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 0.3 beta is in progress and will be released in the first or second week of this month. It is aimed mainly at adding some administrative features to the site and includes some critical bug fixes and several enhancements thrown in for good measure as well. As with 0.1 and 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 significant issue where loading a historic MLB leagues was causing problems when trying to view the player’s stats page and, more importantly, running a draft. This was because the stats engine was defaulting to using the current calendar year when fetching players stats and not using the year defined in the OOTP league table. The stats engine patch fixes this glitch and adds support for historic leagues now in place. A few additional issues on the team rosters page and the player’s profile have been resolved 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 on 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 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, the installer tests 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 enable StatsLab Compatibility. This feature prevents 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 to the dashboard for the Roster Limits and Scoring Rules
• A live version check widget to assure the latest mod version
• Google Analytics support, which 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).