WHAT'S NEW IN GENERATION 2 OF TOURNAMENT®

Over 10 months of research and 1100 man-hours of programming went into the development of the second generation of Tournament®. With its improved, yet familiar user interface, you will find dozens of new features that further enhance its flexibility and ease of operation. These are just a few...

EQUIPMENT CLASSES ARE NOW SUPPORTED

In addition to Competitor Classifications and Categories, many disciplines also require the consideration of Equipment Classes in entries and award assignments. Unfortunately, the first generation of Tournament® simply ignored them entirely, making it difficult to produce Award Schedules and Bulletins that would comply with a customary Match Program for those disciplines. Now, Equipment Classes are fully integrated, making Tournament® 100% compatible with such disciplines as Highpower Rifle, Action Pistol and Silhouette Rifle and Pistol, and others. From the Downloads area of this website you will find Sample Configuration Files that clearly demonstrate how to integrate Equipment Classes with the other Class and Category systems available.

NEW TIE-BREAKING SYSTEM

The code and interfaces for tie-breaking have been completely redesigned. Operating entirely behind-the-scenes, the algorithm for automatically breaking ties in Aggregate Matches has been enhanced for accuracy. However, the BIG news is the new process for tie-breaking in Fired Matches! Much like its predecessor, the process scans the entire competition for unbroken ties. However, now when it finds one, it will prompt for you to order ALL of the tied competitors from first to last (instead of just asking to select the first). This change improves the speed and accuracy of the tie-breaking process and makes it unnecessary to run the operation more than once.
In addition to Open and Class/Category awards, the process now searches for ties in Special Category Awards as well.

ADDITIONAL SPECIAL CATEGORY AWARDS

New categories have been added for Special Awards: in addition to the Senior, Junior and Woman categories, you may now assign awards for High Civilian, Service, Police and even Equipment Class. These awards will appear not only on the Match Bulletins, but also will be assigned to the awards schedule.

AGGREGATE MATCH TOTALING & ADDITION CHECKING

Of the hundreds of Tournament® users that took the time to send feedback emails, almost 100 suggested the same thing: "It would be nice to display the aggregate match total as I type in the fired match scores." By making the user interface a little more interactive, their wishes have come true in Generation Two.
Clearly visible in the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen, an Aggregate Match total is displayed whenever the LAST of a fired match within that aggregate is typed in. A glance at the written scorecard and then down to the status bar will check the scorer's addition and accuracy of data entry.

BONUS PRIZES WITH LEWIS CLASS CALCULATION

In Sporting Clays and Silhouette competitons, it is quite popular to offer special Bonus Prizes based on competitors' Grand Aggregate scores, but randomly divided into groups or flights. The standardized system of drawing up these groups is called the Lewis Class System which has strict rules on how classes are to be separated and ties to be handled. Unfortunately, the complexity of the Lewis Class System usually resorts in old-fashioned pencil and paper calculations. Tournament® comes to the rescue.
The Second Generation of Tournament® offers a Bonus Prize Match with Lewis Class calculation. This Bonus Prize match is handled in a way that allows it to be merely optional, with the bonus purse divided among only those who had paid the extra fees to participate in it.

NEW INTERACTIVE HELP DOCUMENTATION

With the new Interactive Help, both new and advanced users will find the information on whatever topics they are seeking more quickly and easily. A new table of contents and automatic keyword search is in a frame affixed to the left side of the help screen. In the main help frame to the right, you will find a completely rewritten tutorial, with interactive program screenshots and text. Much new information has been added as well, including more detailed operating instructions and life-simplifying tips.
While Tournament® is already user-friendly, the improved Interactive Help will make the learning curve of getting effective results from an unfamiliar application even shorter for new users. And more advanced users will be able to tap into the true power of Tournament® more thoroughly.

AUTOMATIC ARCHIVE UPDATING

A new function allows Tournament® users to effectively "kill two birds with one stone."
Exactly like in Generation One, entering new competitors to your tournament is lightening fast by allowing you to retrieve folks' data from the Past Competitor Archive. In addition, once that retrieved data is automatically pasted into fields of the competitor entry form, you can make changes to that data - such as a Classification upgrade or an Address change. However, a limitation of Generation One was that those changes would not be written back to the archive. NOW THEY ARE. If you change any field after you retreive a record from the archive, that original archive record is updated automatically.

MAILING AND SCORECARD LABELS REFORMATTED

Satisfying the requests of a few users, the FONT SIZE on the labels has been enlarged. No longer will folks need a magnifying glass to read the information printed on them. Regardless, the label size itself has not changed, and the basic Avery #8161 or #5261 format is still the choice, not the 3-wide label some folks prefer.

BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY

Rest assured that all of your configuration files from versions 1.5 and earlier will be compatible with the Second Generation of Tournament®. You can load an old configuration file, adjust the settings that are new to Tournament® 2, and re-save the new file configuration file under the same or a different filename.