GoDraw Development

GoDraw V 6.4.1 is available for general use, as from its release date of 11/01/17.

If this is your first use of GoDraw, or you have been having problems installing or running in Windows 10, then please have a look at the Install page.

The resources available are:

Install [1] Installation procedure for Windows
Download GoDrawV6.4.1 [2] for Windows XP.
Download GoDrawV6.4.1-U [3] for Windows 10.
Download Players [4] the latest list of known players.
Online Manual [5] Includes a quick tour of Godraw.
Download Club Names [6] File of club codes and names.

Please Download Players [7] separately if you are downloading GoDrawV6.4.1 more than a few days after the release date. It is best to save the file without opening it in the browser: some might change the formatting.

The current GoPlayers.gdi file is updated regularly, and replaces the one issued with the program. Its location is the same as the installed location of GoDraw. This will be C:\GoDrawSys if you accepted the default in GoDrawV6.4.1, or it will be C:\Users\Public\GodrawSys if you accepted the default for GoDrawV6.4.1-U.

Please ensure that the downloaded file has the correct name and extension (GoPlayers.gdi), as some browsers might change that by appending (.html). When you re-run GoDraw, newly-entered players will have names, grades and clubs as up-to-date as at the most recent tournament.

Some users have recently experienced issues regarding installation in Windows 10. There has also been some problem loading a registration text file into GoDraw. These issues along with solutions are documented in the Installation page.

Please see the Introduction and Quick Tour sections of the Online Manual to get a fast overview of the system. The manual is included in the download file.

If you have any issues concerning GoDraw, please contact draw-program at britgo dot org

INSTALLATION: A separate self-extracting executable is provided for Windows 10 users who do not want to use the Administrator account. It installs all files into the folder C:\Users\Public\GoDrawSys by default.
IMPORT REGISTER: If any errors are detected in the register text file, the error message displays the whole line containing the error number. Any non-ANSI or illegal control characters in the line are made visible.

SAME-CLUB GAMES: GoDraw aims to avoid same-club games below the bar. We now give priority for choosing an alien opponent to those with the largest number of same-club games.
NO CLUB: Players entering with club 'No Club' are no longer kept apart.
EDITING THE DRAW: You now get a warning message that any printouts refer to the previous round, not the currently edited one. Also mis-clicks while editing no longer produce an operator error, but the information is quietly displayed in the status bar of the GoDraw window.

SEEDING A NEW TOURNAMENT: Creating a new tournament by seeding from a previous one and then deleting unwanted players: this resulted in spurious blank lines at the top of the register.
CLOSING REGISTER: Running a non-McMahon tournament produced a spurious message regarding setting the bar.
SWISS HANDICAP: Assigning a large handicap manually produced a display of the form hcap++komi.

BAR SETTING: The setting of the bar has been improved, by limiting the bar-depth to less than 3 grades difference. The bar-depth is the difference between the maximum entry grade and the bar-grade. This restriction avoids the frequent occurrence where high dan players are drawn in even games against kyu players. It has been shown that if players are correctly graded, the latter have have extremely low probability of winning the tournament.

If you change the bar before close of registration, you now get a message warning that the bar will be recalculated when you do close the register. Furthermore at that point you will get a message stating where the bar has been set and explaining that you can change the bar if this is needed.
SMALL TOURNAMENTS: When running small McMahon tournaments, you may experience the situation where the draw is incomplete. The pairing method works well when the number of players is at least 3 x number of rounds. If there is an incomplete draw, you now get a message with hints as to how to manage the situation manually.

REVERSE REGISTER SORT: Some actions would leave the register sorted in an order different to the displayed order. So clicking a player produced the wrong details.
KOMI STONES: If the handicap exceeds 9 stones in an edited draw, komi stones are awarded to black. The handicap and komi strings were merged without an intervening "+" leading to excessive handicap and a complaint when the draw edit was saved.
ACCESS VIOLATION: There were instances where some action would result in an access violation message, but GoDraw could continue without harm. This was experienced when importing a register from a file with blank lines containing invisible characters. It was also seen when ending a manual draw resulted in not all players paired.

You can view past improvements and bug fixes [8] in a separate page.