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Battrick Developments

As it’s now officially been made public that I’ve been made in to a developer for Battrick, I can now share my thoughts on developments for my own spreadsheets and tools.

Due to the obvious conflict of interest, unfortunately I will have to stop any further development of the tools that I have created. I may do the odd bug-fix to keep them working the way they were originally intended, but I won’t be updating any formulae and here’s why: if I’ve seen a formula in the Battrick code and I know the version in my spreadsheet is wrong, then a) I can’t update the spreadsheet because that would give the formulae away, and b) I can’t release new versions of the spreadsheet knowing that the formulae are incorrect, as I would feel that is also wrong.

I hope that the tools and spreadsheets that have been created are stable enough not to need any critical fixes, and I will continue to host them on this site until such time that they are no longer being downloaded.

In terms of my role at Battrick, my focus will be on the quality of the front-end code, which means most of the stuff I do, you shouldn’t really notice, unless it’s a new feature. I aim to improve the accessibility and usability of the site, and generally make it a nicer experience. The easier it is to use the site, the less it gets in the way of playing the game. I won’t have much, if any, role of developing the “game”, only the “site” which serves the game.

In terms of game development ideas, reporting of bugs etc, I ask that you use the existing features within Battrick to do so, rather than posting them here.

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2008 02 19 Comments (0)

Talent-Finder Released

Over the last few days I’ve been helping to do some work on a new spreadsheet for the Battrick game I play. Someone (zinc) had found a highly accurate formula to work out the un-displayed sub levels of players, based on their wage, and this spreadsheet made use of that formula.

After a few intermediate versions, and updates, we released the first official version of Talent-Finder yesterday.

It was soon apparent though that due to the macro code in Excel being different to that supported by Open Office (a free open-source version of office software), some people wouldn’t be able to use it. Today then, was about rewriting the back-end code from one language that I’m not particularly good with anyway, into another language which I’ve never used before!. In short, it’s now complete, so all Battrick managers have a chance to use the fantastic resource we’ve created, and it’s added to all the other Battrick Resources.

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2008 02 02 Comments (2)

Battrick Search Strings

I’m not expecting a flood of traffic now I’ve started with the blog, but it’s interesting to see how people are finding my site. Part of the content I have is for Battrick, a cricket management game I play. There’s a few spreadsheets I’ve created, and other tools and stuff - the BT community seem to find it useful. Despite the in-game links posted in various places, it seems managers are still using Google to re-find my tools. This is from this month’s stats:

Search strings for this site, January 2008

OK, so some queries have only had one hit, but I think it’s pretty conclusive what people are coming to my site for! I’ve yet to add the content to WordPress, and when I do I’ll be changing some of it around a bit, and hopefully make it even better. It currently ranks 11th in Google, just for the word Battrick, which isn’t bad at all!

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2008 01 24 Comments (0)

FC Fixtures

This is a reference post for those Battrick managers using my Timetable-Helper, part of the Battrick-Helper spreadsheets.

It seems that the scripts that generate the fixtures list for First Class (FC) games in Battrick, “see” the leagues differently to how they are generated at the start of the season. In short - what we see at the front-end is different to what the back-end thinks it is.

There is only one FC fixtures pattern, and it is based on league position — however, the reset leagues do not show the correct positions!

Here’s how to work out what number you need to enter in the FC Position box on the Timetable-Helper.

Go to Club->Pavillion->FC League->Fixtures. Here’s a screenshot of my FC league fixtures:

FC Fixtures for Battrick

Now, map the teams on to this pattern:

1 vs 2
3 vs 4
5 vs 6
7 vs 8

So, my team, Jargon Busters is actually starting off 7th in the league, rather than 3rd as it shows on the league table. Consequently I would put “7″ into the FC Position box, to get the correct Home/Away data in the spreadsheet.

FC Position box

Nineone ACC would put “1″, JG’s superstars would put “2″, Ólafur Pái would put “3″, London Pride would put “4″, dirts allstars would put “5″, Bluemooners would put “6″ and Alalminore CCC would put “8″.

This should then give the correct Home/Away data for the FC games:

FC games

The One Day (OD) leagues were generated correctly, so you can simply enter the league position as you see it into the OD Position box. Mine is position 5, as per the screenshot earlier.

Update: It seems that there was indeed a bug! The fixtures list for the FC games were generated against the OD standings (in the separate leagues of course) of the teams in your league, rather than the FC standings! This should be corrected for the start of next season, so there should be far less confusion!

To clarify: The teams in my league are starting from the following OD positions this season: 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 8. As I was one of those’s 5th places, then my FC fixtures this year follow that of the 7th place team. I’m not quite sure what happens if there’s a tie between OD rankings.

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2008 01 23 Comments (1)