MANTIS 2.2 Discussion Thread

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John Danker

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As we've all done a hundred times....last night I asked the judge how much time was left in the round, he fumbled for his watch and after a few seconds of subtracting let me know.

At an old tournament location (now closed) we had talked him into buying a digital countdown clock. I'm thinking it shouldn't be that difficult (though I admit I know nothing about programing) to put a digital "stopwatch" on the computer. A stopwatch program with buzzer, perhaps programable for length of time and warning "beep" as well as expired time buzzer. I'm thinking this wouldn't be a bad feature for RONIN to have incorperated into it. A lot of judges obviously keep RONIN up and running during the tournament as it is, this would give them one more reason to do so, a nice little plus. It is something Mantis SHOULD have built into it already.

Even if this suggestion is not used, can someone tell me where I can download a shareware "Stopwatch" program?
 
Can you have multiples going at once? I judged 4 side tournaments at once, each with their own start/stop time, with just my cell phone. Not too difficult, but I always felt my attention was a little too divided, always having to mind the time.
 
That program is PERFECT DaGuy, thank you very much for your help.

RONIN programers take note of that one. I think such a feature would be jumped on....this is what MANTIS SHOULD have already have had programed into it.
 
John Danker said:
That program is PERFECT DaGuy, thank you very much for your help.

RONIN programers take note of that one. I think such a feature would be jumped on....this is what MANTIS SHOULD have already have had programed into it.
Click to expand...

It's difficult to be excited about making enhancements to a program that has zero acceptance in the area it was designed for (those being UDE sanctioned tournaments).

If you only knew the true history behind it and who it was really made for in the first place ......
 
While it might not have the acceptance we'd hoped for in premier tournament play, I can tell you that I know many a judge that keeps it up and running at their local tournaments.
 
I've just downloaded 2.2 and it has some cool extra features such as the Timer, and the Team Tournament Structure. I'll post my thoughts after I run a few test tournaments.
 
I conducted a few test trials, both with the new Team feature and the old individual feature. My first trial was a Team Tournament Trial. For my first team trial, I used fictional characters for the most part (with Temp IDs) and ran the tournament with 2 players per team, and 11 teams total.

First off. The Team Feature is cool, but in the Tournament tab and Standings printouts, you can only see the team names and not the individual players' names. The only time you actually see the individual players' names are when you actually print out the Results slips and Pairings. When you try to repair the round, you can only repair the teams, and not the individual players. I think not including the ability to even view the individual names is a big minus.

The Timer is a neat little feature, and the countdown is shown on the bottom of the program, no matter what tab you are currently viewing. In addition, it has neat message functions for "Time Remaining", "Round Over" and "Round Late". This will definitely enhance SK - AJ/FJ communication and hopefully AJ/FJ - player communication and improve accuracy. It has been one too many times that players have been given the wrong amount of time by a floor judge and lost due to the End of Match Procedure.

However, I encountered an error message later on. The message states "A program exception has occurred" The enrollment tab had a red X across the area where the team names were entered and at one point, Mantis seemed to ignore my results input: I would select the 2nd team - the lower team listed in the pairing as the winner, but Mantis would only allow the 1st team listed to be designated as the winner. This problem was "alleviated" once I moved on to the next round.

The easy access to entering penalties is removed from the Team Structure. You can no longer right click the Team name and expect the menu to have the "Player Penalty" option. Instead, you have to go to "Tournament" at the top (not the tab) and scroll down the menu to select Penalties.

In contrast, the individual player tournament retains this easy function and has also included an additional feature in the same menu: Player's Match History.

I am disappointed that I cannot use the mouse's scroll wheel to scroll down a list of players/matches during enrollment or while viewing the pairings. The addition of this feature would greatly greatly benefit many SK's, myself included.

To conclude, the new features are cool, but the inability to execute some others in an efficient manner deters me from giving this program a high mark.
 
I don't mean to be rude, but if you guys want a MANTIS 2.2 discussion, let me know and I can move/prune this thread into YGO General or something. I don't want anyone to think you're talking about new RONIN features that don't work right :D (If WE implemented them, they would at least function properly - LOL)
 
Why was the old thread closed? I didn't have a chance to whine about how I think RONIN, being primarily a rulings program, shouldn't have a timer function.

Oh, right, PM function. Well, I can't delete this post.
 
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