Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Tournament Software 1.07

F

farbsman

New Member
Well the PTO's were given the new tournament software to try out this past weekend.

New tournament software is no better then the last one. It now prints, but it does it by player name instead of table which confuses the players. Many asked why there were 2 tables listed.

Pairings are done wrong going into round 3 just like before. When you have two players tied for 1st after 2 rounds they should play each other, right? Well not with this software.

New version requires birth date to be entered. Automatically converts there age (only thing that actually works)

Can't do byes in age modified swiss tournaments without crashing the system. which should make the State Championships interesting. How do you give City winners byes if the software crashes every time you try it.

Only way around this is separate tournaments for each age division. Modified Swiss lets you do byes, age modified doesn't.

Wow, 4 months to get the software to print, seems hardly worth it. So around the start of 2005 we might have software that works at this rate.

Did I mention now you can't open any tournaments you do in version 1.06.

Stick with version 1.06 if you have it.
 
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If anyone is interested, I've developed an alternative to TMS. I'm a software engineer by trade. After my own frustrations with TMS, I developed my own tournament software to run our local tournaments (since we've been told to NOT USE DCI Reporter). I used it at the Colorado Springs CC. It does Age-modified, late entry, awarded byes, 33%-minimum tiebreaker, and single elimination. I'm working on reverse engineering the .trn file format so that it can be uploaded. It also allows you to create a Local Players database and easily register players from that database with the click of a button. If there's any interest, I'll provide this freeware software (Windows-based VB program) for download from the internet. I'll even provide the source code for other software engineers out there who may be interested in tailoring the software as they like, or who'd like to see such things as how I implemented age-modified.
 
yes please steve ;)

The .trn format from 1.06 is very easy I've been generating them directly rather than use TMS.
 
farbs delete the first line of two of the .trn files.
append the remaining files to the unmolested .trn

you should be able to open the concatenated file in TMS and see what it looks like. hmm I'll just check to make sure that TMS doesn't freak when it gets some round 1 resutls after round 2!.

I don't think that the upload requires results to be entered in round order so I don't think that you need to do any further editing to ensure that all round 1 results come before round 2 etc. But if it does then a quick edit using any text editor will get things in the right order.
 
Okay, I'll put my tournament software online so everyone can download and look at it. I'll be publishing my wife's business website tomorrow, and I'll put the software in a sub-directory on her site. Check back tomorrow and I'll provide the URL in this topic thread.
 
SteveP said:
I'll even provide the source code for other software engineers out there who may be interested in tailoring the software as they like, or who'd like to see such things as how I implemented age-modified.
Click to expand...

I think GreatFox might like your code (Cross-Platform Realbasic). I'd like to see it, too, actually (I do web-db integration & scripting and could see the whole enter-calculate-print, even PDF thing from a portable web server package, such that you could serve and access it locally w/out network from the same computer -- I just don't know the algorithms for the pairings). Can you fix us up? If you want to email it I can PM you with my email.

'snore.
 
You have absolutely no idea how badly I would like to get a copy of your software, Steve! Please, please, let me know how I can get a copy! Our city championship had some nasty problems with the old software, and I have to admit, I'm a little leary of trying for some more punishment. The reason we haven't been sanctioning tournaments (even though we have them weekly) is due to problems with the software. Thank you very, very much for your consideration for others. Any help would be appreciated.
 
NoPoke said:
The .trn format from 1.06 is very easy I've been generating them directly rather than use TMS.
Click to expand...

If you have it's definition written out, could you send a copy?

'snore
 
Age-Modified Swiss is the only format that seems to have a problem with pairings and byes. So if you do a tournament in regular swiss or single elim you won't have a problem.
 
Believe me farbsman, I can understand the problems with pairings and age-modified. The pairings algorithm was by far the most difficult part when developing my software. When I make my software available tomorrow, I'll include pseudo-code comments to show how I do pairings.

One other thing I noticed when using TMS at our Lakewood CC:

- the age-modified pairings sometimes gave EXTREME preference to age over score. For example, TMS paired a 3-0-1 (10 points) player against a 0-4-0 player (0 points). Tthey were both 10-under.
 
'Snore, the format is written out in the TMS guide that's hosted by TC.

Or use this:

Here is a breakdown the first two lines to provide an overview of what’s in the file. The first line is the administrative information for the event:

1122333333,0,Sample Event,101,Head Judge,Anytown,Anystate,USA

Each block is separated by a Comma.

Block 1 = Tournament ID (minus dashes)
Block 2 = Type of pairing algorithm. 0 = Single Elimination, 1 = Swiss, 2 = Age Modified Swiss
Block 3 = Tournament Name. We am unsure as to how long this block of text can be.
Block 4 = POP ID of the Head Judge
Block 5 = Name of Head Judge
Block 6 = City where the tournament takes place
Block 7 = State/Region where the tournament takes place
Block 8 = Country where the tournament takes place

Each line thereafter represents 1 match in the event:

4,Kori,bouros,1,IP,Geek,1,12:51:51 AM,1/15/2004,1

Block 1 = Player 1’s POP ID
Block 2 = Player 1’s First Name
Block 3 = Player 1’s Last Name
Block 4 = Player 2’s POP ID
Block 5 = Player 2’s First Name
Block 6 = Player 2’s Last Name
Block 7 = Indicates which player won the match
Block 8 = Time that the match result was saved/recorded
Block 9 = Date that the match result was saved/recorded
Block 10 = Round Number
 
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Steve, drop me a copy of this as well. I just laid my hands on 1.07 this weekend and will really get into the meat of it this and next week.
 
DGL, thanks for the format. It looks like CSV (Comma-delimited format). Do you know what happens if there's a comma or double-quote in any of the fields? I guess I'll just have to play with it and see.

Tonight, I'll work on getting my software to open/save in the .TRN format before I release it tomorrow.

Also, it looks like my software doesn't support the time/date stamp for each match. I suppose that's needed to assure the ELO ratings are calculated correctly. I'll have to add that feature to my software tonight too.
 
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KABOOM! it hates commas quotes or anything else that might be legal in a normal csv file! There are some faults in the internal SQL that cause the TMS software to explode :( It is a very delicate programme.

No idea if POP use the time when the pairings were made or the actual tournament date for calculation of the ELO rating. I'd definately prefer that the actual tournament date is used as that is a much more reliable date.
 
SteveP said:
DGL, thanks for the format. It looks like CSV (Comma-delimited format). Do you know what happens if there's a comma or double-quote in any of the fields? I guess I'll just have to play with it and see.

Tonight, I'll work on getting my software to open/save in the .TRN format before I release it tomorrow.

Also, it looks like my software doesn't support the time/date stamp for each match. I suppose that's needed to assure the ELO ratings are calculated correctly. I'll have to add that feature to my software tonight too.
Click to expand...
Can't wait to get my hands on it. I am also a software engineer and had just about decided to go down that road which would mean dropping all sorts of other projects. Perhaps you can host it as OpenSource at Sourceforge, we could get a team together on it and whack this thing out so we have something useful.
One note about the TRN format - when you run a top 8 (or other playoff) it changes the tourney code from Age Modified to single elimination.
One last thing as I am impatient - what is your program written in? Hopefully nothing obscure like DarkBasic... ;-)
Some other stuff worth mentioning TMS will blow up on just about any punctuation in the names. If you look at the DB you will notice there is no primary key so duplicates can (and will) happen which can cause some very very strange happenings when running the tournament. I made a quickie database verifier to test the DB for duplicates and misspelled player names using the soundex. I had several issues when editing player names (*that's* not how I spell my name!) where instead of editing it would create duplicate entries.
So do you use the PUI math or DCI math when calculating win/loss and tiebreakers? I for one prefer the DCI system for these numbers...
 
Well, we still DON'T KNOW what the PUI math is (if someone does, please share), that's part of the problem. We only have one set of definitions. Those are from WotC/DCI and have been canibalized by so many other TCGs that it's not funny.
 
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