Personwholives Automatic Nerv Calculator

[personwholives]

Do you use Tournament Director? Does your area track NERVs? Do you want to track NERVs, but don't want to do all the hard work yourself? Or have you never heard of NERVs before, and are now thinking "Hmmm... that sounds like a good idea, but also like a lot of work...."?

Well then, this app is your solution: SPANC - Shiny! Personwholives Automatic Nerv Calculator

Wanna see how it works? I'm glad you asked. Here are steps to follow to update the NERVs for your area:

1. Start the app. You should get a screen like this:


2. Use the add and remove player buttons, along with the editable list, to fill in the players in your area. NERVs start at 1200, though you can change these if your group already has some values calculated. Don't forget to set a K factor in the bottom (the standard value is 24). When you finish, it should look something like this:

2.5. If this is not your first visit to the app, just click on File -> Open Players List... and load your old data. No need to reinvent the wheel, or in this case retype all those names and numbers.

3. (optional) Save the players list. Just in case. Always good to save your work.

4. Load the .tourney file saved from tournament director. Click on the "Tournament Matches" tab to see the data.



5. Double check the matching. If your .tourney file has players that match your player list, they'll be mapped automatically. If a player is not mapped automatically, then you'll need to pick it by hand. Just choose the right player from the dropdown in the column marked "NERV player name".


6. Step through the tournament to see the NERVs change in the top table. Or, if you trust the software to get it right, just click "End >>". Click Finalize to save these newly calculated values to the player records, then save the player list.

7. (optional) Share the results with the world. Click on the "Reports" tab, then select the options you want, and hit generate. Other formats in the "Report Type" drop down will be provided when I come up with good ideas for what else to put there. Other filtering options can be provided, should you want them.


8. Sit back and wait for the next tournament. Enjoy the fact that this took you literally minutes to do (I managed to do mine in 15 minutes, and I spent a lot of that taking the screenshots I wanted for this thread).

Do I have your attention? Want the app? Click right here. (Note: you'll need to unzip it, since this site doesn't allow .jar uploads. Even though .jar is just .zip by a different name and with a special XML file to tell it how to run. But that's really neither here nor there)

In case you're wondering, this was done in Java, so you can run it on whatever machine you have around. Screenshots from a mac, just because that's where I'm posting this from.

App made by request of Killometer for the NorCal area. If you find bugs, let me know. If you want something added, let me know. If you just wanna say "You rock, dude", well, I've never complained about that.

ETA: I probably won't update those screenshots, unless I add something major to the app. Mainly because it's a pain to take all those screenshots.

[personwholives]

This will be the current issues list. Here are things I've found while doing some further work on the app:

- Elimination matches don't really work - (we don't do much elimination in NorCal) - fixed, will be in my next post
- No map data in matches - fixed, will be in my next post
- Better text for match results - fixed, in next post
- Proper keyboard shortcut support - lazy programmer syndrome (I'll get to it)
- Manual Match entry - shouldn't be that hard

Any requests?

[Killometer]

You rock, dude.

Thanks for putting this program up. Tomorrow I'll see if I can figure it out...

[ZAKOVANI]

This looks great! From what I've read, and think I understand, the app takes players win/loss/score record and gives them a player rating essentially? That sounds really neat! It could be used to make fair-er match ups when planning a tournament if it works the way I think, right?

[personwholives]

Sort of. Theoretically, you keep track of NERVs over the long term, over a series of tournaments. Your score should improve as you get better, and go down should you get worse. You could use them to seed the first round matchups of a tournament, if you wanted to, but I wouldn't. For a swiss style tournament, you want the matchups in round one to be more or less random, I would think.

As for making fair matchups in a tournament, just use something like Tournament Director. We've found it tends to produce pretty good tournaments.

[ZAKOVANI]

Ah yeah, I wasn't planning on a tournament really, just was trying to get a feel for it- But I do think I will use this in my matches with friends so we can all see our comparative scores! Thanks for programming this.

[personwholives]

Unfortunately, I didn't really design this to be a generic tool. It works for taking tournament results and calculating the NERV values. But, it shouldn't be that hard for me to add a couple buttons to enter a couple of quick matches.

Unfortunately, I probably won't have much time to work on it for a few weeks. I'll see if I can squeeze an hour in tomorrow to work on it.

[ZAKOVANI]

Originally Posted by personwholives

Unfortunately, I didn't really design this to be a generic tool. It works for taking tournament results and calculating the NERV values. But, it shouldn't be that hard for me to add a couple buttons to enter a couple of quick matches.

Unfortunately, I probably won't have much time to work on it for a few weeks. I'll see if I can squeeze an hour in tomorrow to work on it.

When my friends and I play, we usually do a mini tournament with the 6 of us, so it should be fine I'd think....

[personwholives]

Originally Posted by ZAKOVANI

When my friends and I play, we usually do a mini tournament with the 6 of us, so it should be fine I'd think....

Sure, if you run your "mini tournament" with tournament director. If not, there's no way to manually enter matches. But, I've added it to the feature request list. I've already finished a lot of what's needed for that, I've just got a few bits more to add. But as I said, I won't be able to get it done for a bit, unless it goes real quick tomorrow.

[ZAKOVANI]

Originally Posted by personwholives

Sure, if you run your "mini tournament" with tournament director. If not, there's no way to manually enter matches. But, I've added it to the feature request list. I've already finished a lot of what's needed for that, I've just got a few bits more to add. But as I said, I won't be able to get it done for a bit, unless it goes real quick tomorrow.

Sweet.

[cmgames]

Anything new to report here?


~Z

[personwholives]

It's amazing how busy one can be. I haven't had a lot of free time to work on this lately. Or at all. I intend to take some time when I have it, but I haven't had a lot of it lately.

So, status update: work proceeding extremely slowly. Stay tuned.