What are ‘Beta’ versions?
Sometimes we release ‘beta’ versions of our software to give you a chance to try out new features and provide feedback on them before they are released as fully supported product.
We advise against using beta versions of TScore or the tablet apps for actual competitions, as they have not been through a full regression test. VScore is generally safe to try though, as it doesn’t write anything back to the TScore database. Be prepared to swap back to your previous version though if you bump into any bugs.
The beta versions are normally released as just a zipped executable with no installer, so you can just unzip them into any folder and run from there without replacing your existing TScore installation. If in doubt, remember that you can always take a copy of the TScore.exe file from C;|Program Files (x86)\TScore and run that copy from any convenient folder. Note however that running an older version of TScore than the one used to create or open a competition database will often warn you about potential mismatches.
If in doubt, please contact support for advice.
Current Beta releases
Tablet scoring for Difficulty, Bonus and Penalties
We have been working on a new feature to allow the difficulty judges tablet entry of the tariffs for each skill, plus the ability to set the Bonus and Penalty fields as necessary.
This works broadly the same way as the Execution Judges app, but as we now need two digits to specify the difficulty of each skill, the input screen has been altered accordingly.
In standard mode, just enter two digits – e.g. 0 5 for 0.5, 2 7 for 2.7. On the second digit, the app moves to the next skill.
However, if you are mainly entering scores that always take the same first digit, and are less than 4, you might prefer to use the single digit input mode, which simply remembers the ‘units’ value, so you just press the button for the tenths. It sounds complicated, but it’s easy once you’ve tried it, and much faster.
As an example, if you have a routine the comprises ( 0.2, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.2, 0.1, 0.5 ) you can just click on the 0 unit, then 2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,5.
You can also enter any Bonus and Chair’s Penalty the same way. If the routine has no difficulty score, you can leave those unset and still submit a penalty or bonus.
To enter nothing, just set a bonus of 0 to get the ‘Confirm’ button to appear.
To use this new feature, you will need the app, and a new, beta version of TScore 11.2.
IMPORTANT!
This version has a new database schema, which enables full support of synchro with 6 execution judges and 2 HD judges. This is a ‘breaking change’, and you should not use old versions of TScore on competition databases that have been upgraded to 11.2. When you run TScore, it does warn you, as gives you the opportunity not to upgrade the database. This may result in some warnings, but you can at least avoid accidentally upgrading a competition that you still need to use with TScore v11.1 or older.
When TScore does upgrade to v11.2 it will always take a safe copy of your existing database first, so you will always have a recovery route.
Remember that TScore will always try to open the last database you connected to whenever it runs up, so you are advised to use your existing TScore version to switch to a non-critical database first, then run the beta version to either upgrade that one, or create a new one.
(Tecchie note: The main change to the database is the separation of HD1 and HD2 scores from the Ex5 and Ex6 judge’s entry columns that they used to share. This goes back to when you either had 4x + 2H or an automated HD + 6E).
A second change, related to the above, is that Print and Export templates have had to be extended. In order to avoid making your existing templates invalid for any v11.1 or older version that you may be running, there are now 2 new template folders in the TScoreX public Documents folder. (Called Templates2 and Templates2USA). This will only affect you if you have modified templates that you wish to use with v11.2 – in this case you will need to reapply your changes to the new templates.
NOTE: We found a bug that caused TScore to hang if you went directly to Edit Competition ->Edit Database. Ok if you go via ‘Score’ first. Turned out to be an obscure ‘race condition’. Fixed in 11.2.2
So, if you want to try this out, you will need to download and install TScore Version 11.2.2 and then download the new D-Judge app (v1.0.5) here onto your tablet.
You are advised to take a copy of your existing TScore.exe file, so you can easily switch between the two versions without having to reinstall. (Installing v11.2 will normally overwrite your older installation)
Note that both T-Judge and D-Judge apps can be installed at the same time on each tablet, but you must not run them at the same time, as only one of them will detect messages from TScore. The D-Judge app is hard-wired to Judge number 9 on each panel (1-6 are Ex, 7 & 8 are HD)
Documentation on the new feature is not yet complete – but feel free to experiment!
Eurotramp QIRA Time of flight integration – Now Fully Released
If you have the equipment, you can now directly send the results back to TScore in a fully integrated manner. Just ‘Start Scoring’ on the TScore tablet scoring screen as usual, and TScore will send athlete details to QIRA and receive the routine results from QIRA (ToF + HD) as soon as the ToF operator confirms a set of results. All of the per-move scores are returned, so changing the number of moves in TScore will automatically adjust E, H and T (or S) scores for a short routine. As this is non-destructive, you can correct it if necessary later.
Full details of the integration, how to set up the new TScore web service and run the system can be found in the TScore-QIRA User Guide
Note that this beta does require a full installation, so be sure to take a safe copy of your existing TScore and VScore executables if you need to revert without having to do a full uninstall/reinstall.
There is a demo of the proof-of-concept here: https://youtu.be/_iS47K4NBwg
The TScore Web-Service can be found in the C:\Program Files (x86)\TScore\TScore-WebService folder. When you install it, Windows will prompt you to install the latest .NET8 runtime libraries (usually 2 of these).
Just follow the links presented to download and install the Windows component.