"Kombat at Home" an upcoming app-suite/API for MKX!

[Tony at Home]

Kombat at Home
​

Beta-release: April, 2015

** BIG UPDATE **

Hey everyone! Thought I'd update progress on KAH.

I am still targeting an April release, though it will now be rather unlikely I'll be able to launch at the same time as Mortal Kombat X as I had hoped. Expect a launch towards the end of April as opposed to mid-April now. I hate to delay stuff, but thems-da-breaks of being a 1-dude-dev-team.

The current beta website, http://kombatathomebeta.com/ has been pretty much scraped of content, and I'm moving development to the main site, http://kombathome.com (yes, the name has changed to remove the 'at').

However, I have left one thing open at the kombatathomebeta.com site... a feature request widget! Please feel free to leave any requests for things you'd want to see in the final product.

*NEW DESCRIPTION*

Kombat at Home is a 'Kombat-focused' take on the Event Hubs 'Fight Tracker'. It will offer a focused Mortal Kombat matchmaking system that gives you suggestions based on factors such as skill, regular time of play, desire for character matchup experience, and other factors like 'hashtags'. Additional features will include lobby and group suggestions, as well as support for 'clans' and weekend warrior groups, though these features may not all be available at initial release- they will be added over time.

 

[Crathen]

Needs more attention , this would be great for online players and all around cool thing to have at disposal.

 

[Tony at Home]

Thanks. It's kinda a busy news day so I definitely see why this would be buried

In a week or so when I can have some actual front end apps up and running that people can try out, I'll ask a mod to promote this- but I want to wait till I have the front end up so people can actually interact with the web apps and give feedback. Right now it's pretty much just server code with no GUI

 

[Zoidberg747]

I dig this idea.

 

[Eldriken]

This sounds fucking amazing. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[SHAOLIN]

Sounds super legit dude, can't wait for the final product. You can best believe I will be using this for MKX.

 

[Chaosphere]

Awesome

 

[Braindead]

Damn this sounds like one hell of a project. Good luck, man! I'm looking forward to it now.

 

[IMakeItL00kC00L]

This is going to be great, especially if someone doesnt have an offline scene

 

[Rodrigue]

Hey Tony, you rock. Now on to that cooking show haha

 

[aldazo]

This is front page material. @STORMS

 

[Cossner]

I like this a lot.

 

[STORMS]

This is front page material. @STORMS

I'd like to test it out first but no doubt... this looks like something many will benefit from. This is basically a mobile app, right @Tony at Home ?

 

[Charybdis]

As someone without a local scene, this is a godsend. Thank you so much!

 

[Tony at Home]

I'd like to test it out first but no doubt... this looks like something many will benefit from. This is basically a mobile app, right @Tony at Home ?

It's not a mobile "app" in the sense of something like a mobile youtube app or tinder or whatever.

It's a collection of web based applications getting data from what I hope will be a very large database of players. It can work on any website that hosts it, from a regular or mobile browser.

The same way you can embed a google maps plugin anywhere, you will be able to embed a Player Detail Card search. If someone wants to find which of their friends are playing or search for people they may want to send an invite to on XBL/PSN, they can either go to my own web domain which I will be hosting everything at personally, or use any plugin that is embedded on any site that wants to use the tool.

So think of it basically like this:
https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3544418?hl=en

Embeddable anywhere, but can be accessed from the main site which I will host: that's where I plan on demo-ing everything and I'll just keep it up.

And yes, please do wait until I have a nice front-end product to test out before front-paging. I'd much rather this get the most attention when it's at a state where I can collect valuable feedback. Back end is pretty much done for Player Detail Cards, Player Search, "Check In" and "Who's On", so hopefully come next week or the week after I'll have a front end by which everyone can see how it works.


* I should note, the Online Tournament functionality probably won't be embeddable because by nature needs to be it's own full web page, especially since the front end is being built on Knockout.js. This will only be accessible from the site I'm hosting. *

 

[Braindead]

* I should note, the Online Tournament functionality probably won't be embeddable because by nature needs to be it's own full web page, especially since the front end is being built on Knockout.js. This will only be accessible from the site I'm hosting. *

You forgot the slash at the beginning and the end of that line.

 

[Zyphox]

I would love to help out with this, sadly I have no experience in anything that you said, but I can suggest you open up something like a kick-starter or something that allows you to get compensated for your hard work or even just donation page. That's the way I can help out

 

[MCPeePants]

Stoked. Looks baller, bruh.

 

[AssassiN]

Sounds really good.
Can't wait to see what will come of it .

I wish I could help you out. But I'm much more of a back-end developer than a front-end.

 

[PainForge]

This sounds great Tony. If not already, your ideas/features would be great to have in game.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

How will you determine the connection rating and skill level?

 

[Tony at Home]

How will you determine the connection rating and skill level?

Connection will be twofold. First is distance between the players, which is easily measurable- and good connections don't make up for having an ocean between players. Second is voluntary- which is supplying a link to a speedtest.net result, which the program will basically html scrape and add to the appropriate field in the player's database row.

There will also be a feedback option of "awful connection"- but I'm hoping it will be used rarely because if the system is working like it should, players should have plentiful options of those in their immediate region.

For skill level, I'm really only dividing it into two major groups: "casual" and "competitive" but they're not so much traditional skill ratings as "mindsets." Casual players are those looking for transient fun, while competitive players are those who are in it for the long haul to get better. This setting can actually be changed on the fly (all profile settings can, actually), so a normally skilled player just wanting to mess around online with random select while drinking can switch to "casual". At the same time, a player who is poorly skilled at the game, so long as they are determined to get better, can identify as "competitive". It's more of a mind set than a skill level.

The name of the column in the database is: "GameplayType"

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Connection will be twofold. First is distance between the players, which is easily measurable- and good connections don't make up for having an ocean between players. Second is voluntary- which is supplying a link to a speedtest.net result, which the program will basically html scrape and add to the appropriate field in the player's database row.

There will also be a feedback option of "awful connection"- but I'm hoping it will be used rarely because if the system is working like it should, players should have plentiful options of those in their immediate region.

For skill level, I'm really only dividing it into two major groups: "casual" and "competitive" but they're not so much traditional skill ratings as "mindsets." Casual players are those looking for transient fun, while competitive players are those who are in it for the long haul to get better. This setting can actually be changed on the fly (all profile settings can, actually), so a normally skilled player just wanting to mess around online with random select while drinking can switch to "casual". At the same time, a player who is poorly skilled at the game, so long as they are determined to get better, can identify as "competitive". It's more of a mind set than a skill level.

The name of the column in the database is: "GameplayType"

Last question: what language are you writing this in

 

[Tony at Home]

Last question: what language are you writing this in

Javascript, both back end and front end (I'm using node.js loaded onto an Amazon Web Server via beanstalk so I can do Javascript on the back-end).

I'm also making extensive use of Knockout.js because it's crazy good for doing the Online Tourney application.

Knockout and node.js work reeeeeally good together because they're both event-driven frameworks. Users shouldn't have to refresh an entire page just so a tiny embdedded web app updates. Knockout observables and node event listeners allow me to seamlessly stream updates to the page.

....And also the company I work at has me writing Javascript applications, and switching between languages drives me crazy and causes me to leave alooooooot of syntax errors. Otherwise I'd probably be writing everything in Perl.

 

[Tony at Home]

Made an update to the original post with my progress (aka, a slight delay).

I do encourage everyone to take advantage of the feature suggestion widget I left on http://kombatathomebeta.com

I am delaying a launch till later in April as opposed to mid-April, but since I plan to develop this continually after launch, those additional feature suggestions will not go to waste.

For those unclear on the nature of suggestions I'm looking for, I left a helper question:
'What do I want in a multiplayer matchmaking system for Mortal Kombat X, that goes above and beyond what is normally offered?'