Messages

286

Suggestions / Re: penalty timer

« on: November 28, 2006, 02:16:29 PM »

I do think that just adding the +1 minute would make it workable as a penalty timer.

It would be nice if we could resize the timer or choose its size in the preferences (maybe too hard to do).

That way, even if it was on top of the screen I would move it to an unused corner - right now it takes up about 1/6th of the screen, so it covers a bunch of info.

Again, though, this is a very minor feature request. 

287

Help Me / Re: Tournament Point Suggestions

« on: November 28, 2006, 09:10:48 AM »

I agree with the last post.  I was in a 6-month league last year and you had to pay a little extra to be in the running for points.  After a while, people would slowly drop out because they might be half way down the list and didn't see a lot of chance to catch up.  So the only people interested in the points and participating in the points championship were those in the top 10 spots.

I would limit it to no more than about 20 tourneys to keep people interested.

Do the math for whatever points schedule you choose with some theoretical finishes (give a couple people a couple of wins, others single wins and high places, other single wins and medium places, others high places and medium places, etc).  Then you can see whether or not, after 10 tourneys, if the people in the middle will have any chance of catching up with those in the top spots.

I also like the idea of getting at least token points for showing up.  Then you have extra motivation to play.

For my single rebuy OR single add-on tourneys, everyone starts with 2 points, but you lose a point for a rebuy or 0.5 points for an add-on, so at a minimum you will finish with 1 point.

Here is my "points for playing" formula: (n-r+2) + if(r= 1,3,0) + if(r = 2,2,0) + if(r = 3,1,0) - nr - 0.5*na + 0.5*nh

Essentially, start with 2 points, 1 extra point for each step up the ladder, top 3 places get 3, 2, and 1 extra points.  lose a point for rebuy, lose 0.5 points for add-on, gain 1 point for each hit.

So, the bigger your tournout, the more points you can win by placing higher in the tourney.

Not sure how this would work for a 30 person league.

288

Suggestions / Re: penalty timer

« on: November 27, 2006, 07:17:29 PM »

Actually, I wouldn't have a problem with that, except for 2 items.

1.  My default hand timer is 30 seconds (by the time it becomes and issue and I or someone calls "clock" and I turn around and get the timer started, I figure 30 seconds is enough - just my opinion).  So, since you can only imcrement the hand timer by 10 seconds at a time, to get to my rules designated minimum 5 minute penalty, it would take a while to increase from 30 seconds to 5 minutes (let alone 10 minutes for second offense).  If I could increment the minutes by +1 and +5, then maybe that would work.

2.  I don't mind the hand timer being always visible while it counts down, but for a penalty timer, I would want to be able to minimize it and just have it pop-up when the time is done - otherwise it takes up a bunch of realestate and covers important info for a big chunk of time..

I don't need to necessarily have it associated with a player, but if I was running a BIG tourney, that might be nice, just so I knew what table/person the penalty was on (I will never run one that big, unless someone cons me into helping with some charity thing).  Although, if the penalty timer was small and a name was associated with it, then there is the advantage of the shame factor for the person with the infraction (or maybe it calls attention to the person and that isn't good - I am sure that Matasow, or whatever his name is would just do it so his name would be displayed for everyone to see).

My 2 cents (not worth a ton since I have not yet had to apply a penalty and I don't do big tourneys).

289

Help Me / Re: points problem

« on: November 27, 2006, 03:03:31 PM »

Gosh darn it - only place I didn't think to look and that was it.

Is that a default thing to have points in the prize area?  (or maybe at some point while I was futzing with the tourney I put those in there - although I have no memory of that  - of course my memory is in serious question most of the time :-).

Thanks Corey - I forgot that one can assign points with prizes so I never thought to look there.

All is well.

(and one guy was so enamered with TD at my tourney this past weekend that I am sure he will purchase it - he was shocked at the price for such a feature rich program, but I told him the best thing is that if no one on the forum has an answer for a question or problem that more often than not the developer will chime in)

290

Help Me / points problem

« on: November 27, 2006, 12:44:08 PM »

O.K., unusual problem.

Here is my "points for playing" formula: (n-r+2) + if( r= 1,3,0) + if(r = 2,2,0) + if(r = 3,1,0) - nr - 0.5*na + 0.5*nh

Essentially, start with 2 points, 1 extra point for each step up the ladder, top 3 places get 3, 2, and 1 extra points.  lose a point for rebuy, lose 0.5 points for add-on, gain 1 point for each hit.

When I test this for my first place finisher who had 5 hits (11 players) it appropriately spits out 17.5 points.

On the player rankings page it gives him 37.5 points.

2nd place person got 27.5 points, 3rd place got 23.5 (also wrong, should both have 13.5 points [2nd place had 1 hit, 3rd had 5]).  Again, the test button for these people works as it should.

everybody else got the correct points.

What is going on?

291

Templates, Layouts and Sounds / Re: Custom Layouts

« on: November 26, 2006, 08:14:09 AM »

I am absolutely no expert on this video out thing, so I don't know how far you could get without some type of "booster", but they do make simple "Y-connector cables" that will send video out to 2 separate monitors for quite cheap.

Something like this http://tinyurl.com/uru5c
for $15 could get you 2 monitors going if that is all you need.

I have no clue how far away from your computer you could get with that second monitor with this solution.  someone posted on this forum about having success with this solution - I can't find the post.

I think it is aweful handy to have audio going to that separate room though - just my preference maybe, but I like to have dedicated dealers and it is handy to have some type of notification of the end of a round so the dealers have an audio cue without yelling from the other room to confirm the increase in blinds.

292

Templates, Layouts and Sounds / Re: Custom Layouts

« on: November 25, 2006, 11:40:28 PM »

I use a video/audio splitter/extender connected to the laptop (Got mine at Globalcomputer.com but you could probably find others).

http://tinyurl.com/yafl7z

One monitor uses a 35 foot cable, the second uses a 25 foot cable connected to an older laptop and I lose no video quality.  Splitter/extender is advertised as being able to extend to 200+ feet without loss of video quality.

I got the model that has 4 video out ports and 4 audio out ports.  Then I bought a "cables to go" brand monitor cable that also has an audio cable in it so that I could send the audio to where my distant monitor is too (http://tinyurl.com/yed4x8)

If you don't need sound (although it sounds like you might if you are using a separate room), then they have video splitters without the audio option that are cheaper (and then obviously you wouldn't need the monitor/audio combined cable.

They also have a "2 video port out" model available (both with or without audeo out) that is obviously cheaper than the 4-port job (and you can daisy chain any of these to multiply your monitors.

So, say you don't need sound in your second room, you could get a 50 foot monitor cable for probably $20-25 and the 2-port video splitter for $35-40 and you are good to go for maybe $60.

I think I did it with the 4-port audio/video with 35ft audio/video cable for close to$100.

Very pleased.

293

Templates, Layouts and Sounds / Re: Custom Layouts

« on: November 25, 2006, 12:50:50 PM »

How are you going to display your TD screen?

Big monitors, TVs, projector?

Part of your layout decision is how big your display is going to be.

I have two or three 19 to 21 inch monitors around the room depending on how many tables going (2 monitors for 1 table, 3 monitors for more).

I find that I have to somewhat limit what I put on one screen, otherwise the font sizes have to be small and you can't read anything anyway.

Something to think about as you plan your layout.

The Hollywood layout is quite nice, but for me, the info would be displayed too small on the monitors that I use, so I would have to delete some elements.

If you were using bigger screens, then it might be a very nice layout and you could whip up something similar in short order.

Good luck and when you run into problems the forum will no doubt help.

294

Templates, Layouts and Sounds / Re: Custom Layouts

« on: November 25, 2006, 08:21:00 AM »

Just try it on a test game/layout and play for a while.

You need very little to no HTML experience to customize a TD layout - it helps some to know some of the HTML tags, but it really isn't necessary, Corey has built so much into the program that TD takes care of a lot of the layout for you.  You could create a decent TD layout with no knowledge of HTML.

Here is a nice little web site that has a non-fancy, easy to follow tutorial for basic HTML (bottom of the page) - this isn't rocket science by any means.  The same web site has a list of HTML tags and tells you what they do and what kind of attributes they can take.

http://www.html-reference.com/index.htm

I won't say that it doesn't take some time to set up a nice layout and if you want to add graphics and logo's then you have to know a little about picture editing and have at least a rudimentary image editing software - but again, not a lot of rocket science required.

You don't want the layout too complicated anyway - otherwise it will be hard to read.  I used to have multiple screen sets that would scroll during a tournament.  I keep taking out screens because the main screen that shows the blinds and the round timer are the most important items for the groups I play with.

295

Help Me / Re: displaying points during tourney

« on: November 22, 2006, 12:25:50 PM »

yes, go to the properties tab (right click) on the player rankings page.

choose "edit column"

Choose "points" for a column (move it from the right hand side over to the other side).

You can also add hitman and many other things.

296

Help Me / Re: Make a cell

« on: November 22, 2006, 09:08:06 AM »

player rankings can be somewhat customized, but can't include other information.

The other 2 options (Inlineranking and ranking tokens) that I mentioned you can place in any screen (in any cell) and will do what you want.

297

Suggestions / Re: Locking player in seat, auto save and a critical error or two

« on: November 22, 2006, 07:32:52 AM »

How about a taping a piece of paper over the button that says "do not touch under penalty of utter humiliation and a whipping with a wet noodle - I mean it, don't even think about it" . . . well, o.k., it is probably a small button, how about "NO "

 

298

Help Me / Re: Make a cell

« on: November 22, 2006, 07:26:27 AM »

I think there are at least 3 ways to display this information.

easiest is to display the "Player Rankings" screen in one of the screen sets (adjust the settings on the "player rankings" page to only show busted out players.  This can show who the hitman was.

Then there are the tokens "inlinerankings" and "rankings", either of which can be inserted into a cell and pretty much give you what you want.  Check out those tokens and the properties that they can have.

I have had less success with "inlinerankins" only because it can be harder to read than a table format (such as "rankings" or "player rankings").

I recommend displaying the player rankings page.

299

Help Me / Re: I need some sounds

« on: November 21, 2006, 08:52:51 AM »

best sounds thread.

http://thetournamentdirector.net/forums/index.php?topic=73.0

If you have a PC there isn't a much easier route than using the sound recorder program to record your own.  Get your wife, girlfriend, mother to do it.

It will take you all of 5 minutes.

300

Suggestions / penalty timer

« on: November 19, 2006, 09:24:17 PM »

O.K., a very minor feature request (for version 4  ).

How about a "penalty timer".  Same as hand timer, but one you can set for a different time (say 5 minutes or 10 minutes) that would run in the background and then play a sound when the penalty time was over.  I would think the program would only need one, but maybe if one was running for one person, you could have a second start for someone else if necessary (I will never run tourneys that big!).

I actually haven't had a reason to penalize someone yet, but have a time penalty noted in my house rules, always figured I would just use my watch timer.  Have given a warning before.

And how convenient . . . the "P" hotkey isn't taken yet