News and Announcements

SuiteCG Update: New Logos, New Football Experience, and Data Automation Available to the Public!

This long-awaited update to SuiteCG is finally here! In addition to new features, which we will detail below, we’ve updated the SuiteCG logo, along with the logo for MultiSport Scoreboard.

Important Upgrade Steps

Before we get to the exciting stuff, we want to make sure everyone is prepared for some non-standard steps to make this upgrade. Due to some changes in how we license the software, if your installation is currently licensed, you will need to DEACTIVATE your license prior to upgrading. You can do this from the License Manager, accessible from the SuiteCG Main Menu. We advise that you have your emailed invoice on hand so you have your license ID and activation password available. You can also find your license information at the Customer Portal.

After you have deactivated your license, close SuiteCG and run the installer, or click “Update Available” in the License Manager to run the update. During installation, you will see this very important notice and you cannot upgrade until you have confirmed understanding of the requirement.

If you have deactivated the license, or do not have an active license, you can check the checkbox and continue installing the upgrade.

Failure to follow these steps will result in your upgraded version of SuiteCG showing as unlicensed, and attempting to re-enter your license ID and password will result in a failed activation. Reach out to us through the contact form and we can reset your license. Be advised that support may not be available to assist on short notice! We do not recommend upgrading right before a game, especially if it’s in the evening.

We appreciate your patience and understanding and hope this is the only time we have to ask our customers to jump through these extra hoops to upgrade.

Now, with that out of the way, on to the exciting news!

New Football UI and Graphics

There are too many changes to put in writing, so watch this overview! The import points to cover are:

  1. Improved workflows for Field Goals and extra point attempts after touchdowns.
  2. Improved Penalty Flag workflows, including penalty types, declined penalties, plays under review, and coach challenges.
  3. The addition of Manual Stats for manually entering additional statistical information
  4. A new, sleek graphics package with more page options and scorebug configuration options.

School teachers, don’t forget that your students can download an unlicensed copy at home and learn to use the program while following along during a televised game. You can literally make watching Sunday night football part of their homework!

Other Sports?

Out main push with this release was to update the football UI and graphics. Other sports are in the cue to receive a similar graphics upgrade, and for some sports, a UI update as well.

Data Automation

And finally, after the long wait, we’re thrilled to announce the addition of external data support! There is still work to be done on this, but the main framework is in place for all the essentials of data automation for clocks, counters, toggles, and even some basic team and match details.

We currently have support for the following data sources:

  1. Daktronics TV Feeds, including from All Sport CG’s, All Sport Pros, and DSTI computers. Other Daktronics models, as well as other scoreboard systems are planned for support.
  2. Scorebird via the basic cloud API, requiring a Nest ID. More comprehensive integration with Scorebird is planned, and their team has been fantastic to work with!
  3. Basic XML, JSON, CSV, and TXT files from a local drive or via HTTP.

We’ve provided sample files and configuration profiles to get you stared on how to map data from your own sources, and you can export your profiles to use in future games sessions.

A few caveats:

  1. Some features, mainly in football (given it’s complexities), cannot be supported by data automation. Mainly since most scoreboard controllers limit the ballspot to a range of 0-50, we are unable to fully automate the ballspot to include the side of the field, nor are we able to accurately predict the Redzone. If you intend to utilize these features, it will require manual entry of the ballspot. We have added customization options to the Down and Distance button to enable or disable different features based on your needs.
  2. We do not yet have automation support for macros, so any action involving an animation (touchdown, field goal, etc…) will require user input. In the absence of user input, scores will still automatically update, but animations will not be triggered.

While this release took much longer than planned, we appreciate everyone’s patience, as well as input from our beta testers. We’re looking forward to moving forward with support for more data types and building in more features in the future! Click here to download the latest version of SuiteCG!

What’s Coming Up: External Data, Football Updates

External Data Support is In Development!

SuiteCG is in preparing a major new release that adds external data integrations. While the range of external data sources will be limited at first, we are excited to support Scoreboard OCR as an initial data source, as well as any software application that will export XML, CSV, JSON, or TXT (key=value pairs)!

Here is what to expect in the initial release:

  • Initial release will only support clock data
  • Support for additional data types (scores, Boolean data like possession, bonus, etc… will be added as quickly as possible)
  • Initial release will only support XML, CSV, JSON, or text data. HTTP support will be coming soon.
  • Support for ScoreBird and other devices is planned

American Football Gets New Features and Graphics

The next release will include updates to the American Football user interface and unveil a brand new graphics package with a modern look and a boatload of new features, including:

Assign players and types to penalty flags. Flags can end normally or with a declined status.
  • Play Clock that subscribes (counts down in-sync) to the GameClock
  • Improved graphics controls for setting when Down and Distance will display
  • New Penalty Flag workflow to define the type of penalty and which player committed the offense
  • Manual Stats so you can type in additional stats that are not tracked by SuiteCG automatically
  • Lower Third interview graphics for Pregame, Halftime, and Postgame live interviews
  • And more…

The next release will only have a new graphics package for American Football, but other sports will have similar updates in the works as well!

Shootouts, More Clocks, More Sports! Long-Awaited SuiteCG Update is HERE!

It’s been a very long time coming but the wait is over and we’re excited to announce an update for SuiteCG. There is no video tutorial to go along with this update but stay tuned for future announcements with video tutorials on the various new features.

As a general overview, this new update includes new features for shootouts, such as in soccer, hockey, and lacrosse (LAX support in development). Also included are some sort/filter features when selecting players for lower thirds, etc…

Easy to use Shootout controls allow for goal, miss, and auto calculation of which team wins the shootout

But the biggest update, which we took our time to carefully build, test, revise, re-test, etc… to ensure it works to expectations, is the inclusion of multiple clocks. First and foremost, this benefits games like hockey and lacrosse where penalty clocks are an important piece of the scorebug. Penalty clocks will sync with the game clock to start/stop and add/subtract time with the game clock. No need to start/stop/edit multiple clocks if the operator was too slow to stop the game clock! And when it comes to the free hockey graphics package, whether you have a single penalty clock or penalties for each team, or penalties of differing lengths, the scorebug will show an individual team Powerplay, or an “On Ice” drop down, and will always show the clock that is closest to zero.

Additionally, multiple clocks have allowed us to create intermission and halftime clocks. This is only implemented in hockey intermissions at the moment, but we will be adding halftime clocks to other sports as well in the coming months. We will cover the hockey updates in a video tutorial in a later update.

Once set, a penalty clock will sync with the game clock to count down, and add/remove seconds as the game clock is adjusted. The type of penalty is also stored. Working with the optional roster/player selection feature, you can show who is in the penalty box and what penalty they are serving.

Another big update is the addition of tennis as a new sport! Support is included now but training videos will be forthcoming. We’ve made sure to provide a user interface that allows for singles and doubles, allows for tracking who is serving, who is what side of the court, advantage and tie breaker points, and tracking games, sets, and match points.

Singles, doubles, advantage points, tie breaker points… from game, set, to match, we have it all covered

In the coming months we will be providing official support for lacrosse, now that penalty clocks are completed, and will be adding support for folk-style wrestling, which is already in the testing stage. Other features are in the works as well. We appreciate everyone’s patience while we worked on this big update in-between family, full-time jobs, and the ongoing disruptions to general life with the pandemic for the last two years. We are excited to get this release out and get moving on to the next stage of development!

The update is available now at suitecg.com, or from the License Manager in the SuiteCG application!

SuiteCG Adds Support for Graduation Ceremonies

The last few months have been interesting times for everyone. With all sports cancelled, many producers have shifted to offering other online services, including graduation ceremonies.

We’ve spent some time modifying MultiSport Scoreboard to meet an important need for those producers. Basic lower thirds for guest speakers is fairly easy, but managing the list of names for students as they walk the stage, either in person or virtually, is a different matter all it’s own. We’ve repurposed the Sponsor Carousel feature to meet that need, including a basic user interface for manually advancing student names or allowing it to play on a timed interval, as well as importing the student list from a CSV file all at once.

We’ve included a simple but elegant graphics package to use with our built-in NDI CG, and as always, the data fields are exported to XML or CSV to use with third-party systems.

We see potential for this interface in more traditional podcasts and shows with guests as well.

Version 0.6.72 is now available to download for free evaluation or from the SuiteCG License Manager.

Hockey Support Now Available in SuiteCG MultiSport Scoreboard

SuiteCG is excited to announce a new release that adds Hockey support for MultiSport Scoreboard. This release also updates SuiteCG to NDI 4.0.

One of the best features of hockey support is the ease at which Power Plays and Players on Ice are automatically displayed in the built-in graphics package. Power Play tabs automatically reveal and hide based on the number of players on ice for each team, meaning the operator only needs to focus on the number of players and the software handles the rest. Additionally, Delayed Penalties, Empty Net, player headshots, and players in the penalty box are easy to update and display with a few quick clicks on the touchscreen-friendly interface.

This is the first of what we plan to be a few updates for hockey. Future updates will address penalty clocks, which are not yet supported.

An informal walk-through of the Hockey user interface is provided below:

Additionally, this update includes NDI 4.0 libraries and we have changed the built-in preview monitor to be more reliable and include transparency.

This update is available through the website or through the License Manager, accessible from the SuiteCG Main Menu.

The Puck is About to Drop!

We are really close to getting a release out with hockey support! We have a few tweaks to make and get some more testing done (mostly relating to NDI 4.0!) before we can release this to the general public, but we do have a short video for you to salivate over!

Change to Game Clock Output may Affect Users with Third-Party CGs

SuiteCG users that integrate with a third-party CG should take note that after identifying an issue where the game clock was slow to update in certain situations, we have made a permanent change to how we export the game clock data. Game clock will now always write to suitecgclock.xml or .csv, depending on your export settings for third-party CGs. Previously, the game clock only wrote to this file if the clock counted down and displayed 1/10 second intervals in the last minute of the game.

We do not expect this change to affect many customers, as most game templates already counted down and had the 1/10 second setting applied. Customers using the built in NDI graphics will see an improvement, but do not need to apply any changes to their CG Settings. CGs such as LiveText that rely on a broad “watch folder” for data updates are unaffected, however vMix customers or customers that bind game clock data though a data source management tool may need to change their data binding to the suitecgclock file.

This change has been applied to version 0.6.47, which can be downloaded through the SuiteCG License Manager page, accessible from the SuiteCG Main Menu.

Dedicated User Interface for Football/Soccer for MultiSport Scoreboard

We are excited to announce improved support for football/soccer that includes the following:

  • A dedicated user interface streamlined for football/soccer previously used the generic interface)
  • Added player headshot features
  • Added Red and Yellow card workflow for assigning cards with or without the requirement of a team roster
  • Added Substitution workflow that includes basic animation on the scorebug as well as an optional player In/Out graphic when team rosters are present
  • Updated graphics package to support the various player lower thirds

An informal walk-through of the new user interface is provided below:

This update is available through the website or through the License Manager, accessible from the SuiteCG Main Menu.

Dig… Set… Kill… Volleyball Template and Graphics Package Now Available

We’ve dropped another update, this time for volleyball support. This volleyball interface and graphics package is fairly basic and not where we intend to leave it, but it’s straightforward and easy for the fast pace that comes with volleyball.

This update can be obtained through the SuiteCG License Manager screen. As always, updates can be performed within the License Manager even without a license.

Automatically Display Down and Distance in American Football Graphics Project

We’ve released a minor update that includes a new graphics project for American Football that automatically displays Down and Distance, as well as Ballspot, per the end-user’s option. For more details watch the included tutorial video.

This update is available through the License Manager screen of any existing installation of SuiteCG, regardless of the presence of a product license.