Introduction

This software allows to play the classic X01 darts game with up to 9 players and single or double out. It supports both the keyboard and an actual dartboard as input and features logging which can be used for statistics. It also includes a CGI application, which provides a web interface for additional tools.

Command Line Arguments

The following options may be passed to the Darts.exe as command line arguments in any order. Each option is specified by passing the Short or Long identifier as argument, possibly followed by the value for this option as another argument according to the following table.

Player Names

Each name must consist of 1 to 20 characters and must not begin or end with a whitespace. In addition to alphanumeric characters and the space character, any of the following characters is allowed: !"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~

Input

The application takes all of the 62 scoring sections as well as 3 buttons for navigation as input. They are named according to the following table.

Keyboard

The following keyboard mapping is used. If a key is specified in the first column, it must be hold down while the key in the second column is pressed.

Serial Port

If a real dartboard is connected to the PC using a serial port, it can be used as input. The application reads from this port and turns any received identifier from the table above into the corresponding command. Any two consecutive identifiers read from the stream must be separated by at least one whitespace, which includes line breaks. Any non-whitespace character must be part of a valid identifier.

The following sample code is a program written for the Arduino Uno used to turn the signals from the dartboard into commands for the darts application.

const int outN = 7;
const int inN = 10;

const int outPins[outN] = { 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 };
const int inPins[inN] = { A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, 2, 3, 4, 5 };

const char* const mapping[outN][inN] = {
    "T6",   "T10",  "T20", "T5", "T12",  "T9", "T13",  "T4", "T18",  "T1",
    "D6",   "D10",  "D20", "D5", "D12",  "D9", "D13",  "D4", "D18",  "D1",
    "S6",   "S10",  "S20", "S5", "S12",  "S9", "S13",  "S4", "S18",  "S1",
  "BOUT", "START", "EXIT", NULL, "S25", "D25",  NULL,  NULL,  NULL,  NULL,
    "S2",   "S15",  "S16", "S8", "S11", "S14", "S17",  "S3", "S19",  "S7",
    "D2",   "D15",  "D16", "D8", "D11", "D14", "D17",  "D3", "D19",  "D7",
    "T2",   "T15",  "T16", "T8", "T11", "T14", "T17",  "T3", "T19",  "T7"
};

void setup() {
  for (int i = 0; i < inN; i++) {
    pinMode(inPins[i], INPUT_PULLUP);
  }
  for (int i = 0; i < outN; i++) {
    digitalWrite(outPins[i], HIGH);
    pinMode(outPins[i], OUTPUT);
  }
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  for (int i = 0; i < outN; i++) {
    digitalWrite(outPins[i], LOW);
    for (int j = 0; j < inN; j++) {
      if (digitalRead(inPins[j]) == LOW && mapping[i][j]) {
        Serial.println(mapping[i][j]);
        delay(500);
      }
    }
    digitalWrite(outPins[i], HIGH);
  }
}

Logging

The application logs each played game and each round of a player to two separate CSV files. Both files are written to the working directory and are named Games.csv and Rounds.csv, respectively. The first file contains a single row per played game containing the game settings passed as command line arguments. It consists of the following columns.

The second log file Rounds.csv contains a single row per round, which is a three-dart turn of a player. It consists of the following columns.

Each round is logged as soon as it is confirmed, which either happens when START is pressed to go to the next player or when the game is restarted or quit while there are no remaining darts in this round. A game is logged together with its first round, but the logged timestamp represents the time when the game was started. So only games with at least one played round are recorded and the beginning of each game is marked by a round, whose second column is 0. This allows to associate games with their corresponding rounds.

The timestamps in both files are generated using the standard C function ctime with a small modification: During daylight saving time, a whitespace followed by DST is appended to allow for disambiguation during time changes. The timestamps therefore match the format Www Mmm dd hh:mm:ss yyyy[ DST] and represent the local system time.

CGI Application

The DartsServer.exe implements the Common Gateway Interface and provides a web interface for configuring and launching the Darts.exe and for showing statistics about played games. It has been tested successfully with the minimalistic web server TinyWeb, but should as well run with any CGI compatible web server. It expects the Darts.exe as well as the two CSV files to be in the working directory to run properly. The package also includes a folder named DartsServer which contains additional resources like CSS and javascript files in a subfolder Resources. It should be placed on the web server as well for the web interface to look and function properly.