Isn't 100% done, but it's getting there. Hopefully done completely in a few days.

Here are some example results generated from last hour:

http://www.funtrivia.com/triboard.cfm

I decided to go with 2 divisions to keep competition tight and the thrill of winning meaningful. I could still change my mind, but I kind of like it being somewhat special to win.

Awards:

- Triathlete: Winner of your division in an hour.
- Tri Achievement: Score at least... 2500(?) points in an hour.
- Tri-mini: Score in the top 25% in your division.

The idea is that Achivement and mini should be obtainable by anyone investing a little time.

Triathlete is designed to be pretty difficult and some people (like me) would likely never earn it (even in the lower division!).

Any other ideas for something cumulative to add to this?
Perhaps, an award for X top-5 finishes in the "Veterans" division, or something?

Looks very good here - I'd add a cumulative award, based on placement points: In veterans, top 10 go from 10 to 1 and in amateurs, top 6 get 6 down to to 1 points. 500 to win the badge with the possibility to later add a mega at 5,000.

Works for me! lol

http://www.funtrivia.com/triboard.cfm

By the way, I'd put the tri achievement at 2,660 points. Yes, that's a rather odd number, but it adds up the scores of the three individual achievement badges (960 + 820 + 880). Thus the tri achievement would be the same as all three achievements in one hour (with the option to compensate for a lower score by scoring more elsewhere).

Edit: mini-bug in the display which isn't that important - just like the chat boards and some other random places on the site, the list on the game ignores the red editor stars. I guess you're using some subroutine to generate the name display, so maybe you can fix that one.

Since this is supposed to really be a challenge, I would put the score even higher, at 2700. The people in the Veteran group have already showed that they can achieve the individual badge requirement numbers. Why not prove that they can push it even higher?

Then again, for this they have to do it in all three categories in the same hour. Given the changing topics, the combinations adds to the challenge sufficiently, in my opinion. But I'll go along with whatever happens.

Terry, I'd pay to see you try to ride a bike at the same time as you're swimming and running underwater Ah, it's a silly thought but it gave me a giggle!

Seems good to me just had a go and scored 2607 at current time of scorring during the hour, will change as more people play the games.

Getting better 2780 this time round. This looks like fun.

I like the idea that this new badge/badgelet will foster more participation.

(This is from the results page.)

Does this mean that you can only do the Triathlon in the first half-hour of each hour?

For example, I just played the three games between 7:50 and 7:55. This was the easy game ending at 8:30, the intro game ending at 8:45 and the hard game ending at 8:00. Does this mean that even though they were played at the same time (directly after each other) my total would not have been considered for the triathlon if the challenge were live because the three games aren't considered part of the same hour?

That is correct. Terry might want to implement a "triathlon marker" on the main page so that players with three checkmarks on the games can quickly assess whether this triplet is a correct one or not.



Not quite. If you want to play it all at once, you are right. You could however play easy at 7:31, intro at 8:25 and hard at 8:58 and they would all be part of the 9:00 set (as the most extreme example) and if you play easy, intro, hard in this order with 15 minutes between each game, you are always sure that the games stay in the same triathlon hour.

Of course maybe Terry could consider moving the times on these games to a closer staggering while still maintaining a few minutes to keep the load down on the server - going to :45 (intro), :50 (easy) and :55 (hard) would actually help compared to the current setup because of fewer things happening at :00 - and then you could pretty much always just play them in sequence without worrying.

Thanks Wesley. It hadn't occurred to me before reading the info on the results board that playing the three games within 60 minutes might not be the same thing as scores in a specific hour. So when I actually read the results board it prompted the question.

I like the idea of a "triathlon marker". I don't think changing the times would make that much difference. Unless they were all going to end at the same time there would still be some calculation or double-checking to make sure the games were in the same "hour". In my example from this morning, if the games ended 5 minutes apart it still wouldn't have been the same hour - I probably would have gotten the "there is no record of you starting this game" message on the third one.

Really enjoying this new challenge Terry. Looking forward to it going online. I posted a suggestion a couple of weeks ago about creating a player of the month badge from points collected from the team games. Not sure if you saw it. That gave me the idea that perhaps you might want to include top player of the month for points collected in the Triathlon. Perhaps best all round score of the day goes into a monthly tally for one badge a month (not top ten as in other monthlies). What does everyone think?

This one is close to completion now. Just need to make up the badges. I'll hopefully finish that up tomorrow.

*makes some room in the tower for the new arrivals*

Ok Wes, added badge "Triathlon Winner".

Added "Triathlon Award" mini. Made it top 20%.

Added "Triathlete" badge. 2750 point requirement.

Note that none of these badges can be won yet -- still connecting stuff up.

Woo-hoo! Thank you, Terry! As somebody who loves the team-oriented hourly games, I'm going to LOVE the Triathlon game!

Coming from a team, some of whose members keep asking me to play the hourly games, they are also going to LOVE the Triathlon game!

Woohoo Terry! Thanks!

Added cumulative badge "Iron Brain".

How about a rusted brain?! Ha! Too much iron and the brain fluids rusted it? Any avatar is fine. I'm just glad the game is up. Thanks.

When does it start?

I noticed the Triathlete mini badge has the same image as the Alchemy mini badge.

Ok, all the code is in there to award badges so it's ready to go.

I'll open it up tomorrow morning my time.

I'm debating moving "Triathlete" up to a total score of 2800.

What do you think?

Fixed

Badge Tarts, please form an orderly line at the starting gate, and please stop drooling!

If I am reading this correctly, it says you need 500 points for the Iron Brain badge at the scores page but at the badge description page it says 700 points.

Thanks, fixed. I scaled it up to 700 since the # of points that can be earned is now higher.