RSB online pool table help page
Dear fellows:
Very often when discussing about certain shot or layout on the net, we find it difficult to show a precise mental picture with words. After hearing enough of things like "well it's a litte bit above 2nd diamond to the right where they are abourt 2 inches apart and btw the black is in front of the...", I have decided to program a little online pooltable with the hope that people can use it to show their ideas better. Please check it out at its current url:

If you like the program and find it useful, I highly recommend that you "download" the table. you canuse it on your computer without connecting to the internet. By doing so we can free up network traffic.

The pooltable is free for everybody for the purpose of education. If you know how to download it and put on your own web pages, please feel free to do so. If you have any commercial interest, you may contact me at the email provided below.

I'd like to send special thanks to friends who have patiently tried the beta at the testing stage. I hope soon we will have another new version of the table out with even more features.

Thanks for trying the program and hope you find it useful. As always, any suggestion and comments are welcome and highly appreciated.

Cheers,


11.01.00

 

Quick Links

Tutorials

Where can I get the shockwave plug-in?

Some new cool features

Can I get a table with my name on it?

Can I download the table and use it locally?

What are those funny symbols?

At last , here is a table for carom as well

Thank You

 

How to use the table:

Basic Idea

In this program you can move the balls around to desired position by clicking on an item and drag it around. After done, click on copy button at lower right corner. It will gather all the objects' position, encode them in a small string and then store that string into your computer's clipboard.


If you open a text editor or email program and perform a regular computer "paste" function, the string copied earlier will show up, it looks like this:

START( %AI1Z8%DC9L7%HC9[1%PC9K4%QB0B0%f7%g6 )END

Let's say you have just send this string to friends via email. By copying and pasting back the code to the program on their computers, your friend will then be able visualize your idea remotely.

 

Tutorial A, we have a nine ball rack here

1, open http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/~wei/pool/pooltable.html via the Internet or the downloaded table html file in your browser

2, use a standard computer copy function to copy below, highlight the following text string, it is okay to copy the word START or END, the program has a built-in filter to edit them out

START( %AN7O5%BL7P8%CJ5O4%DL7N1%EM7P1%FK6P1%GK6N8%HM7N8%IL7O4%Pg6Q6 )END


3, quite the brower, restart the program and load the page again, click on the paste button at lower right corner
it will ask you "do you want to provide the content of the clipboards to this movie?"

(The question asked is for Internet security issues, I have no intention to harm you or your computer. Sometimes the computer ask the same question twice, simply click on Okey should it occurs)

4, click on okay and it will paste what you copied earlier into the program.


 

Tutorial B, let's try copy and paste again. This time it's a tough situation in a game of one pocket:

START( %AI1Z8%DC9L7%HC9[1%PC9K4%QB0B0%f7%g6 )END

you need 1 and your opponent needs 2, and obviously you have the top ("A") pocket, what do you do? ....(for JoeyA, Lou or any one pocket player's amusement only)

New features added in pooltable 2:

1. Illustration symbols such as arrows and target (thanks to Ron Sheperd)
2. Reduced length of string for easier copying and pasting
3. Labels such as diamond numbers and girdles that can be turned on and off (thanks to Mike Page)

4. Greyscale option for better printing

So far we can't print the table layout directly from the browser. The simplest way to print is by doing a sceen capture or print screen and print it from a paint program.

5. Passing the parameter string through html to set the ball positions

There is a way to preset ball position and the table color using html, please take a look at:

Here is the page source from 3ball.html:

<object classid="clsid:166B1BCA-3F9C-11CF-8075-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/director/sw.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="553" height="360">
<param name="src" value="../pooltable2.dcr">
<param name="sw1" value=%AN8O4%BM7P1%CM7N8%Ph7S7 >
<embed src="../pooltable2.dcr" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/" width="553" height="360" sw1="%AN8O4%BM7P1%CM7N8%Ph7S7" >

</embed> .....

if you look at the source for the html page, there is a parameter (sw1) in both the object tag (for explorer) and the embed tag (for Netscape). you can copy the table layout that you have set up previously, bring it into a notepad, edit out the text"START(" and ")END" and then paste the string directly in to the html source (where the %AN8O4%BM7P1%CM7N8%Ph7S7 is). I recommend that you begin with a sample page as a template.

For those of you who are a little bit more computer savvy, it is very possible to write a simple cgi script to generate the html code on demand. By doing so you can invite your audience to go directly to a table layout, without the copy and paste steps.

6. Passing the parameter string through html to set the color of table cloth

<body bgcolor="#000000">
<p align="left"><b><font size="+3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><object classid="clsid:166B1BCA-3F9C-11CF-8075-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/director/sw.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="553" height="360">
<param name="src" value="pooltable2.dcr">
<param name="sw1" value=%AN7O5%BL7P8%CJ5O4%DL7N1%EM7P1%FK6P1%GK6N8%HM7N8%IL7O4%Pg6Q6 >
<param name="sw2" value="200080020">
<embed src="pooltable2.dcr" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/" width="553" height="360" sw1="%AN7O5%BL7P8%CJ5O4%DL7N1%EM7P1%FK6P1%GK6N8%HM7N8%IL7O4%Pg6Q6" sw2="200080020">
</embed>
</object></font> </b></p>
</body>

</html>

There is another parameter "sw2", its current value is set at 200080020, which means 200 red, 080 green, 020, blue, each color ranges from 0 to 255. You can put a new value in and play around with different colors.

Here are some sample colors:

pale green:( 051153102 )
tan: ( 204153102 )
purple: ( 153102153 )
royal blue: ( 000102153 )
red: ( 204000051 )

pink: ( 255204204 )

7. Here are a few new ideas I am working on:

A, a video reader decodes the different colors on the video and translate it into ball coordinates for easy transmitting over the net.

B, utilizing web 3D technology, you can see a test program here

 

Personalized option

it is possible to engrave your personal name or company logo on the table to enhance your business and enjoyment. If interested please contact me for details, I am happy to do it for a small sum.

You can see some examples here:

Carom/3 cushion table

Here is a carom table:

String demystified

Okay, what does thos funny symbols in the string mean?

% a handle for an item
%A, %B ... to %O ball 1 through 15
%P cue ball
%Q, %R, %S, %T label A, B, C, D
%U to %Z, %[, %\, %], %^ 5 straight arrows
%_, %`, %a, %b, %c, %d 2 curve arrows
%e cue ball English
%f, %g player scores

 

For example, in the case of %AN8O4:

%A is the 1 ball
N8 is the X position (horizontal)
O4 is the Y position (vertical)
in N8: "N" is ASCII number 78, have that minus 64, multiply by 10 and then add the second digit "8", the X position is 148
in O4: "O" is ASCII number 79, have that minus 64, multiply by 10 and then add the second digit "4", the Y position is 154

Here is a chart of ASCII codes

-- 64 "@"

-- 65 "A"

-- 66 "B"

-- 67 "C"

-- 68 "D"

-- 69 "E"

-- 70 "F"

-- 71 "G"

-- 72 "H"

-- 73 "I"

-- 74 "J"

-- 75 "K"

-- 76 "L"

-- 77 "M"

-- 78 "N"

-- 79 "O"

-- 80 "P"

-- 81 "Q"

-- 82 "R"

-- 83 "S"

-- 84 "T"

-- 85 "U"

-- 86 "V"

-- 87 "W"

-- 88 "X"

-- 89 "Y"

-- 90 "Z"

-- 91 "["

-- 92 "\"

-- 93 "]"

-- 94 "^"

-- 95 "_"

-- 96 "`"

-- 97 "a"

-- 98 "b"

-- 99 "c"

-- 100 "d"

-- 101 "e"

-- 102 "f"

-- 103 "g"

-- 104 "h"

-- 105 "i"

-- 106 "j"

-- 107 "k"

-- 108 "l"

-- 109 "m"

-- 110 "n"

-- 111 "o"

 

 -- 112 "p"

-- 113 "q"

-- 114 "r"

-- 115 "s"

-- 116 "t"

-- 117 "u"

-- 118 "v"

-- 119 "w"

-- 120 "x"

-- 121 "y"

-- 122 "z"

-- 123 "{"

-- 124 "|"

-- 125 "}"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Macromedia website

You can find the latest shockwave plug in from

Downloading the table

Programmer's note

the original table was a quick n dirty job done in Macromedia director ver 7.0 on a Mac. The dimension and the colors are from some rough measurement of a 9 ft GC IV with tight pockets. The program takes advantage of vector graphics thus the file size is small enough (34k currently) for web users.