Comment Feed for Channel 9 - Visual Foos 2005 http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/c4f/images/910302_100.jpg Channel 9 - Visual Foos 2005   In this article, I'm going to cover a few ways to harness the power of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and a free foosball table to create the ultimate break room accessory. Kevin Marshall, Clarity Consulting Inc. Kevin's Blog Difficulty: Advanced Time Required: 6-10 hours Cost: Greater than $200 Software: [Visual Studio Express Editions, SQL Server 2005 Hardware: Download: Download Late one Friday afternoon, while working at my desk, a coworker asked, "Does anyone want a foosball table? My friend's office is getting rid of one, but we have to pick it up now." Even if I didn't like foosball, carrying a table a mile through the streets of Chicago would have made a great story. I had to get it. Because we're competitive software developers, we started recording the games in an Excel spreadsheet to track stats. While arguing whether I had lost my last four games or my last five games, I realized there had to be a better way. And so the inspiration for the .NET foosball tracker was born. In this article, I'm going to cover a few ways to harness the power of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and a free foosball table to create the ultimate break room accessory. Hacking the Table The first step in building the foosball scoreboard application was to wire the table to a spare computer via the I-Pac, a PC interface for arcade buttons purchased from Ultimarc. Using what little carpentry skills were available in our software development consultancy office, we drilled several holes in the table to mount the buttons. The I-Pac translates button presses into keystrokes. Each player has a button to select his or her account at the beginning of a game (we have a very competitive woman's division) or to signal that he or she scored a goal. Three other buttons were added for game setup and other special features. We used the KeyUp event, so the Visual Basic .NET scoreboard WinForm application could respond to any of the button presses. It's not the most exciting code, but hey, this is just the beginning of the article. Visual Basic Private Sub KeyPressed(ByVal sender As System.Object,_ ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs) Handles MyBase.KeyUp Select Case (e.KeyValue) Case Windows.Forms.Keys.V 'Home Offense Button If _gameMode = GameModeList.ChoosePlayers Then homeOffense.ChangePlayer() ElseIf _gameMode = GameModeList.InGame Then AddGoal(PlayerList.HomeOffense) End If Case Windows.Forms.Keys.X If _gameMode = GameModeList.InGame Then 'InstantReplay _instanyReplay.ShowReplay() Else StartScreenSaver() End If Case Windows.Forms.Keys.Menu 'Undo Button If _gameMode = GameModeList.InGame Then RemoveLastGoal() End If End Select Figure 1. Foosball Table Designing the Scoreboard Lucky for us, our break room contains a 30-inch TV with VGA inputs near the foosball table to display the scoreboard application. The scoreboard consists of a form with several picture boxes and labels with transparent backgrounds on a foosball background image. Each set of player names and icons is a user control that tracks information such number of goals scored. Using the new table adapters in Visual Studio 2005, it's easy to bind the controls to a data table. The following code loads player attributes such as the player image and sounds from SQL Server. Visual Basic    Public Sub LoadPlayer() playerName.DisplayMember = _playerDT.NicknameColumn.ColumnName Dim tauntsTA As New FoosDataTableAdapters.TauntsTableAdapter() Dim tauntsDT As New FoosData.TauntsDataTable() _taunts = New Collection tauntsTA.FillByPlayerID(tauntsDT, _playerID) For Each row As FoosData.TauntsRow In tauntsDT _taunts.Add(row.Item("SoundClip")) Next row Dim dr As DataRow() = _playerDT.Select("PlayerID = " & _playerID) If Not dr(0).Item("Avatar") Is DBNull.Value Then Dim img As Byte() img = CType(dr(0).Item("Avatar"), Byte()) playerPic.Image = Image.FromStream(New System.IO.MemoryStream(img)) Else playerPic.Image = My.Resources.Resource.clarityLogo End IfEnd Sub After cycling through a list of employee accounts in the database using the player's button, it's time to play some foosball. Without budget enough to hire Keith Jackson to provide game commentary full-time, we added our own virtual announcer using the Microsoft Speech API. To make your application speak, all you need to do is add a reference to SpeechLib.dll and declare a new speech object. Visual Basic Dim voice As New SpVoicevoice.Speak("Whoa Nelly! Welcome to the Clarity Foos League",_ SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault) Figure 2. Scoreboard Taunting Your Opponent When playing office foosball, nothing is more important than a witty taunt to demoralize your opponent. When a player scores a goal, he presses the button in his corner, which fires a goal scored event which then triggers several actions. One action is to play a random sound clip from the player's personal sound collection retrieved from SQL Server. I'm mostly a C# developer, so the new Visual Basic .NET My Classes was something I wanted to try out. My Classes make it simple to perform dozens of tasks like playing any .wav file. Visual Basic    Private Sub PlayRandomSoundFile() randomInt = r.Next(1, _taunts.Count) My.Computer.Audio.Play(_taunts(randomInt),_ AudioPlayMode.WaitToComplete)End Sub Let's See That in Instant Replay When we first started this project, instant replay was buried in my list of dream features. I never thought I'd actually code half of those and instant replay seemed like it would take longer than my break to do. With a little lunchtime Internet surfing, I found this easy-to-use video capture/player ActiveX control from Fath Software called VideoCapX. (Oh, and I nearly tore apart the ceiling while trying to run a 50-ft USB cable through the tiles to the Clarity SkyCam©, but let's keep that from the office admin) In just a few lines of code, I can watch over and over again how terrible I am at blocking a pull shot. Visual Basic   Public Sub ShowReplay() Dim vidLength As Double vcx.StopCapture() vcx.PlayerOpen(FOOS_REPLAY_WMV) vidLength = vcx.PlayerGetLenMS() If vidLength > 10000 Then vcx.PlayerSetPos(vidLength - 10000) End If vcx.PlayerSetSize(640, 480) Me.BringToFront() My.Computer.Audio.Play(My.Resources.Resource.InstantReplay,_ AudioPlayMode.WaitToComplete) vcx.PlayerStart()End Sub Figure 3. Instant Replay Archiving the Results It's game over and there is an 80 percent chance that I lost in a blowout; time to put that box score in the record books. For those of you keeping score at home, the table adapters make it simple to save the game record to the database. Visual Basic    Dim gameTA As New FoosDataTableAdapters.GameTableAdapter() gameTA.Insert(homeOffense.playerName, homeOffense.goals, _ homeDefense.playerName, homeDefense.goals, _ visitorOffense.playerName, visitorOffense.goals, _ visitorDefense.playerName, visitorDefense.goals, _ gameStartTime, gameEndTime) With all the game stats recorded in SQL Server, we can produce dozens of reports such as win percentage, total goals scored, shutouts, average goals scored per game, average goals allowed per game, and using a formula based loosely on the BCS (U.S. college football) computer rankings, the top overall player. Sadly, I wrote the application and I still can't get my name into the top 10 players. These stats are displayed on an arcade-like teaser screen that loads after the application has been idle for a few minutes. The teaser screen cycles through several dozen datasets to provide a different set of stats on the screen. Visual Basic Private Sub LoadStats() statTimer.Enabled = True Dim statType As Integer = ChooseRandomStatList() Dim playerDT As New FoosData.PlayerDataTable() Dim playerTA As New FoosDataTableAdapters.PlayerTableAdapter() Select Case statType Case 1 playerTA.FillByTop10Winners(playerDT) statTitle.Text = "Most Wins" ResizeFont(FontSize.Large) Case 2 playerTA.FillByTop10WinPercentage(playerDT) statTitle.Text = "Best Win %" ResizeFont(FontSize.Large) Case 3 playerTA.FillByTop10Foosers(playerDT) statTitle.Text = "Biggest Foosers" ResizeFont(FontSize.Large) …More stats… End SelectEnd Sub Figure 4. Teaser Screen Conclusion Visual Basic.NET has dozens of new features that make quickly building an application very easy. In just a few hours I was able to put together an application that has significantly improved the fun of having a foosball table in the office. Unfortunately, it still can't make me play better. Maybe next version. Speaking of the next version, on my brand new blog, I'm going to cover some future additions to Visual Foos 2005 like a Web front-end to view game logs and upload sound files. Some other additions I'd like to develop are a RSS feed of games played, pre-game predictions using SQL Server Analysis Services, player identification through RFID readers, and a foosball speed radar. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! Or if you have a foosball table you don't want. en Sun, 19 May 2013 14:54:48 GMT Sun, 19 May 2013 14:54:48 GMT Rev9 Re: Visual Foos 2005 Sweet, very nice project.....might just adapt it to a pool table.

posted by xttrensia

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633133296000000000 Sat, 28 Apr 2007 04:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633133296000000000 xttrensia Re: Visual Foos 2005 In this article I’ll review the steps to creating a WPF-based touch-screen scoreboard application that

posted by Clint

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633171312000000000 Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633171312000000000 Clint Re: Visual Foos 2005 In this article I’ll review the steps to creating a WPF-based touch-screen scoreboard application that

posted by Clint

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633179088000000000 Wed, 20 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633179088000000000 Clint Re: Visual Foos 2005 Writing blog posts just keeps jumping down the list. I think I need to realize that regular blogging

posted by 10,000 Monkeys - Harnessing the Power of Typing Monkeys

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633390804000000000 Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633390804000000000 10,000 Monkeys - Harnessing the Power of Typing Monkeys Re: Visual Foos 2005 WOW I was looking for this kind of information to do it on my foosball table ... Well of course it does look difficult to do it .

posted by Ramseck

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633417552000000000 Sat, 22 Mar 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633417552000000000 Ramseck Re: Visual Foos 2005 Hey guys, In this post I wanted to share something very cool with you guys, It’s Coding4Fun Developer...

posted by Beckham

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633430512000000000 Sun, 06 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633430512000000000 Beckham Re: Visual Foos 2005 You know, we have a table at brandes.  Why don't you clarity guys come by so we can teach you how to actually play foos?

posted by Ferdie

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633583440000000000 Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c633583440000000000 Ferdie Re: Visual Foos 2005 @Good you need to create a database, the scripts in the "DatabaseScripts" folder

posted by Clint

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c634007700000000000 Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Visual-Foos-2005#c634007700000000000 Clint