Carcassonne Score Keeper by Scott

[Scott]

NOTE FOR THREAD ARCHEOLOGISTS:
The most recent version of this application can be found somewhere towards the end of this thread.

ORIGINAL POST BEGINS HERE:

I forgot I was making this.

Spent some more time today working on it:


All the scoring buttons work, but only for regular "during the game" type scoring. I need to add a mechanism to switch to "end game" scoring.
The longest road and largest city are tracked, but I still need to add something to the interface to show who currently holds each one.
But before I add any more to the interface, I need to improve things "under the hood" so that I can add the other 5 players (and possibly more?).

[Scott]

Been working on this most of the day now, and progress has been good:


The King and Robber Baron are now visible, and they're awarded automatically as the game progresses. The application is also keeping track of the number of completed features in the background for those who play by the book (1 point per completed feature).

On the right we have a game status indicator which toggles between "Game in Progress" and "End of Game" when you click the button. The legend also changes to show what the current point values are.

Also on the right is a reset button, which has a confirmation prompt to prevent terrible accidents in the middle of a legitimate game.

Naturally, everything we make here gets the CarcCentral stamp of awesomeness with the web address to lead people here.

The application actually lives inside an Excel spreadsheet:


The button in the top-right corner is how you get into the interface. As the interface updates, it keeps the spreadsheet synchronized. When the game is over, you can copy-paste the raw data to somewhere else for posterity.

[ne0x]

This is looking great!    I can't wait to give it a whirl.

[Scott]

Woke up early this morning and just had to finish this off. Added all the legal cruft and locked everything down.

Also fiddled with the Road, City, Cloister, and Farm scoring windows, which you guys never saw yet. I wanted to make the text size larger to match the main window, and I added spinner controls for people who prefer to use the mouse instead of the keyboard.

Download v1.0 here: http://www.mediafire.com/?y3y4qtz8euzfnda

[CKorfmann]

This look awesome!  I've been waiting for one of these for a long time!  Too bad I can only give you one merit point at a time!  Haven't been able to open the interface, but I assume that will be fixed soon.  Can't wait to take it for a ride!

Are you going to add the Castle scoring?

[Scott]

The only reason I can think of for the button not working is that you do not have macros enabled, or your macro security is set too high.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/change-macro-security-settings-in-excel-HP010096919.aspx

By the way, anybody who's still using Excel 2003 will need the Compatibility Pack to open the spreadsheet:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=3

I looked briefly at the castle, and it didn't seem like I needed to add anything because the castle owner is scoring features near the castle, so if a city is completed adjacent to your castle, the city owner and the castle owner both score as if they shared the city. Unless I'm misunderstanding?

[CKorfmann]

I guess that's true to a degree.  You score for any feature, so it could be a cloister too.  Also, there is a 1 point bonus for farmers.

[Carcking]

Cudos on this Scott! This is awesome!

[CKorfmann]

When I try to open the interface, it's coming up read only.

[Scott]

I guess that's true to a degree.  You score for any feature, so it could be a cloister too.  Also, there is a 1 point bonus for farmers.

Each score box has a spinner control for incrementing and decrementing each value, and each box is also directly editable, so any conceivable scoring method can be accomodated. The four buttons (road/city/cloister/farm) are really just handy shortcuts.

When I try to open the interface, it's coming up read only.

Hmm... I'll need you to upload an image of your screen at the point where you run stuck to be able to diagnose this further.

[Scott]

Just tested this on my work computer which has Excel 2003 with the 2007 Compatibility Pack and it's working here too.

[Amorpheus]

Since Chris can only give one merit at a time, I've added one from me as well.  Excellent work Scott!   

[Scott]

I have uploaded a new version 1.0.1:
http://www.mediafire.com/?y3y4qtz8euzfnda

I improved error handling on the numeric fields to prevent crashing. The error only crashes the interface, not Excel itself, so the data was never being lost.

I also added some support for non-standard meeple colors. These colors are not added to the spinner controls, but if you change the text in the spreadsheet while the interface is not running you can use them. The added colors are Orange, Brown, Purple, Pink, and White. I wasn't sure if I should make these available in the spinner controls because they are not official, but I'm interested to hear what you guys think. The way I have implemented it, it's not possible to add the camos meeples, or ninjas or pirates. The image consists of the white space around the meeple, and the actual meeple part is transparent. A background color is applied behind the transparent image to make the meeple appear.

I don't want to add all kinds of support for fan-made expansions (or fanspansions as they affectionately known by some), because there would be no end to it. For the most part, it is possible to keep score by calculating the points in your head and adding them using the spinner controls or by typing over the numbers. However, I suspect there may be some value in providing support for labourer and mendicant (a fan-made expansion to King and Robber Baron). Is anybody interested in this? Would I be setting a dangerous precendent?

EDIT: I just reviewed the rules for Laborer and Mendicant (AKA Friar and Farmhand), and it would be difficult to award them automatically. The friar is awarded to the person who completes the cloister, but not necessarily the person who scores for it. To include the friar I would have to change the mechanics of it so that it goes to the person who scores the most cloisters. The farmhand/laborer is also difficult because Excel doesn't know how many farmers are in play, only how many farms are completed, and farms aren't completed until the end of the game. Likewise, I would need to change how it is awarded; probably to the person who completes the "biggest" farm (that is, the farm which supports the most cities). I'm not sure how people would feel about these changes, but I think it's more consistent with how the king and robber baron work.


Regarding the issue that CKorfmann is experiencing, he sent me an e-mail with screenshots and I have responded to him via e-mail. However, in case others encounter this, I think it may be beneficial to explain a bit here. This issue appears to be with people who are using Excel 2003 with the 2007 Compatibility Pack and the way in which they open the file. When you are downloading from MediaFire, you need to save the file to your computer first and open it as a second step. If you choose to open it from the download dialog, you will get a funny message about updating links followed by a message saying that the file has been locked for editing by 'another user'. From what I've been able to determine on Google, this is a glitch in the conversion process when the file is saved to your temporary files folder (which is what happens when you pick Run instead of Save in the download dialog).

If saving the file to your computer and then opening it still doesn't work, you can try to reinstall the Compatibility Pack, though this is not guaranteed to make a difference. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was successful in getting the file to open in Excel 2003 with the 2007 Compatibility Pack on my work computer. In that case, I saved the file to my desktop before opening it, so hopefully everyone else is successful too.

[CKorfmann]

I also added some support for non-standard meeple colors. These colors are not added to the spinner controls, but if you change the text in the spreadsheet while the interface is not running you can use them. The added colors are Orange, Brown, Purple, Pink, and White. I wasn't sure if I should make these available in the spinner controls because they are not official, but I'm interested to hear what you guys think.

That’s great!  Way to go the extra mile.  Would it be difficult to add Gold and Nude (maybe tan)?  Not that you haven’t done enough already…  As for putting the extra colors on the spinners, that would just add an extra layer of sweetness for me, but I could live with them just being available to be added manually.  What if you used Lindquist’s images?  

I don't want to add all kinds of support for fan-made expansions (or fanspansions as they affectionately known by some), because there would be no end to it. For the most part, it is possible to keep score by calculating the points in your head and adding them using the spinner controls or by typing over the numbers. However, I suspect there may be some value in providing support for labourer and mendicant (a fan-made expansion to King and Robber Baron). Is anybody interested in this? Would I be setting a dangerous precedent?

Yes, I could see this getting out of hand, but I could also see it as a way to encourage people to play with that expansion.  I would agree that Labourer and Mendicant is probably the most likely candidate for inclusion, though a line should probably be drawn there (not that I'm anxious to squash your creative mojo!).  Perhaps two different versions, one with fan and aftermarket additions in the second? = more work.  However, I would not be in favor of changing the rules.  I guess the only alternative would be to add another button that tallies cloister completions and farmers in play… = even more work.

Regarding the issue that CKorfmann is experiencing…

Your suggestion worked perfectly for me and I suspect it will for others too.  I thought this might be the case, I just failed to try it before I whined about it.  :

I found one potential error.  I added a city to in-game scoring and toggled to end-game scoring and added another that was much larger.  Though it got the score correct, the program awarded the King token to that player with the larger, unfinished city (and it did the same for roads).  This leads me to believe that it doesn’t understand the difference in complete verses incomplete features even though it gets the score right.  How then does it score for the King, or is that a manual application?

I realized my error after I thought I had found another mistake.  When scoring for a farm, the last box includes the besieged city bonus.  My first impression was to input the number of besieged cities.  When I selected one (thinking it would double the points for one city) it only added one point.  It should probably be worded differently to make that clear or maybe fixed to calculate it by the number of besieged cities = more work again.

Kudos to you Scott!  You are definitely the man for this job!

BTW, with all those functions you've written, aren't you like half way to making a video game?  

Oh, and this is going sticky!

[Scott]

I'm not familiar with Lindquist's images, can you point me in the right direction? Gold might be tricky, but nude could be added by finding a suitable tan color. I wasn't sure if people actually play with the nude meeples as is or if they are painting them.

Creating another edition of the Score Keeper would increase the amount of work for me to maintain them. Regarding Labourer and Mendicant, I'm not sure I want to go to the trouble of adding more information to manually keep track of.

Glad that your problem has been resolved. If that didn't work, I wouldn't know what else to try.

I'll take a look at the King and Robber Baron code later today. It sounds like I forgot to add a check for whether the game status = in progress vs. end of game, which is an easy fix.
No points are automatically added to any player's score, but the "official" point value is shown in the legend at right. You can either add that amount to the person's total or add some other amount based on your house rules.

For some reason I thought that the number of besieged cities was not enough information to properly calculate the points, but now that I'm thinking about it (though it is early in the morning, so maybe this isn't the best time to be thinking) the besieged bonus could be calculated as number of besieged cities x 3?