrandSlam 128 main and 96 qual.
But when the draws are the same size, e.g. Indian Wells having the main draw 96, it works for the quals correctly.
I have tried this in WTA tour.
And qualification draw has to be the power of 2 multiplied by number of qualifiers, not power of 2 itself since there is no single winner.
I'm not sure if this can be influenced by options in INI files, e.g. define number of qualifiers directly or it is only automatic.
There should never be a bye for a player in a qualification if everything is set up correctly.

Thanks,
marco

[manutoo]

marco,
qualification draw size having to be a power of 2 is a game engine limitation, thus the "unfortunately".

[marco]

Hello manutoo,

I understand that such an engine limitation would be a problem, but why then the qualification draw of Indian Wells being 96 players works correctly and creates 6 pages of 24 or 12 qualified players (depending on number of rounds). Neither of those is power of 2. That was my only point, the engine seems to be capable of it. I believe this works also for different draw sizes, e.g. 48, 56 and 60 so it should not be a problem.

Thanks,
marco

[manutoo]

marco,
Oooops, u're right, I had already forgotten how it works..!

So yup, engine can handle non-power of 2 qualies draw size, but it assumes qualies & main draw have same size. I can't change this, coz it'd invalidate the saved games.

[marco]

Hmm, you mean the engine would try to recompute also the past years tournaments draws using the changed algorithm ?
But it would be problem only in the case someone was using explicitly modified qualification draws of non-power of 2, e.g. 96 or 48.
I don't think that is very likely since it doesn't work correctly right now so there would be no real point.

Still I can understand your concern. Maybe if you could do it as an INI file option that would unlock this behaviour.
That way if someone has a problem with savegames he could switch it off
Or better if someone (like me ) would want the new behaviour he could switch it on.
Of course knowing to possibly have to forget the savegames and start from the beginning if indeed that would be necessary.
Would that be possible ?

marco

[manutoo]

marco,
I checked, and actually, official TE Tour never uses any non-power of 2 fixed size qualies draw, so I could change the way the draw size was created ; it should work as intended in next version... (but any Mod using non power of 2 fixed size qualies draw will see their saved games invalidated)

[marco]

Hey, that's great, thank you very much manutoo.
This is really awesome game, thank you for your efforts and support.

marco

[marco]

This now works perfectly and I have checked it and really the only invalidated saves are the ones using different but also non power of 2 qual draws.
If the qualification draw is different than the main draw but still power of 2 (e.g GS 128, Q 64), the saves are still valid in new build.
It was not quite clear to me after I read your description of the new build and the warning...

Just one more question manutoo, is it possible to show the correct qual draw size in the draw page ?
In fact it is nowhere to be seen in the game if I'm right so it is hidden if different than the main draw size.
I was already trying to understand a bit of the menus but I don't know what object/variable holds that number, similarly to /Board/Draw.
And the menu format doesn't seem to be very friendly to some computation and comparisons that I could use to get the number.
Or maybe I am mistaken and it is quite easy but I just lack the knowledge of the menu language. :-/

marco

[manutoo]

marco,
it's not currently possible to show the Qualies draw size ; it's calculated on the fly during the draw creation.

Note: if you get yourself more familiar with the menu system, you'll see it's not too hard to do computation and comparisons, but as it's not exactly a language (it's a mix of static state init & dynamic instructions), the logic is not same than other script languages you may have encountered (like LUA or Python).

[marco]

I have discovered strange thing which sort of confirms what you say.
I've tried the behaviour with the changed qualification draw sizes and when I look at the tournament I always see the main draw size.
But when the draw appears automatically when playing the qualification during the week, it shows the qualification draw size.
It really looks like just a passed value to the drawing system for that moment.

There is one thing I'm not sure if can be influenced somehow.
All the draw sizes have pretty much good seed distribution in qualification with the exception of 48.
Looks like the engine is not quite ready for 3 full pages with 24 seeded players...

And one more question manutoo, I have found somewhere in the forum that QualifDraw INI option should have two special values.
-1 was supposed to be the same as main draw size and -2 was supposed to be half the size.
Is it correct ? Or is there other difference ?
Because I have noticed that the qualification draws are the same regardless of the value being -1 or -2.

marco

[manutoo]

marco,
ok, all fixed..!
If you go on with that rhythm, in 2 or 3 weeks, the game won't have 1 single bug left..!

[marco]

maybe even sooner, I'm striving to do my best
And I'm still hoping you will reconsider updating the game a little bit more in the future, I'm ready to be of any help

OK, now back to my core focus at the moment
I see it is possible now to pass the qualification draw size to the menu system, it works well in the "Tournaments of the week" menu.
1) But it doesn't work fully in "All tournament draws" menu, it shows the different size only when -2 is used but not when explicit value is used in QualifDraw.

2) Not sure if it is intentional, but "All tournament draws" menu shows the last week tournaments (qualifications) but is not able to cycle through them.
It is best seen when just one week has passed because there are no arrows to previous and next tournaments.

3) -2 value doesn't work well for qualifiers and when calculating the qualification draw size.
a) The qualifiers won't make it to the main draw, they are ignored. Also [LD] flag is missing there.
And I've seen main draw WCs to be given to US players in modified Paris (testing -2 transition from 60M to 32Q)
b) Calculation doesn't round up the qual size correctly, seems to be 1 power of 2 less (i.e. 2 instead of 4, 4 instead of 8)
So the mentioned Paris setup would create 30Q which obviously cannot work (1 qualifier out of 4 players).
Similarly 56M tournament with 3 qualifying rounds would result in 28Q while it should have been 32Q again (1 qualifier out of 8 players).

If I use the explicit qual draw size the qualifiers, last direct acceptance and wildcards work well.
I've tested also -1 value and that works and rounds up draw sizes correctly in all my test cases.

Btw. seeding now works flawlessly, thank you very much.

marco

[manutoo]

marco,

1) on what screen exactly ? In the draw screen, the correct draw size is always shown ; and the "All tournament draws" screen itself just shows the main draw sizes, whatever the Main/Qualies icon is

2) it only happens on the 1st week, when no main draws have been played, so it's not too annoying

3) applying a -2 qualies draw size to a 60 main draw size isn't supposed to give a 32 qualies draw ; it divides by 2 and that's all, so it's normal to get 30, and in that case it will not work if you have more than 1 round of qualies (coz 30 => 15 => 7.5 => bug ) ; if you want a different qualies draw size then you have no other choice than to specify it explicitly