As we ring in the new year, I thought it high time to resurface of sorts and throw an update on the state of the Fantasy Leagues mod.
The Third Beta Update
OOTP Fantasy Leagues 1.0 .3 is in progress and will be rolled out in the first or second week of this month. It is aimed mainly at adding some administrative features to the site and includes some important bug fixes and several enhancements thrown in for good measure as well. As with 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, this update will be available as either a patch or full install. I’ve run numerous test installs using both methods and have the majority of the kinks worked out.
I’m also planning for this to hopefully be one of the last releases under the “beta” program. The mod has been in beta since July so I think it’s in a pretty stable state now. I hope to run one or two more beta seasons on my nabl.aeoliandigital.com web site in the next couple weeks and I expect and plan to patch and upgrade moving forward as well. I also know how the “beta” label can cause some people to want to wait to install and use it so I want to try and remove that blocker and get it out to as many users as possible.
Bug Fixes
Peteg9699 identified a big issue where loading a historic MLB leagues was causing issues when trying to view the players stats page and more importantly, running the a draft.This was because the stats engine was defaulting to using the current calendar year when fetching players stats and not using the current (or previous) year defined in the OOTP league table The stats engine has been updated to fix this glitch and support for historic leagues s now in place. A few additional issues on the team rosters page and the players profile have been addressed as well.
Installer Updates
One big area where issues have seemed to keep cropping up is within the installation process. Because this mod is based off CodeIgniter, it requires several core config files to be updated with the unique system properties and then written to the server during install. The way CodeIgniter is built, there’s just no way around this. Server script access is always a touchy area for non-technical web users, especially those using shared hosting where permissions are limited and information about what is write accessible and what is not can be scare. So I’ve tried to enhance the installer process to accommodate for these issues.
The installer has previously tested whether directories were writable just before attempting to write the necessary data to the config files but after the database had been loaded up. Now these tests are done before anything is committed to the database to help users of the mod tackle these issues before they get too far along in the process.
New Features
Well, I can’t release a new update without throwing in some new features as well, right? So in that spirit, there are several new additions to the site to go along with this release.
StatsLab Compatibility Mode
- A new option has been added to the Global Setting screen to turn StatsLab Compatibility mode on. This feature is intended to prevent conflicts between the two mods when they are both run out of the same MySQL upload folder or the same database. A change to the database connection script used to upload MySQL export data to the database is also included in this patch release.
Admin Dashboard
- Editors have been added to the dashboard for the Roster Limits and Scoring Rules
- A live version check widget has been added to assure the latest mod version is being run
- Added Google Analytics support. This can be enabled and account info set in the Global Settings page
- Revised upgrade messaging and workflow
Global
- Removed version information from the site footer for security purposes
- Added site wide breadcrumbs
- Made minor authentication workflow changes
- Added ability for admins or league commissioners to manually edit players roster assignments on the player profile page
Installer
- Fixed error checking and improved error messaging and instructions to resolve issues
- Added a database test script to confirm database permissions and access
- Removed potential database conflicts with StatsLab
So that’s the high level view. Again, more information is still forthcoming. Watch for the official release announcement and complete change list soon.
Next up, a look forward to patch #4 and some of the BIG things that will be coming up soon for the mod and the effect these will have on the overall direction of this and associated projects (oh yes, I said projects).
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