I am also sorry you are having trouble with the new version. I understand this can be frustrating, especially since version 2 was working for you. I'll do my best to help. Let me address a few of your points first:
I have been happily using version 2.5.12 on my laptop (Old with XP but I only use it for poker) with no problems.
A little popup told me there's a 'new version' so I thought OK why not, it should be better... shouldn't it???
So I downloaded it sent off for my new licence number etc. and tried loading it - I should have been concerned when it needed IE8 but undeterred I upgraded to IE8 and continued to load the new 'better' version.
Version 3 doesn't "need" IE8, but it is recommended. IE7 is required. IE8 has some pretty dramatic scripting performance improvements over previous versions of IE, so I do highly recommend it.
I have my tournaments set up in such a way that when loaded all I have to do is add players, which automatically buys them in, seat them randomly and press start and we're away. On the ‘Add Player To Tournament’ screen, I only want one list of names, how do I get rid of the other columns?
When seating players, I have a 9 seat table and an 8 seat table. When seating 8 players on the 9 seat table the old version would always put them in seats 1-8 leaving seat 9 free. The new version varies the ‘free’ seat despite checking the ‘seat players as near to seat 1 as possible’ in preferences. How do I persuade it to leave seat 9 free?
Seating management has not changed in version 3. So whatever worked in version 2 should be exactly the same in version 3. The option "Seat players as close to seat 1 as possible" still works. However, if you are using the Auto Seat feature at buy-in (which is implied by your statements above), then the software does not automatically seat close to seat 1. This is explained in the user manual and in the Auto Seat tooltip, and has not changed in version 3. The "Auto Seat" option at buy-in seats players at
any open seat and table/seating balance is not taken into consideration.
Now the BIG problem:
The clock does not display correctly. It seems to be keeping correct time overall but the display hesitates
so instead of:
15.00 – 14.59 – 14.58 – 14.57 – 14.56 – 14.55 – 14.54 – 14.53 – 14.52 – 14.51 – 14.50 – etc.
You get:
15.00 – 14.59 – 14.58 – 14.58 – 14.58 – 14.55 – 14.54 – 14.54 – 14.52 – 14.51 – 14.50
This does, unfortunately, sound like a resource issue as Stuart described. The layout was improved to allow more varied conditions, which will take some additional processor work. However, there were efficiency improvements as well that would have hopefully offset this. Further, the performance improvements in IE8 should definitely make up the difference. But without further information/testing/evidence/that sort of thing, I'd make the guess that the hardware isn't sufficient.
I was so impressed I tried to launch version 2.5.12 only to find all the layouts and database were missing and it couldn’t find them. (yes I know they’re not ‘lost’ but it will take time to set it all up again). It seems that this new version has ‘high jacked’ the data and hidden it from the earlier version!!!
Absolutely not. The software has changed nothing as far as where your data is stored. Want to return to using version 2? It's easy. Because version 3 installs as a separate application and does not "upgrade" version 2, unless you specifically direct it to install in the same folder as version 2, then you should still have version 2 installed and can use it at any time. Version 3 does install new versions of the default templates, and will upgrade your database to the new format (IF and ONLY IF you make a change to the database from version 3), but all you need to do is restore a backup of your data. If you followed the instructions in the big red box on the Download page (
http://www.thetournamentdirector.net/download), this shouldn't be a problem. Even if you didn't, that's OK. Download and install the latest version 2 (2.5.13) from the Download page. I released a new version of 2 in which I back-ported the database code. So version 2.5.13 can read a version 3 database. And I added a feature in version 2.5.13 to make it easy to get your version 2 templates back. Just follow these instructions:
- Start the TD (version 2.5.13)
- Select the Preferences tab
- Press the Data Stores button
- Right-click the Active Data Store and select Initialize
- Check "Always overwrite existing files"
- Press the OK button
- Exit and restart the TD (version 2.5.13)
I’m sorry but I can’t see the improvements or benefits of this upgrade and I really regret the change, I’ve had nothing but problems. However now that I have upgraded I need to get it sorted – especially the clock.
So to recap:
1. How do I get rid of unwanted columns on the ‘Add Players To Tournament Screen’?
2. How do I persuade it to leave the higher numbered seats clear?
3. What can be done to improve the clocks erratic display?
No doubt I will find other problems but these are the main ones for now.
JB
1. You can't get rid of those presently. They were added to aid in choosing players, and I have an item to allow them to be selectable (a preference), but until I complete that feature, they're not optional.
2. See my comments above.
3. Make sure you've got the latest video drivers. Make sure there's nothing else unnecessarily running on the PC. You could even try downgrading to IE7 to see if it helped. I would suggest upgrading to IE9, but I don't believe it's available for XP.