Hi,
I'm a little late in joining this thread, but I'd thought I would throw my comments in anyway. The FEDS developed a couple of different scoring options for the 2001 game. We tested them in various practice and competition modes. The first scoring option was a Windows-based program. This had a built-in timer with visual and audible warnings as a time multiplier approached, as well as seperate scores for each team. The latest release version is available at:
http://www.ccsdesign.com/Robotics/score2k1v2.zip
if you would like to take a look at it.
We also developed a scoring program for the Palm OS. This was written using only the free SDK and publicly-available tools. Unfortunately, this requires a decent knowledge of C++ and OS internals, but teams that have the resources do tend to share.
In the end, we found that neither program was as helpful as we wanted when on the field. The ideal program, as our developers decided, would create an infinate number of situations and advise the human player how to proceed. This would require some intensive development and hardware requirements, maybe more than the current line of handhelds can provide.
For development tools, there are a lot of possibilities. For the Palm OS, there is AppForge, as mentioned above and also free C++ compilers. For Windows CE, Microsoft offers development tools free as add-ins to Visual C++ and Visual Basic. For desktop versions of Windows, there is the Visual Studio package as well as Borland C++Builder and Delphi.
I'm interested in any other comments on this subject.
Jeff C.