PING: MP Draft Utility Writers / Maintainers

[gstelmack]

I finally got a look at one of the MP draft utilities that is out there (3ric's for the HFL), and my first thought was shock at how much work a commish has to go through to get data into it when a draft rolls around. My second thought was that I could greatly reduce that workload with just a little bit of effort.

The first result of that took less than 24 hours and was the "Draft Order" table that Interrogator spits out. This is just two columns without headers: Pick # and Team ID. The last row is 225/33 to indicate end of the table (as required by HFL). I believe this is straightforward enough that any league can use it without much work on their end if they are not already expecting that, and it should greatly reduce a bunch of hand-editing and searching/replacing in Excel.

However, there are three other areas I'd like to standardize:

First, the draft pool. What columns does everyone want? First name, last name, position, and college seem obvious. Bureau used to be provided, but was dropped from the player report window in 2k7 and thus is not dumped by Extractor (unless this snuck back in to 6.0e, but I have not looked yet). What other columns do people want? If it is just those listed, I can add this table to Interrogator as well, and you've got a very quick extract to get the data needed for the draft utility. Do you want combine numbers as well? Height, weight, anything else? I can either have Interrogator dump a standard table, or add a checkbox to Extractor that will dump a customized table ready for importing. But I'd like to standardize exactly what columns everyone wants (and at the least in such a way that a specific league can ignore columns they aren't interested in).

Second, I would really like to add a feature to Draft Analyzer that lets people upload draft lists to these utilities directly. Something like "send the next 60 undrafted picks to the utility". For that I'd need a relatively standard way of uploading this data. I can either write out a file that is then imported from the web page (a 2-stage process for GMs), or call a URL directly with the data (a 1-stage process, but more work to get correct all around). I'm not a web developer, so any comments on this?

Third, and related, is the ability to download a list of all drafted players to Draft Analyzer. I already handle marking draftees by copying-and-pasting from FOF's list. We could either have the draft utilities write this file and let people download it from the web (thus meaning no changes to Draft Analyzer), or I could call a URL from within Draft Analyzer and parse the data I'm sent. Again, comments?

Is there anything else that is difficult on commishes setting these up that I could help with? I'll be doing what I can as WOOF goes forward with its first draft and learning from it, but I'd love to be able to standardize some of this so all leagues can benefit.

[Cuckoo]

For me, your "less than 24 hours" changes will be incredibly helpful, and I appreciate it greatly. I don't know how other Commishes handle the draft, but I almost prefer as little information in the utility as possible. People are going to use the game and the draft analyzer anyway, so there's little point (at least in my mind) of crowding up the utilities with college, height, weight, etc.

For our most recent draft, I used the Extractor to get the Adjusted Rating and put that into the utility just so I'd have a way to sort the players. In my mind, the sorting is the primary goal there. So having the adjusted rating if possible and maybe the combine numbers (I think Icy mentioned he had added something similar in another league) would be all I'd want/need. In fact, for simplicity, I'm almost of the mind that a sortable adjusted rating would be all that's necessary there.

As a non-web developer, I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment on the others.

[Skolleck]

I have been using a draft utility to learn PHP, and I have gotten stuck on a few things. If you know any PHP it would be nice to be able to drop you a line, or chat via IM even.

Right now I have an entire list of enhancements to the utility, I am working, but the biggest problem I found was importing the draft pick order for each round.

I remember the old "generic/text" printer print to file trick and I am able to be a txt listing of the pick order. Is it possible to combine that with a way to get the ratings into the draft file?

That is the biggest problem now. The most basic utilities like the one I have are name, pos and rating. We have no ratings so I used a simple 20.00 decrease by .02 per player listed.

The big thing I am working on now if adding chat to the draft utilities.

I have one setup, but it needs to be tied into the forum and utility.
http://www.nflfrontoffice.net/chat/
Check it out a join, the code is open source at www.x7chat.com


Thanks,
Scott Kolleck

[marcmoustache]

Greg, the draft order is the biggest thing tbh. Most drafts are run outside of the game during free agency so there aren't updated picks from the in game draft to put into the draft analyzer.

For my draft I used the in game html to produce the draft pool as this does have bureau rating (including adjusted rating). I also uploaded the combine stats and had a player search box so people could look up a players combine scores.

For me you've done the hardest bit. Thank you!!

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by marcmoustache

Most drafts are run outside of the game during free agency so there aren't updated picks from the in game draft to put into the draft analyzer.

But the draft utility could generate this list fairly easily. The format is just:

[pick#]. [lastname],[firstname],[pos],[college]

Or I could import a different format that is easier for the draft utilities to generate if necessary.

[ShaneTheMaster]

However, there are three other areas I'd like to standardize:

First, the draft pool. What columns does everyone want? First name, last name, position, and college seem obvious. Bureau used to be provided, but was dropped from the player report window in 2k7 and thus is not dumped by Extractor (unless this snuck back in to 6.0e, but I have not looked yet). What other columns do people want? If it is just those listed, I can add this table to Interrogator as well, and you've got a very quick extract to get the data needed for the draft utility. Do you want combine numbers as well? Height, weight, anything else? I can either have Interrogator dump a standard table, or add a checkbox to Extractor that will dump a customized table ready for importing. But I'd like to standardize exactly what columns everyone wants (and at the least in such a way that a specific league can ignore columns they aren't interested in).

I think everything that you spit out in Extractor seems fine - the only thing missing is Bureau Rating, which I understand the logistics of not having it in their right now. In my utility, if the user exports the draftees sorted by bureau rating, the users will have an idea of how the player ranks, because I assign an incrementing rank upon import to the utility.

Second, I would really like to add a feature to Draft Analyzer that lets people upload draft lists to these utilities directly. Something like "send the next 60 undrafted picks to the utility". For that I'd need a relatively standard way of uploading this data. I can either write out a file that is then imported from the web page (a 2-stage process for GMs), or call a URL directly with the data (a 1-stage process, but more work to get correct all around). I'm not a web developer, so any comments on this?

Interesting idea. If I implement my functions that handle all of that into a XML Web Service, you can just call the function in the web service to add the players directly to the utility database. But I bet most utilities are not written in ASP.NET, like mine.

Third, and related, is the ability to download a list of all drafted players to Draft Analyzer. I already handle marking draftees by copying-and-pasting from FOF's list. We could either have the draft utilities write this file and let people download it from the web (thus meaning no changes to Draft Analyzer), or I could call a URL from within Draft Analyzer and parse the data I'm sent. Again, comments?

I think this can be handled by simply adding a feature to the draft utility to let the user export a csv file that you can then import.

[marcmoustache]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

But the draft utility could generate this list fairly easily. The format is just:

[pick#]. [lastname],[firstname],[pos],[college]

Or I could import a different format that is easier for the draft utilities to generate if necessary.

True, I could write a quick function to export the list so that the draft analyzer could be updated byt he individual user.