#87 | Interface | SimBBA Offseason Roadmap

[TuscanSota]

Hi everyone,

 

For today's dev diary, I want to discuss the following topics:

• News Page
• 2022 SimCBB Post Season Analysis
• Roadmap for SimCBB 2023

 

News Page

I want to give a shoutout to @AFu01for her work on the News Page -- the news page is now available and fully ready to use for all sports leagues. She did a fantastic job with revamping the page, improving performance, and with allowing news logs across all leagues to be viewed.

Performance-wise, the page now returns all news by each season separately; so, when the user selects the league dropdown, the page will return that league's set of news logs, rather than filtering all news from one larger single set.  To view news within a specific league, please use the following dropdowns:

- League

- Season

- Week

News type is still available: but if you're looking for specific news within a given league in a given season, this is the recommended order. 

Note: Some filters may take time to load. This is due to the number of news that can be available within any given season. Using the week filter will improve performance.

With the news page now reworked, this also means that NFL news logs are now available. 

 

2022 SimCBB Post-Season Analysis

The 2022 SimCBB season is now complete. Having ran a full season, and having completed recruiting within the regular season, I want to call this season a success. It was exciting to see users tune in to games being streamed in the mornings, while becoming more competitive over 5 star recruits and the active battles which took place.

Some important things to note:

- The implementation of AI in CBB Recruiting turned out very well -- while a majority of users took the top 25 selections, plenty of AI teams were able to recruit and achieve competitive classes with blue blood Michigan State at #12, and a surprising class with Davidson at #21. There's still some improvement that can be done, especially from the AI side of recruiting. Many changes behind the scenes were adjusted, specifically how the AI would scout recruits and fill their boards.

- This year's recruiting pool was okay, though we received feedback that there should be more five stars in the class overall. Some numbers are being slightly tweaked on the AI side to allow more five stars to appear. Pending some other changes that will be occurring as well, we are very likely to see more five stars and more competitive battles.

- Roster generation of the remaining 150+ teams I think is something I should've allowed more time to tinker with. Many teams were generated with fantastic rosters. While working on the generation algorithm, there was an emphasis to make sure that players were designated a specific year (freshman, junior, etc) and position when generated, which worked as intended. Progression worked as intended at the time, but the challenge with SimCBB and SimNBA was that we ended up with generated players who should've declared early by their sophomore year, who then stuck around for their senior year instead. These are very talented players who played exceptionally well when coached correctly; but they should've been placed in the SimNBA. This was an oversight on my part, and something that I've nerfed for the next round of expansion.

- Despite the oversight, it did allow for some cinderellas to sneak into the postseason and cause chaos. I'm looking at Louisiana Tech and Fresno State specifically. Just about every generated team garnered the same level of talent; but there was a stark difference between a team's win/loss record and how they performed on the court for March Madness. We may see more cinderella matchups in future seasons; but with the generation algorithm being nerfed, and with the plans for SimCBB next season, seeing a 16 seed take down a goliath 1 seed will be far less common.

 

Which brings us to our...

Roadmap to SimBBA 2023

There are going to be a lot of changes next season which will impact both SimCBB and SimNBA. To group these together, I'm going to be using the moniker of SimBBA specifically. Next season we're going to be using a new engine which will allow more gameplan strategy, including shot proportions by range for each player. This will allow for users to properly strategize how they want certain players to play when on the court, while preventing mishaps on players who shouldn't be making certain shots.

 

There are other changes that are being made, but I don't plan to reveal these changes until everything is ready. By everything, I mean everything. The changes for SimBBA are currently in development and still in progress. I can't provide an expected date on when things will be completed by; however, @Migiand @Ezacowill be able to provide y'all with more information regarding roster management in the future.

With that said, here is my list:

• Football Related items
  • For the over the next month I will be working with Rocket on getting the final changes for the SimCFB and SimNFL season ready. The list of things remaining is small, but there's still some work I will need to do on my end, specifically on the NFL side, to ensure that things such as UDFAs, Practice Squad, and the Waiver Wire are ready.
• SimNBA on the Interface - Roster Management
  • I am working on making sure that users who want to participate in SimNBA are able to request their team and at least see their roster at this moment. I will go over this later.
• SimNBA - Free Agency, Waivers, and Trading
  • There are a few small differences between SimNBA and SimNFL -- in that regardless of whether it's the offseason or regular season, a player cut from an NBA team still technically has their pre-existing contract in hand. Most of the features from SimNFL were migratable into SimNBA; but small differences such as this means that I need to take some time to make sure that these features, as detailed in the SimNBA rules, are ready and function as intended. There is a small task that @Migi is going to help me with after the NFL draft, which will determine some work that needs to be done before the FA and Trading pages are available.
• Run SimCBB progressions
  • You may be surprised why this is lower on the list. The next dev diary I will write on SimNBA will explain why. What I'm allowing to tell right now is that my objective is to make sure that viewing the SimNBA roster page, Free Agency, and Trading is 100% ready before progressions on the CBB players can be ran.
• Build the SimNBA Draft page
  • Once SimCBB progressions are ran, work on the draft page will begin. There's going to be a lot of R&D done on this page, so if you don't hear from me for awhile, it's because I'm working on this page. No news on when SimNBA and SimCBB are ready mean I'm working on this.
• Run UDFA
  • Once the SimNBA draft is ran, all undrafted players will be moved over to the FA pool. There will be a short period where teams will be able to place offers on UDFAs, but that information will be provided on a later date.
• SimCBB Expansion + Secret
  • I want to thank everyone for the feedback provided on which conferences we're expanding to for next season. No information is going to be provided right away on which conferences were selected. Consider this the phase where expansion occurs, and players will be generated. There is also something secret that the SimBBA team and I have planned that is related to SimNBA, which will be announced once expansion is done and ready.
• Gameplan changes
  • Once expansion is complete, work will begin on revamping the gameplan page for both SimCBB and SimNBA. Some things will look different on the page, but that is the intent.
• Recruiting changes
  • Due to changes to progression and the gameplan, and with expansion, recruiting will see some adjustments. There is at least one new feature I want to place in SimCBB for recruiting that I think will make recruiting a bit more interesting. 

 

When will this all be done by?

Someone's going to ask this on Discord, so I'm going to give an early date on when we can at least get the SimNBA draft by: June. If it arrives earlier than planned, consider it great news. However, users will likely see less updates on the interface during this time unless its for CFB and NFL. The reason behind this is because I want everything for SimNBA to be fully ready by the time the next update does occur. That's why I'm looking towards June.

 

However, I do want to announce that users are now able to request their NBA teams on the interface. Team structure in the NBA is going to be similar to that of the NFL where there will be four roles: Owner, Manager, Coach, and Assistant. Go ahead and request your teams now.

 

Once given access to your NBA team, the roster page will also be available for use. Users cannot cut players at this time, but you will be able to place players on your trade block and on your team's G-League.

 

With that said, thank you for tuning into today's dev diary. I know y'all are excited about the future of SimBBA, and I hope y'all are more excited once these changes are ready and presented.

 

~Tuscan

[subsequent]

SECRET