Development plan

[Gandalf]

Here is the vague plan in sequential order. One step doesn't need to be fully complete before moving on to the next. Development may be slowed due to me probably moving webhost in the next month or two, oh and also having a baby. I'll keep this updated with what's going on. As always, comments/suggestions welcome.

1) Create an upload tool, that uploads the whole DB file to "staging" tables on the database.
1 week?

2) Create processes that turn this raw data into useful, readable data on proper tables.
Months!

3) Create basic front end to display the data.
Timescale depends on definition of "basic"

4) Create fancy front end that looks pretty and does all sorts of stuff.
?

5) Blood bowl 2 support - depends on the file format of replay files in Blood Bowl 2, assuming there even are replay files. If someone buys BB2 I would be very interested to know more about this...

[Gandalf]

At work we have a weekly team meeting where we all update everyone on how things are going and what the next plans are. So I will do one here, at least for the purpose of making sure I don't forget about this.

Last week : Zero development. Reasons include a ton of household admin stuff (almost all done now), revising for an SQL exam (which is on Tuesday) and having the in-laws round all of Saturday.

Next week : I should get some things done post-Tuesday as the things that held me back won't exist then. The first target (as per plan) is to have some sort of uploading technology in place.

[lawastooshort]

the in-laws

Next week... the things that held me back won't exist then.

Crikey.

[Gandalf]

And that my friends is the power of taking quotes out of context....

Last week : Little development. I started playing Elder Scrolls Skyrim... HOWEVER! I have achieved a proof of concept for first objective! It needs tidying up before being released - for example the same game can be uploaded twice - if the file name is different - and it only does a few tables for now, but the technical concept I used to implement it has been proven to be sound.

Next week : More work on tidying up progress from last week. Add some lookup tables (eg lists of skills, races etc.)

[Raveen]

What would be nice is a feature that BBM has in theory but only as a manual function set up by the admin. Namely to have a dummy league that aggregates results from multiple live leagues.

So instead of uploading twice, the commissioner could set all games in Season X to also appear in the overall league.

[Gandalf]

Oh yes absolutely... games will have a one-to-many link to leagues rather than a one-to-one link like BBM does. It's one of the key flaws of BBM as I see it.

I'll start off a wishlist thread for things like this... I'd like this thread should stay for progress updates & comments relating to them.

[Gandalf]

Last week: I was definitely bitten by the coding bug. I've done a ton of stuff - a lot of the invisible behind-the-scenes stuff for part 2, and also a few hours on part 3 (front end). I have written pages to display a list of players, teams and results. Leagues is the final "main entity" as I see it, but that's definitely a later thing... players/teams/results are the facts that needs to be stored and displayed first. I've even implemented it with fancy sortable tables... so venturing into part 4 slightly.

Next week: Part of the impetus behind last week's work is that little will happen next week, as I am out 4 evenings out of 5, plus the baby could arrive. Any work in the next will be a lot of repetitive dull stuff for part 1 and a lot of complicated work for part 2, apart from match logs (including dice rolls) which is probably more work than the rest of part 2 put together. But I will continue to decipher the netcommands table as and when people post their findings on that post.

[Gandalf]

It's all about importing data to proper tables at the moment (Step 2). Original estimate of "Months" has shrunk a lot due to my obsessive coding nature, the bit's between my teeth and I can't let go now... though this could be interrupted by a newborn at any time...

Done : Code to import races, their players stat lines, skills and potential skills (ie single and double rolls).
Next up : Basic team info, match results, basic match stats, basic player functionality, player-match-stats. I should have something basic worth showing by this point!
And finally: applying and tracking player injuries, other proper coding for players, more advanced team data. This is where you will really start to see the superiority of this work compared to BBM.

[Gandalf]

New development plan!

Version 0.5 - release THIS WEEKEND! Features an upload tool, and viewing matches, coaches, teams (but not their players), assigning matches to competitions, races. Most data will be sortable by the user.

Version 1 - featuring players, their overall stats, stats per match (viewable either from the match or the player screen), injuries (including when they were sustained, and ones that have been apothecaried away), skills (including when they were gained). Ability to view a team's lineup before/after every match. Dead/retired players logged. Lineups for races added. Basic support for competitions.

Version 2 - league/competition more feature. Importing log files, interpreting them & providing statistics regarding how lucky/unlucky coaches have been.

[Gandalf]

Weekly update.

v0.5 has been released. I also added an extra page giving a different view of the matches, that gives aggregate stats about them, eg total casualties, knockdowns etc. There is a link to this on the matches page.

Work on v1 is progressing. Lots of code regarding processing players. It's a lot of stuff to write, especially all the extra intelligence I am trying to program in that BBM lacks - such as noting when a player was retired, easily being able to see a history of injuries sustained, and Star Player support. The import code for v0.5 was 10kb, the import code for v1.0 is 43kb and counting. I think I'm getting close to being able to test it.

The other element of v1 is competition support. This will be fairly simple for version 1. The competition page will show matches that have happened in the draw, and, for leagues, give a league table. Detailed statistics (like BBM provides - team/player top scorers, most knocked down etc.) will come in a later version.

[Gandalf]

Baby in lap - typing 1 hand

Achieved this week....
- Support for star players, mercenaries, journeymen. Required a lot of behind the scenes work.
- Shiny navigation bar! Improves looks and enables access to more pages without multiple clicks.
- Match details page shows all players & their stats from the match.
- Player type list.
- Player type pages complete. Different for star players and normal players.
- Various bug fixes.

Plan for next week....
- Add star players to the players page.
- Some other stuff from the "v1.0 complete" thread.

[Gandalf]

Achieved this week...
- Star Player's overall stats now appear in the Player Statistics screen. See how many XP Morg would have! Track all the touchdowns that Deeproot scores! (Rav's request)
- Team average stats page created (notjarvis' request)
- Retired players are now tracked. See retired players in the player lists, team pages, and player type pages.
Two of these things are things that BBM doesn't do, so hurrah for adding value

Issues...
- Something fishy is going on with retired players. I'm not sure what it is, but a couple more added themselves unexpectedly when I refreshed one of my matches. If you see something odd let me know.
- The movement value of some players/player types is 1 or 2 less than it should be. Please point out any inaccuracies and I will fix them.

Plans...
I am back to work on Monday as my paternity leave ends so don't anticipate doing much more in the coming weeks. Spare time largely taken up with 2 kids. Getting injuries displayed is the one big-ish thing that is left so that will probably be the next thing I will work on. Everything else (excluding v2 plans) is just more icing on the cake.

I won't be doing weekly updates now as I will have less time to work on this. I will just post as & when new things are done.

[Gandalf]

The incorrect movement value thing has been fixed going forwards, I think. MV4 was being calculated as MV3 instead. In future this is fixed but if you see anyone who should have MV4 but is showing as MV3 then let me know.

I believe the "latest match" code is broke meaning that retirements and post-match stats are not being updated, I'll try and get that fixed this week.

[Gandalf]

New features:
- Injuries are now displayed in match reports and player histories. The injury name is displayed, and if you hover over it, it will tell you the description.
- New skills are also displayed in match reports and player histories. When a player debuts a new skill it will be displayed - not in the game when it is earned. For teams who do not have all their matches loaded into BBDB, it will display against the first match that it finds after that skill was given. If you subsequently load an earlier game, the skill should move backwards in time accordingly.

[Gandalf]

Work on the log files has begun over the Christmas break, probably 10-15 hours. I've achieved quite a bit but don't have nothing to show for it just yet. I've created lots of jigsaw pieces and getting close to having something to show for it. It initially won't be much more than what BBM provides on the game log page, but this is all about getting the data in the right & proper format, which will make it easy to do all the bells and whistles, like more graphs, better statistics and so on.

One thing I am trying to get right this time is the true target for rolls where possible, for example BBM doesn't deal with stunty for casualty rolls, the mighty blow support is a bit iffy, and whilst sometimes you can't work out the roll required (eg you roll a 1, the log only says "failure"), sometimes you can with a bit of cleverness (eg if you reroll that 1 and get a 2-5 then that exposes the information required to work out the true target).