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Main => Beta Testing => Topic started by: jodybingo on January 29, 2011, 08:42:37 PM

Title: Displaying Prizes
Post by: jodybingo on January 29, 2011, 08:42:37 PM
I used the following token to display my prizes today with a total of 23 spots paid. TD rarely showed my last few prizes, and would reset to first at different levels and I could not predict or figure out when it would complete displaying all prizes. This is b4.
<prizes orient="horizontal" max="23" showAmounts="true" roundOff="true" rotate="true" rotateMax="3" rotateDelay="3">

(max was originally set to 0 and I changed it to 23 hoping this would rectify something, unfortunately not.)
Jody
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Magic_fubu on January 29, 2011, 08:57:21 PM
have you tried it without the quotes, or with -1? I know with the marquee tag, -1 would be continous, perhaps it may be like that for the prize orient tag?

Just my idea, as a non-html coder :)
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Corey Cooper on January 29, 2011, 09:14:29 PM
When a screen change occurs, the whole screen is updated.  Any tokens that perform like the <prizes> token, in that they "rotate" and display different things for a set amount of time, will be reset on a screen change.  So, for example, if you have 2 different but similar screens, and the <prizes> token is on both screens in the same place, the rotation will go back to the start at the screen change, and if the screens are similar enough you might not even notice that the screen changed.

Same thing is true if you have the token in a cell with multiple property sets and a different property set is chosen (based on some conditions(s) changing on the tournament).

I don't know if that's what is happening to you, but something to consider.
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: jodybingo on January 29, 2011, 10:27:02 PM
I am using only one screen.
And it would display all the prizes...once every few minutes.
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Corey Cooper on January 30, 2011, 09:26:30 AM
OK.  Well, what exactly does it mean that "TD rarely showed my last few prizes"?  If the token only displays 3 prizes at a time, then it would display prizes 1,2,3; then 4,5,6; then 7,8,9; then 10,11,12; then 13,14,15; then 16,17,18; then 19,20,21; then 22,23; then start over.  Does it stop at 13,14,15?  Does it always make it to 19,20,21 then go back to 1,2,3?

You also mentioned "and would reset to first at different levels".  A level change will always produce a screen change.  So, does this happen only on level changes?
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Corey Cooper on January 30, 2011, 09:34:52 AM
FYI, I think you're on to something here, but I'm not sure exactly what at this point.  I believe there are a bunch of events (internal events, not TD Events) that occur that might trigger a reset of this token that should not.  But I'd like to know what you're seeing.
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: jodybingo on January 30, 2011, 02:48:44 PM
Sorry for being unclear. by different levels I meant prize levels. TD would show up to 18th on a few rotations, 15th on other rotations and would rarely show up to 23rd place.

Update***
I ran TD in a virtual machine (XP under W7) and all prizes displayed properly
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Corey Cooper on February 01, 2011, 10:49:18 AM
As long as the clock is simply counting down, the <prizes> token should rotate properly.  But any actions you take could have the effect of resetting it back to the 1st prize.  Actions like pausing or unpausing the clock, busting a player out, adding-on, rebuying, moving a player, etc.  Just about any change you make, even unrelated changes like adding a player to the tournament even if you don't buy them in, changing the cost of a rebuy even if no one has rebought, or adding a player to the database, will reset the state of the rotation.

Could this be what you saw, or did the rotation not always complete even when nothing (other than maybe the clock running) was happening?
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: jodybingo on February 01, 2011, 10:59:39 AM
There is nobody in front of the computer while this is happening. Nothing interacting with TD either. No events planned. One screen only. I stood in front of the extended display watching and trying to see if there was anything happening every time the token reset and found nothing that i could point a finger at.
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Corey Cooper on February 02, 2011, 10:28:49 AM
Did anything else appear to not be functioning as usual?  For example, did the clock skip a second?  This would indicate the screen wasn't updated during one interval.  But since your token has the prizes displaying for 3 seconds at a time, the screen would have to not be updated for at least 3 seconds to see this.  I dunno, I'm not sure what's happening.  I'll try to spend some time and see if I can reproduce it.  Let me know if you learn anything else.
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: jodybingo on February 02, 2011, 04:33:48 PM
I reloaded the completed tournament this afternoon and watched the prizes display properly without any hiccups.
Out of curiosity, would the option to suppress the screen saver cause the token to reset? It doesn't seem to be on right now, but it might have been on when I experienced this.
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Stuart Murray on February 02, 2011, 04:43:33 PM
depending on how much information you are displaying this may be a cause for your token to not rotate properly, for example the UK Casino layout uses a horrendous amount of resource and needs a powerful computer to run it smoothly, if not you notice a distinctive lag with the clock not counting down correctly on older XP laptops with limited RAM and Processor.

The fact that the token ran ok with the tournament complete is likely to do with the clock not running, therefore cells are not updating and events are not firing as there is no clock, try the difference with the clock running (undo several players or restart the tourney) and then if it hiccups again pause the clock to see if it rotates without issue.

It may simply be the case that the information you wish to display is struggling due to the power of your system.

Regards
Stuart
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: jodybingo on February 02, 2011, 04:59:02 PM
I am on a Intel Dual Core 2.8 GHZ with 4GB RAM and running W7 Pro (32bit)
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Magic_fubu on February 02, 2011, 05:07:20 PM
as a semi-expert in computers, knowing the program and seeing what you have, it shouldn't be an issue. If your system is at least a year old and used extensively, the processor and RAM may not be that well up to speed. I would probably look  for something else, personally, but i wouldn't rule out hardware either if it's starting to age.
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Stuart Murray on February 02, 2011, 05:29:38 PM
not an issue with me im on a Sony Viaio AMD Dual Core with 4GB, merely an observation of other computers that have used my screen set-up
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: jodybingo on February 02, 2011, 06:32:10 PM
My computer(s) are only about 3 months old, and even at that, when I reloaded the tournament a few days later, the issue disappeared
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: Corey Cooper on February 03, 2011, 10:39:20 AM
I reloaded the completed tournament this afternoon and watched the prizes display properly without any hiccups.
Out of curiosity, would the option to suppress the screen saver cause the token to reset? It doesn't seem to be on right now, but it might have been on when I experienced this.

This is a great observation, but I've just tried this with a few configurations of the screen saver and the screen saver suppressor and the prizes rotated normally.  In other words, either of these "kicking in" had no effect on the rotation.

Also, based on the discussion it sounds like hardware isn't an issue.  I was alluding to hardware in my earlier post, but also to the issue that some users see where the software appears to use more resources and slow down over the course of a tournament.  That could still be a possibility, but I'm really thinking that there could be a background task within the TD that is sending out an internal event and causing this to occur.

Which makes me think of: Auto-save.  I just tested this and indeed the rotation is reset when an auto-save occurs.  Could this have been the cause?
Title: Re: Displaying Prizes
Post by: jodybingo on February 03, 2011, 05:10:08 PM
This is a possibility. I set auto-save on every tournament and have it set to 60 seconds. I will use that saved tournament and try it out again with auto-save enabled (when i reloaded and all prizes displayed properly, the auto-save was disabled.)