I think the commentators idea is great. People will want to watch these games to improve their game, for entertainment, and to keep up with what's happening in the tournament. If they just watch the replay, less experienced players may not get as much out of it without an expert commentary. It's also more entertaining, replays can be dull. A good informative, witty, and insightful commentary from a team with good chemistry could greatly add to the replays. If done well, it would help spread awareness of the tournament, and even the game itself. I suggest that if everyone is cool with the commentary idea, that some auditions be held for anyone who wants to bring a commentary team, or try out for one. We could post some interesting replays and check out people's commentary of them, and then we could vote for the best team, or individuals. If we get any good commentary teams it could significantly improve the tournament, because the games may be intense for the people playing them, but anyone else that wants to watch a game afterwards would benefit from a good commentary I think.
As far as the logistics of it, I would suggest that the commentators would download the replay of each game, convert it into a video and then add their commentary, creating a video of the match with their commentary of the game added to the sound of the video. I can do this fairly easily. Once this is done, the videos can be posted somewhere and people can stream them. Doing live broadcasts of the games would be more problematic and the commentary may need to be edited, live commentating is hard.
I am announcing that I will be playing as shred_demon's "unknown" partner. I have discussed this with him and we're signing up. Also if there are to be commentator auditions or voting or whatever, I'd like to put myself into the mix, possibly with shred demon as my co-commentator. Having one of the teams do commentary may seem a bit biased, but in reality anyone who's interested enough in this tournament to be willing to put that kind of time into it, will be biased in some way even if they aren't a participant. Obviously the commentators should try and stay as impartial as possible. When doing commentary on my own match I would just pretend I'm watching someone else’s replay.
I'd also like to weigh in on crashes/dc/invalid game states. I think the best way to handle it is, if someone crashes or dc's somehow unintentionally, i.e. power outage, internet disconnect, some sort of routing issue between the players, anything really. Or crashes and drops out of the game, the players involved in that match should see if they can come to a consensus on whether one of two things happens: 1. no clear winner was apparent and they do the same match again with the same demigods and teams, or 2: it is agreed that one team was winning and give the win to that team. If they can't agree on a winner or that the game should be redone, then the replay of the game should be reviewed by someone or more than one person and they should weigh in on it. I'm sure we can figure out what should be done in these cases if the players in that match don't agree. As for invalid game states, I’m fairly certain that the last game file stores data up until the demigod process is terminated, whether that is because they pressed exit, pressed exit on an invalid error, or ended the process. I tested this by starting a game and then ending the dg process after 2 min and then checking the replay file, it showed the 2 min and then me leaving after and it just ends without a result. If and invalid error happens, the players in the game should try and resolve it the same way as if there was a dc, if they CANT come to a consensus, they can submit the replay, and whatever other data they can come up with to support their arguments, and we should review this information and try to come up with a verdict, whether to redo the game or to declare a winner. If the same team causes or is suspected to have caused more than one invalid game state and this seems to be working to their advantage somehow, they should be disqualified after a thorough review of the facts. I know this is a lot of work to do in the case of anything buggy or crashy or dcy or invalid happening, but this is DEMIGOD. If we don't have rules about this that take into account the fact that this stuff happens OFTEN in this game, it is likely that teams will get unfairly treated if such unfortunate things happen.
And one question, I get that the first match is one team on light side, pick first, second match is the opposite and if each team wins one of these you stated that "If there is a 3rd round, then teams can decide for themselves (keep in mind the following rule)". I don't understand what you mean by the teams can decide for themselves, clearly each team will want to be light side in the 3rd game, there has to be a rule for how this gets determined or the third match will be one sided. I propose that for the third match, the teams pre-pick their dg lineups without any knowledge of the other team's lineup, basically each side is blind making it kind of even. Problem with this is one team is going to randomly have the advantage in most situations and this will break the tie unfairly. The only fair way to do it is to keep playing 2 game sets where each team gets light side once until one team wins both light and dark in the same set. This could theoretically take forever unfortunately which leads me to conclude we either need someone to come up with another way to organize that 3rd match that’s fair, or risk really long matchups. One other way that might work but is contingent on players being cooperative is that in the third match instead of blind or one team first, they get to conference about it. For example light side picks oak tb, and then dark side picks ere reg, the light side then gets to change their combo if they wish, if they do the dark side can change theirs again if they want, and this would continue until they reach a matchup satisfying everyone. Problem with this scenario is that stubborn players could deadlock it. Anyways all of my proposed solutions have upsides and downsides, let me know what you guys think. Sorry for the crazy long post but I just found out about this whole thing today and I had a lot of catching up to do 