Bracket display

[robertcampion]

One feature that would alleviate a lot of confusion is if we could change the display of upcoming/recent games from a list to a tree-like bracket on the second day of competition. Last year we had no bracket displayed anywhere and everybody was confused as to what was going on. I think adding it into the scoring system is feasible, and preferable to putting e.g. a spreadsheet up on the projector as we've done in previous years.

This feature will require:

• Server-side, adding some sort of data to documents in the games collection to indicate where in the bracket a game is. Questions we need to answer:
  • What form should this data take (not only for games in the bracket, but also for games in the round-robin matches on the previous day).
  • Can we get the server to automatically generate upcoming matches when finalizing a match in the bracket?
  • Is the shape of the bracket fixed/hardcoded, or adjustable?
• Client-side, adding a new page with the bracket view. Questions:
  • Can we fit the entire bracket on the screen?
  • How do we indicate the order of upcoming games?
  • For games that have been already played, should we keep them visible? Should we show the scores?
• Client-side, adding a way to edit the bracket position of a game in the games page.
  • Do we need to include a tree view for editing the games as well?

[robertcampion]

I'd lean towards having a fixed bracket layout in the logic (each game in the bracket has two predecessors, contributing two teams each to the next game). But we can then represent different-shaped brackets like bye rounds by having an empty game or game with only two competitors, and (optionally) have the client-side UI omit these games in the display. That'll keep the server-side logic cleaner.