New Game Numbering System [Pending]

[sully800]

its called copy and paste...
no remembering involved

And when you're given a big list of game numbers copy and paste can be a pain. It already is more of a pain then just remembering the number.

MM17: I know it wouldn't completely fix the problem, since A123456 and 1234567 are both 7 digits. But each letter would have 100,000 new games that are only 6 digits, so that would be 2,500,000 simplified game numbers. Then we could have an additional 16,000,000 at the next level of 7 digits, compared to the 10,000,000 that would currently be available. So it wouldn't completely eliminate the problem but it would slow the growth certainly.

[AndyDufresne]

The idea has been noted by lack.


--Andy

[AAFitz]

perhaps we should give the game numbers human names, like hurricanes, and so it could be like sheila1 or marcus893.

lol

not a bad idea, after 20 million or so, we'll probably even use your name as one

[wcaclimbing]

I think all the game numbers should be in Binary. That would be easy to remember.

Much better than the 6 numbers to remember now!

cause look!

whats harder to remember:

Game number: 300

or

Game number: 300 represented in binary: 100101100

I think binary is the obvious winner here, AK.

we need to switch to binary ASAP!
Priority 5+

[wcaclimbing]

and even better!
Game number 123456 would be:
11110001001000000
in binary!!!
so much better!

[sully800]

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

[paulk]

why not skip numbers totally and have a letter combo instead?

game 1 would be "A", game 2 "B", game 26 "Z", game 27 "AA", game 28 "AB", game 29 "AC" and so on.

When you reach "ZZZZZZ" you should be up to game 308.915.776 and "ZZZZZZZ" 8.031.810.176

I'd like to join game "PAULK". (Somebody count that game number for me...)

[john1099]

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

[Twill]

use a date code combo

game 5268 begun in jan, 07 would be 01075268 or 0175268 if we want to save a digit for the next 3 years.

Or we name months of the year and have fun with it.

2007 could be colour months
jan games would be: Red 5268
Feb games would be: Blue 5268
etc

2008 could be food months:
Jan: grey poupon 5268
Feb: soublaki 5268

2009 could be different inuit words for snow....etc

ok, that's just a silly suggestion, but I'm tired and I clicked on a link for fun and felt the urge to reply...I didnt actually read the first post through fully, sorry sully

[cena-rules]

use a date code combo

game 5268 begun in jan, 07 would be 01075268 or 0175268 if we want to save a digit for the next 3 years.

Or we name months of the year and have fun with it.

2007 could be colour months
jan games would be: Red 5268
Feb games would be: Blue 5268
etc

2008 could be food months:
Jan: grey poupon 5268
Feb: soublaki 5268

2009 could be different inuit words for snow....etc

ok, that's just a silly suggestion, but I'm tired and I clicked on a link for fun and felt the urge to reply...I didnt actually read the first post through fully, sorry sully

I am in love with this

[Aerial Attack]

perhaps have a system so that u can tell what sort of game it is by the number/letter combination... similar to area codes for telephone numbers

for example, all doubles games could start with D and then numbers and triples with T, etc, etc

you could even go map specific T001-XXXXXX for classic or something

ultimately this will eventuate in the same problem down the track, especially for the most popular settings which would get there quicker. but nevertheless, it would make remembering game numbers easier imho

This is actually a pretty decent system. Although, I think we need to take it even further ...

S = Standard, A = Assassin, T = Terminator, R = Triples, D = Doubles
F = Freestyle, Q = Sequential
E = Escalating, L = Flat, N = No Cards
J = Adjacent, C = Chained, U = Unlimited
H for Hours (24), M for Minutes (5)
AOM = Age of Merchants, CLS = Classic, BRZ = Brazil, etc. (every map would have a 3 or 4 char abbreviation).

So, a game number would look like this: AFLUM_AOM-0000001 (Assassin, Freestyle, Flat, Unlimited, Speed Game on Age of Merchants)
You would now know everything you need to know about the game just based on the game #

[GreecePwns]

perhaps have a system so that u can tell what sort of game it is by the number/letter combination... similar to area codes for telephone numbers

for example, all doubles games could start with D and then numbers and triples with T, etc, etc

you could even go map specific T001-XXXXXX for classic or something

ultimately this will eventuate in the same problem down the track, especially for the most popular settings which would get there quicker. but nevertheless, it would make remembering game numbers easier imho

This is actually a pretty decent system. Although, I think we need to take it even further ...

S = Standard, A = Assassin, T = Terminator, R = Triples, D = Doubles
F = Freestyle, Q = Sequential
E = Escalating, L = Flat, N = No Cards
J = Adjacent, C = Chained, U = Unlimited
H for Hours (24), M for Minutes (5)
AOM = Age of Merchants, CLS = Classic, BRZ = Brazil, etc. (every map would have a 3 or 4 char abbreviation).

So, a game number would look like this: AFLUM_AOM-0000001 (Assassin, Freestyle, Flat, Unlimited, Speed Game on Age of Merchants)
You would now know everything you need to know about the game just based on the game #

I like this idea most of the ones mentioned. Maybe for more sorting, you could put a # next to non-team games for # of players.

So with your example with 5 players: A5FLUM_AOM-0000001

[Night Strike]

Well thought out idea, but I thought the point was to simplify the game ID, not make it much more in depth.

[trimunch]

Sorry for the redundant thread, I see that it has been removed.

In my opinion, an alphanumeric key is trading one annoyance (a long string of numers) for another. An alternate composite key with a non-unique numeric portion to be used as shorthand identifier is about as close to the good 'ole early days of the club as you can get at this point.

If you are the one who owns the data model, consider the fact that you don't have to give up the flat numeric key. Indeed, I predict that you would sorely miss it if you did.

In the abstract you are considering the idea of an alternate composite key which would be shorter for users to type and easier for them to remember. You could either hide or expose the current flat numeric key depending on the specific view. Please consider the idea that you could offer a short all-numeric composite sub-key as long as you were willing to allow it to be a one to many mapping.

As an example, consider the idea of resetting the sub-key to 1 at the first of each month. Then combine this with the idea presented earlier in this thread : a composite key based on date.

You could implement this with a mapping table :

key
year
month
subkey

key --> year, month, subkey ** would be a one to one mapping

subkey would map to multiple games

you could provide a "short game number" option exclusive of the current game number in the game finder dialog with an optional year/date entry and a checkbox ("use current month") exclusive of these options.

[lackattack]

Now that game 1M is around the corner I finally took some time to ponder these suggestions for our game numbering system.

I have concluded that the underlying key should remain a plain old number. For one thing, that makes it easy for the database to auto-increment. Any change to underlying key would require too much re-coding of many parts of the website and may affect performance.

Having said that, we can "hide" the underlying game# and show a shorter key as long as it can be translated back and forth to the real number.

So hexadecimal and A999999 and AAZ would work. TCLA-xxxxxx and MMYYxxxxxx would not.

I also realized that since the underlying number ain't gonna change, this can remain on my to-do list until we are way past game 1M. And so it probably will as I work on other stuff which I think we need more urgently

[Stoney229]

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

lol

[antony.trupe]

Yes, hex is much easier to memorize and remember then decimal. For example,everyone can surely memorize B00B and F00D.

If the date is encoded into the new (displayed) number, in the name of all that's holy please use ISO_8601(YYYYMMDD).

[Ditocoaf]

Yes, hex is much easier to memorize and remember then decimal. For example,everyone can surely memorize B00B and F00D.

If the date is encoded into the new (displayed) number, in the name of all that's holy please use ISO_8601(YYYYMMDD).

I was halfway through reading this, and very confused, until I realized that this thread was from a year ago!

great gravedig, antony!

[antony.trupe]

Yes, hex is much easier to memorize and remember then decimal. For example,everyone can surely memorize B00B and F00D.

If the date is encoded into the new (displayed) number, in the name of all that's holy please use ISO_8601(YYYYMMDD).

I was halfway through reading this, and very confused, until I realized that this thread was from a year ago!

great gravedig, antony!

I can't tell if my failure to detect sarcasm is correct or not, so I'll explain myself just in case.
Its linked to in the official todo list(thus the [Pending] in the title)(and which I had just skimmed over looking for novel ideas to add my two cents to); I didn't just bump a random thread, though I see it does appear that way.

[Blitzaholic]

your post was so long, that by the end of it you disagreed with yourself
this happens to me often

lmaoff


sully, I think, renumbering from A1 on now is a good idea, then we got another million games to come up with another idea, could be B1, or even 01

[Ditocoaf]

Yes, hex is much easier to memorize and remember then decimal. For example,everyone can surely memorize B00B and F00D.

If the date is encoded into the new (displayed) number, in the name of all that's holy please use ISO_8601(YYYYMMDD).

I was halfway through reading this, and very confused, until I realized that this thread was from a year ago!

great gravedig, antony!

I can't tell if my failure to detect sarcasm is correct or not, so I'll explain myself just in case.
Its linked to in the official todo list(thus the [Pending] in the title)(and which I had just skimmed over looking for novel ideas to add my two cents to); I didn't just bump a random thread, though I see it does appear that way.

There was no sarcasm; I just love seeing really old threads come back to life. I'm actually pro-gravedig, since making useless duplicate threads is worse. I don't like once a thread reaches the third page or so, it's considered taboo...
It's entertaining to see a gravedug thread, since people (myself included) tend to assume everything they're reading is fairly recent. Plus, two posts with a year-long gap between them still look as if they were said in succession. These are the reasons I said, "great gravedig"... I find gravedigs amusing, even though I agree that they're legitimate, even necessary.

[pissedoffsol]

I have concluded that the underlying key should remain a plain old number. For one thing, that makes it easy for the database to auto-increment. Any change to underlying key would require too much re-coding of many parts of the website and may affect performance.

Adding just one letter will add SOOO much overhead. I'm sure everything is quered off [where gameid = 123456]. You add a letter into it, and now a full table scan needs to take place, even with an index, as you basically just made your int into a varchar.


As a DBA-wannabe, this is probably a horrible idea. I can see the server crashing already....

[lancehoch]

What about having the game numbers in hex?

[pissedoffsol]

mysql doesn't support hex as int natively.... it is just as bad as using the single letter, if not worse due do having to cast


http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/ ... alues.html

[TaCktiX]

So right now I'm in game 26BF14h...

EDIT: From a database standpoint, converting to a different system would be a complete boondoggle. Think the forum upgrade time squared. The present system preserves a very important aspect of a database, the primary key of an entity, perfectly well.