iOS Scouting Companion App (WIP)

[Hooe]

I don't know where else to put this, so I'm putting it here.

If you're like me, you continue to be disappointed that Madden NFL 15 lacks a big board in for the draft in Connected Franchise. Using the game interface alone, remembering which targets you liked amongst those you scouted, remembering those you want to avoid, or remembering the guys you want to keep an eye on in a later round is just burdensome because the draft prospect list UI simply offers no functionality for ranking prospects.

Rather than wait for EA to provide us with something better to this end - who knows where it ranks on their priority list - I'm building my own solution. Since Madden NFL 13, I've privately been using Google Docs spreadsheets to keep track of prospects I've scouted and generating high-level grades based on the information gathered and using that as a companion. Updating this has gotten to be a bit of a chore, so this weekend I spent some time putting together the backbone of an offline mobile app to replace that. I'd like to share it with you all to gauge interest in it, if there's enough I'll endeavor to clean it up and put it up on the App Store for free.

The app has two major components - grading rubrics, and player scouting data entry and organization. Also, as to set expectations, I have done exactly zero graphic design for this; this is all just standard UIKit stuff on the frontend. The demo screenshots also all only show one player; there is no upper bound on how many players the app may store.

First up is rubrics. Out of the box, the app comes with one simple grading rubric per-position. Each rubric defines rules for how to evaluate a player by establishing which ratings to care about and how much to care about them. The user may adjust these parameters as he sees fit - if you really don't care about Awareness when evaluating a QB, you can throw it out of the final grade calculation entirely. Conversely if you really want find a RB who can pass block, you can add that rating to the RB and give it a high weight and the final grades for RBs will change to reflect that new valuation. The app can store multiple rubrics per-position (including user-defined rubrics) so that it is also possible to evaluate a player two or more different ways at once; if you want to grade a QB's throwing and running skills separately, you may do so. Rubrics can each be given their own overall weight so that the final grade when considering grades from all relevant rubrics can be adjusted to the user's needs as well.

The other half of the app is player scouting and ranking. The Big Board screen is where you plug in players you've scouted in the game. You may plug in as many players as you'd like to rank via the New Player interface. The app automatically organizes the players by projected draft position (assuming you input that field) on the Draft tab. Back on the Big Board tab, you have the option to sort players manually (by dragging around table rows) or automatically by rubric grade.

When you select a player to begin plugging in his ratings, you'll see a list of all rubrics you've created for that player, as well as the current grades returned by each rubric using the known information. Any unknown field (?) is considered a 0 rating, so only players you scout will automatically percolate up your big board if you sort automatically by rubric grade. Selecting a rubric will bring up a list of all the ratings that rubric cares about - nothing more, nothing less. You may input an exact grade by tapping a row and inputting a 1-99 number, or you may slide the cell to the right to reveal letter grades - A, B, C, D, F - and use those to quickly provide a grade for a prospect. The app equates an A to a 90 and goes down in 10 point increments from there. Each grade you plug in for a prospect automatically carries over anywhere else, so if you have a QB, you plug in the Throw On Run rating, and it appears in two rubrics, as soon as you plug it in both rubrics will update and you'll see updated grades. Further, if you decide later you want to change how your rubric is grading players, or you want to add a new one for a position later, all the already-scouted data for each player carries over.

The big things I have remaining on my to-do list for this app to meet where I initially want it to go - the automatic sorting option on the Big Board screen described above doesn't exist yet (only manual sorting exists at the moment), and there's currently no consideration for Dynamic Player Performance or CFM-specific traits. Presumably, if the user finds a guy with Superstar development, he's going to want to have the option to flag that guy for later by weighing the development rating very highly in the rubric. I also plan on adding an ability to flag already-drafted players on the Draft tab as to help keep track of who is available during a live draft setting (with an auto-completing search by name as to find players whose visibility to toggle easily). A pie-in-the-sky goal would be to get this app talking to EA's servers and syncing scouting data from there rather than requiring manual input of all the information, but I don't have the institutional knowledge of EA's stuff to implement that; if someone "knows a guy" please tell them I'd like to know lol. Anyway, what's here so far is less than a week of part-time work, so there's plenty of room to improve. I'm open to suggestions as to where to take this app if there's enough interest. If nothing else, I at least have a helpful tool for myself, haha.

Anyway, feel free to give me your thoughts on this if you care to do so. Thanks!

[BadAssHskr]

yes please!

[Nuke LaLoosh]

I'd use it.

[luvlyzero]

I'd also use this!

[jce504]

I'd be interested in not only the iOS app, but also taking a look at your Google Spreadsheet. I've been working on something for myself, and would love to compare what you have done already.

[Badguy1985]

Don't know if anybody at EA would be willing to help, but I wonder if you contacted someone from Daddyleagues they might be able to share some info on how they work with the CFM servers. Possibly in a trade for letting them use your scouting system with their tools? Just a suggestion, don't know if you or they would be interested.

Anyways, very cool idea to help out the community Hooe. I don't have iOS, but I'll be following this anyway.

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by Badguy1985

Don't know if anybody at EA would be willing to help, but I wonder if you contacted someone from Daddyleagues they might be able to share some info on how they work with the CFM servers. Possibly in a trade for letting them use your scouting system with their tools? Just a suggestion, don't know if you or they would be interested. Anyways, very cool idea to help out the community Hooe. I don't have iOS, but I'll be following this anyway.

I'll definitely give the guys at DaddyLeagues a shout about the matter. Thanks for the tip!

[ThatMichiganFan]

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...ting-tool.html

This is JRTs thread. Made a Draft Big Board for Madden 15. You both have similar ideas. Maybe he can help you with your app.