dev diary #11 - Interface progress (Depth Chart+)

[TuscanSota]

Hey everyone,

 

TuscanSota here. Hope y'all are doing well and staying safe.

 

Just wanted to give you a progress report on things going on behind the scenes for the SimFBA interface. First thing's first is the visuals. We went ahead and revamped the Depth Chart page to be friendlier on the client side.

 

 

Our previous rendition of the DC page relied on placing EVERY possible position and their backup on that one page. It at first didn't seem bad, but we concluded that it was perhaps too much information, so we wen't back to the drawing board. We decided to go for an approach that I think players in the community are more familiar with and went with a design similar to the roster pages seen on the Madden and NCAA football games. The Depth Chart UI is also the place where players will be able to select which players they want to start for their team, and ultimately set their depth chart.

 

The depth chart page comes with two dropdowns: A team dropdown and a position dropdown. On accessing the page, your current roster will load from the DB and will filter based on the current position. The default position is always QB, but you will be able to select all other viable positions. Look below for an example.

 

 

Upon selecting a different position from the list, the roster will filter to display all players under that position. Below is the same page, but you will notice the position dropdown now reads: WR. Despite the fact this team needs more wide receivers, this is specifically for this demonstration.

 

 

The table on the Depth Chart UI will display all attributes for said players at those positions. Users will be able to view their different players' archetypes, overall, potential, and all player attribtues for that specific player.

There's two columns that I want to point out: String and Promote. Both are located on opposing ends of the Depth Chart table. String specifies the current role for that player in that position. As shown above, Cal Beckham Jr is the starting WR for this roster. In the first example, Aaron Kotar is the 1st String QB while Marquise Mariota is the 2nd String QB. Promote will be the function allowing players to sort who they want to start and who they want either as backup or on the bench. Ideally, the player data will change up and down along the depth chart page, with only the string values of the players remaining the same. When the user leaves the depth chart page, their Depth Chart will be set and stored in the DB.

 

 

The Depth Chart page is a key component to the SimFBA interface, important for setting your team and for (potentially) viewing the starting roster of other teams. We are working on ensuring this page functions as intended so that it will be ready for launch. As I stated above, this is a visual representation of the depth chart page. Progress will be made this week on ensuring its functionality so that the application is bug-free on launch day.

 

On progress after the Depth Chart page, we are currently discussion but are looking to implementing Team Requests, which will allow players to request the team of their choice, and allow admins to approve said requests. Once this is implemented, we will (hopefully) look into slowly deploying the interface for the users so that they can view their rosters for the first time.

 

Thank you for reading this week's dev diary. We're excited on the progress made, and we hope you're excited on the future of sim football.

 

Until next time,

 

TuscanSota

[Rocketcan]

"Once this is implemented, we will (hopefully) look into slowly deploying the interface for the users so that they can view their rosters for the first time."

 

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