[FF]: Draft Organization Stuff To Do

[EricH]

As I mentioned in this post, I think some of the programming for future organization/draft running/scoring stuff should be done collectively. This is intended to be the organization thread. There's quite a few tasks to be done, improvements to be made, and all that good stuff.

So, there are two main categories. There's the Draft Assistant project, mainly in Excel macros (Visual Basic and the like), which is a big one but easily breakable into smaller chunks, and there's several smaller projects that one or more people can take on. If you want to work on something, put your name down on that so we know what still needs to be covered.

Draft Assistant V3 (EricH, coordinator)
-Rewrite original macros for speed/optimization. (EricH--I'll be modifying the code to set and use certain variables throughout the program, rather than having to reset 'em all, as the key part of the process)
-Rewrite for dynamic placement of team list. (Note: This ought to be pretty straightforward, so I might get to it when I do the other rewrite. Right now, it'd be a pain in the behind.)
-Add a 4th-round option, as that might be useful in the future. (There's an existing macro or two that can be modified to make this easier.)
-Incorporate list picks.
-Incorporate random picks.
-Incorporate error-checking.
-Automate format changes and error-checking.
-See if the various macros etc. work in Google Docs, or can be rewritten for same.

General Organization
--Work out single scoring sheet with alliances/scores--location, layout, automation level, all the gory details.
--Automatic team list pulling from FRC site.
--Automatic scoring (by team or by player)--I think there's an existing method, but IIRC it didn't work properly when I checked it for this year.
--Automatic waiver processing--if anybody wants to be so bold.


The plan on the Draft Assistant is: If someone wants to get a jump on it, there's a copy in CD-Media; I'll point you to it if you've forgotten (or you could search for me as the uploader). I'll use the development version, which is slightly different and do the above-mentioned rewrite there, then publish that (and I'll make sure to comment a lot within the macros). At which point, y'all see the list, y'all have some fun, and if you complete a section that seems to work, drop it on over to me and I'll republish the whole sheet.

[ghostmachine360]

I could work on general organization; I'll have a lot of free time over the next couple weeks or so.

[EricH]

I have uploaded the rewritten Draft Assistant to http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2881, under the "Group Development Copy" paper. ("Clean" setup versions remain available.)

I took care of the first two rewrites and added some comments.

[bam-bam]

I can help with the general organization also.

[BrennanB]

Originally Posted by EricH

-See if the various macros etc. work in Google Docs, or can be rewritten for same.

I will take a look at this. Google spreadsheets just recently went through an overhaul and some new things were added.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by EricH

--Automatic scoring (by team or by player)--I think there's an existing method, but IIRC it didn't work properly when I checked it for this year.

I'll take this on. Any specific ideas or requests?

Should I set it up so that you can look up points on teams by entering team number and week? i.e. like a get function such as get_points(2495,4) and it spits it right out? Any features you'd like to see?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

Should I set it up so that you can look up points on teams by entering team number and week? i.e. like a get function such as get_points(2495,4) and it spits it right out? Any features you'd like to see?

I'd go with a couple of different data access methods, namely by event, by team, and by team and week/event. There are various reasons to pull each of those.



What I'm currently working on: That random list pick. I think I can get it working in the next couple of weeks.


New projects, under Organization:
--I was just thinking it might be nice to be able to maintain an archive of all the drafts.
--And, for some of the Excel wizards out there: A method for updating an event's team list on command, highlighting new and removed teams.
--Something I might be able to do in off time would be to make a draft runner coverage calendar. Essentially, who's likely to be available on what night(s), and who's actually taking on the drafts, and who's NOT available. Low priority, mainly because it's pretty quick to set something like that up.



Question for going forwards: I've been thinking of tackling the list picks after I deal with the random list. Would folks prefer to view those in vertical or horizontal form, and would you rather have 'em on the main player list, in a separate tab, or right next to the drafting tier? (BTW, I don't think it'll be an issue to take lists in and swap 'em between vertical and horizontal. Excel has a method for going one way, I have a method for going the other way somewhere in an archive if I can find it.)

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by EricH

--I was just thinking it might be nice to be able to maintain an archive of all the drafts.

If a database is created through the draft managing program and uploaded somewhere easily accessible, that would be nice. That could further be combined with the scorer to create a live-updating ranking webpage

[EricH]

Status update: I *think* I have the random list pick functional. I'll pull a draft and see what it does before too long (read: sometime next week). If it works as planned, I can do some simplification elsewhere in the code.

OK, by "functional" I mean that it runs around and gets stuck on an empty list. Haven't tried it with teams or a draft loaded. I'm also trying to get the formatting to play nicely this time around.

[Brandon_L]

First run of the scorer, currently scrapes all the data needed using TBA API and builds it into a single array. I just need to start the actual scoring process. Replace the year and the event code with any valid combo. Please try to break it, and let me know if you find any inconsistencies or errors.

Planned features: Different scoring systems per year, each system is setup in an ini file. You'd be able to choose, for example, to look at the 2012 results with the 2012 FF scoring system or the current (2015?), whatever floats your boat.

Once the event scorer is done, I can create separate 'functions' such as pulling up only a specific team, ect. Suggestions welcome.

Because I'm flying by the seat of my pants and learning php as I go (this is my maybe my 3rd php project overall), criticism is welcome from anyone more knowledgeable. Source.

[BrennanB]

Autodraft looks possible with Gdocs. Will investigate further. Sheets can remain hidden (I think) depending on who you are logged in as.

However if people have a problem with having a google account, that may be a problem.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by BrennanB

Autodraft looks possible with Gdocs. Will investigate further. Sheets can remain hidden (I think) depending on who you are logged in as.

However if people have a problem with having a google account, that may be a problem.

How is the drafting program going to work? Is there any chance it could output the alliance(s) for a FF team into somewhere I can scrape it from? I'd be willing to work with whoever to make it happen

[EricH]

Originally Posted by BrennanB

Autodraft looks possible with Gdocs. Will investigate further. Sheets can remain hidden (I think) depending on who you are logged in as.

I'll see what I can do as far as getting the "backbone" in Excel macros. Found a trick the other day that ought to work wonders as far as automating some of the formatting/positioning. If hidden sheets can be done, it might be a good idea to have a "list input" sheet that will dump to a hidden sheet, if that can also be done.

Originally Posted by Brandon_L

How is the drafting program going to work? Is there any chance it could output the alliance(s) for a FF team into somewhere I can scrape it from? I'd be willing to work with whoever to make it happen

That would probably depend on exactly how it was set up. As-is, without an online component, I can probably set up a .csv file dump; copy/paste into a Gdoc, or some similar method. With an online component, shouldn't be too hard to rig one Gdoc to scrape another--bet I could do it with Excel, too, in terms of picking up data and dropping it off in a sheet.



BTW, random team macro testing has been delayed. I'll try and get to that later this week, then upload that version.

[BrennanB]

Originally Posted by EricH

If hidden sheets can be done, it might be a good idea to have a "list input" sheet that will dump to a hidden sheet, if that can also be done.

I was considering having each FF team having their own hidden sheet so that they could make edits after without confusing the draft runner.

Originally Posted by EricH

With an online component, shouldn't be too hard to rig one Gdoc to scrape another--bet I could do it with Excel, too, in terms of picking up data and dropping it off in a sheet.

Yeah, I will look at scraping from on g-doc to another and if that is possible.

EDIT

So it seems hidden sheets are a no-go. However I did end up getting scraping working, so each team can have their own submission sheet. Currently I can pull from one sheet to another, and it updates pretty quickly, have a look.

Sample submission sheet #1
Sample submission sheet #2
Autodraft Testing

EDIT 2

I have it automatically removing already picked teams from the list for each team's first picks. It's not pretty work, but it's functional

[EricH]

Originally Posted by BrennanB

EDIT 2

I have it automatically removing already picked teams from the list for each team's first picks. It's not pretty work, but it's functional

Any chance you can translate that into an Excel function, once you get the rest of the picks as well? That's on the to-do list--matter of fact, it's in a macro, but the macro never triggers for some reason, so I disabled it.