What would your dream draft utility and draft day presentation(s) be?

[JesterBlaze]

Forget what we have. Take a step into your own imagination and tell uncle Jester what you dream of for a draft utility and draft day "add-ons" ala Hell Atlantic's videos and screenies.

Please don't criticize another post. Build on the ideas sure, but don't cut any down. Move along if you don't like one/some.

Thanks and this is open to technicalities ("I'd like the time each owner spent on the clock displayed"), cosmetics ("I like to see my team colors and logo on stuff like HA does"), and anything else you can think of.


Uncle Jester's guarantee: "I might not be able to cook what you want but I don't offer a meal without food in the fridge."

[Matt]

I'm happy with a utility that allows me to add the players i want.
turn it on or off
allow a "best available" option

and of course some HA movies and pics.

[tarcone]

I loved HAs deal. If we could do a draft analysis as we went, that would be cool.
More draft commentary. I like to see a more in-depth veiw of the draft.

[Suicane]

I want to see the last 2 picks written on Jessica Hahns chest.

[George W Bush]

same schedule as the games. 1 pick every sunday.

[Kobeck]

lol

[Hell Atlantic]

i would do more videos and "ESPN newscasts", believe it or not the hardest part for me is coming up with stuff to say. i'm semi-satisfied with the quality (or lack thereof) of my videos, but since i have to spend time recording the voice and actually writing what i consider to be a script it means i have less time to do stuff with more pizzazz. i guess my point is if there was more of a collaborative effort i could focus more on the eye candy stuff and just take what someone recorded and sent to me via mp3 i could work around it.

but it's fun. not hard to do, again, the hard part is the script - people expect something funny/entertaining so it's about more than just compiling stats. sometimes i wish someone else would work on the funny so i could just work on the presentation.

what would be cool would be if everyone recorded a quick blurb about their pick, or even just the top 10 picks. we could assemble all those blurbs and at the end of the day i'd be able to have a really nice draft recap with people talking about what they were thinking making that particular selection or pimping their latest franchise savior.

as far as the draft utility is concerned, how about as soon as you make your pick you hit "enter" and on the next screen you see a pick of your guy wearing a hat with your logo and holding up a jersey with your team colors. i'm not good with programming, but i imagine hitting enter would generate an html doc. so basically i would create about one pick for each of the picks in the first round like the one below:



by hitting "enter" you get taken to the next screen which would automatically pull the appropriate pick corresponding to your team from the database, and with some snazzy code you could generate the text for the player's name and the text that appears under the player's name like in the example above.

i think it'd be pretty funny, if we got a good response i could maybe try to extend it to the 1st 2 rounds. maybe someone could add a gallery section in each team's screen and we could store the pics there.

this is just crazy talk, somewhere in this post is something coherent and/or practical.

[Coder]

Let me think.. I love the utility and all of it's functionality.. however, i often find myself having several windows open at once when setting my list, wanting to see the combine scores of the players in the available-list.

So..

(wish list for utility)

* When I click on a player in the "available" list, I'd like for his combine scores to show up in a box somewhere on the screen (could use AJAX to avoid reload of page)

* When I add a player from the available list to my priority-list, I want the name gone from the available list as well.

* I'd like a link from the priority-list screen to the "Draft Order" screen, so that I can see which players were picked before me.

There might be more.. these are things I've thought of when sitting with the draft-screen during the drafts. As I said, the current utility is absolutely great, my only points are small small things that would make things easier for me.

[iceman99]

I would like to be able to sort the list by rating. We have the ability to see who the best is at each position. But I have not been able to sort by rating. I have seen a few other utilites that can do that.... Its pretty neat.

I would also like to be able to select my guy from my pref list. I am normally on when my pick comes up so I seldom use the auto pick function, but I do build a pref list just in case. So when I am on the clock I would like to just select off my pref list. We may be able to do that and I am just scared to test it and draft the wrong guy ....

I also think it would be cool to get more graphics in the utility.... Kinda like the draft board that HA posted. That was pretty cool. So when we go to the other screens you see the team logo and the player selected. Maybe even making those screen more indepth as well...

David

[JesterBlaze]

Thanks for the responses. I've read nothing that can't be done. Sui's request would be strange both to implement and see but certainly can be done.

However I have no experience with audio as it stands. I'm sure I can learn to use/manipulate audio files in whatever language I'm using at a given time in a couple days or so but actually recording quality content would probably be a problem.

as far as the draft utility is concerned, how about as soon as you make your pick you hit "enter" and on the next screen you see a pick of your guy wearing a hat with your logo and holding up a jersey with your team colors.

i think it'd be pretty funny, if we got a good response i could maybe try to extend it to the 1st 2 rounds.

this is just crazy talk, somewhere in this post is something coherent and/or practical.

This is far from crazy talk. This is exactly what I'm looking for.

And the code for something like this would be automated so it'd be for all 7 rounds.

Crazy talk? I'm in my living room inviting you in and you're tinkering around with the front gates.

(wish list for utility)

* When I click on a player in the "available" list, I'd like for his combine scores to show up in a box somewhere on the screen (could use AJAX to avoid reload of page)

* When I add a player from the available list to my priority-list, I want the name gone from the available list as well.

* I'd like a link from the priority-list screen to the "Draft Order" screen, so that I can see which players were picked before me.

There might be more.. these are things I've thought of when sitting with the draft-screen during the drafts. As I said, the current utility is absolutely great, my only points are small small things that would make things easier for me.

Great stuff!! Do you know about parsing FOF files? That's one thing I haven't looked into but if you know how to get to the combine #'s and whatever else you'd like to see then I see no problems here.

For the bolded one: Why go to another screen? I hope everyone has a decent sized monitor because I too don't like multiple windows/tabs open.

[dberner30]

i like all the thoughts about rolling the info into the utility to make it a one stop shop particularly when at the office instead of at home with the game...

i would also like our utility to time stamp the picks if possible so we can get a good visual of how it really flows from pick to pick...

maybe a built in best available selection once the time limit is reached..this would allow mods to be offline and things to continue moving...

it would also be nice if we had some system where the time limits had a modifier over the top so that a team got more time if there were over X picks in a 2 hour window...maybe something like if 10 picks in two hours then the deadline for the following picks would be doubled or something...

[tarcone]

I wish it wouldnt refresh everytime you change something. Being on dialup It takes for ever.

[Kobeck]

ludites unite!

[Cringer]

I am getting scared. Jester knows things. Jester knows how to do things.

These are things I never knew about Jester.

[JesterBlaze]

i like all the thoughts about rolling the info into the utility to make it a one stop shop particularly when at the office instead of at home with the game...

This was my initial thinking but on further thought I think it's probably best with at least two windows: an admin one and a display one. This would be for everyone and mods would just have added abilities on the admin one.

i would also like our utility to time stamp the picks if possible so we can get a good visual of how it really flows from pick to pick...

automatic. as is time stamping any and all mod moves

maybe a built in best available selection once the time limit is reached..this would allow mods to be offline and things to continue moving...

The only technical trouble I see here is the question "What defines the best available?"

it would also be nice if we had some system where the time limits had a modifier over the top so that a team got more time if there were over X picks in a 2 hour window...maybe something like if 10 picks in two hours then the deadline for the following picks would be doubled or something...

Definitely a good idea for a preference to be added to the utility. It would ultimately be each league's decision on whether or not to use it.

I am thinking that an entertaining presentation could force each pick to take say, 30-600 seconds, and therefore appease both the people that want an entertaining draft with no dead time and those who are away and don't want to be passed by. I just haven't thought out potential negatives to collecting multiple draft choices in the DB and delaying their display. Do I take them off preference lists therefore indirectly displaying the results? Do I leave them on preference lists and let subsequent GM's think they're loading a player who's now gone? I don't like either choice.

I wish it wouldnt refresh everytime you change something. Being on dialup It takes for ever.

Get off dial-up.

Seriously, hitting the server more often than necessary is bad for both the server and user. In theory you'd make all changes and then upload. Depending on how much data we're dealing with it may or may not be all done on one click. It won't be anywhere near changing once for everytime you move someone up and down your list though.

And the plan is for drag-and-drop reordering of the preference lists. I have to see what options I have these days for this.

I am getting scared. Jester knows things. Jester knows how to do things.

These are things I never knew about Jester.

I'm bi-polar. At any point there's at least 1 side of me that I know nothing about. Right now I'm riding a GIMP/Blender/Phython high while still drunk off some recent PHP action. Database theory hasn't changed afaik so this'll be a nice little test of everything put together.

I have no idea if I can trigger a Python script residing in a blender file/app from inside PHP code. There has to be some way to trigger the Blener/Python scripts or they wouldn't be much use I'd think... I just have to research how.