Looking for new ways to keep score

[bmwrider]

Has anyone seen any good ways to keep score other than the score track?
I would like to try a few different methods to mark players score, I've seen a few on BGG but not many, I figure there may be more ideas on htis site due to the fact that it is strictly carcassonne.

[CKorfmann]

I've been hoping to find a computer program that would do it.  I've got one someone on this site made, but it was created before the need for subtracting points, so it's a little outdated.  I'm sure someone here has the skills to make one with excel.  Who's up for it?

[Carcking]

What we do is use colored dice on the scoring track instead of meeples. We start out with the 6 showing on top. When the marker completes one lap we turn it to the number 1 to indicate it has completed one lap. This shows at a glance which player is on what lap and who's ahead. It works out well for us. We're currently using it on the 50 space track but I intend to print off the 100 space track to make it even easier to determine someones score at a glance.

[bmwrider]

What we do is use colored dice on the scoring track instead of meeples. We start out with the 6 showing on top. When the marker completes one lap we turn it to the number 1 to indicate it has completed one lap. This shows at a glance which player is on what lap and who's ahead. It works out well for us. We're currently using it on the 50 space track but I intend to print off the 100 space track to make it even easier to determine someones score at a glance.

The die thing is a good idea, I also was going to use the 100 point track but we would like to create something that was bump proof and backward proof (sometimes a player steps their marker 3 steps the wrong way with out using math)

[Lardarse]

I'm probably going to get yelled at for suggesting this, but: poker chips.

[Bixby]

I'm probably going to get yelled at for suggesting this, but: poker chips.

No laughing at all. poker chips make a great subsitute for money in many games. They would be handy for victory points as well.

[Tobias]

I'm probably going to get yelled at for suggesting this, but: poker chips.

It is a good suggestion.

Personally I would prefer something like this though.

[teichrod]

I ordered a couple of these yesterday:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002D3X40U/ref=oss_product

I'm not sure if they will work well or not (as long as I can hold down the button and it goes up fast, it should be perfect).

[CKorfmann]

I downloaded an ipod app called Score.  It works pretty well.  It was $1.99.

[bmwrider]

I also agree that moving a score marker can be a problem, it can happen to anyone and can somtimes cause doubt in players score.

[Scott]

I've been hoping to find a computer program that would do it.  I've got one someone on this site made, but it was created before the need for subtracting points, so it's a little outdated.  I'm sure someone here has the skills to make one with excel.  Who's up for it?

I've got the skills, but we should probably talk about how it will work. I don't think a simple increment/decrement thing will be sufficient. I'm imagining something that keeps track of largest city, longest road, trade goods, etc.

[Scott]

Here's what I've got thus far:


The spinner next to the meeple icon changes the meeple color. It currently cycles through the six official colors. Does it need to cycle through the unofficial MeepleSource.com colors too? (orange, brown, purple. pink, white) This could make resizing the interface a lot more challenging.

The spinner next to the zero is for adding or removing points. I'll probably leave this in forever just to be safe, but I'm thinking there will be buttons below for scoring cities, roads, etc. that will ask for more information. For example, the score cities dialog would ask for number of tiles, number of pennants, trade goods, whether the mayor is present, etc.

Currently all the information is stored in memory, but the plan is to read from and write to the spreadsheet, so after the game is over you can save the results and do stuff with it.

[CKorfmann]

This looks great!  I'm excited to see the end result.  I think it would be ideal to have the extra colors, and maybe even a custom/random color or something to represent someone using custom meeples like the pewter ones.

[Gwommy]

Here's what I've got thus far:

Nice. I started out doing something like this, then I thought it was too simple, so I added to it and then it got too complex so I quit working on my version of it. =b

Speaking of it getting too complex, I think that adding those extra options would be too complex and take too long to enter number of tiles, number of pennants, etc. Thinking about it some more, the most complex that I'd make is to have a number box to enter points into. Then have 2 buttons for each player. One button will add the points in the number box to that player's score, while the other subtracts the points.

So if blue, green and red share a 36pt city, type 36 in the number box, then click the "+Blue pts", "+Red pts", and "+Green pts buttons".

And at the very least, it should also have purple as a color. All my yellow meeples got painted purple.

[Scott]

Since that screenshot, I added four buttons: Road, City, Cloister, Farm. Using the buttons is entirely optional, but would facilitate keeping track of who built the largest city and longest road. It also might be just plain interesting after the game to see how many cloisters each person got. The score box itself is unrestricted, so you can click into it and type whatever number you want.

I'm thinking I should add an options screen where, among potentially other things, you can customize which colors are available. If you bought the orange set from MeepleSource (formerly MeeplePeople), you can add Orange. If you painted your yellow meeples purple, you can get rid of yellow and add purple.