UKCT is proud to present the Odd Compo Club - [url="lfs://|UKCT+Odd+Compo+Club|0|S2|/"]UKCT Odd Compo Club[/url]! Yes.. Odd Compo Club, not Odd Combo Club! It's the Odd Combo Club's evil sister It's an auto-rotating server, picking random odd combinations for a wide variety of cars. The server will cycle the tracks, choose the cars, and pick the number of laps for you.. all you have to do is get on there and race!

Why Compo? Because it is, to a small extent, a competition server. The person who races the most and wins the most points, wins the competition. Each week there's a new winner, and that winner is announced at the beginning of each race for the duration of the following week.

Not that that's the point.. the point is, it's an ever-varied server, where the likelihood is you'll find an odd combo you never even thought of before, race for a few races and then get a change of scenery, with a new car. Join for an hour or join for the night, race for the fun of it or race for the hell of it

A little bit of info about the points system: If you race, you get a point. If you place in the top 8, you also get F1-style points. Therefore, the first place gets 11 points, 8th gets 2 points, 9-20th gets 1 point.

Hope to see you on there soon!

PS: The Odd Combo Club isn't closing.. it's still alive and kicking! This server is an additional wee beasty

PPS: Software coded by Becky

Looks good.
Though there are a lot 'odd' combos that are so odd they are unbearable. No, UF1/Aston National and BF1/Fe Club might be odd, but they are not much fun...
Does it have a protection against such things? Or does it pick from a specified list? If so, how big is that list?

I guess I'll be spending quite a lot time there... Good idea :go: .

Vain

If the combo is too odd, vote to end the race.. the server will automatically rotate the combo

Now that it's automated I'm sure there'll be more people racing odd combos
"wide variety of cars" - what cars did you exclude from the list if I may ask?

I'm still developing the car combinations, but basically every car is now accomodated. There is a small amount of car matching to tracks, although the specifics are random.. for example, if the server picks the UF1000, it will not pick a loooooong track, but it will pick either a medium or short track. If the server picks the FO8, it's possible that it will pick a short track, but it's 3x more likely to pick a medium or a long track. Which one, though, is entirely up to the server

I want to see BF1 on SO Classic! Sounds like a fun server, thanks.

As I'm sure most people have already figured out, the code's all Becky's!

Mostly 3 lap races

The combination is changed too frequently. People are just getting used to a combo, and sorting setups etc so that we can have some close racing, and it goes and changes...

The 3 laps may be a coding problem, which we'll address (BECKY!?!? WHERE ARE YA!?!?). The number of races, I was kinda expecting to be an issue. The Odd Combo club is more accustomed to evenings with one combination.

We've actually moved from testing straight into production faster than intended.. Becky and I went on the server initially with single lap races, to make sure that all the application's functions were in place and working correctly. Before we knew it, there were about 15 people on there with us, but everything seemed to be working so we decided to declare the system up and running.. and off I scuttled to the forum to announce it

The configuration does need tuning, and I'll be doing that tonight and tomorrow. The 3-lap race is/was a coding bloop, but the number of races before rotation I can fix straight away

3 lap races was fixed several hours ago, but Sam only just got around to launching the new .exe

EDIT: wrong .exe Sam!

Grrr!!

The server now cycles every 10 races. In a future improvement, the cycle will be based on the length of time on a combo, rather than on the number of races run. So, with this in mind, I welcome opinions (preferably with a bit of explanation) regarding how long people feel is the right amount of time to race a single combo, before moving on to the next combo.. 1hr, 2hrs...?

Ok, I've about had it. I'm moving over there to the UK or Europe! You guys have all the cool stuff. Excellent idea and I hope you get everything sorted out perfectly. Me being in the US and only having Aston National for racing or all other tracks for lapping by myself makes me quite jeleous of you guys and your odd combo's and rotating tracks, hehe. While you all are having fun, I'm over here at work (normally). Then log on to say "eh, I can't do any more laps at Aston." Then I end up joining and lapping around while my mind wanders, LOL.

Hopefully, the wife and kids cooperate and I can jump on for the rest of the week. Off work until Tuesday . Gotta love manufacturing plants and their 2 week shutdowns for Christmas holidays .

So what's the prize?
Same as the first to reach Titanium license (free registration on the wrecker barricade was it? )?

Quote from SamH :

Grrr!!

The server now cycles every 10 races. In a future improvement, the cycle will be based on the length of time on a combo, rather than on the number of races run. So, with this in mind, I welcome opinions (preferably with a bit of explanation) regarding how long people feel is the right amount of time to race a single combo, before moving on to the next combo.. 1hr, 2hrs...?

I would say 1 day. The busiest hours are (I guess) between 1700-2200 which would mean changing the combo twice or even more during a single evening, which would be pointless. A different combo every day sounds nice.

Yowzer.. one day is a long time! For something like that, I think the original Odd Combo Club is probably more suited. This server's really intended for more rapid-fire racing. At one rotation per 24hr period, we're looking at a weekly competition winner based on 7 combinations.

I guess I'm counting on the server attracting interest partly because it's almost guaranteed to be running a different combination every time you join.. even if you join 3 or 4 times over the duration of a day.

I'm not saying "no".. if people want a single combo per day, I'll do it. I'm trying to achieve something that'll keep the server busy and interesting, but I'm not sure that level of rotation will achieve it

Quote from TagForce :

So what's the prize?

Notoriety

The prize really is just being able to say you're the oddball of the week.. and the server will announce you as that, at the beginning of every race for the following week

I think one hour is about right for most, but what if you find a really good combo and want to keep it for longer? Perhaps the server can ask a question somehow, and the people have to vote? Is it possible to do that? Would it work (i.e. would people vote to keep a combo because they don't like change or don't want to lose an advantage, or would people let all but the best combos stay?

Another way might be participation. If a server is really busy (and therefore must be a good combination) perhaps it could stay longer, but if the number of drivers drop it would reduce the time on that combo?

Just brainstorming.

Quote from SamH :

Notoriety

The prize really is just being able to say you're the oddball of the week.. and the server will announce you as that, at the beginning of every race for the following week

YaY, eternal fame for one week I'll be there as soon as I find some time to spend actually racing... Bloody holiday season is annoying.

Brainstorming's good!

Yep, the plus with rotating is in finding a good combo, but the negative is definitely in leaving one behind.

I like the idea of being able to vote to keep a combo. It's entirely down to Becky's willingness to code further, but I'll ask! She's given notice that she's going to be doing broadcast work from tonight/tomorrow onwards so new software changes will be slow to come (though gratefully received when they do). Something like entering "!keep", and if the server sees > ~50% of the number of people on the server say that, it stops the rotation for another x minutes.

In the meantime, and most importantly because the prize on the Compo server isn't actually up to much .. if you do hit on a combo that a bunch of people like, then leap over to the Odd Combo Club server, set the combo and keep racing there.

Sounds like a good idea. Something along the lines of voting for combos to stay could be a favorites system where people can vote for certain combos and they get points. Combos with mroe points come on more frequently or stay on for longer compared to cmobios that get a thumbs down from voters.

Quote from Davo :

Sounds like a good idea. Something along the lines of voting for combos to stay could be a favorites system where people can vote for certain combos and they get points. Combos with mroe points come on more frequently or stay on for longer compared to cmobios that get a thumbs down from voters.

wouldnt that be a direction completely contrary to what the whole odd combo club tries to achieve ?

I think voting for combo's would not necessarily be a good thing. I can understand that players might want to keep a combo, and the facility is there to end a 'rogue' combo. Marking them as bad would not be good. For instance, tonight I briefly got GTR on Ferb Bay Club - which I think with Sam's config is a rare combo. That would be madness with 20 people, but with 4-6 it might be really good fun...

Quote from Shotglass :

Quote from Davo :

Sounds like a good idea. Something along the lines of voting for combos to stay could be a favorites system where people can vote for certain combos and they get points. Combos with mroe points come on more frequently or stay on for longer compared to cmobios that get a thumbs down from voters.

wouldnt that be a direction completely contrary to what the whole odd combo club tries to achieve ?

Yep

The Odd Combo Club's mission statement is to try things you've not tried before, or would not normally think of trying. Really, the way the Odd Compo Club server works now is the way it's intended to. It's just the overall variables that control it that may need refining.

I noticed this evening that people were occasionally screaming, absolutely baffled at the idea of driving a particular car on a particular track.. but after a couple of races they were really into it. That was a "win", for me.. a convert to the concept of the Odd Combo Club

Hi, I've only just seen this thread and I'm not able to try the server at the moment so this might be a dumb question... but where do you keep the scores? Is that viewable on the server itself, with a !command, or is there also a website with an overview?

Sounds like a great idea anyway. And thumbs up to Becky for the coding work... respect.

Quote from Shotglass :

wouldnt that be a direction completely contrary to what the whole odd combo club tries to achieve ?

It would still be odd combos but the popular odd combos get played more to attract people to the server. I think nothing would empty a server quicker than a bad odd combo. if that wouldnt work then don't midn me.