Creating a tournament

About

Sendou.ink can used to run Splatoon 3 tournaments without the need of another bracket hosting website. Currently it is in limited beta. Note that you should only make tournaments you host yourself. Creating tournaments on behalf of others is not allowed. Access is available to two groups:

1. Patreon supporters of Supporter tier or above
2. Established organizations

See the /faq page for more information about established organizations.

Creating

Tournaments can be created via the add menu (the + button on the top right of your screen) after logging in assuming you have access, by choosing “Tournament”.

Using a template

At the top of the form you can select one of your recent tournaments as a template. Doing so copies over its settings (description, rules, tags, format, map picking style etc.) to the new tournament. Follow-up bracket start times and the registration closing time keep their distance to the new start time. Badge prizes are only copied if you still manage those badges, and a trophy prize only if it belongs to an organization you can host for.

Fields

This section explains all the different options when you are creating a tournament and what they do. The form is split into steps: Basics, Teams & rules, Maps, Format and Prizes & review, the last one showing a summary of the tournament before creating it.

Name

Name of the tournament.

Description

Description of the tournament, shown when registering. Supports Markdown including embedding images.

Organization

Which organization to host the tournament under. Note that if you do not have global tournament adder permissions (patron perk) you can only host tournaments for organizations that are “established”. To host a tournament for such an organization you need either the Admin or Organizer role.

Rules

Rules of the tournament. Supports Markdown including embedding images.

Date

When the tournament starts. Note that unlike calendar events, tournaments can only have one actual starting time. Start times for additional brackets are set separately in the tournament format section.

Discord server invite URL

Invite link URL to your tournament’s Discord server.

Tags

Tags that apply to your tournament. Please take a look at the selection and choose all that apply.

Badge prizes

Badges awarded to the winners of the tournament. You can only select badges you manage.

Alternatively a trophy prize can be picked from the trophies of the tournament’s organization. A tournament can have either badge prizes or a trophy prize, not both.

Logo

Tournament logo you can upload to be shown in various places. For non-patrons the logo is shown publicly only after a moderator has checked it.

Tournament settings

Players count

Choose whether you want to host a regular 4v4 tournament or 3v3/2v2/1v1 tournament.

Max team size

Only shown for 4v4 tournaments. The maximum number of players a team can have on their roster, between 4 and 10 (default 6). The limit does not apply to tournament organizers adding players to a team, they can add up to 12. For 3v3/2v2/1v1 the roster size is always exactly the team size.

Registration closes at

The date and time when sign ups close. Leave it empty to close registration at the tournament start time. Not shown for invitational tournaments. When the registration closes new teams can’t sign up, add team members or change their registration info. All of this is still possible via admin actions regardless of whether the registration is open or not.

New sub posts can also no longer be made after registration closes, unless registration closes at the start time, in which case subs can be posted until the tournament is finalized.

Ranked

Host the event as ranked or not. Ranked tournaments affect SP and contribute to the seasonal rankings. A tournament hosted during off-season is always unranked no matter what is chosen here, and so are 3v3/2v2/1v1 and test tournaments. Some events are not allowed to be run as ranked:

• Gimmick rules (some weapon restrictions is fine for example “no duplicate specials”)
• Skill capped in any way

If you are not sure whether your event qualifies to be ran as ranked, ask before hosting.

Splattercolor Screen toggle

When enabled, Splattercolor Screen is banned in a match if the teams’ accessibility preferences call for it.

LFG tab

Allow participants to look for more members via the LFG feature and sign up as subs (after registration is closed). With this off there is no LFG tab and no subs list.

Autonomous subs

Allow teams to add subs while the tournament is in progress on their own (via the Add sub button on their team’s page). If off then all the subs have to be added by the tournament organizers.

Require in-game names

Especially for tournaments where verification is important. Players need to have submit an in-game name (e.g. Sendou#1234) and this can’t be changed after registration closes.

Invitational

All teams added by the tournament organizer manually. No open registration and no subs list.

Test

Test tournaments are for dry-run testing. They don’t appear on the calendar, don’t send notifications to players, and won’t show up in players’ profiles or results. Test mode cannot be changed after creation and the tournament will never become a real tournament. The toggle is only available when creating a new tournament, not when editing.

League

Makes the tournament a league: an event played over weeks where every starting bracket is a division and the teams schedule their sets themselves. See Leagues below. League tournaments get the League tag on the calendar automatically.

Draft

Draft mode hides the tournament from the calendar and front page. Only organizers can see and access it. This is useful for preparing a tournament privately before making it visible to participants.

The tournament must be opened before any bracket can be started. To open a draft tournament, edit it on /calendar/new and disable the draft toggle. Once opened it can’t be put back into draft mode.

Unlike test mode, draft tournaments are fully functional once opened: they appear on the calendar, affect rankings/results, and behave like any other tournament.

Draft vs Test

Feature	Draft	Test
Visible on calendar	No (until opened)	No (never)
Accessible to organizers	Yes	Yes
Accessible to anyone with link	No (until opened)	Yes
Can be opened later	Yes	No
Affects rankings/results	Yes (once opened)	No (never)
Bracket can be started	Only after opening	Yes
Toggle editable after creation	Yes (until opened)	No
Purpose	Prepare tournament privately	Dry-run testing

Tournament maps

With sendou.ink tournaments all maps are decided ahead of time. The map settings can be edited until the tournament starts, but changing them resets the maps every team has already picked and checks those teams out.

Team picked

The tournament organizer chooses which modes are played (any combination, Turf War included) and how many maps each team picks in every mode. By default a one mode tournament has teams pick 6 maps, two modes 4 maps each, three modes 3 maps each and four or more modes 2 maps each.

The maps teams can pick from are either the SendouQ legal maps, all maps or a custom map pool built by the organizer. A custom pool needs at least one more stage than teams pick in every mode.

Teams pick their maps as part of the registration process. When the tournament is in progress an algorithm builds the map list of each match out of the two teams’ picks, both teams getting an equal amount of their own picks and maps the teams have recently played avoided where possible. The last map of the list is a map both teams picked when one exists, otherwise a random map from the pool that neither team picked. When starting a bracket the organizer can fix the mode order of the rounds with the same mode patterns as organizer picked tournaments use.

More info on how it works.

Organizer picked

Note that here you select just the map pool. The actual map lists are picked when the bracket starts (or prepared in advance). You choose the amount of maps per round, whether it’s a “best of” or “play all” and optionally a pick/ban style. The maps are generated from the pool, and any of them can be edited or the whole list rerolled before starting the bracket.

Tournament format

Choose the tournament format. You can have at most 10 brackets with teams advancing between them as you wish.

Source bracket means a bracket where teams come from. Target bracket means a bracket where teams go to after first playing some other bracket. A bracket can be both at the same time.

Bracket options

Each bracket has a name and a format (single elimination, double elimination, round robin or Swiss). Depending on the format some extra options appear:

• Single and double elimination: group count, up to 16 groups each playing their own elimination bracket. Rounds played picks which of the last rounds are played (semifinals, finals and the 3rd place match for single elimination, winners bracket finals, losers bracket semifinals & finals, grand finals and bracket reset for double elimination). A round can only be left unplayed together with the rounds it feeds teams to, and the teams still in the bracket when it ends share their placement.
• Round robin: max teams per group. Teams are distributed equally so groups may end up smaller than the selected number. Starting round robin brackets can also have A/B divisions where teams are split into an A and a B pool and every A team plays every B team once (requires an even amount of teams per group).
• Swiss: group count and round count. Early advance/elimination can be enabled so that teams stop playing once they reach the required amount of wins or exceed the maximum amount of losses. With it on you also pick how many wins are needed to advance, and the target bracket doesn’t take placements (the teams that hit the threshold advance).

Bracket progression

The brackets are shown as cards in columns. Brackets in the “Starting brackets” column take their teams from the sign-up. You can set which teams start from which bracket in the seeding page. Note that when you have more than one starting bracket you are creating a tournament where teams that start in separate brackets will never meet (so in essence they are separate tournaments but just happening on the same tournament page).

Brackets in the columns after it are follow-up brackets that take their teams from one or more earlier brackets. To send teams from one bracket to another, drag the ● of a bracket onto the other bracket (or click/tap the ● and then the other bracket) and pick who moves on: the best finishers (e.g. “Lost in the semifinals”) or, from an elimination bracket, the teams knocked out early (e.g. for an underground bracket). Cards can also be dragged to move or reorder them, which also sets the order of the bracket tabs.

When the format is edited on the bracket admin page after the tournament has started, each bracket instead has a “Teams join from” option (“Sign-up” or “Another bracket”) and the placements that advance are typed in.

Placements

On the bracket admin page placements are typed in as a comma separated list. So e.g. the following are valid:

• 1,2,3 - places 1, 2 and 3
• 1-4 - places 1 to 4
• 5+ - place 5 and every place after it
• -1,-2 - teams eliminated in (losers) rounds 1 & 2, elimination brackets only

Placements are relative in the sense that the amount of teams that sign up don’t affect them. 1 is always the 1st placement but 2 is the “2nd best possible placement to achieve” and so on. So for example with round robin the amount of teams advancing from that bracket depends entirely on the amount of groups (which is decided via sign ups.)

For example in a round robin bracket with two groups of four teams each, placement 1 is both groups’ winners and placement 4 both groups’ last placed teams.

Start time

Whether to start the bracket right after the previous one concludes or at some other time. This can be useful for two day tournaments. Note that it’s not really meant to organize an event that spans many weeks, use a league for that instead. Only available for brackets that take their teams from another bracket.

Check-in required

Whether to require check-in to the bracket or not. Note even if you leave it off, you can still check out teams. Check-in starts 1 hour before the bracket’s start time, or right after the previous bracket finishes if no start time is set. Only available for brackets that take their teams from another bracket.

Editing the format later

The format can be edited on /calendar/new until the tournament starts. After it has started the format can still be edited by an admin of the tournament on the bracket admin page, but brackets that have already started can no longer be changed or removed, and which brackets are starting brackets is locked in.

Limitations

Current limitations. Feel free to leave feedback if it’s blocking you from running some event you wish:

• At most 10 brackets per tournament.
• Teams that start in different brackets can never meet, so routes coming from separate starting brackets can’t merge into the same bracket.
• Brackets can’t source each other in a loop and the same source bracket can only be used once per target bracket.
• Negative placements (teams dropping out in the losers rounds) are only available when the source bracket is single or double elimination. A single source can’t mix positive and negative placements.
• Placements can’t have gaps (e.g. if 1st and 3rd advance somewhere then 2nd must also) and the same placement can’t be sent to two different brackets.
• The highest placement that can be used is 100.
• A/B divisions are only available on starting round robin brackets.
• A Swiss bracket with early advance/elimination must lead to another bracket.

Leagues

A league is a tournament played over weeks instead of a single day/weekend. It is enabled with the League toggle when creating the tournament.

Divisions

Every starting bracket (bracket that takes its teams from the sign-up) is a division. Teams are placed into divisions on the seeding page like with any tournament that has many starting brackets. A division can continue to other brackets (e.g. a round robin followed by playoffs) and teams from different divisions never meet.

When there is more than one division the tournament gets a Divisions tab listing them and the brackets are viewed one division at a time.

Registration

• There is no check-in, registration simply closes at the “Registration closes at” time (the tournament’s start time by default)
• After registration has closed teams can’t unregister on their own, the organizers handle it

Starting a division’s bracket

When starting a bracket the organizer picks a “Playable from” date for each round next to its maps. A round can’t be playable before the round preceding it. The date is a calendar day that starts in the earliest time zone (UTC+14), so the round is playable everywhere once that day has begun there. A round without a date is playable right away.

Alternatively the bracket can be started with “Play in real time” on. Then its sets are played right away like in a regular tournament and the teams don’t schedule them. This is useful for example for top 4 playoffs played on one day after a scheduled round robin.

Scheduling sets

Every set of a scheduled bracket has a Schedule tab on its match page, visible to both teams, the organizers and the streamers.

1. Scheduling opens a day before the round becomes playable (right away if the round has no playable date).
2. Either team proposes up to 6 times they could play. The tab shows when their own roster is free based on the teammates’ availability.
3. The other team picks one of the proposed times, or answers with times of their own.
4. Once a time is agreed the set can be played from the moment its round is playable. Teams are free to play before the agreed time if both are ready.

After agreeing either team can propose new times to reschedule. The other team doesn’t have to agree.

Organizers can pick a proposed time on behalf of the teams or set the time themselves from the admin tab of the match page. A time set by the organizer is final, teams can’t propose other times after it.

Notifications are sent when times are proposed to your team, when a set gets its time and when a set is starting soon (an hour before the agreed time). Events related to scheduling also appear in the match chat.

Matches page

Once the league has started it has a Matches tab listing the sets of a division (the viewer’s own division by default, or all divisions) split into scheduled, unscheduled and past sets. Sets marked for cast by the organizer get a Cast badge and sets currently streamed by a team member a Live badge.

Elsewhere on the site

• Scheduled sets are shown in the sidebar’s events
• A scheduled set marks its players as busy in their availability for an hour from the agreed time
• A set streamed by a team member or marked for cast shows up among the sidebar’s streams around its agreed time