Basketball software for coaches

[ponjavic]

For a few years now I have, for my own amusement, been creating small games in order to learn how to program.
Now that we, in our school, have to make some kind of mandatory project I felt like my only choice could be one in programming.
My basketball coach mentioned the need for some kind of planning application as the ones on the market aren't sufficient.

I have about 7 months to do this, what I need is advice on how to make some parts of the program.

First of all, what compiler should be used for straightforward WINDOWS software engineering? The one I'm most confident with right now is dev-cpp but I really doubt it will suffice. I have access to microsoft visual c++ 6 and it should be the most compatible (providing workarounds for interaction) i hope.
What do you recommend?

I'm wondering a lot of what filed the finished program should consist of. As of now I am used to an executable + images and that's basically it, certainly this shouldn't suffice for a (possibly) a licensed program, if it outranks the other programs on the market.

This is what the finished program should do:
There should be some kind of database with a list of all the players, there ranking/stats age telephone number and so on.
How should this be displayed? If it's an ordinary list, how do I create one easily?

One should be able to create different kind of practices consisting of different (pre-created) excercices. These practices would then be set up in some kind of schedual.
How do I get current dates and such, and how should this be shown/handled?

Hopefully I have time left for the optional part which is the playcreator. Different plays should be created and then be playable (think flash with squares and circles). How should this be created/handled and so on.

My coach wants to be able to attach videos to each of the plays/exercices which we have made during practice. Hopefully windows provides an easy way of integrating a player into a program, if so then how?

I'll add on more stuff to this, It's not like I want anyone to make the program for me I just want to learn about popular workaround, so if you have any comment or ideas for the program or how any of these problems can be solved feel free to post away...

//Aleks Ponjavic

 

[graphic7]

I'd recommend Visual Studio 6.0 C++ if you want a decent Windows programming environment. This is the only C++ compiler that I've used in Win32, so I'm a bit biased. Do you have any experience doing forms in Win32?

MSDN is an excellent solution to many of the things that you've asked for, and it's included in MSVS 6.0. I imagine there's solutions to being able to play a wav or mpeg file from an program, and for integrating flash graphics.

 

[dduardo]

This is quite an undertaking and planning is the key to success.

The first thing you should do is choose which gui toolkit you want to use. QT is a very good toolkit. It has good documentation and runs on windows, mac and linux.

Look at the documentation here:
http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/index.html

And some example code here:
http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/examples.html

To display the player information you can use the table module:

http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/table.html

For drawing you'll want to use the canvas module:

http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/canvas.html

The video you can use QMovie:

http://www.jtz.org.pl/Inne/QT-Tutorial/qmovie.html

Be forewarned, this is not easy stuff. You better have some experience in OOP if you want to do this. If you don't feel confortable enough with C++ you can always fall back on VB.

 

[ponjavic]

It's all right, I know what I'm dealing with and also the project requires at least 100 hours of work (even though I know I'll do more).

That is some really good advice, I'll look into it.
What would you say about C# and do you have any advice for the play editor.
It is basically a way for the coach to put out the players and tell the program how they should move. Then it should be able to play back...

How would I go about implementing some kind of schedual where the coach can add practices?

Also what compiler do you recommend for this type of programming?

 

[dduardo]

If you use C# your program will be dependent on .NET. This means in order to run your program the computer will need to have a copy of the .NET framework installed. This is Microsoft's way of locking you in. Atleast with Java they have virtual machines for all the major operating systems.

I use the GCC compiler. It has been around for quite some time and is industry proven. On the other hand, Microsoft's compiler isn't standards compliant and has many issues. Just check out this thread started not to long ago:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=50563

 

[graphic7]

Duardo makes an interesting point here. C#, from my experience, is very close to Java's syntax. C#, however, does differ from Java in a number of ways. The most blatant is C#'s operator overloading support. Not to get off track but if you're going to write it in C#, consider Java because of their syntax similarities and overall premise. Java has some very nice graphical classes (Swing). Java will also give you the portability that you will need; you never know when you'll have to execute the program on another system (maybe a Windows version where .NET is NOT supported), or another OS. As long as Sun has a runtime environment for that OS, your application will be able to run flawlessly (no type conversions between OS's).

 

[ponjavic]

A classmate just mentioned that Qt is very costy atleast for windows development which renders it quite impossible for a student like me to use

 

[graphic7]

Yes, there is a GCC for Windows. If QT isn't a solution (I'm not sure if it's propiertary or not on Win32), looking into GTK2. I still *highly* recommend Java for this job, though. Especially, if you're considering doing it in C#. Keep in mind there isn't an open source C# compiler, therefore, your only solution will be able to use g++ (out of the GNU compiler collection) for C++, or Java.

 

[dduardo]

QT is under a dual license model. If you sell your program with the source code (Open Source) you don't have to pay anything. If you sell your program without the source (Properietary) you have to pay a license fee. If your just doing this for a school project you don't have to play anything If you don't like this model there are other alternatives:

GTK
wxWindows
fltk

 

[ponjavic]

Qerub wrote:
Qt is actually tripple licensed, you're forgetting the QPL. What you're saying is accurate for the Mac and X11 versions of Qt, but not for the Windows version. Qt/Windows is only available under Qt's commercial license. Please see http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licensing.html for further information.

My classmate's thoughts...

 

[dduardo]

Ok, well then use another toolkit or switch operating systems.