Project Tournamnet Manager (Mac OS X)

[GreatFox]

Well... when at GenCon SoCal, I mentioned to Jimmer how we would really like to have an OS X version of Tournament Manager.

He mentioned that if I could make it, they would love to view it and see if its good. If so, they would be willing to allow it use. As long as it works simallerly to the existing version. As long as it can output the same .TRN files (basiclly just a simple text file).

I am willing to get this project going. However, my programing skills aren't that good. I'm currently attempting to make this project using RealBasic. Of course, this would be a lot easier if I know some Visual Basic. At the moment, I'm just building up the GUI and will be working on the coding as I figure it out.

Of course, if there are any Mac users out there with programing skills, your help would be much appreciated.

Also, since I know we want the Mac version to be much better than the Windows version, feel free to give me some input on what other features should be included and what not.

I'll be giving updates as the project progresses. :thumb:

 

[Magmar2000]

That sounds great.

I don't know any coding things - or anything like that. So I can't be much help in that department.

But if you can think of any other ways for me to help out, just let me know.

 

[marril2k]

Well... I'm a windows user (who does have both his Laptop and Desktop look more like a mac than pc...), but if you want to have Tournament Manager Mac anything better than windows, you just need one thing... functionality. No more needs to be said

Really though, I think... if you can get something stable first, than you already have a leg up on what we have now... perhaps having decent pairing sheets printed out? Also on the subject of print outs, what about match result slips (both styles of printing...). One thing I realized with manager, when you cut to the Top X, it seems to just drop everyone else in the event, and as you contiune it keeps dropping those players. I think an idea more like what was in reporter, where its another window, not actually affecting the listings of the players in the event. I once used Manager for an unofficial event to see how well it would handle. A few players left early and well, comes time to get the final standings, there no where to be listed, or seen in the event... I had to recalculate the math to figure out where they would rank to set their prizes aside...

Who knows, while your at it perhaps you can get a stable PC port too

-marril

 

[bulbasnore]

Well... when at GenCon SoCal, I mentioned to Jimmer how we would really like to have an OS X version of Tournament Manager.

He mentioned that if I could make it, they would love to view it and see if its good. If so, they would be willing to allow it use. As long as it works simallerly to the existing version. As long as it can output the same .TRN files (basiclly just a simple text file). :thumb:

That is amazing(ly good news)!

The entire project would have been really nice if done in Java from the start; then it would have run on Mac & Win (and PDA). OK, I got that comment out of the way.

Random comments that I hope may be helpful (and all advice worth at least what you paid for it):

RealBasic is pretty good as a project tool/language for this. It should handle a lot of high level things for you (like formatting for print and accessing print drivers). I'd recommend you find a RealBasic 'online community' and check this out before investing effort in this product though.

MacOSX comes with disk called DevTools (which you can also download from Apple). It has a ton of open source development tools, etc. You can also sign up with Apple for free to be a developer and get their ProjectBuilder stuff which is supposedly quite easy to build applications with and does high level stuff like printing etc. They do a demo where they build a text editor by dragging and dropping objects in like 20 minutes.

Check out this site for tons of Mac Development ideas and a place to ask some questions:

http://www.macdevcenter.com/mac/

Don't start from scratch unless you have to do so. Check this out for other projects under way that you could build off of:

http://freshmeat.net/search/?section=projects&q=+tournament+-unreal+-UT

This could take a while, but even if it goes slowly, you could have something better than wherever the windows version is at by the fall of 2004. It might start slow. Hang in there.

Also, I'm a pretty good Perl hacker, only got to chapter 8 of 'learn java on the mac', but I have helped folks debug their Visual Basic code. If you can wait til April when I'm done with my dissertation, I could even help.

In some ways, it would be nice to do this as a 'web application'. You can run Apache locally on your Mac (or PC) for that matter) and handle the programming in Perl/PHP. Now you have a 'universal' application AND the browser handles LOTS of high level stuff for you like printing and screen display. W/ PHP you can even have it output PDF files to print match slips.

Good luck and feel free to bug me about this.

 

[GreatFox]

Yeah... I had thought about using the Developer Tools included with my copy of Mac OS X Panther... I just don't have the Hard Drive space (I still have and use my old Rev. A iMac).

From my understanding, RealBasic is suppose to be easy to learn and requires no programing skills. Since my background is DHTML, ActionScript, and Lingo... I figured it would be the easiest to use without it hoging up my hard drive. I also hear its similar to Visual Basic... so maybe someone with knowladge in Visual Basic could help out (alot).