Hey guys! Briefly I'll mention I've been playing since VGT and I have great appreciation for both the game and the staff that have always run the FMP leagues behind the scenes. Love and respect for you guys.

I'm a senior programmer/software developer and I see a good opportunity I think I should at least mention here.

There's an obvious hindering factor of competitive fastest map play which has been there since day 1, which is that it's not "natively" supported in SC, nor SCR. This results in less fluid experience overall in terms of finding games, managing ladder, communities and so on. I'll note here that this does not suggest anything about SCW or how it's run (SCW is an amazing thing).

I see a very well-fitting solution for this, which would be to use the ShieldBattery engine to setup a new infrastructure. This would result in a new launcher client, and of course a ladder system. All played games and players as a result of this would be obviously automatically integrated/processed.

Since the framework would be custom you get the benefit of shaping it in any way. But a couple of obvious features might be: chat/friend system, lobbies, ladder, seasonal approach, profiles, matchmaking etc.

In terms of which fastest maps you would play on, or how all the smaller details of this would work out I don't know yet, but maybe a solution would work where it's like the current SCR ladder map pool: you could select which maps you veto. But that's more like a detail right now.

Overall, you would have a launcher similar to the Battle.net launcher, but it would be dedicated to the fastest map league genre. You would be able to see chats, add friends, engage in matchmaking, play ladder matches, and all the usual.

As I see enough capacity, free time for myself to develop this project, I'd gladly do it. But obviously, if I present this idea and people either don't care or the response is "nah we're good" then... yeah.

The engine: https://github.com/ShieldBattery/ShieldBattery

For clarity's sake, SB already comes with a launcher, but it would be replaced with a new one.

Thanks