As a quick response to a query on the forum, i developed a small GUI tool to display the number of players in each squad that has been listed in the league.dat file.

I have now managed to get over the difficult of reading the roster files in the code and now will be able to work on additional utilities if required.

The current PlayerCounter utility only shows the number of players in the side. I am thinking of adding the ability to show the players available to a side, excluding those injured or suspended.

---

Permalink 0 comments

I have stopped working on the Teamsheet Maker GUI and do not intend to work on it. I found it tough going and decided that it is not worth the hassle to complete it.

I know this might sound stupid or even downright rude, but that is how I feel about it for now.

---

Permalink 0 comments

After a few weeks, there is now some progress on the Teamsheet Maker. It's not much, but something is better than nothing.

These were the tasks that I had posted in my previous blog post:
1. UI for Conditionals section
2. Loading a Roster
2a. Populating the drop-down boxes with the player names.
3. Loading a teamsheet
3a. Populating the drop-down boxes with the player names.
3b. Populating the other boxes with the information from the teamsheet.
4. Generating teamsheet
4a. Displaying the text on the display panel when a particular player is chosen or teamname is added, etc.
4c. Writing the teamsheet file.

I can safely say that Item 2 is now complete. Had a tough time in splitting the rosters and obtaining only the player names. Even this is not fully compliant. Currently I am only checking for injuries and suspensions. Leagues that are using fitness might have to wait for a bit longer. There are still some fixes that I need to make to this part of the code.

Loading a teamsheet is going to be even more tricky, I suspect, but it's something that I need to tackle pretty soon.

---

Permalink 0 comments

After a semi-successful release of the ESMS PLUS GUI, I am now concentrating on the GUI based teamsheet creator. This new program would help the team managers to prepare a team with 7 substitutes. This is the short term goal. I am also planning to facilitate the inclusion of sides in this program.

Since I started today, the first plan was to focus on the User Interface. This is what I have completed for now.



The task does not look as simple as I thought it was and am already running into trouble. I hope to overcome them as quick as possible.

The following tasks still need to be completed:
1. UI for Conditionals section
2. Loading a Roster
2a. Populating the drop-down boxes with the player names.
3. Loading a teamsheet
3a. Populating the drop-down boxes with the player names.
3b. Populating the other boxes with the information from the teamsheet.
4. Generating teamsheet
4a. Displaying the text on the display panel when a particular player is chosen or teamname is added, etc.
4c. Writing the teamsheet file.

I will tackle these tasks as they come, and hopefully will have a good replacement for the teamsheet maker, soon.

---

Permalink 0 comments

Its been a while since I actually posted something on this blog. Wishing everyone a Happy New Year 2009. I know its 7 days late, but nevertheless its here.

The site has been facing with a lot of spam in the last months. I have been regularly trying to keep it clean. Besides that, there are very few users who do sign in and visit the site. The activity on the site has now trickled down.


With regards to the ESMS PLUS GUI tool that I was working on, there has not been much updates taking place on that. I have been spending most of my free time on making games and you can find the updates on my blog Digital Tree Games.


Thats all I have for now. Thanks for reading.

---

Permalink 0 comments

The first version of the GUI was released about 5 days ago. I have now uploaded the 3rd version of the GUI. There have been around 70 downloads of the first 2 versions of the GUI and I have received feedback from 3 guys. I would like to restate the aim of the GUI, it should provide the game admin to run the matches with no need to setup batch files every time matches need to be run.

The first version was released to test the waters and the feedback I received made me think about how I should progress with the GUI. Thanks to Matt B for that. I came up with the config file so that users could specify the names of their exes. There are times when the esms_plus engine could be renamed for sake of convenience, so that is now totally configurable with the help of the inbuilt GUIConfig editor.

The second version also saw the introduction of the ability to run the updater and the lgtable exes. This now helps the admins run a proper round of games and update rosters as well update the league table.

A bug was reported by Willz on the esmsworld forum, stating that more than 5 matches were not simulated. I still need to recreate this scenario and test the GUI. He also asked for the ability to read fixtures with team fullnames. This has now been incorporated with version 0.3 released today.

Jeff from IFF reported that he could not get the GUI to read his fixtures.txt. He sent me his file which is not a normal fixtures file. I am not sure if I could incorporate that in the GUI editor, but I sent him the fixtures file in a format the GUI would be able to read. I hope to hear back from him.

For version 1.0 of the GUI, I am planning to move the files to specific folders after the matches are run.
- The rosters would be copied to a folder
- The match reports would be moved to a folder
- Unwanted files would be deleted

I also believe that there would be some specific exe's like stats.exe that may have to be run. I havent run a league for some time now, but I would like to incorporate all of these features in the UI. This would be my next step.

---

Permalink 1 comments

Finally, the GUI is ready for testing. After a lot of self thinking the first draft of the GUI has been uploaded for testing. Its very basic to say the least.

The exe has to be placed in the same directory / folder as your game files. The fixtures.txt currently should have teamsheet names instead of team names. (e.g. chesht.txt - mnusht.txt)
Enter the number of the week that you want to run the matches for. Hit the "Set Week" button. These fixtures will be displayed in the box below.
Hit the "Run Games" button. And "Viola" the matches will be run. :)

The GUI has been coded in C# (C-Sharp) 2005, so am not really sure about any other dependencies that it may need.

GUI_Screenshot

---

Permalink 0 comments

Yeah... I had an exam to answer and I did clear it today with flying colors as well. Nothing like the satisfaction of seeing the result, especially when its 100%.

Now that I have completed the exam, I have time for some game development activities. I shall work on my GUI for the Admins, once again. After being outfoxed by Fx-Ruby?, I shall give it another go and if things dont work out, I shall proceed to work with a RAD tool like VB or VC#, not that I am fluent with them.

Some new leagues are popping up and thats always a good sign. Scott has his league running and I would be proud to say that I did play a small part in helping Scott get there, but ultimately its his determination which has ensured that the league kicks off. Hope you have a great time running the game, mate.

With that, I shall sign off for now. Hopefully will be back with some good news about the GUI.

---

Permalink 3 comments

... and then there is some.

Its been a while since I posted. The site is now in a state where its steady. There is no exponential growth and thats something I had anticipated. I am content.

Regarding the ESMS_PLUS GUI, work is still going on it. I am still facing issues in letting the GUI run the games. I think the easiest option would be to move to another GUI toolkit and leave Ruby behind. I need to get a move on since right now I am still stuck and dont know how else to proceed.

Just ran one nice little post-season friendly tournament for PBEMFF. The report files are availble at http://andresdsa.net/pbemff/
I used Esms Plus v3.33, released by Chris, and things did go pretty well. It has been smooth sailing all along and the feedback received was good. Another part of the game that was tested in the friendlies was a new commentary file.

I think the commentary file provides an interesting avenue for leagues to differentiate amongst themselves. Its intresting to see various lines of commentary being spun out in a match report.

---

Permalink 0 comments

Its not even a month that the site was officially launched and I think we have made some good progress on this site. There are a few users who keep visiting the site, but then there are many esms-users who have no clue about this site. To get the news out to them, I put in some effort. I contacted a few of the existing leagues and a few of the leagues have surprised me, with the resources that they possess and the passion with which the game is played.

I worked on the site and read a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This site now is in the top 10 searches for the "esms plus" keyword. Now the time has come to expand the reach of the site to generic play-by-email groups, so that people interested in pbem games, would find the site. With more people interested in esms, the more managers each league can get. I see this as a win-win situation.

Chris has been working real hard to get a new esms plus version out pretty soon. Kudos to him. Working with code is messy and sometimes gets annoying, but he has persisted.

The GUI for ESMS PLUS admins, that I am working on is not making much progress as I am running into a few errors. The closest that I have come to a solution leads to the matches being simulated but the gui program just hangs. So I do not think of it as the way forward. Any body willing to discuss the code in Ruby, contact me.

---

Permalink 0 comments