TioPro
TioPro, commonly known as tio tournament organizer and tio, is a computer program for running tournaments created by Nealdt, released in 2008. tio is designed to help a tournament host organize every aspect of an event, from player registration and seeding to bracket finalization and payout calculation. The program, originally intended as an alternative to Tournament Maker 2, was the most commonly used tournament program throughout the Smash community through 2006 to 2012. However, in 2013, Challonge was picked up by most tournament organizers, in part due to the steady increase in live streams, where it was much easier for viewers to check the results of matches in the bracket as the tournament went on. The website and servers were taken down sometime after 2016.
History[edit]
Nealdt started work on TioPro in late March 2006 after using Tournament Maker 2 to run his Champ Combo: Yayuhzzz Edition tournament. The first version of the program was used to run Champ Combo: NorCal Edition in April 2006, but it wasn't until 0C2 that TioPro was again used for a large tournament. Progress on the application had increased rapidly during the months prior to 0C2, and tio was sufficiently advanced to run every event at the tournament, from single-elimination crew battles to a pair of round robin brackets which fed into a double elimination bracket. nealdt soon thereafter released a private beta of TioPro (along with regular updates) to the Smash Back Room; various members of that forum helped beta test TioPro over the following months. It wasn't until January 2007 that tio was released to the public, albeit only in the Pacific West regional forum of Smashboards; this was intentionally done to keep the user base small while the program underwent final bug fixes and feature additions.
When Nealdt started AllisBrawl, the TioPro tournament organizer was available for anybody to use if they were hosting a tournament on AiB. The use of TioPro was mandatory for any tournament host that wanted their results to be uploaded to All is Brawl so their players would be recognized on the site for their placings.
Features[edit]
Tournament setup[edit]
The capabilities of TioPro include single elimination, double elimination, and Round Robin (also known as pools) formats. Each tournament can have multiple events, with any number of entrants. Organizers set options such as event details, event options, fees and prizes, and seeding.
While Nealdt created TioPro specifically for Smash, he upgraded it to include a wide variety of other competitive games. Because the program allows for multiple events, it will allow hosts to hold a multi-game tournament on a single computer.
Seeding and brackets[edit]
The seeding options which TioPro incorporates include random, manual, in order, and multiple options which separate players by location and skill. Brackets can be recreated multiple times and can be manually manipulated. Wins and losses were easily recorded as the tournament progresses and updated to tio's online server, Tia, in real time. Brackets can also be de-attached from the main program to allow it to be viewed independently, such as on a projector.
Results[edit]
Tio allows the tournament organizer to export full brackets to image formats, and can also automatically copy simple results to the clipboard for quick posting on the web. Complete results and tournament histories could be found on Tia when the site was up.
Tournament archive[edit]
In addition to running a tournament operator's tournament, TioPro's online server, known as Tia (short for "tournament archive") hosted the results of any tournament which is run by or converted to TioPro format. Results, complete with full bracket images, were interlinked throughout the site to provide a record of a player's tournament history. Tia is now defunct.
External links[edit]
- Official site (Now defunct)
- Twitter account
- SmashBoards thread
