Unofficial xkoranate user guide? Let's talk.

[The Babbage Islands]

xkoranate is the most comprehensive scorinator available for NS Sports. It handles the most sports, with the most format options. It is easy to use, but it is not easy to learn, as numerous questions in the OOC Scorinators thread attest.

With the permission of Commerce Heights, the creator of xkoranate, I'm opening this thread to build an unofficial user guide. The program has been in a state of near-perpetual beta, and its continuing evolution has argued against CH taking the time to write. But I believe that there is more than enough knowledge in the xkoranate user community to build a reference that will be of benefit to nearly every host and potential host in NS Sports.

Let's start the conversation here. What are the FAQ's? How about the tricks we've found, the features we've uncovered? I will try to organise things in the next several posts as they develop. The long-term goal is a sticky-worthy guide for an important NS resource.

Interested? Let's play.

Initial Outline

1. Main screen
1.1 Bonuses
1.2 Events
2. Team entry screen
2.1 Uploading entries from a text file
3. Match options screen
3.1 Individual matches
3.2 Round robin
3.3 Others
4. Groups screen
5. Scorination screen
6. Optional tables generator
7. Frequently Asked Questions

(I'll make the outline more comprehensive when I'm staring at the program. )

[The Babbage Islands]

xkoranate is a Java-based program used to produce results for fictitious sporting events in the NS Sports forum on NationStates. It generates reasonably authentic numbers for 75 disciplines of over 50 individual and team sports.

The current version of xkoranate (0.3.2), available for Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux versions, is at this link.

Part One:

[The Babbage Islands]

Reserved

[The Babbage Islands]

Reserved

[The Babbage Islands]

Reserved

[Novograd IV]

Okay then, first things first, I recommend a link to xkoranate.

[Miley World]

Thanks for this thread. I've downloaded xkoranate a few weeks ago, but I'm still inventing players for my leagues so I still haven't started scorinating them. I scorinated a few things for fun and is there a way to have teams from a group play some games against teams from another group? Let's say my hockey league have 12 teams, I wanna make 2 divisions (or groups) of 6 teams each. I want my teams to play 8 games against teams from the same division and 6 games against teams from the other division. How I do that?

[The Golden Tamarind]

This a great idea TBI.

I don't know if you are planning to do it this way, but I would suggest this as a discussion thread and the guide as a separate thread which isn't open to comments. This is why - if this thread serves as both, then new users, once this gets filled with discussion, won't be bothered to search out the bits they need - they'll just post a query, as in the scorinators thread. Understandably.

But if all the discussion happened here, and you managed a non-comment thread for the actual user guide, that way the pertinent information would always be to hand for new users, and also for experienced users who want to signpost someone to a particular part, saving them having to find a pearl of information buried in a busy thread.

EDIT: Miley's a case in point. You could get overwhelmed with queries and never get the guide coherent. No offence Miley! I think this was intended as a discussion on a user guide rather than a troubleshooting pitstop.

EDIT 2: Of course, there's always the reserved posts. Doh.

[Thatius]

I love this idea. It was a bit confusing trying to figure out xkoranate at first, but practice helped me figure out what I should and should not do. It's excellent that there now exists a thread that will give all new users a basic guide to use xkoranate, and hopefully they'll read it if they want to host a tournament. Too many times, people say they will host something, but do not fall through because they either don't have time or they don't know how to use the proper scorinator.

Miley, I think you could post in this thread here which is the Scorinators OOC thread. I think that is where you could ask your questions officially, without interrupting the flow of this thread.

[Wolfmanne]

I was going to propose this at one point in the past but I thought it was going to be ignored or eventually die. I like the idea 100%; I had to work out everything by myself.

[Mapletish]

I was going to propose this at one point in the past but I thought it was going to be ignored or eventually die. I like the idea 100%; I had to work out everything by myself.

I was thinking if someone would be doing this so,there would not be a huge and headache enquires and questions going around,like the case of Miley..

[The Golden Tamarind]

One thing that's not on your list so far as I can see is scheduling, which bugged the hell out of me whilst learning to use it for WISC.

So, and I'm not asking for answers to this right here, but for inclusion in the FAQ perhaps or as a section in it's own right -

How do you pre-publish a tournament schedule - how do you know when who will play who?

- Inelegant language, needs refining, but you take my point.

[Zwangzug]

Ok, I am bumping this thread to provide a rudimentary overview. Let me know what could be improved with more details/screenshots/etc.

So I'm using Windows, don't know how different this is for other people, but here's my basic outline.

-Download and unzip. (Sounds easy but I spent way too long stuck on this step!)
-The 0.3.2 release begins for me with a "bonuses" screen. For now I'm going to try simulating without any bonuses besides the ranks (which show up later), so I'll type "0.0%" in the effect of bonus box.
-Then I click the green plus sign in the bottom left. A text box pops up below the "EVENTS" header, I'll try "Men's race" in there so I know what it's called. Then on the "Select sport" thing I'll click the plus sign next to "Cycling, road" to open up a list of options, then select "Men's mass start."
I can toggle the box for "Show team names," which I'll leave on for now. Then I hit continue.
-It says "Set participants," with adjustable slots for "Minimum" and "Maximum skill." I'll choose a scale from 0 to 10, so I type 10 in the bottom box.
Then I click on a plus sign to add a participant. You kind of have to double-click inside the boxes that pop up to edit them. Rule of thumb is "just keep clicking and it'll eventually light up." I'll put in some names and teams (for the Olympics these "teams" might be three-letter abbreviations. If you're doing a domestic basketball league you might just list the names of the teams under the "partcipants" column and leave "team" blank). If you were doing an association or American football league you would have a column for style, which ranges from -5 (most defensive) to +5 (most offensive).
-Continue. The next screen will probably be "choose competition type," and it varies for different sports, but is usually pretty self-explanatory.
-Continue. Next is "set up groups."
Click the green plus sign to set up a group. Again, you can type in "Group A" or anything here to give it a name.
-Depending on the format of your competition, maybe it's just all the cyclists competing against each other. Clicking the button in the middle (when I hold my mouse over it it reads "Add all available participants" will do exactly that).
-Otherwise, you can select a group, and then click the green circle with a white plus sign--a drop-box will open up below the group name and you should be able to select one of the participants you entered before. If you click on Group A again, you can repeat that and add someone else in the same group (maybe for basketball teams in two different divisions) until you've entered as many as you want. Then you can click the green plus sign to make a new group and repeat as needed. The red minus sign will delete participants or groups, whichever's selected.
-Clicking the black die first selects everyone in a group, and then you can click it again to randomize the order.
-Continue. The next page will let you scorinate the event, by clicking on the black die. If you're in a round-robin tournament, you can jump to any matchday you like. Or, you can scorinate one day at a time by just clicking the black die.
-You should be able to copy the results and/or tables from inside the program to paste elsewhere, if you like. I have had bad luck with using the "export" function but strict copying works great for me.
-The fourth button from the left on top (mouseover to display "Save As") will save the file. When you quit and reopen the program, you open files with the second button from the left, and then can maneuver through the same "continue" buttons. I'll change my maximum skill to 10.930 on the second go'round, and can change skills (or names, or styles) there on the Set participants screen.
-Hitting continue all the way through on a round-robin event will bring you back to the scorinate event page, with the Matchday one results loaded. Now you can jump ahead to matchday two and scorinate that day; the tables will include that, as well as day 1. Again, you can save, quit, and come back whenever for Matchday 3, etc...

[Zwangzug]

Double-posting with malice aforethought, want to keep the original post separate.

How do you pre-publish a tournament schedule - how do you know when who will play who?

Maybe late, but what I've done is gone through and scorinated a "dummy" dry run using placeholder names ("Team 1," "Team 2," etc.). Then I look at the results for each matchday and see "oh, on day 1, 2 plays 7, 3 plays 6, 4 plays 5, 1 has a bye" and write that all out.

[Mapletish]

Double-posting with malice aforethought, want to keep the original post separate.

How do you pre-publish a tournament schedule - how do you know when who will play who?

Maybe late, but what I've done is gone through and scorinated a "dummy" dry run using placeholder names ("Team 1," "Team 2," etc.). Then I look at the results for each matchday and see "oh, on day 1, 2 plays 7, 3 plays 6, 4 plays 5, 1 has a bye" and write that all out.

That's gona be tedious...

[Zwangzug]

*shrug* It's not too bad, and if you do it once, it's done for all the groups of that size--here, I'll copy-and-paste the seven-team round robin setting for everybody's future reference.

Matchday 1:
2 v 7
3 v 6
4 v 5
1 bye

Matchday 2:
6 v 4
7 v 3
1 v 2
5 bye

Matchday 3:
3 v 1
4 v 7
5 v 6
2 bye

Matchday 4:
7 v 5
1 v 4
2 v 3
6 bye

Matchday 5:
4 v 2
5 v 1
6 v 7
3 bye

Matchday 6:
1 v 6
2 v 5
3 v 4
7 bye

Matchday 7:
5 v 3
6 v 2
7 v 1
4 bye

[Commerce Heights]

How do you pre-publish a tournament schedule - how do you know when who will play who?

This fixtures generator uses the same formula as xkoranate for the first half of the fixtures (in xkoranate, the second half of a double round-robin is the same as the first half with home and away reversed; in that generator, the second half of the fixtures are played in reverse order).

[Mapletish]

How do you pre-publish a tournament schedule - how do you know when who will play who?

This fixtures generator uses the same formula as xkoranate for the first half of the fixtures (in xkoranate, the second half of a double round-robin is the same as the first half with home and away reversed; in that generator, the second half of the fixtures are played in reverse order).

it is effective to rule that in so as to prevent lazy people like me to lose interest when starting a tournament when stucked at the fixtures part.

[Sarzonia]

Not only has a guide to xkoranate not been in the works in the recent past, but I distinctly remember being raked through the coals by Commerce Heights because I had the temerity to ASK for one.

All I've got to say about this thread is "about fucking time."

Hope this turns out well.

[Commerce Heights]

Not only has a guide to xkoranate not been in the works in the recent past, but I distinctly remember being raked through the coals by Commerce Heights because I had the temerity to ASK for one.

All I've got to say about this thread is "about fucking time."

Hope this turns out well.

Did you have something you’d like to contribute to this guide, or are you just here to make accusations against me? I don’t know what incident you’re referring to, and I don’t see how bringing it up here (whatever it is) is the slightest bit helpful to anyone.

[Sarzonia]

I posted a question looking for basic help on using xkoranate and you basically ridiculed me for asking.

[Commerce Heights]

I posted a question looking for basic help on using xkoranate and you basically ridiculed me for asking.

Everything I said in response to your last post applies equally well to this one.

[Sarzonia]

I would like to see a guide to xkoranate written that includes basic instructions on how to use it without the assumption that a potential user has ever even seen xkoranate, let alone ever toyed with it.

The way I learned xkoranate was having Delaclava give me a tutorial assuming that I knew nothing about it. Many of the guides I've seen to scorinators assume at least some familiarity with the scorinator.

Besides just "Select this format", include explanations of the formats and why one would be preferable to the other.

[Castinistan]

I need help.
I have never used a scorinator before, therefore I don't have a clue what to do with this xkoranate. I have it (for some reason) popped up in a window. Now What?

[Zwangzug]

Can you describe a little more of what you're seeing? You should be able to select "American football" under "Events" if that's what you want.