Competition tracking is used by captains of teams to track their team competitions, which usually result in prizes such as cash or Gold Membership.
Introduction[]
There are three main methods that are used by captains of teams to track competitions. At the heart, all of them are based on Team API, which is Nitro Type's JSON API links. The directory for these links have changed over time, but as of September 2022, they are at this page, where CODE is the tag of the team.
Methods of Tracking[]
Lacan NTSport[]
Try2Win4Glory (an Olympic Bronze Medalist) and his team have built both a third-party website and a Discord bot capable of handling team competitions.
- As of September 2022, the current version of the website is hosted on this site and creating an account is required (using a unique password, different from your NT account or any other account is strongly recommended). The site operates on a freemium model, but free features are quite generous. Once an account is created, a captain or competition host may choose the team they would like to create the comp for, the duration of the comp, the start time (within 12 hours, if a free account), and whether they would like the link to be accessible by the public or only to the comp creator. Once the comp is created, results can be viewed by races, speed, accuracy, or points.
- In January 2023, the website stopped working for a time. The Discord bot still worked, but only for general racer statistics, not for competitions.
- In February 2023, thanks to the programming efforts of Malakai/AlmightyOne, the website was back up, and team comps via Lacan were again operational.
- In June 2023, unfortunately due to changes on NT's side, Fly Lacan was no longer operational.
- In October 2023, Fly Lacan was again operational.
- In December 2023, Lacan finally shut down completely.
Benefits[]
Generally accessible to any captain, whether on Discord or not. Results can be viewed by all four metrics: races, speed, accuracy, or points. Results can be easily copied and pasted into a Google sheet to collate for cross-team competitions.
Limitations[]
There are sometimes stability issues; a backup method is always recommended in case the website is down.
NTComps[]
Nusakan has built a third-party website capable of handling team competitions, ntcomps.com, which is currently free to use. The tracker debuted in a cross-team competition between HONT, S0RC, and STACL on October 19, 2023. It is still the only tool that natively integrates and updates multiple team trackers simultaneously.
- The site features a daily/weekly team tracker team tracker.
- The daily tracker runs off of Eastern Time. You can also see results for previous days.
- There is a separate tab for races this week and last week.
- Each team can add a daily race requirement or a weekly requirement to the team tracker (this feature requires an admin account that should be requested from the developer).
- There is also a "flight" system whereby the team can be manually divided into mini-teams that are color coded. This also allows for easy tracking (and easy kicking) of those who are not meeting racing requirements.
- There are "on-a-roll" features that show when a player is doing better than usual by comparing to season accuracy and speed, which is very motivating. There are also individual player leaderboard pages where one could see improvement over time.
- The site also has individual racer trackers by NT id. For example, agentgarbo's NT racer ID is 50851700 and the individual racer tracker is at https://ntcomps.com/racers/50851700. Note that the racer must have been on a team tracked by NTComps in order to have an individual racer history page. An NT racer ID can be easily identified by using one of the statistics bots, such as Magmal on Discord, or by viewing the page source from the racer page. Search for RACER_INFO: {"userID": to find the NT racer ID.
- Comps can be created from the comps page and are manually approved, unless an account is requested from the developer on Discord or through the site, in which case they are active immediately.
- The comp tracker is fully featured, and integrates races, WPM, accuracy and points. There is designated place for comp information for those stubborn MotDs that can't seem to get posted.
- It can run cross-comps across multiple teams and automatically update results every 10 minutes from the NT API.
- It has a "tier" system where racers across all teams are divided into tiers A, B, and C, by season speed, for better competition.
- It also shows results by flight.
- It is possible to export comp results to Excel by appending .xlsx to the competition link for easy copy and pasting.
Benefits[]
Generally accessible to any captain, whether on Discord or not. Results can be viewed by all four metrics: races, speed, accuracy, or points. Results can be easily copied and pasted into a Google sheet. This tracker is a star at handling cross-team competitions.
Limitations[]
Captains without admin accounts on the site should contact the developer for access. A backup method is always recommended in case the website is down.
Lib.so[]
This is a third-party, private solution that is owned by Volatile, captain of SSH. It is capable of tracking races, speed, accuracy, and points, however, use is limited to a few top teams. Teams that have used this in the past include TALK, PR2W, SSH, N8TE and TBZ.
Limitations[]
As a private, limited solution, it is not an option for most captains.
Other Custom Solutions[]
Some team captains are developers and have built custom trackers for their teams. Examples of such are FOLLY's captain Toonidy (perhaps better known for several of his useful scripts, such as the MOTD and stats on race page) who logs daily races here and ComputerHope captain of IBM. Since these are custom built solutions, they are also able to make comps and trackers suited to custom rules. For example, ComputerHope's stats page has an automatic list of who is in danger of being kicked, and how many races they need to stay on the team. He also tracks weekly racing, donations, earnings, and unique comp rules and results, among many items.
Manual[]
Most captains simply look at team races on the team page and calculate the number of races done during a defined period, based on snapshots of the team roster, and a simple calculation of the starting and ending number of races. However, it is not possible to tell speed, accuracy, and points in this fashion. To do so, data must be obtained from the Team API, and a baseline obtained; differences can then be calculated for the variables of interest (races played, seconds played, characters typed, errors typed), and from those differences, the speed, accuracy, and points can be calculated. The NitroType team page natively does these calculations on a team level, however, as of September 2022, Nitro Type has not incorporated any other team competition tracking mechanisms into the website, natively.
There are ways to import data using Google sheets and API, however, sometimes that results in false values for what should be null values. Google sheets tends to repeat the values of the row above when data should be null. This is a serious limitation, that, if overcome, would open new doors and possibilities.
Opportunities still exist for new solutions to be developed. A scalable and accessible solution would be welcomed; there is always strength in diversity.
Limitations[]
Manual solutions can be a hassle to calculate, but it is useful to have as a backup when systems don't work as expected.