Eyebergine, Atropine's mascot since 2018.

Atropine

Atropine is the tournament administrator used to administer many FOCAL Countdown events. It is written in Python.

Atropine starts a web server on your computer, and you administer the tournament from your browser. It doesn't need internet access to work, unless you use the exaggeratedly-named live broadcast feature.

Atropine has been tested on Windows and Linux, and waved in the general vicinity of a Mac.

Prerequisite: Python 3

To run Atropine, you need to have Python 3 installed. At the time of writing (April 2024), the latest release of Python 3 is version 3.12.3, but if there's a later version on the Python downloads page by the time you read this, then install that.

Python 2 is not supported, either by Atropine or by much else any more.

Download latest release: Atropine 1.2.3

This is the latest release of Atropine.

Download links for earlier Atropine versions can be found below.

Instructions for getting started

Install

• If Python 3 is not already installed on your computer, or if you're not sure whether it's installed, download and install Python 3.
• Download the latest Atropine zip file from the download link above.
• Extract all the zip file's contents into a new folder of your choice. This is where Atropine will be installed.
  • This is an important step. You cannot simply run Atropine from inside the zip file! You must extract (or "unzip") its contents. On Windows, you want the "Extract all" button. Forgetting this step is the most common cause of Atropine "just not working".
• Don't move any of Atropine's files out of that folder - the location of atropine.py in relation to the subfolders must be maintained as it is. If you want to, it's okay to make a shortcut (or symlink, on Linux) to atropine.py and put the shortcut anywhere you want.

Run

• Open the folder you extracted Atropine to, and run atropine.py.
• If you didn't fully extract the zip file, or you didn't install Python 3, this will become apparent now. Otherwise, if all went well...
• Atropine will open a small web server on your computer, and give you a link to paste into your browser, like this: http://localhost:3960/cgi-bin/home.py
• Go to that link in your web browser. You are now using the web interface, and you can create and administer your tournament from there.

Further information

The file webroot/docs/index.html in the zip file contains further information about using Atropine. You can also reach this from within Atropine using the Help link in the sidebar.

Screenshots

This is what you see as the event organiser...

... and this is what the players see on your public-facing screen.

GitHub

Atropine is available on GitHub.

Past releases

Normally, you want the latest release in the table above. If for any reason you can't use the latest release, earlier releases are shown below.

Past dependencies

pygame is no longer required

Versions of Atropine prior to 0.9.0 also required the Python "pygame" module for the full-screen public-facing display. Versions 0.9, 1.0.0 and onwards do not need this module any more. pygame's presence won't do any harm, so you don't need to remove pygame from your computer if you already have it installed, but it is no longer used by Atropine.

Where's Teleost?

The reason we don't need pygame any more is because the public-facing display is now a web page, accessed through the Atropine web interface like everything else. The old standalone program "teleost" no longer exists. Instead, in the Atropine web interface, click "Display Setup" on the sidebar and then click the "Open Display Window" link at the top.

Legacy releases (for Python 2)

These older releases used Python 2. They are shown here for historical interest.

Please note that these releases are now many years old. There will be no more releases of Atropine for Python 2.