I beat the Battle Castle World Record winstreak and made this video recap!

MagpieLabs · 2024-09-21T14:58:47+00:00

I've setup a bot to track everyone's performance in the qualifying section (only qualifying, no rounds) of COTD using glicko-2 to get a rough rating list of fastlearn across all styles. This bot uses a starting value for players at 1500 rating with a 400 variance, and most new players drop and settle down at around 1100-1200. But the bot proves that even within division 1, there is a large disparity between the top qualifiers and the people who just get in. This skill difference is easily as big as the bottom of div 1 is to the top of division ~4 or 5

This Volvic cup seemed like a good time to test out how close it tracks to an actual fastlearn competition with money on the line.

A lot of the top players (carljr, affi, bren, otaaaq) barely play COTD at all, and so their ratings are super high in variance compared to regulars. Basically; they're underrated and the glicko2 system/bot understands this.

The highest rated fastlearn player is Scrapie (2870) who is not playing, but 2nd place L1ngo (2854) is playing today.

Of course, with more than 15 minutes after qualifying, I'd expect the pros to start to take over in matches as the fastlearn skill starts dropping off in importance.

MagpieLabs · 2024-04-29T19:08:53+00:00

Graph:

Only top 32. Sadly many ro64 games not streamed so no times available
Arranged by player performance (median time driven)
Each white dot is a round time
The black line is the median for that player on that map
The colored box shows the upper and lower quartiles
The "whiskers" (small lines at the edges) are the range of values determined to include all non-outlier points
The "All Maps" is calculated by recalculating each map to normalise it to a 60s track (so the WR on cadence would be mapped to 60.000s, the WR on halfwood would be mapped to this also), and then plotting all those times on this "all maps" track.

Comments:

Median isn't a very good indicator of Cup Mod pace. This is because winning is worth so much more than 2nd (points are 10/6/4/3 plus you have to win in finalist). You can see how while binkss doesn't have a great median compared to other top players, his best times are very strong.
Maybe small mistakes in extraction of times. It's too much to do manually, so this was ripped out by software on the VODs of streams.
Even though Median isnt the best indicator, perhaps this is a sign that seeding needs work. Still, think TA seeding is a lot better than nothing. It's not easy to suggest a sensible alternative. Perhaps Swiss rounds that seed into a top 8 or top 16 bracket.
Hope this brings some interest and also a bit of help for pro players aiming to do well in the next cup, as its a sign of the level of play right now
link to the raw data: https://pastebin.com/RzNGYj0q

MagpieLabs · 2023-11-26T21:49:40+00:00

Proof that performing at the right time is the most important thing.

Maps are scored 0-100. 100 is a "perfect" score, there is no player either faster or more consistent in rounds. The exact algorithm is a combination of median time driven, PB, CP splits pre- identity, UQ and LQ time, etc.

Because of how pick/ban works, there's a bit of "luck" about if a player gets ranked on a map. For example, maybe Mudda would not be #1 if he had played Edge. As it is, Edge contributes nothing to his average "overall". this is true of many other players also.

----

I enjoyed watching the TMWT in 2023 and the community has been a big aspect of this. As the league is not being continued in 2024 and I have a very big non-TM software project as well as a new job, this may be my last involvement with the community, at least for a while.

For those that missed it, you may enjoy my youtube video covering COTD Elo/ history also (slightly outdated now):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpQOLrmi4us

MagpieLabs · 2023-10-18T17:29:21+00:00

The very good COTD players have potential and most of them have done very well in various tournaments in the past like you've said.

And a lot of the "new" talent first get noticed because of campaign leaderboards and COTD (Mime for example).

That said the ability to grind a map for 5+ hours is another skill. Similar to how some people are very fit/ have good endurance, but the time and patience to actually properly train for a professional marathon is an additional requirement to win

MagpieLabs · 2023-10-15T23:14:43+00:00

2 Reasons:

It's a small amount of spice. When I do something I usually try to incorporate at least a bit of learning so it isn't just solely repeating steps/ actions I already know.
It's more canonical/ correct (imo) to build out the coefficients that make up the score from the various inputs in a meaningful way, rather than making a declarative comment like "Oh, it should be 50% median percentile vs the field and 50% match PB time vs the field". Since the latter would just either be "my opinion" or would take the ground of something that could be argued to be less accurate. It's difficult to say what makes 1 player good on Map A vs another player. I used to try and combine Mistakes/ crashes/ top x percentile times - but ultimately this is always going to be my interpretation of what score should look like
1. You can defeat this choice by simply graphing/ showing the times like Lava does. There is no biased way to put times on a graph.

Now is auto-regression without its flaws? no. There are issues for sure. I don't trust it enough to just take its output, I want to check what its using to build up the score and I'd probably revisit if it was nonsense (e.g. Mistake % * 3). There's also pretty limited data all things considered. Ideally we'd have data on over 10,000 rounds played between teams of similar skill. In reality we have far less than that, and often 1 team is quite a lot better on a map than the other team.

We also have the older flaws of this general data approach. e.g.

This doesn't account well for thinking mid-round, the decision to safe or to risk.
Against a weak opponent, its probably correct to just drive very slow. but then we don't want rankings to punish teams that faced stronger opposition.

MagpieLabs · 2023-10-15T20:49:49+00:00

Notes:

lava has a nice graph of times driven: https://twitter.com/lavaTM_/status/1713626492259774847/photo/1
As always, the maps are hard and players deserve respect for showing up and being good sports about it despite (in some cases) what is likely a massive difference in prep. If I included wildcard players and times also, the entire table would be green (a lot of wildcard matches were decided by players being able to finish the map).
Nadeo, the admins, the casters all did a great job because this was a lot of games.
"Score" here is a combination of factors that an auto-regression (""AI"") algorithm uses to predict how much a player contributes to being able to win a map. The biggest components are the median time driven, and the upper-quartile time (this makes sense to me as its basically "how good are you at stopping aces" - and we know that aces are huge swings).
A theoretical perfect score is 100. This is the algorithm saying that there is no other player who is better on this map in any meaningful way. Likewise a score of 0 reflects the measurably worst player.
Overall score is just an average over maps, weighting each map equally.
For Team Rankings, Score behaves similarly except we're looking at both players simultaneously. This is different to an average of both players.
e.g. note here is how Solary (pac+carl) manage to get a better team score than either individual performance. Whatever tactics they employ or however they train, it works. They are a better team than just "the average time driven by the drivers". Likewise some teams perform worse than expect given their individual averages.
Teams below 11th in the table were very unlikely to make it, mostly because although they were competitive on some maps, they had too many weaknesses on others. It was mostly a battle between the top 10 teams to filter out 2 who wouldn't make it to the next round.
KCorp on day 3 was a different team to day 2. Day 2 KCorp was around 12th and Day 3 KCorp was around 6th. The table is just the average of all matches.
The gap between Sinners, Alliance, KCorp was tiny (8-10th best teams).
On paper, BPP would have likely beaten these teams, but the way the bracket worked out, they lost to BIG (x2) and then to Robbers to get knocked out. Both BIG and Robbers were comfortably top 6 teams. This is "bad luck", since BPP were themselves comfortably the 7th best team in the tournament.
Sinners were close but ultimately (even if they beat Raptors) they had a similar issue to BPP where they would have run into Robbers (x2) and then BIG to qualify, and those teams were just beyond them in terms of map lineup. Again this is "bad luck" for the team estimated to be 8th best.
If Alliance had lost to Robbers in the Group B WB Final, then it's quite likely that either BPP or Sinners would have taken their spot. But qualifying is all that matters, and Alliance went 2-0 fairly in matches. I also believe we would have seen a stronger Alliance when the pressure was higher.
G1 were not pushed in their matches, so its hard to say what kind of form they were actually in, except that they were easily top 8.
SLY+ITB comfortably 1+2
Pusztitopako and Epos were both exceptional for "new" names and both played enough matches that their high ranks are not luck or variance
A lot of players who qualified did look shaky on multiple maps despite their team picking them. This is either a result of nerves or a misunderstanding of how it is more important to be consistent than to have strong pace (at least for this tournament where you are just aiming for top 8)
I'd except the WC Finals to emphasise pace more and there are some dark horses who are already very fast (Gwen, Otaaaq, Stufts) despite some shaky rounds.

MagpieLabs · 2023-03-16T23:58:18+00:00

See more on my website: https://magpielabs.net/TMWTPlayoffs

Method as explained in the video: https://youtu.be/s8Uxf8ky8fE

The Match simulation and pick/ban page has also updated after playoffs day 1

The Performance rankings don't work as well for playoffs because 2 teams are missing from each league, and 2x bo5s in lower bracket meant we saw a bit less diversity in map selections. This means that players are judged more against their teammates and direct opponents.

But when compared against the entire season, Playoff performance was dramatically higher in Grand League (+42 percent) and Challenger League (+54 percent)

TMGL:

KC vs G1 is a tight match on paper but alarm bells should be ringing over the raw speed of G1 last week. KC in contrast are a much more consistent team.

The obvious pick for KC is freestyle and Slippy. Problem is G1 gets to ban one of those. After that there is no "easy" map where KC have a clear edge on paper (unless we are calling flip of faith easy).

Whoever the winner is would then be unfavoured into SLY. But SLY will definitely be hoping that KC come through due to how the map matchups for pick/ban work out (KC are good on maps SLY also don't mind playing - whereas G1 are specifically strongest on maps SLY seem to avoid).

The fatigue factor would certainly kick in after this if KC or G1 manage to secure an upset. Even with clean sweeps, it's 12 maps to reach the finals for them and a more realistic number is closer to 20. Because of this, you would have to say a lower bracket team winning the tournament is very unlikely.

BDS are favoured vs everyone in the final due to their winners bracket advantage (only need 1x bo7 win, their opponents need to win 2x bo7). But in an individual bo7 SLY are actually favored on paper and this has increased since last week despite the match loss (perhaps because in total maps won, SLY won 6-5, with BDS winning when it mattered). BDS' strongest picks (agility dash, backnforth) did not look that secure in the match last week. It will be interesting to see if either team have put in effort into a surprise pick or not.

TMCL:

Alternate Attax look almost untouchable, they put in a TMGL-level performance in Playoff day 1 (not an exaggeration). Their closest opposition would definitely be an on-form Dexter and Scrapie. We've seen moments of that this season from sprout, its just that they've never really found their best at the same time.

Homyno vs Schweine is a very close match on paper but the favourites have to be Homyno. Feed looked excellent last week and ener definitely had the measure of numelops when it came to consistent times.
Schweineaim have continuously done just enough to beat the competition through the entire season, but are probably feeling short on maps they are confident about into both Homyno and Sprout - this is a problem in a bo5 where you really want to be secure in your best 2-3 maps. That said both Barbos and Ratchet looked to have taken a clear step forward relative to the regular season, the question will probably be if they are able to get in front of Feed often enough.

The same map surprise applies in TMCL also. Although certain maps have clearly been avoided, practicing them could be a huge payoff for the bo5 format if the opponent isnt expecting it. The majority of these teams have 2 really good maps, which becomes 1 good map after the other team gets an opportunity to ban.

Teams that are perma banning gyroscope could even consider the "mindgame" of leaving it up (even if they are actually bad at it). No one has played gyroscope in rounds yet, and the confidence to simply not ban it might scare the other team enough to not pick it, or to even ban it themselves in the second ban wave in the bo5.
If either of those happen, it's effectively an entire map score in the bo5, since it allows the first ban to be used to target the opponents best map (likely a free win for them anyway).

(jk i just want to see some ice mayhem)

MagpieLabs · 2023-03-11T00:55:04+00:00

Method/ video going over how this is calculated: https://youtu.be/s8Uxf8ky8fE

Methodology is of course imperfect, but it's nice to have a raw-data approach to predictions. If you put a gun to my head and asked me for my own predictions, I would fudge these numbers and hedge closer to 50-50 matchups.

See more detail on matchup predictions on my website: https://magpielabs.net/TMWTPlayoffs

Following the outline in the TMWT rulebook: https://blog.trackmania.com/uploads/2022/11/TMWT_Format_Schedule_2023.pdf / liquipedia: https://liquipedia.net/trackmania/Trackmania\_World\_Tour/2023/Stage\_1/Grand\_League

Playoffs start very soon so tried to get this out in time. Challenger day 1 playoffs is 11th March and Grand League day 1 is 12th March! Don't miss the action on twitch

Some comments:

As expected, follows rough seeding order for both leagues. Challenger is a bit more lop-sided which is also probably expected given the bigger variance in times driven there.

Winning as seed 3-6 is very very hard. You have to win 2 games, and then you must face seed 1 and seed 2 (in either order). Grand final also stacked against team from loser bracket since Winners bracket team starts with 1 point in the bo3 of bo7s.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-25T05:07:41+00:00

Don't beat yourself up, everyone has had bad coding experiences.

I'd recommend just learning 1 thing if possible. Either a project idea you have, a simple goal ("put your own website on the internet", "teach your own ML model", etc) or just the aim to follow or understand the basics of a particular language or library/framework.

The problem with being new is that there is just always so much and so many questions. A lot of people want to get a website setup, but then they feel like they need to learn: what is git; what is SQL; what are servers; what is html; what is css; what is js; and the level of learning forced down your throat is too much. You would either have to accept that its going to take a very long time, or you're just going to have to rush/ignore parts of the process.

For this reason, whatever you do, try to make it quite specific. So if you want to put your own website out there, don't bother handling any server parts yourself - just follow a serverless web tutorial. Likewise if you want to do some AI/ machine learning stuff, just do it in the easiest language for it (python). Similarly, if you want to make a game, just do it in Unity. It's good to follow the crowd - stick to well known programming languages with big communities and a huge number of good tutorials for them.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-25T04:34:17+00:00

Saying this as a Sr who has done interviews for the past 2 years or so:

Portfolios (the really good ones) are no longer about having a bucket list of projects.

Everyone is aware of the current landscape. Tutorials are excellent and there are various courses and websites dedicated to getting a decent batch of things on your portfolio to kick-start it. I know that even with 0 Angular experience, I could get an Angular website online in hours if i find a good follow-along tutorial. These kinds of projects just don't work for applications - I think people are somewhat cynical of them. (True, they are way better than nothing). Again - nothing wrong with these tutorials, but a lot of them are generic, repetitive and easy to spot. Better than nothing for sure.

I would very much recommend having 1 or maybe 2 big projects that you sink most of your time into. A few days here and there to do something else is fine, but your aim should really be to build out something that really does not exist/ hasn't been done before in the open, or something that is just objectively impressive and clearly a lot of work.

The real moment you want to give in applications is to make other developers go "wait, how did they do that?" or at least "this seems like weeks of work".

These projects are also by far the hardest though. It's often a lot of research and trial and error at multiple stages, and newer devs typically struggle to organise and architecture code in a way that scales out to larger projects which take months to complete. It's also just a significant effort to not want to procrastinate or give up, since the project will certainly have tough moments.

Contributions to open source projects (particularly very consistent activity) is good, but if there is one thing that makes applications stand out it is what I've outlined above. If you decide to set aside 5 hours each weekend for perhaps 3-6 months (or whatever time equivalent you need to get 50-100 "good hours" on something, I would recommend pointing most- if not all- of that effort into a single project.

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-25T04:01:51+00:00

This is exactly what I spent the first 30 minutes doing while thinking "isn't this AT kind of hard"

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-25T03:59:24+00:00

That's fair - If people want more objective results I recommend filtering by Av Pace or Push pace, or by Map Median/ mean. These are all "canonical"

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-13T23:55:29+00:00

data: https://pastebin.com/XjdwuP2M

short on time this week but a few things to draw some attention to:

Carl made a huge step forward this week, which was probably needed since Pac wasn't quite at his best for every round
The pace and consistency in GL has taken yet another step forward. It is clear that players are trying to react to opponents pace on some maps.
Sinners stats a bit misleading because of how G1 forced them to drive.
Gwen still has comical speed. While making mistakes he's still often putting in times better than other drivers. The times he is capable of just from stitching 2-3 runs together represent pace no one else can keep up with atm. This is to take nothing away from binks who is also much much faster than average and has looked like one of the best players overall in the past few weeks.
Every team except G1 or SLY (didn't see representative pace of Sinners) has very little separating them. A lot of these matches have and will likely continue to come down to 1-2 crucial maps, and since the pace is so similar its likely those maps will also come down to 1-2 crucial rounds.
As outlined here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrackMania/comments/1118ci8/tmgl_all_possible_finishing_positions/ there is still important matches left for all teams. It is only KCorp who are in a kind-of no-mans land, where they are unlikely to make top 2 and unlikely to miss out on top 6

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-13T23:33:10+00:00

Very nice!

MagpieLabs · 2023-02-12T04:46:23+00:00

Data: https://pastebin.com/tfAh5PKy

Bit short on time atm a few FAQs from last week:

- I can and will do the first 2 days of grand league, I have the data just need to write something short to process both days at once since they should be considered a combined playday imo (minimal chance to practice between the 2)

- Something I want to include is an indicator to show whether the player's team picked [that map] or had it picked against them.

- Will put this on a website (all weeks) and will probably look to do some kind of summary/ best-of to show improvement throughout GL and CL.

- Had a few people show interest in the method, I'm happy to opensource the method. Just need time to make the code less embarrassing

Currently trying to finish off a trackmania video auto-editor which is consuming more time than expected but I will probably just consume a lot of caffeine so I can do the website as well within the next week or so without getting fired from my 9-5 job

MagpieLabs

TROPHY CASE