TuscanSota

Well, he wears football pads and goes after the ball like a ball hawk. It's clearly a football player /s

Hey everyone, TuscanSota here with tonight's dev diary. RocketCan has been working very hard on the simulation aspect of the SimFBA, and we promise that he will provide you with new details soon. I will be providing you with an update on the latest changes to the interface in the meantime. First and foremost, I don't think this has been done yet but I want to welcome @gheavy to the SimFBA team. GHeavy is a friend of mine who's very adept when it comes to web development. As part of the dev team for SimFBA, GHeavy is in charge of the server-side of the Interface application. With that said, we both have been making a few changes to the interface behind the scenes. In the previous dev diaries, the team provided you with screenshots depicting the roster page & depth chart page, along with a team & profile page. Everything is still pre-existing; but the data being displayed on those pages was hard-coded for visual purposes. No database or data-source was involved. Over the past couple of weeks we've made efforts designing and implementing the server that will hold all data related to SimFBA. Everything from coaches, teams, players, and gameplan will be stored in the DB so that you can manage your team and strategize how you want your team to perform. With that said, here is a current screenshot of the current roster page: The data appears different from before, yes. The kicker is: all of this data is stored in the database. Here: This is another step towards being able to store live data within the interface. While some fixes still need to be made on the Roster UI, the fixes will be done by this Friday. Our next step will be to remodel and revamp the depth chart page to be more legible and easier to use. We hope that you enjoyed reading this and are excited about the progress made so far. Rocket will provide more details on the sim-side tomorrow, so stay tuned!

done

All, I hope y'all are doing well during these tough times and that y'all are safe with your family and loved ones. If you haven't noticed, all forums & subforums related to SimFBA are missing. Unfortunately, the admins and I have been discussing this for a while and we realized that we don't actually want to build a football sim. They're the hip trend right now, and I know we've been providing some great side content for the past few months, but we realized that this site has enough football already and we have other ambitions elsewhere. Instead, we would like to announce a new project, starting immediately. It's been in the works for about a few months; hell, in fact, we'll be running it starting tomorrow. It's THAT ready. We called it... Orchestra Simulator Lukewarm Von BeetsinOven is taking his symphony orchestra around the world! Perform in the greatest theaters and halls known in the world. Play songs made from famous composers such as Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, and... more! You are now an ambitious musician who will play classical performances around the world. You can practice your instruments, master your musical technique and woo all the bourgeois who pay to see you play a few notes. We are very excited about the project, and we hope that you are too. Please sign up now for this amazing and ambitious experience!

Thank you everyone for your input in the poll

Hey guys, We meant to put this out earlier, but there are a few things going on behind the scenes. My job right now is to bring you guys up to speed. I'm also using this as a sort of dev blog of sorts to let you know of my intentions and so forth. Is the sim still being built? Yes. There are two developers currently working on this: me, and Rocketcan. Rocket is busy with school and work, so it's mostly me doing what I can to finish up the interface so that I can transition to the game algorithm. What's taking so long? Thank you for being patient during this time. I've been doing a bit of learning behind the scenes. While I have a template up here, I'm making an effort to make sure that the interface remains efficient, secure, and easy to develop. The tech that I'm learning is what I'm hoping will make that possible. I'm focusing to make sure that we build the best interface possible, without cutting any corners. In terms of deadlines, we're still on task. For those who didn't know, I was juggling three things: work, a job hunt, and this project. And the good news is, I accomplished one of those three things. No, I'm not leaving the project, and no, I didn't lose my job -- well, actually, I found a new job. So all in all, that means I can prioritize two things: 1) New Job, and 2) SimFBA. And honestly, I'm a little relieved. I don't have to shift and refocus on so many different things all at once. How Can I Help? Most of the work that we have at the moment is focused around building the website and building the game algorithm. This doesn't require heavy math, but rather more of a focus on logic and coding. The work we're doing is the type of work that is not limited to just this site -- you can take the experiences from building this project and apply to your own, and even place them on your own resume/portfolio. I don't expect anyone we're bringing in to know how to build the website from the ground-up and shoot it into space; but rather if you are genuinely interested in learning how to build a website and code, and are willing to invest the time in learning, this might be the project for you. If this sounds like you, please message me. I'll send you a few tutorials, and some of the technologies we're using, and how you can learn them too. What's After This? This is the section of the dev blog which is more blog than it is dev. As I've mentioned above, I've ended my job search and will be focusing more on the development of simFBA. Once we have the project in a comfortable state for Beta testing, the team and I will put together a roadmap of the features that we want to implement into the site later on. After the official development of simFBA, I'm not sure. For those who know me from CFBHC, I am very passionate about storytelling and games in general. I finished a writing competition 3 1/2 years ago (over 200 pages of an unfinished draft!), and even made an Oregon-trail clone about being a bison. I'm looking to get back into that. I have a few ideas swirling in my head. Each idea I believe is unique in its own way. If you want to help me decide, hit up the poll. Anyhow, I need to head out. WIll edit later. peace.

Really excited for this. Great work Rocket!

Hey everyone, Coach Toucan here. I'm sorry it's been a while but I'm writing this now to update you on progress within the Simfba. As you all might have known, I took a bit of a break - I got to get out of town for a while, which was a nice change of pace. Now that I am back, I'm getting back into developing the UIs and wanted to show you all a bit of progress made. What Progress? In the last Dev Diary, I asked y'all to post as much as you can. Don't worry, you're now seeing the fruits of these very minor labors: https://calebrose.io/simfba-interface/ Yes, this is a working demo for the Simfba interface. I would like to point a few things out though, this is in a VERY Alpha stage. Here are a few known bugs that I need to point out: Refreshing on the URL that isn't '/simfba-interface/' will throw a 404 error. This is currently being looked into, so please don't panic. The site has not been optimized for mobile devices. That hamburger icon doesn't work yet. It will, just not at this moment. I would highly recommend viewing the site on a desktop if you can. If you want to give the tablet a go, by all means. The depth chart, scheduling, and recruiting pages will send you to a version of the launch page. That is because these pages aren't ready yet. Feel free to navigate through the site. If there are some oddities that you might find, send them here or let me know - I'm more than happy to look into the issues so that we can provide a better service. For those who haven't gone through the Interface link just yet, here are a few screenshots on what you'll find different from development over the past week: There is now a dropdown allowing the user to browse the roster for their team. I've added a few teams based on those who commented and posted in the last Dev diary. Here is an example of the interface rendering new teams: Hyun-Jin Robinson doesn't have a high school because he didn't play School. If you click on any of the names, you will now see icons for relevant attributes as well! What's remaining for the UI Interface? The item remaining for the 1.0 version that we're planning for is the Depth Chart UI. This is the UI that you will use to manage your team and assign the starting positions for your players. The current plan is to allow the user to view their own Depth Chart, with a later implementation on viewing other team's Depth Charts. Development on this UI should be complete by the end of the week, latest being Sunday. Okay... then what? Once the User Interfaces are complete we'll be moving to the next stage for Developing the interface and the simulation. We have an idea of what the roadmap will look like, but rest assured we will continue to make these each week. Visual signs of progression may be minimal until we reach a certain point, but I promise to show some snippets of code when appropriate. Speaking of code, I would like to state one last thing before I finish up: We're going to complete as much as we can by the Holidays, at least December. We're doing as much as we can, and we promise to have something to show. If you're interested in help speeding up that process, please reach out. We're not looking for anyone with prior programming experience, but those who have a genuine interest. The next stage of development is different from visually building a webpage, we will be designing and building the backbone of the application. This is the type of work that will allow you and everyone else in this community to use the interface in realtime and manage everything in a snap. Everyone's team won't be Washington State. @subsequent will be able to manage his Michigan Wolverines and @brightfalls will manage his Oregon Ducks. The goal is to let you manage your team on the interface so that you don't have to manage your team on the forums. If any of this sounds interesting to you and you want to leave a personal touch on this project, let me know. I'll bring you up to speed on what we're doing and provide you with the tools necessary so that we can hit the ground running once UI development for 1.0 is complete. We're not throwing you out onto the deep end, we're teaching you how to swim. On the shallow end of the pool, obviously. And that about wraps it up. I need to head out for the moment, but I will begin UI development for the depth chart very soon. I hope y'all are doing well, and that you enjoy what we're showing you so far. ~TuscanSota

Thanks everyone. I will no longer take replies

First person to reply to this will get a neat surprise in the next dev diary. edit: Actually, everyone please reply

Thanks for doing this while I was away!

Thanks! I'm glad that y'all like what you see right now

Hey y'all, Welcome to our second Dev Diary entry. I'm part of the team that's in charge of building the user interface for SimFBA. Tonight, I'm going to go over a bit of what we've been doing behind the scenes and showcase a few screenshots for y'all on the alpha build for the Interface. Our goal for the interface is to build a platform where users can manage everything about their team on the interface. This includes the roster management, recruiting, gameplanning, and scheduling teams. We want to make sure that players have the tools needed to manage their team with ease without the use of a forum. As for our progress, we have a ways to go, but we've been working on what we would like the site to look visually. So, I'm going to provide screenshots below for your review. Note: The following screenshots do not represent the final product, only a working build. Landing Page: The landing page is the first thing the user sees when they access the Interface. Above is the navigation which is what the user will use to navigate to the pages necessary. If the user is logged in and has a team, they will see their team name on the left-portion of the nav bar. On the right side, they will be able to see their username. When you hover over the team name, you will be given more options on navigating the Interface. A quick note: The dropdown items are likely to be changed due to a few things we're working on. Clicking on the team name will bring the user to the team page. The user will view info regarding their team and their roster here. Everything from the current season, players and redshirts. We eventually want to implement sorting so that users have the option to sort through their roster by name, position, overall, and jersey number. If the user clicks on their username, they will then view their User Profile. The user can access all of their own personal info - their username, the option to change their password, and their overall and current record. On the right side of the panel are four images that the user will be able to use to navigate to other pages directly from their user profile. If the user has a team, they will be able to see their team's logo. The formatting is a little off right now, but Quick Note: The image resolutions and text sizes are currently being worked on. Currently, we've viewed screens that a user should be able to see, granted that they have a team. What if the user is not assigned a team? Well, they will be able to navigate to two options from the Navigation Bar: Available Teams and recruits. The Available Teams page provides users with a visual display of all teams available to coach in the sim. We want the user to be able to see the teams available, their logo, and the conference the team resides in. Each team card will have a Request button at the bottom, that the user can click to request that team. Once a user has requested a team, an admin will be able to manage and approve active requests. Once a user has been approved for their requested team, they will be able to access the variety of menus shown above. At the moment, the Recruiting UI, Scheduling UI, and Depth Chart UI are not ready to be shown. As mentioned above, the following pages are works in progress on what we want the interface to be like for the user. We want to make the experience as seamless as possible so that users can manage their teams seamlessly. There's still a lot of progress to be made, but we're making sure to take our team and to break tasks down. We want to make sure that the platform we're building is one that you all will enjoy. If you have any questions or want to give feedback, please comment below or message me. I am always open to feedback. If you're interested in contributing to the development of the interface, please message either me or @Gigemags. I hope you all enjoyed reading this, and that y'all have a nice day. ~TuscanSota