TIMELINE

is a scoreboard-esque program to give a graphical overview of a game.

It is copyright Doug Burbidge 2008.  Source code is included, and permission 
to use, modify and redistribute is granted.


SUMMARY

Run it, press F5, set the GameServer IP.


INSTALLATION

TimeLine can be installed on any machine on the same network as the Game Server.

Place TimeLine.exe in a suitable folder, such as C:\Program Files\DougWare.  
Create a shortcut to it.


USE

Run it.  Press F5 (or right-click and choose Preferences).  In the resulting 
dialog, set the Game Server IP address.  (If TimeLine is running on the Game 
Server PC, you can leave it at 127.0.0.1.)  (You can configure other 
preferences, too, if you like.)

TimeLine will now listen to the hit-by-hit data that you see on the bottom 
right of the scoreboard ("Alice hit Bob in the Laser", and so on), and will 
display it graphically.

The marks you see in the red bar are things done by the red team.  For example, 
a blue dot in the red bar means a red player hit a blue.  A larger blue mark in 
the red bar means a red player put a shot into blue base, and a full-height 
blue bar in the red bar means a red player destroyed blue base.  And so on for 
other colours.

Within each bar, red dots apear towards the top, blue in the middle, and yellow 
towards the bottom, to make things a bit clearer and to make more room.  When a 
lot of things are happening at once, marks often overpaint each other.


KNOWN ISSUES

If you restart Game Server while Timeline is running, TimeLine may pop an error 
dialog.  If this happens, simply restart TimeLine.

TimeLine sometimes gets only part of a hit from GameServer ("Alice hit Bo").  
If this happens, it simply does not display the hit.  It only sems to happen 
when there are a lot of hits coming in in a short period of time.

TimeLine has no memory, other than the current game.  If you close and restart 
it, its memory will be cleared.  When a new game starts, its memory is also 
cleared.  If you start it halfway through a game, it has no memory, so it 
assumes that the game has just started.


MORE

Source code is included, so if you'd like to see how TimeLine works, or enhance 
it, take a look.  I compiled it in Delphi 5, but it also compiles in Turbo 
Delphi, available free at:
http://www.turboexplorer.com/

Trying to find out why we get some partial packets would be nice.
Improving the "key" that appears on the right during the first half of a game 
would be nice.
You could use this code as a starting point for a completely different 
visualisation, scoring or logging tool.

Amusingly, TimeLine runs correctly under Linux and Wine.

Send feedback to: dougburbidge@dougburbidge.com