lordscarlet
01-23-2009, 11:26 AM
Text Sports Network (TSN) (http://www.textsports.net/) (Text Sports Network (http://textsports.net)) was an idea hatched by lordscarlet and wademoore. After seeing the quality FOF Multiplayer (FOF MP) sites developed for leagues such as FOFL (http://www.thefofl.com/)(cuervo72), IHOF (http://fof-ihof.com%20target=/) (VPI), WOOF (http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/woof/ben/leaguereport.php)/FOWL (http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/newleague/) (Ben E Lou), and others we felt that it would be great if such functionality was available to all leagues. The primary focus is to give the same deep level of statistical information without many individuals repeating the same work for each league. Essentially the idea is to have an ESPN for the text sports community. In addition, we hope to give leagues the option to use TSN as a repository for game exports/league files and for jdavidbaker's (http://www.catalystproductions.cc/) Conscriptor.The goal is to move beyond FOF in the future, but it is the game we are most familiar with and the third party utilities for extracting data are unparalleled.
The idea for TSN has been stewing for quite some time and sat for well over a year without being touched. In November of 2008 Ben E Lou offered to share his existing FOWL code to give this project a jump start. Lordscarlet ran with the code and in the last month several leagues have begun using various portions of TSN. The leagues using it currently are: FOWL (for File Management), RNFL (http://replicatednfl.com/) (for stats and possibly File Management in the future), and FFL (http://franchisefootball.net/) (for stats and planned File Management next season). During that process we have been able to reduce the number of bugs and received quality feedback. We believe that TSN now has a good shell for the future and we are looking for as much feedback as possible. We know that there is room for improvement, however we're looking to the community for specific improvements, priority of improvements, bugs that have not yet been discovered, etc.
Current Features:
League Summary Page (Weekly Leaders, Season Leaders, Upcoming Schedule, Injuries)
Weekly Recap (Score, Game Leaders)
Weekly Leaders
Box Scores
Standings
Team Pages (Schedule, Injuries, Transactions, Player Stats)
Team logos (commissioner upload)
Player Pages (Stats by year, Dogbytes Scores, Player Images, Transaction History, Injury History, Graphs [work in progress])
Player image upload
Sortable season and career stats screens
Robust File Management System
Conscriptor [Testing in Progress]
vBulletin (Leagues can use if they want as well)
Major Planned Features:
Play by play
League Personalization
Hall of Fame (Both FOF-generated and Owner-generated)
Records, records and more records
Expanded Weekly leaders and awards
Historical rankings for players
More all-time information
Greater representation of export status
Improved interface
More!
How It Works (Commish Perspective):
Sign-Up your League (contact lordscarlet (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/member.php?u=4521) or wademoore (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/private.php?do=newpm&u=1005) to do so)
Install the Stelmacksoft FOF 2007 Utility Suite
Run DBUpdater for each sim
Upload League File for each sim (if you are using the TSN upload utility)
If you are interested in seeing the owner/commish functionality, send us a message and we can give you access to the test league
This project would not be possible without the contributions of:
Solecismic Software (http://www.solecismic.com/) - Solecismic Software is the developer of Front Office Football 2007. Front Office Football 2007 is the premier text-based American Football Simulator. This is the game that these leagues are based on.
Greg Stelmack (creator of the Stelmacksoft FOF 2007 Utility Suite (http://www.gstelmack.com/UtilitySuite/index.htm)) - This application makes this and other FOF MP websites possible. You will need this utility to use TSN and allows all of the data from FOF to be extracted and easily uploaded to the website. It makes for a one-step process for commissioners to upload their data.
Ben E Lou (creator of the websites for WOOF and FOWL) - Ben has long been an important contributor to the FOF community. Most recently with the websites that he has designed for FOWL and WOOF. As mentioned above the FOWL website was used as an initial codebase for TSN and made getting the site off of the ground possible. In addition, Ben is the mastermind behind the dogbytes scores. He spent many hours developing the formulas that are utilized to generate the dogbytes scores that do a fantastic job of representing overall performance.
jdavidbaker - Conscriptor (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=64517&highlight=conscriptor) has by far become the leading draft utility for the FOF MP community. Because of the simplicity of installation, we have been able to integrate Conscriptor directly into a user's TSN login.
FEEDBACK WANTED!
We have been using this site for about a month now in various capacities for leagues. Everyone has been very supportive and positive so far. However, the feedback has been somewhat limited. With a new tool like this people are often wary of making criticism. However, without suggestions the site only has the perspective of the two of us. We need the community's perspective. All constructive criticism is welcome and all suggestions will be taken into consideration. We will do our best to communicate what is being worked on, what the priorities are, etc so that everyone can chime in.
In particular we would like feedback on the ease of use of the site and what features need to be added. This is an area that we feel has a lot of room for improvement, but do not have a clear direction on where to go. Are there items that are hard to get to/navigate? Is there something that doesn't make sense where it is? Are you on the fence and require some specific feature to put your league's data on the site? Let us know!
The idea for TSN has been stewing for quite some time and sat for well over a year without being touched. In November of 2008 Ben E Lou offered to share his existing FOWL code to give this project a jump start. Lordscarlet ran with the code and in the last month several leagues have begun using various portions of TSN. The leagues using it currently are: FOWL (for File Management), RNFL (http://replicatednfl.com/) (for stats and possibly File Management in the future), and FFL (http://franchisefootball.net/) (for stats and planned File Management next season). During that process we have been able to reduce the number of bugs and received quality feedback. We believe that TSN now has a good shell for the future and we are looking for as much feedback as possible. We know that there is room for improvement, however we're looking to the community for specific improvements, priority of improvements, bugs that have not yet been discovered, etc.
Current Features:
League Summary Page (Weekly Leaders, Season Leaders, Upcoming Schedule, Injuries)
Weekly Recap (Score, Game Leaders)
Weekly Leaders
Box Scores
Standings
Team Pages (Schedule, Injuries, Transactions, Player Stats)
Team logos (commissioner upload)
Player Pages (Stats by year, Dogbytes Scores, Player Images, Transaction History, Injury History, Graphs [work in progress])
Player image upload
Sortable season and career stats screens
Robust File Management System
Conscriptor [Testing in Progress]
vBulletin (Leagues can use if they want as well)
Major Planned Features:
Play by play
League Personalization
Hall of Fame (Both FOF-generated and Owner-generated)
Records, records and more records
Expanded Weekly leaders and awards
Historical rankings for players
More all-time information
Greater representation of export status
Improved interface
More!
How It Works (Commish Perspective):
Sign-Up your League (contact lordscarlet (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/member.php?u=4521) or wademoore (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/private.php?do=newpm&u=1005) to do so)
Install the Stelmacksoft FOF 2007 Utility Suite
Run DBUpdater for each sim
Upload League File for each sim (if you are using the TSN upload utility)
If you are interested in seeing the owner/commish functionality, send us a message and we can give you access to the test league
This project would not be possible without the contributions of:
Solecismic Software (http://www.solecismic.com/) - Solecismic Software is the developer of Front Office Football 2007. Front Office Football 2007 is the premier text-based American Football Simulator. This is the game that these leagues are based on.
Greg Stelmack (creator of the Stelmacksoft FOF 2007 Utility Suite (http://www.gstelmack.com/UtilitySuite/index.htm)) - This application makes this and other FOF MP websites possible. You will need this utility to use TSN and allows all of the data from FOF to be extracted and easily uploaded to the website. It makes for a one-step process for commissioners to upload their data.
Ben E Lou (creator of the websites for WOOF and FOWL) - Ben has long been an important contributor to the FOF community. Most recently with the websites that he has designed for FOWL and WOOF. As mentioned above the FOWL website was used as an initial codebase for TSN and made getting the site off of the ground possible. In addition, Ben is the mastermind behind the dogbytes scores. He spent many hours developing the formulas that are utilized to generate the dogbytes scores that do a fantastic job of representing overall performance.
jdavidbaker - Conscriptor (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=64517&highlight=conscriptor) has by far become the leading draft utility for the FOF MP community. Because of the simplicity of installation, we have been able to integrate Conscriptor directly into a user's TSN login.
FEEDBACK WANTED!
We have been using this site for about a month now in various capacities for leagues. Everyone has been very supportive and positive so far. However, the feedback has been somewhat limited. With a new tool like this people are often wary of making criticism. However, without suggestions the site only has the perspective of the two of us. We need the community's perspective. All constructive criticism is welcome and all suggestions will be taken into consideration. We will do our best to communicate what is being worked on, what the priorities are, etc so that everyone can chime in.
In particular we would like feedback on the ease of use of the site and what features need to be added. This is an area that we feel has a lot of room for improvement, but do not have a clear direction on where to go. Are there items that are hard to get to/navigate? Is there something that doesn't make sense where it is? Are you on the fence and require some specific feature to put your league's data on the site? Let us know!