With version 5.0, the Game Caddie continues to move away from its original design concept that was first featured in GC 1.0. Those early versions of the Game Caddie tried to ensure that the user could type anything they wanted into cells. If the user violated the ‘rules’ of the Excel program (e.g., by entering text in cells formatted for numbers), the Game Caddie could hang, get corrupted, or display cryptic warnings and error messages.
As the Game Caddie has automated more features, it has made greater use of structured data, formats, and processes. Some of that approach showed up in GC 3.0 with the revised Approach Caddie and continues to a much greater degree with GC 5.0. Thus, we are moving in the direction of trading off absolute flexibility for greater speed and accuracy of gameplay.
The Configuration Settings Menu in GC 5.0 is a way to incorporate well-known user preferences for various styles of gameplay, while preserving some form of process control. GC 5.0 also adds more conditional formatting that warns users of type-mismatches from miss-entered data and a few more warnings that will keep the macro code from diving off the deep end when a user ignores them.
Version 5.0 doesn’t close every possible loop a user can ‘inadvertently’ open, yet that remains a design objective for the future. Of course, a determined programmer can always break the Game Caddie or the workbook that underpins it. I am not an experienced programmer, nor do I intend to make the Game Caddie immune to attack from a pro.
My goal has always been to create a free utility for a great board game–one that supports its many users’ desires for gameplay options while making it easier, faster, and even more more fun to play APBA Golf.
Enjoy!