Lazer Swarm Forum

Good morning Riley

I have a few suggestions for future software releases that hopefully you are amenable to:

1. Option for scoring screen to be normal black on white (better for printer) or better yet, just html-formatted scoreboard with clickable screen to print out results. Kids love to save results and brag later (ok, maybe some adults too)

2. Running average ranking for players. This could be done in one of two ways:

a. complex: include something like SQL-lite; or
b. simple: after each game, re-compute average of each player. For example, KD's current average ranking is 1.5 and games he had played are 15. If KD earned a 3 ranking in this last played game, then his new average = ((1.5 * 15) + 3) / (15 + 1)

The new "Sharp Shooter Leaderboard" would contain the player name, average ranking, plus games played. It should searchable on player name and sortable via player name, average ranking, games played.

3. ability to export game data.

Thanks Riley for listening.

Have a nice day.

For #1, you can customize the scoreboard by editing the HTML/CSS in the following folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Astrospark Technologies\Lazer Swarm Command Center\html

For #2, I definitely plan on adding player stats.

For #3, good idea.

Good afternoon Riley

Thank you for your responses. I can now customize by scoreboard

After a night with 10 boys playing lazertag using the command center, I have a few suggestions that would improve the usuability of the lazerswarm. The truth be told, after a few rounds, we gave up on the lazerswarm and went back to the normal, free for all solo. Two reasons:

1. Registering the guns is cumbersome and takes too long for a bunch of boys chomping at the bits to get at each other; and
2. At the end of the game, invariably, quite a few people cannot get their scores b/c their guns had timeout and shut off (they were knocked out early in 10-minutes game, which is not really that long).

i took a look at the debug log to study and to understand the working of the guns and the swarm better and here are my proposals:

1. allow right-click on the scoreboard so it can be printed out.

2. On the registration screen, for each player, associate with that player two shortcuts when that player is clicked on (i.e., first player gets SHFT-A and CTRL-SHFT-A). One shortcut is used to send a request for that player's tag report and the other is used to drop the player . That way, as soon as the player is knocked out, he can report to the host and send his stats b4 his gun goes to sleep. Right now, only "drop player" is supported and it is via right clicking, not easy when you are on a notebook with one of those built-in pad.

3. The list of players on left, after each player's name, should also list his corresponding key shortcut (please see attached picture).
4. The list of players should be used when the "new game" button is pressed to automatically assign the players to the various slots/positions. That is, when I want to start a new custom 2 teams game, the list of the position shows up with the various slots denoted with the notations A, B, C, D, etc. Lookig at the names from my list, I see that Iceman would be assign at slot B. If I want to move him to another position, then I can drag him down the list to he can drop into another position. Depends on where he moves, everyone else above will move up. So, after new game is pressed, all I have to do is look up to see who is A, B, C, D, etc. and ask him for his gun to turn on and join the game.

What do you think?

PS: note on the attached sample that since only 5 players joined, the rest of the position ended up being open. On the registration screen however, the positions would be pre-filled along with the shortcut letter

Are you sure that the kids aren't turning the taggers off when they get tagged out early in the game? The taggers won't turn off automatically until after the game time runs out. The taggers will stay on through the end of the game and then report their scores as usual.

Tag reports cannot be requested for players who are tagged out early because as soon as any tagger sees the request, it will think the game is over, even if it is not tagged out. This is the same as what happens if you click the "End Game Early" button.

Automatically assigning players to taggers is an interesting idea. I'll consider it. Did you know there's two ways to assign players from a player list to a tagger? The first is to right click on the player's name in the player list, select assign, and then select the tagger to assign them to. The other is to drag the player's name from the player list to the tagger. Perhaps one of those methods will be faster for you.

Printing of scores is on my list. Are people really going to bring a printer outside with them though? How will they power it?

riley wrote:Are you sure that the kids aren't turning the taggers off when they get tagged out early in the game? The taggers won't turn off automatically until after the game time runs out. The taggers will stay on through the end of the game and then report their scores as usual.

Initially I accused the kids of turning off the taggers but I later verified it myself. In my cursory inspection, it seems battery status also affect the taggers' sleep time as the ones with weaker battery tend to go to sleep quickly. But the LTARs never seems to time out though (got two, one with 1.35V/batt average). In order, the LTTOs are the quickest to go away, then the LTXs.

riley wrote:Tag reports cannot be requested for players who are tagged out early because as soon as any tagger sees the request, it will think the game is over, even if it is not tagged out. This is the same as what happens if you click the "End Game Early" button.

hmm... what if after the game starts, I then put the command center inside an IR-shielded box for individual report request and only take it outside of the box after the game ends?

riley wrote:Automatically assigning players to taggers is an interesting idea. I'll consider it. Did you know there's two ways to assign players from a player list to a tagger? The first is to right click on the player's name in the player list, select assign, and then select the tagger to assign them to. The other is to drag the player's name from the player list to the tagger. Perhaps one of those methods will be faster for you.

Yup, but on the built-in mouse of the notebook, it is not that quick to do. Even though my notebook has a touch screen, it's still cumbersome. I ended up using a usb mouse that helped some but the "new game" process is still too slow. Keyboard shortcuts are definitely preferred. That's when I thought "why not use the list order to pre-populate?"

I also realize quickly that the list once created will auto-sort and cannot be drag-n-drop into the order that I want.

riley wrote:Printing of scores is on my list. Are people really going to bring a printer outside with them though? How will they power it?

I was thinking more like print to PDF, naming the pdf files so that I can remember which game is which. then send them PDF files later. I think if you just allow right-clicking, then this feature will be automatically available.

** also, it's not only the score per se that they seemed to be interested in; it's the fact that "I shot you XX times and u only got me YY times"

Thank you Riley for listening and have a nice day.

You can add a printer button to the scoreboard yourself by using javascript, I did and it works like a charm (had the same print to pdf idea)...
I used the code from this page: http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/printbutton.html

silly me, why didn't i think of that ? done. thanks MisterTeaBag btw, do you experience the tagger goes to sleep problem ?

Next week I'm away. When I'm back, I will try using a box coated w/nail polish. read that it's great at blocking IR signal.

Are your batteries running too low maybe? Do those same taggers last a whole game if they don't get tagged out?

Yes, if you can completely isolate the command center and the tagger you are getting the scores from, it shouldn't affect the game. Just click "End Game Early" in the Command Center software. It will not timeout, but it will run the batteries in the Command Center out faster.

I'll look at adding some more keyboard shortcuts for assigning players.

riley wrote:Are your batteries running too low maybe? Do those same taggers last a whole game if they don't get tagged out?

could be. I didn't wait for the 10-min; rather, for testing, I shot the timed-out unit until it died and watched and waited until all the sudden, from wait mode, it announced "Game over" then shut itself off even though the other two taggers were still alive and "playing".

riley wrote:Yes, if you can completely isolate the command center and the tagger you are getting the scores from, it shouldn't affect the game. Just click "End Game Early" in the Command Center software. It will not timeout, but it will run the batteries in the Command Center out faster.

It will run out quicker b/c it keeps sending out report request right? That's why I asked for the shortcut to request report from a specific tagger. As soon as it receives the report from the tagger it requested, it can stop TX and we should be OK again

riley wrote:I'll look at adding some more keyboard shortcuts for assigning players.

Excellent, thank you Riley. I was thinking CTRL and ALT are often used already (e.g., CTRL-P is often print, ALT-F brings up File menu, which is the case here, etc.), so we could use SHFT and ALT-SHFT instead?

BTW, love ur foresight of allowing the log to be visible and save. It really allows us to understand how all this work. Great work!!!

I would really like to see a "handicapping" feature (outlined in blog comments). This would allow lesser players to compete (score-wise) at the end. Another great option which I can help you implement is attaching FACEBOOK accounts to users. So, at the end of the game it can share some stats on their facebook wall. I work quite a bit with the facebook API and can help you with this. This would be a great viral promo tool for LazerSwarm as well.