Development Tracker for Solo Leagues

[Neags23]

This is a very early beta version of a player development tracker for solo leagues. Getch has a much better utility for online leagues, but I haven't been able to find one that would do the same for solo.

The results for this program aren't nearly as pretty, either, as they are just output to text files or player history files. But it does the trick.

Again, this is a very early beta release, and there are bound to be problems. I just hope it'll actually run.

It requires the .NET framework to run.

Unzip, and run the setup.exe.

It will also create a start menu shortcut under the folder "Center of Excellence". That's the name of my company that the version of VS I used is registered to. I'm not sure how to change the folder of the start menu that it creates, so if anyone does, please let me know.

Also, anyone that is interested and knows C# is welcome to dig through the code to help improve this program. It's fairly well commented and readable.

The only feature of the program right now that is inoperable is the writing to player history in-game. It will write to the player history text file, but the game won't read it. This is a problem with the date formatting that I haven't figured out how to fix, yet.

So, please give me as much feedback as you'd like, negative and positive (if any).

I won't be able to release a patch or new version until probably a week from now, so hopefully by then there are a lot of problems to fix and suggestions to implement.

Ignore the .zip files below and just download from this site: www.mccreadylaw.com/devTracker.zip
Enjoy.

[Mike Donlin]

I'm eager to try this out, but I don't have WinRAR. Any chance of getting padresfan or someone to host it on their site where it could be zipped?

[Neags23]

I'll go ahead and host it here in .zip format. This is one of my client's sites, and I'm sure he won't mind all the links posted in hopes that maybe someone will visit it.

www.mccreadylaw.com/devTracker.zip

[Neags23]

Anyone try this, yet?

[Mike Donlin]

Originally Posted by Neags23

Anyone try this, yet?

Downloading now.

I'm very excited. I'll let you know how it works.

P.S. Thanks for even trying to put something like this together. It is much needed.

[Mike Donlin]

Couple of impressions so far:

1. Establishing a baseline worked, but I could only get it to register on a 1-250 scale. I don't know if the changes tracked are ultimately according to my rating system (20-80) because, well, see below.
2. It would be very convenient if the output text file also grabbed a player's age; similarly, if it could track potential changes in addition to ratings ones.
3. Game has to be closed in order for the program to run; otherwise, you get an error saying that some free agent file is in use.
4. It takes a long time to run, and it is very finicky about other programs running at the same time. I haven't actually seen the output because I think it needs to have no other programs running and I have too much work to do this morning not to have them running!

But this is an intriguing start. I have long wanted something like this so that I can run a bunch of tests without having to transfer everything over to Access. Thanks again.

[Neags23]

Originally Posted by Mike Donlin

Couple of impressions so far:

1. Establishing a baseline worked, but I could only get it to register on a 1-250 scale. I don't know if the changes tracked are ultimately according to my rating system (20-80) because, well, see below.
2. It would be very convenient if the output text file also grabbed a player's age; similarly, if it could track potential changes in addition to ratings ones.
3. Game has to be closed in order for the program to run; otherwise, you get an error saying that some free agent file is in use.
4. It takes a long time to run, and it is very finicky about other programs running at the same time. I haven't actually seen the output because I think it needs to have no other programs running and I have too much work to do this morning not to have them running!

But this is an intriguing start. I have long wanted something like this so that I can run a bunch of tests without having to transfer everything over to Access. Thanks again.

Thanks very much for the feedback. A couple of things....
The baseline only uses the 250 scale. It's much easier to track changes on the 250 scale because the resolution is much higher. Also, it takes a very, very long time to convert every single rating for every single player. So leaving the baseline at 250 was prudent. The program compares the baselines on the 250 scale to the .CSV on the 250 scale, then converts either the change or then converts each to the scale of your choice.

It would be pretty easy to add ages to the player reports and baseline. Only a few extra lines of code. Thanks for the suggestion.

It does actually track potentials, too. Maybe you didn't have any potential changes? Or maybe it's a bug. But I've gotten it to track potentials, I'm sure.

When you say it takes a long time to run... do you mean creating the baseline, or tracking changes? On my pretty slow and old work computer, I was able to create a baseline on an all minors level 63-year old universe in about 20 seconds. Tracking changes may take longer depending on how long it's been since you ran the baseline and what ratings scale you use. Basically, the more changes the program detects/tracks, the longer it will take. Again, on my slow and old work computer, I was able to track changes after a week of simming and using the 250 scale in about 30-45 seconds.

I'll check the free agent thing. It mostly depends on what program you have the files open with. Excel and Word don't like to share files with other programs, so it'll probably throw an error if you have one of the .CSV files open. Even OOTP will complain about a file in use if you try to do a .CSV dump when a MS Office program has one open. I used TextPad to open a lot of the .CSV files and leave them open with no problem.

So, if you were using excel or word to look at .CSV files, try using something like TextPad (it's free) and the devTracker won't care. I was able to have the game open, run the baseline, look at the baseline and .CSV with Textpad, sim a week or so, create a new .CSV dump and track changes without closing any of it. So I'm willing to bet it's whatever program you're using to open the .CSV files.

Thanks again for the feedback, and please give me more input when you get the chance.

[Comedian2004]

I would bet my money that he is using Excel to look at the CSV files. Excel and Word actually rename the file to a ~random.ext file name and work on that copy and mark the original as hidden and also mark the file as in use. When the file is closed, it just renames the temporarily file to the correct name. This is the way that is has the ability to UNDO items and/or track changes to the file (like in Word)

OOTP does not use the CSV files when it is running, so unless this app is accessing DAT files, OOTP being ran should have no bearing on it.

I plan on looking at the program this weekend, time permitting, Neag.

I read somewhere you were having some date problems in converting. Let me know the problems you are having, maybe I can help you there.

I think I am the resident 'guy that knows everything about the CSV files and other files' that are created by OOTP. I have gone over them with a fine tooth comb. Let me know if you have questions about them.

[Neags23]

The date conversion is not so much a .CSV problem as it is my not taking the time necessary to figure it out.

It appears that for the game to read an entry in the player_history.txt file, the date has to be in a format like: 20070707. The CSV file holds the date as 2007-7-7. I've taken out the dashes, but that leaves me with 200777. So then I thought, I'll replace the dashes with 0's. That gives me 20070707. But what if the date is 2007-10-21? That gives me 2007010021, which isn't right at all.

So I just have to figure out how to properly format the date I pull from the .CSV file.

[Comedian2004]

Since the date is always going to contain 8 characters, and if they are in this format: yyyymmdd (like the players history files)

Try this:

REM get date
yy = Mid(line, 1, 4)
mm = Mid(line, 5, 2)
dd = Mid(line, 7, 2)
 
You now have the date broke down into year, month and day, you can then re-format it the way you want:
 
line2 = MMMM(mm) & dd & ", " & yy
 
Whereas MMMM is an arrary as shown:
 
MMMM(1) = "January"
MMMM(2) = "Feburary"
etc.

line 2 will now be "January 1, 2000"

I wrote another routine that puts in the st or nd or rd in some spots where I needed it.

Or you can do whatever you want with it. Of course this is VB, not sure what you are using, but you should get the general idea.

Originally Posted by Neags23

The date conversion is not so much a .CSV problem as it is my not taking the time necessary to figure it out.

It appears that for the game to read an entry in the player_history.txt file, the date has to be in a format like: 20070707. The CSV file holds the date as 2007-7-7. I've taken out the dashes, but that leaves me with 200777. So then I thought, I'll replace the dashes with 0's. That gives me 20070707. But what if the date is 2007-10-21? That gives me 2007010021, which isn't right at all.

So I just have to figure out how to properly format the date I pull from the .CSV file.

[Comedian2004]

There are many ways to do it, but I like this way, as you now have the date broke down into months, day and year. You can then load it into a date var and then use date functions on it.

I have DD, MM and YY set up as strings, which is fine, since they contain leading zeros in them. You can use the val(MM) to turn them into integers. Caution when using VAL:

If will ignore spaces, so if you have 10 05 the val will be 1005 instead of the expected 10. This is by VB design, it only messed me up once when some whacko was naming his team with numbers. I use the - to separate the two, as 10-05, as a val of that would be 10. Then I can always search the string for the - to find the 05 value.

Hope this helps

[Neags23]

Originally Posted by Comedian2004

There are many ways to do it, but I like this way, as you now have the date broke down into months, day and year. You can then load it into a date var and then use date functions on it.

I have DD, MM and YY set up as strings, which is fine, since they contain leading zeros in them. You can use the val(MM) to turn them into integers. Caution when using VAL:

If will ignore spaces, so if you have 10 05 the val will be 1005 instead of the expected 10. This is by VB design, it only messed me up once when some whacko was naming his team with numbers. I use the - to separate the two, as 10-05, as a val of that would be 10. Then I can always search the string for the - to find the 05 value.

Hope this helps

I did something similar to this. .NET has a 'split' command that will split a string into an array if there are multiple instances of a character separating parts of the string. So I took the date (yyyy-mm-dd) and split it with the '-'. I checked the length of mm and dd, and if the length is less than 2, it adds a 0. After that, I just pulled them all together.

Thanks for the advice!

[Neags23]

The first official version of the devTracker is now ready for release. The same download link now links to the most up to date version.

The writing to player history works, now.
The interface has been redesigned and needs few, if any, additional instructions.
Added browse options for the paths.
Results are now also written to the program's main screen. Of course, the more ratings changes there are, the more cluttered the screen gets. But you can always select all, paste into something and search for the players you want. That allows you not to go through individual team results if you'd rather not.

I've also created a method that pulls the age of players, but nothing calls it yet. I'd have to paste a call into 47 different if statements and a few other places, so it's a bit of work. If anyone is really interested in my adding this functionality, let me know, and I'll add it.

Also, has no one else tried this? Any feedback at all is not only appreciated, it's being begged for!!!

[Neags23]

New version of this out, not that anyone seems to care.

I included an option to show only the results of the team of your choice in the program window.

Also included an OK button to click after inputting the league folder import/export path in case you don't use the browse button.

Has really no one tried this? There are 203 views and only one comment from an actual user...

[plannine]

I've downloaded it, but just havent had time to try it.........

[endgame]

I'll be taking a look, too, once I am able to have OOTP up and running again.

[ifspuds]

Hey Neags, I just gave it a try... am I not getting the new version? I used the link above and I don't have an option to see the results for a specific team (which was going to be my major suggestion for improvement).

One other comment... it appears that accented characters in names don't appear quite right. They show up as a highlighted i regardless of what character is in the name.

Is there a way to make the application "remember" the last import/export folder opened? Having to browse to the import_export folder every time is inconvenient.

It might also be nice to have the option to write the output to a date-stamped text file in a folder of my choice. It could possibly include a date range since the last report was run?

It worked like a charm right out of the box, which is really nice. Thanks for writing this. I hope you get more commentary... I'd hate to see you give up on this.

[Neags23]

Originally Posted by ifspuds

Hey Neags, I just gave it a try... am I not getting the new version? I used the link above and I don't have an option to see the results for a specific team (which was going to be my major suggestion for improvement).

One other comment... it appears that accented characters in names don't appear quite right. They show up as a highlighted i regardless of what character is in the name.

Is there a way to make the application "remember" the last import/export folder opened? Having to browse to the import_export folder every time is inconvenient.

It might also be nice to have the option to write the output to a date-stamped text file in a folder of my choice. It could possibly include a date range since the last report was run?

It worked like a charm right out of the box, which is really nice. Thanks for writing this. I hope you get more commentary... I'd hate to see you give up on this.

Feeback!!!!!

Hmm, seems like that wasn't the latest version for some reason. Try it now. Choosing a specific team is step 3.

Yeah, the accented characters cause problems. I know Larry found a fix for that in one of his programs, so Larry, if you read this, fill me in on how you squashed that bug.

I think I can make the program remember the last path you used, so I'll try to implement that. Most likely won't be today, but definitely by the end of tomorrow. Good suggestion, I like it. Thanks!

The date stamped file is something I've been fooling around with a little. My main problem with this program is when you run it a second time, it just appends to the end of the previous report and it's difficult to distinguish the two. I tried putting a date stamp in the actual file to separate the two, but that didn't seem to work. Maybe putting a date stamp on the actual file name would help things. I'll investigate that part further.

Thanks again for the feedback. Much appreciated!

[ifspuds]

Cool. Got the new version now.

One more suggestion (you're going to get tired of my feedback!): with OOTP 2007, the potential exists to have hundreds of players in your organization. It might be nice to have a team abbreviation or a league abbreviation after the player's name in the report to help you go searching for George Brandt in the depths of your organization, because his gap talent went up from 8 to 10.

[Neags23]

Okay, I was wrong. Another new version is already out. I included a find button that will search for an .ini file containing the path of the last league you loaded.

You will need to browse to the path (or type it in and press OK) once before the .ini file is written. Thus, if you press Find before an the .ini ever gets written, the program will throw a fit.

This has been extremely helpful in testing. It got really old browsing to my own league folder every 5 minutes .

Thanks for the suggestion ifspuds!

I'm gonna start working on the league level and ages of the players in the reports. That's gonna take a little more work.

Probably have it before around this time tomorrow.

Someone let me know if the Find button has any problems!