Tournament & Leaderboard Guide

This page collects information players may need for a Springs & Pucks tournament.
It may look like a lot, but running a tournament can be simple — the easy way is just three steps.

Additional resources:

• The left panel on the main S&P page has context help that scrolls to the relevant sections when you start games and demos.
• For the controls reference, see the Mice, Keys, and Touch page.
• The Videos page offers a walkthrough documenting the physics sandbox and the games.
• The Two-Thumbs cell-phone gamepad is discussed in the S&P and Multiplayer pages.

Devices and Play Modes

A tournament is simply an organized session where players compete on the same game course and compare scores on the leaderboard. Competitors can be individual players or teams, and a single tournament can mix both.

The host is the computer that runs the physics engine and displays to the audience. It collects mouse/keyboard input from the host player and connected clients.

The client collects input from an additional player and sends it to the host. It can run in mouse/keyboard mode or gamepad mode. The Two-Thumbs gamepad is only available on a client, which must have a touch screen.

The host has a host-player option under the Multiplayer options (right panel). Uncheck it if the host is not playing — do this when all players are using the gamepad.

• Solo (single player)
  • keyboard — the player is on the host computer, a single device.
  • gamepad — two devices are needed (host and client), and the host-player option should be unchecked.
• Team mode — one host and one or more clients. One member of a team may play on the host using a keyboard.

Set Your Nickname and Team

Your nickname is the name that appears during games and on the leaderboard.

• Type it into the chat/nickname field (in the Multiplayer panel) before clicking "Create" (host) / "Connect" (client), or before starting a game. Optionally, use the nickname field in the help text (left panel) for most games.
• Names must be 2 to 10 characters, letters and numbers only (plus the @ team separator).
• To add a team, append @teamname, for example bob@red (see Team play).
• Type noname in the chat field (then Create / Connect / Chat) to go back to being anonymous.
• The host does not need to connect to the server to establish a nickname — it takes effect when starting or restarting a game.

Starting a Game

On the main Springs & Pucks page, games are accessed though the numbered buttons and variant links below them (right panel) or corresponding help-text links (left-panel). For example, the Puck Popper game has variants 7a–7e and 8a–8e.

Multiplayer order matters: the host creates the room first, all network clients connect, and then the host starts the game (clicks the demo button). Use the v key for a full-screen view of the canvas (the game window/play area), and esc to return.

Scoring for Each Game

During play, a live score for each player is shown in the upper-left corner of the canvas, updating in real time as points are earned or lost. This lets everyone track their standing as the game unfolds.

At the end of a game a score summary is shown in the chat panel, followed by the leaderboard report. Toggle between the help panel and the chat/leaderboard panel with the m key.

Ghost-Ball Pool (9-ball, 8-ball, rotation)

Monkey Hunt

A perfect game is 600 points; the b fine-adjust aiming helps you reach it.

Bipartisan Hoops (basketball)

Scoring is limited to the first two minutes of play. Any shot stops the on-screen help series.

Jello Madness

This game is scored on time only — the seconds needed to untangle the jello (separate the pucks). There is no point score; the shortest time wins.

For solo play, the 6a demo starts with a mildly tangled block of jello, it's spinning, and the tangle-timer is running. Straighten out the block and the tangle timer stops. 6d is a more challenging tangle. The right mouse button, the freeze control (f key), and possibly the gravity control are useful in this game. Hints: one of the interior pucks is colored differently and the diagonal springs are all yellow.

The multiplayer idea here is to create a tangled capture of the block (or an edited version of it) and share it with another team. The opponent team does the same. Both teams play using the capture provided by their opponent.

Part of the fun/challenge is the editing and tangling process. Edit the spring lengths/strengths and puck sizes to create an altered version (or you can even add pucks to the grid). Tangling is generally done best by dragging perimeter pucks into the middle using the right mouse button. The capture name should reference your team name.

Players load the capture provided by their opponent and then restart the timer by clicking the #6 button (or 6 key). In addition, there should be one capture, provided by the tournament coordinator, that all teams will play.

Puck Popper (demo groups 7 and 8)

Tell the controlled pucks apart by the color of each puck's jet tube: the host's is tomato red (or as specified in the capture), and each client's tube matches the color shown on that client's page. You can also locate your own puck by pressing the ? (question mark) key.

Similar to Jello Madness, Puck Popper lends itself well to producing altered courses that you can post for other teams to try. In addition, there should be one capture that all teams will play. The video page has content on creating custom captures, including the editing, let's build one, and state capture sections. The video on changing the drone path is particularly useful for making a custom course.

Team Play

Team play allows you to group multiple players together for scoring purposes in a tournament. Players in a team work together to clear the drones in Puck Popper or take turns in one of the other games.

• Add a team by appending @teamname to your nickname, e.g. bob@red.
• Team totals (not individual member scores) are reported to the leaderboard.
• Friendly fire is prevented between team members in Puck Popper.
• The "Friendly fire" checkbox (shown when Multiplayer is checked) controls whether human bullets can affect other human players.
  • With it unchecked, human bullets only affect the drones, so all players cooperate to clear the drones (scoring is resolved by teams).
  • With it checked, inter-team bullets can not hit a team member, however teams can shoot at other teams.
• In the game score summary, a team row shows the team name and its member count, e.g. red (cnt:3).
• The team's results will appear on multiple leaderboard entries — one per game played. See the repeated green (cnt:2) entries in the leaderboard image below.

The Leaderboard

After completing a game, a leaderboard report of the top 25 results is displayed below the game-score summary in the chat panel.

The leaderboard report can be sorted to show lowest times or highest scores. The default sort is by time. Click the word "score" or "time" in the report to switch between the two sort types. Rows matching your just-finished game are highlighted. Jello Madness reports on a time basis only.

Reading the columns

Hovering over a column header in the leaderboard report shows a tooltip explaining that column. This is especially useful for interpreting the string of letters in the edit column.

Querying the leaderboard directly

The host can query the leaderboard without playing a game. From the multiplayer chat field (after connecting), type lb to see example queries, then submit one such as:

• lb::current — the current game version
• lb::7.a — a specific game version
• lb::4.e.monkeyhunt — a named game

Custom Captures for a Tournament

A tournament often runs on a single, agreed-upon course (as defined in a capture). Each capture carries a unique identifier, its demoVersion name. The leaderboard reports each name separately, so a uniquely named capture gives your tournament its own dedicated board.

• Capture controls
  • U — take a capture (stores it in the text area and paste buffer); shortcut u
  • C — clear out the capture text area
  • Run — re-animate the pasted capture; shortcut shift-r (or the matching yellow number key). Shift-click to run and immediately re-capture (a refresh)
  • S — save the capture out to a local file
  • L — load a local file into the capture text area
  • P — post the capture to cloud storage (shift-click to update an existing one; ctrl-shift-click to delete)
  • ? — list similar captures from cloud storage (shift-click for the complete list); click a listed link to download and run it

There are four ways to share a capture for a tournament:

1. Share by name. Starting from a capture-based version (e.g. 7.b), edit its demoVersion name to something unique, such as 7.b.tourney-abc. Share that name with the other players so they can run that capture using that same name (editing the demoVersion value in the capture) and automatically report to the same dedicated board.
   (The a versions (e.g. 7.a) are scripted and have no capture. See method #3.)
2. Share via the cloud. Same as above, but after renaming, post the capture to cloud storage with the P button and tell everyone it is available in the cloud captures. (The posting process rejects a capture that is identical to the base one, so you must change something — editing the date is enough to post successfully.)
   To retrieve it, other players:
   • click the corresponding demo-group number button (e.g. 7),
   • then query for that group's cloud captures with the ? button,
   • then click on the tournament-capture link in the list in the left panel.
3. Starting from an a base (scripted) demo. The a versions (e.g. 7.a) run from a script, so there is no capture to work with yet. First produce one: click Run with the shift key down to run the scripted start and immediately grab a capture into the text area. Then edit its demoVersion name and post it as in method #2.
4. Share by file. Save the capture to a local file with the S button and send that file to the other players, who load it with the L button. Alternatively, copy the file's contents and paste them directly into the capture text area. As with the other methods, everyone then runs the same course under the shared demoVersion name.

A few more notes:

• The capture's identifier (demoVersion name) determines which leaderboard the scores go to, so a uniquely named capture keeps tournament results apart from the standard demos.
• However the capture is shared, each player loads it and runs the same course (the Run button, or shift-r).
• Query that tournament's board with lb::<its-version-name> or lb::current while it is loaded.
• For Puck Popper, the starting position and velocity of each client-controlled puck is fixed and editable in the capture's startingPosAndVels object. The host's controlled puck (and starting position) can be found in the pucks array by searching for "clientName": "local". These values are useful for giving all players a fair start.

Quick Tournament Checklist

• Host: open the main page, check Multiplayer, enter a room name, set your nickname, click Create.
• Players: open the client page, enter the same room name, set your nickname (add @yourteam if playing in teams), click Connect.
• Agree on the game/course and, for a dedicated board, load the tournament capture.
• For Puck Popper:
  • Decide the Friendly fire setting before starting.
  • Don't use the mouse in the canvas and don't put the drones to sleep (ctrl-q) — otherwise the result is flagged and excluded from the ranking.
• Host starts the game once everyone is connected; use full-screen (v) for a clean view.
• After the game, press m to toggle the left panel between the leaderboard report and help.

For the complete list of mouse, keyboard, and touch commands, see the Mice, Keys, and Touch reference.

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