Colored Stacks

[fish2plus2]

I would like to have different colors deferentiate how many chips/dollars a player has.

So if the person in seat A has <$1500 his box would be green.

If guy in seat B has <$3000 his box would be yellow.

I play $25/50 NL and want a way to easily see who has how much, as it helps avoiding short stacks moving allin on my opening raises.

edited title. -Sam

[SamIAm]

I don't think you can do this with graphics, PokerAce, or any other easy tool. I think you'll have to write a new version of Blider, that covers the old stack and writes a new one in color.
-Sam

edit: If you had any idea how Juk's $2BB script worked, you could mimic that. But I don't, so I can't. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[jukofyork]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think you can do this with graphics, PokerAce, or any other easy tool. I think you'll have to write a new version of Blider, that covers the old stack and writes a new one in color.
-Sam

edit: If you had any idea how Juk's $2BB script worked, you could mimic that. But I don't, so I can't. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]
It basically hooks (ie: intercepts) certain API calls just before Party calls them, then looks at the amount in $'s and then converts the amount to BBs. So long as you only play the same limit then it could be adapted to do what the OP was describing (one of the calls it hooks is TextOut(), and the DeviceContext could have it's background colour changed, thus making the amounts show up in colour).

I just haven't put in the time into improving $2BB yet. Basically it needs two things doing to move on:

1. Figure out why it doesn't work for certain people who are using Unicode (ie: 16bit) character sets, and possibly hook a higher level function such as DrawText() and/or the wide char version of TextOut.

2. The most tedious coding task is to make it work for different levels/SNGs, as it requires alot of testing (for fear the values will all disappear, etc). Basically to do this bit I need to do the following:

A. Every time TextOut() is called I have to look at the DeviceContext which was passed to TextOut, as TextOut() is not drawing directly to the screen, but to a "back buffer".

B. Then I have to store the text string along with a note on which DC is was using in a specialized queue-like data structure (see bellow why).

C. I then have to hook/intercept all calls to BitBlt() and StrechBlt() (which are being called to blast the back buffer's contents to the window itself). It is now and only now that I know which window the text is being sent to, and I can thus look at the title-bar (or in the case of SNGs the blind amount string) and work out the divisor for the original string I caught in stage A.

This might sound simple, but the queue data structure required is far from standard and all elements will require a "Time To Live" to avoid infinite queue overrun, due to the fact that the TextOut() function may actually be called and the back buffer never get blasted to the window, due to overlap etc. There are also a few other things I need to consider to make sure it is pretty much bulletproof (as losing the amounts of the window is "catastrophic" while playing).

So if people wonder why it's taking me so long to update $2BB its because I haven't had a great deal of time to put onto doing the step mentioned above (and making sure it works properly!). [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[fish2plus2]

sam,

Your FAQs look great. Are they uptodate?

[Shroomy]

[ QUOTE ]
I would like to have different colors deferentiate how many chips/dollars a player has.

So if the person in seat A has <$1500 his box would be green.

If guy in seat B has <$3000 his box would be yellow.

I play $25/50 NL and want a way to easily see who has how much, as it helps avoiding short stacks moving allin on my opening raises.

[/ QUOTE ]


Im kind of doing that now except based on effective M for tournaments. Once I get a things a bit more bulletproof Ill let you know.

[Roland]

[ QUOTE ]
If you had any idea how Juk's $2BB script worked, you could mimic that. But I don't, so I can't.

[/ QUOTE ]

You need a new excuse now Sam [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Interesting post Juk.

[Shroomy]

[ QUOTE ]


This might sound simple, but the queue data structure required is far from standard.... [snip]

[/ QUOTE ]

lol.. um NO it does not sound simple, and I know how to hook, subclass etc .. (though far from an expert)


btw .. you may try just using the api to tell the window to redraw a particual rectangle of the app and hook the TextOut ExtTextOut DrawText. Then you can just grab the info by polling and not have to worry about the queue and time to live .etc..

msg me is you ever want to chat, sounds like we are both working on a bunch of similar stuff.

[jukofyork]

[ QUOTE ]
btw .. you may try just using the api to tell the window to redraw a particual rectangle of the app and hook the TextOut ExtTextOut DrawText. Then you can just grab the info by polling and not have to worry about the queue and time to live .etc..

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not 100% sure what you mean here (intercept WM_INVALIDATE messages?).

If I tell it to redraw by sending my own WM_INVALIDATE, then I still have the problem that the text strings are now bitmaps (I have considered using template matching to get the values back from the blitted bitmaps, but this might be very error prone on different systems w/ different charset/fonts).

Not 100% sure I get what you meant. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[_dave_]

Is this the sort of thing you are after fish2plus2?

The idea piqued my interest - like many NLers I often fail to notice a shoristack when I LAGishly re-raise some junk hand, and end up having to call the inevitable 2-4BB "all-in", looking so very foolish ion the process [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

So tonight I made this (cheap lazy hack) script:

If only I understood the C++ hooking techniques and stuff Juk talks about.... much respect Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

On Party, standard setup:



And on my modded Empire:




Right now it only works on one table, and is a bit flickery - I think I know how to sort both these issues, although I am still somewhat of a scripting n00b.

Give me a few days and I'll have this up on overcards.com for all to enjoy [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

dave.

[fish2plus2]

Dave,

Exactly. I will make a donation when you get it up and ready!