Version 1.1
Last revision: November 16th, 2005
Author: Hermen Reitsma
TOMA Video Chess Show 1.1 is an extension to the TOMA Chess Tournament Broadcasting sofware for showing a chess game within a venue. The layout is highly customizable, and extra graphical elements like logo's of sponsors can easily be added.
With Chess Show, a chess commentator can draw arrows and highlight fields to show for example attacks and plans of a live chess game.
Download and execute the windows installer at the DGT Website.
Chess Show will be installed in \Program Files\DGT Projects\ChessShow. After installation, you can start Chess Show from START > DGT Projects > TOMA Chess Show 1.1.
To use TOMA Video Chess Show, you need a valid TOMA license key with one or more ChessShow extensions. Contact DGT Projects to receive or upgrade your license.
If a valid license is not detected, the word "DEMO" continuesly pops up in the main screen of TOMA Video Chess Show.
When you run TVCS, it first locates and connects to the TOMA server on the local area network. After the connection has been established, it downloads all games from TOMA, and will automatically receive any following updates in a game.
The settings dialog of TVCS allows you to select a game, a move, adjust settings and modify the layout. You can open the dialog by pressing the function key F11.
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The first tab sheet of the settings dialog, allows you to select a game or browse to selected games positions. Select a game by clicking in the drop down bown box, select a position by clickin in the move/position list.
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When the settings dialog is closed, you can also browse through games with the PgUp and PgDn keys, and browse through positions with the left arrow and right arrow.
Each update in a game automatically refreshes the list of games and positions. TVCS automatically jumps to a newly received position.TVCS has an option to indicate the last moves with arrows, up to 5 ply (2 and a half move). You can customize the color of the ' last' arrow (indicating the last move played on the board) and the color of previous arrows.
The opacity of the arrows decreases per ply: the last arrow is the most opace, and the first arrow (up to 5 ply backwards in the game) is the most transparant.
If TVCS can not determine what move was played, it will not show the arrow or any previous arrows.
Number of arrows: the maximum amount of arrows TVCS can display automatically. Select 0 to disable this feature.
Arrow color (last move): The color of the last arrow, which indicates the last move played.
Arrow color (previous moves): For previous moves, the alpha level will decrease per ply backwards.
When a player lifts up a piece on the DGT Electronic sensor board, TVCS can highlight the field of the lifted piece.
Lifted piece: Possible options are " OFF" to disable this feature, white, blue yellow and green.
TVCS can show the long algebraic notation of chess moves, of up to the last 9 moves. Illegal moves and impossibilities are handled as good as it can, but it can happen that the notation is lost during a game. It will continue calculating notation for the next moves, and the current position is always shown directly.
Number of lines for notation: Possible values are from 0 (to disable this feature) to 9.
Show form caption: Check the option "show form caption" to show the windows form caption of a window, to be able to drag it over the screen and resize. Uncheck this option to remove the form caption. Resizing and dragging of the window will not be possible now.
All settings and graphical layout can be saved and retrieved later.
Select layout: Select a layout in the drop down list.
Save layout: To save your own settings and graphical layout, click the save button. Type a descriptive name in the dialog that pops up, and click SAVE.
All changes you make are automatically saved as "USER SETTINGS" and will be retrieved the next time you run Chess Show.
You can customize the graphical layout of TVCS by changing the graphical elements it is build of. Each graphical element consists of
Selecting an existing an item.
The following graphical elements are dynamically changed by TVCS and can not be deleted. You can hide them if you don't want them in your layout.
Other, custom elements, can be added. They will appear, like the elements listed above, in the select item drop down list.
Select an item in the drop down list to modify, delete or hide it.
To delete an element, click the delete button. The fixed elements (see the list above) can not be deleted.
To create a new element, type a descriptive name in the " name of new item" edit box, and click the "add to foreground" or " add to background" button.
To change the position of the selected element, drag it with the mouse or type the coordinates, width and height in the Position tab.
After entering a value, click on the SET button. Please note the values are not in pixels, they will not change when you resize the movie.
Check "Hide" to hide the selected element.
The overlay color can be used to make colored squares, a background for text or to "watermark" an image.
Overlay color: Click on the " ..." button to choose the color to work with.
Opacity: the level of opacity from 0% (completely transparent) to 100% (completely opaque).
You can change the text, text color and size of all graphical elements. Please note that dynamic elements like clock times and move notation will automatically change when new data is available.
Text: The text to display. Enter the text and click on set.
Text color: the color of the text. Click the " ..." button to choose the color.
Text size: the size of the text. You can also adjust the size of the text by dragging the line under the text on the main screen of TVCS. Enter the value and click on SET.
Click on the JPG... button to select an image. Click on the clear button to remove the image out of the selected graphical element.
"White squares": Click on this button to change the image for the white squares.
"Clear White squares": Click on this button to clear the image for the white squares.
"Black squares": Click on this button to change the image for the black squares.
"Clear Black squares": Click on this button to clear the image for the black squares.
"Border": Click on this button to change the image for the border around the diagram.
"Clear border ": Click on this button to clear the image for border around the diagram.
Check the coordinates box to show the coordinates.
Use the mouse to drag an arrow. You can drag arrows from any field to another.
Type 'w' for white arrows, ' b' for blue arrows, ' y' for yellow arrows and 'g' for green arrows.
Type '1' for 10% opacity (nearly transparent), 2 for 20%, ... and 9 for 90% opacity.
Hit backspace to remove all commentator arrows.
Click on a square with the mouse to highlight it. Click again to remove the highlighting.
Type 'w' for white highlighting, ' b' for blue, ' y' for yellow and 'g' for green.
Press "delete" to remove all highlighting.
F11 |
Show settigns dialog |
|---|---|
| 1-9 | Set opacity level |
| g | green |
| y | yellow |
| b | blue |
| w | white |
| Backspace | remove all commentator arrows |
| Delete | remove all highlighting |
| PgUp, PgDn | Browse through games |
| Next, Previous | Browse through game positions |