The Elite Forum
The Big Three Plus One => General Chat => Topic started by: David Wonn on June 09, 2012, 10:02:26 pm
-
The 2012 Virginia meet Kart spreadsheet is almost ready, and here's a sneak preview of the newest features from my development machine. I couldn't put in all the stats from 2011 because I am missing some papers. (Ngamer, Jimbo, do either of you still have them?) Anyway, here is what a sample round from 2010 would have looked like in the new sheet:
(https://forums.the-elite.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdavidwonn.kontek.net%2FMKMAST12.GIF&hash=9973376893643b0dbdb46f9fe7e7b70b49083bcc)
As you can see, several enhancements have been added:
1. At last, we will have the results from every track entered into the sheet! Previously it only accommodated the total number of 1st place through 4th place finishes, which didn't really tell the whole story. This was my commitment to Kevin Booth that we will finally have more documentation of what happened on the spreadsheet itself, rather than having to dig through all the scraps of paper.
2. On that note, I also created a separate spreadsheet for printable blank rounds for the referee / scorekeeper. It will look something like the screenshot above, but formatted to fit 4 to 5 groups of 4 people on one sheet, so that we no longer have to draw our own sheets. And since it will be aligned in a similar fashion, it will make the data entry much quicker and easier for the statistician who enters them.
3. Also not visible in the screenshot above is that the "End" tab for the semi-finals and finals will now include the 4P format we are using this year, with the passage of Rule I-B. That tab will also have a similar look, including results from every track.
4. Ordinal numbers (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, etc.) are finally implemented! All rankings in the main rounds and beyond will have this new touch. And they said it was impossible under Excel 5.0 / 95 without the use of macros or VB scripts.... :-)
5. New color highlighting will automatically take effect to highlight good performances. I chose to automatically make the cells turn blue for each 1st place finish, a high number of total 1sts, a low total number of 4ths, and high overall scores. I also have it turn red for forfeits (FF), disqualifications (DQ), and general error conditions. I don't want it to be overkill, so I welcome any feedback on this matter.
6. I introduced a column at the beginning to denote which seat position each player sat in. In early tournaments, specific seats were enforced, but now that we have GameSharks to take care of problems with character selection, I made this minor modification.
7. Lastly, I moved the scores away from the far right side since I had to introduce 16 new columns for the individual tracks. While it logically made more sense next to the total number of 4ths, there would be a huge gap at the bottom where the grand totals are. Plus I had to make columns as narrow as possible to fit within the native 800*600 resolution of craptops I, II, III, and IV without having to scroll horizontally. It will all make more sense once you guys see it at the meet.
All these changes will make documentation easier not just this year, but also in future years for whomever takes over, assuming the existing format doesn't change too much (although it likely will undergo significant changes for 2013.)
5-8008BF4C-0F
80076F1C
46105480
-
This looks awesome, Wonn! Just seeing this has me pumped for the tourney. *turns on MK64*
-
Good work, Wonn
-
So when the the new spreadsheet is ready, please include me so I can play some Mario Kart :)
-
^
Let Ngamer know you are interested, Adam; I think he's still handling the prelim round matchups. Maybe we can get a prelim round together, and put in a GameShark so we can both be Bowser and not have to do paper-rock-scissors to see who gets him. In fact, I'm going to modify the "Pre" tab now so that Bowser's name fits. I'm sure I can shrink some other cells to make this work. This should be fun.
-
I'd better get groomed during the meet to eventually TAKE OVER THE REIGNS OF KART. BOY I CAN'T WAIT.
Seriously, I love detailed Excel spreadsheets, and this is pretty neat.
-
Good work Wonn!
I'll look around and see if the recent Kart sheets are around here somewhere.
-
So when the the new spreadsheet is ready, please include me so I can play some Mario Kart :)
Behold. I made room for you and your favorite character!
(https://forums.the-elite.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdavidwonn.kontek.net%2FMKPRELIM.GIF&hash=5d34e18fde9ba96b115ceaf6d2987f71b7f34a11)
Adam, if you are paired with me in a 2P prelim this year, and you pick Bowser, I will too. This could be the first alternate driver pick in preliminary rounds since 1997, when I picked Bowser against the host, who's coincidentally also named Adam. It would be a nice way to make things come full circle. Bowser doesn't get enough respect anyway, so I can't think of a better way to pay homage to this tournament's roots and to our Bowser rivalry simultaneously one final time.
-
I'm not afraid of playing ANY character. Bring it on!
-
this looks like the excel from windows 3.0
-
^
I was wondering when somebody would comment on the operating environment. :-) [Warning: Be prepared for long explanation!] You are close, but both screenshots above are actually from Excel 5.0 on Windows for Workgroups 3.11. I find its ability to switch to the even older 4.0 menus (initial screenshot) much more efficient for certain repetitive tasks like (un)protecting sheets. Alt-O,P is way faster and closer to the Control-Page Up/Down keys than Alt-T,P,P. And when I have to do that often for all 16 tabs, it's a real time saver. Don't even ask me to do all that with a mouse! I know it looks strange, but there is a little more history on why it's designed on relic machines....
For the 2006 St. Louis Kart meet, I had initially only designed the sheet for 8 players. When we just barely missed that target number (7 players actually works out more elegantly, mathematically speaking), I wanted to expand it to ensure we would be well-prepared for various numbers of players in future meets. I also did not yet know which laptop(s) I would later have at my disposal, so I wanted to ensure as much backward compatibility as possible, while still remaining feasible. Hence the spreadsheet project was ported to a 386 running Excel 4.0 on Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (which could also be run on Windows 3.0 if I felt so inclined.)
All the tabs you see now were initially individual spreadsheets. I figured it would be too cumbersome to run it this way, so I merged them together in Excel 97 format so they could be run as tabs in the same spreadsheet. That worked fine for the first Virginia meet since we ran it off of Jon Mertz's laptop. When he couldn't make it in 2008, and I had acquired several throwaway laptops, I decided to back-port it to my (physically) smallest laptop, since I had just barely enough room in my carry-ons to bring it. I didn't have a whole lot of time to prepare, and that particular Pentium 75 laptop already had Office 95 on it, so I figured I could work around its slight limitations.
Now that I have Office 4.3 loaded on my PS/2, I figured I'd back-port the whole thing once more while making the latest changes. That particular 486 is built like a tank, and I have plenty of free space on it to make several revisions, compared to the roughly 3 megs of free space on the P75 laptop! Some of the laptops are having CMOS battery issues and other things, so it just makes sense for me to do the development work on my desktops / servers instead. The added bonus of designing it on a 486SX25 is that if I can initially load the entire sheet in 8 seconds, and then have snappy performance afterward, then it will naturally run even better on any Pentium and above. If only all developers would design on older hardware, we wouldn't have such bloated and buggy apps these days, but I digress.