Introduction, Features and Updates

[sohum]

May 3, 2010
Released PCCS 1.0.1 which is a minor update that adds tracking for maiden overs. The last major update to the Twenty20 engine will be the restructuring of the bowling selection algorithm.

I will proceed working on the One Day engine, as well.

 

[sohum]

May 5, 2010
Released PCCS 1.1.0. This is the last major change to the Twenty20 engine. From hereon I will simply be making tweaks to the probabilities. The changes in this version include modifying the bowler selection process to use a notion of specialist resources. This is still far from perfect, but as long as you do not have too many part-timers in your team, it will attempt to use specialist bowlers in an intelligent fashion (powerplays, slog overs, etc.).

 

[sohum]

May 6, 2010
Released PCCS 1.2.0. The only discernible functionality it adds is the ability to delete matches. I also tried to improve the match window to be a little more responsive but unfortunately I will be bound by the slowness of the SQLite database engine.

 

[sohum]

May 8, 2010
I'm hoping to release PCCS 2.0.0 Beta later today or some time tomorrow. I've gone ahead and rewritten the ODI pacings and probabilities and am pretty happy with the way its functioning. All that remains to be done now, before the beta, is to write the special skills probability and implement stamina or some related metric to prevent bowlers from bowling right after finishing a spell.

The feature that will be missing from the beta is batting and bowling powerplays. The mandatory powerplay is implemented.

 

[sohum]

May 9, 2010
PCCS 2.0.0 has been released. There are still some missing features and the probabilities still need some tweaking, but I've decided to go ahead and release this for public consumption.

 

[sohum]

May 25, 2010
Started to write the StatisticsEngine. This will be a 2-3 step process. The first step is to design the engine, which is now done. The second step is to design and implement the queries. This is the step I'm on right now. Right now I have written the query for batting summary for the various different match types. The final step is optimization so that PCCS doesn't have to hit the database and get all the associated innings every time it needs to get the statistics data.

 

[sohum]

May 26, 2010
Hoping to have the db work on the commentary engine done today. Not the actual lines or the generation of commentary, but just the way it is stored.

 

[sohum]

May 27, 2010
The backend work on the commentary engine is basically done. Just have to write the portions that pick out commentary from the database and of course the actual commentary lines themselves!

 

[sohum]

June 8, 2010
A lot of work done on the commentary engine. Commentary lines can be customized via text files and can include a bunch of macros. I'm working on getting the commentary lines from the original PCCS commentary thread into my text files.

 

[sohum]

June 9, 2010
A lot of work done on the tournament engine. The tournament engine basically allows you to devise XML based tournament files and specify them in PCCS. PCCS will then take care of things such as points tables, etc. Tournament mode will probably be launched as a separate EXE while PCCS will be the default EXE for one-off games. The data will be shared, though.

For example, here is a sample tournament file for a triangular series:

<Tournament
	Name="Triangular Series"
	MatchType="ShortSingleDay"
	MatchLeague="InternationalSenior"
	MatchLength="50"
	NumberOfTeams="3">
	<Round SubId="1">
		<PointsTable Win="4" Loss="0" Tie="2" NoResult="2" UseBonusPoints="True" />
		<Match Team1="1" Team2="2" DateOffset="0" />
		<Match Team1="2" Team2="3" DateOffset="2" />
		<Match Team1="1" Team2="3" DateOffset="4" />
		<Match Team1="1" Team2="2" DateOffset="6" />
		<Match Team1="2" Team2="3" DateOffset="8" />
		<Match Team1="1" Team2="3" DateOffset="10" />
	</Round>
	<Round SubId="2">
		<PointsTable Win="1" Tie="0" NoResult="0" />
		<Match Team1="{1:1}" Team2="{1:2}" DateOffset="13" />
	</Round>
</Tournament>

 

[sohum]

June 24, 2010
Began work on Tournament Manager UI. This won't be released for a while but I will be using it internally so that I can handle the PCCL tournaments more efficiently. The tournament manager UI will basically allow you to create new tournaments from their XML definitions as well as do things such as view the points tables, change the dates/venues/teams for matches, etc. It will also allow you to view statistics for a particular tournament, eventually.

Anyways, I'll have some screenies up soon, perhaps this weekend.

 

[sohum]

June 25, 2010
Major refactoring done which will help performance. For the technically inclined, I'm now caching objects that are loaded from the database. What this means is that the first time you load an object (for example Player, Match, Team, LineUp, etc.) it will not load a second instance in memory.

Previously, it was hitting the disk over and over again. For example, if you wanted to simulate a new match, first it would load the match and the lineups into memory. For the lineups it would then load each player into memory. Then, on the simulation screen, it would create new references to these objects and hence result in just a bunch of objects being recreated needlessly. Furthermore, there was a risk if I edited the properties of an object from one scope, it would be overwritten from another scope. This obviously is not a huge issue from the UI perspective since that is impossible, but it's just nice to keep it safe.

The place this is most evident is in the "previous lineup" window. Previously, this window took a long time to load because it had to hit the disk a lot of times. For example, if you had 10 lineups with Tendulkar in it, it would create a .NET object for Tendulkar for each lineup. Now it will just create one .NET object and all the lineups will point back to it.

Theoretically, the only negative to this is higher RAM usage. Since I'm creating each object and holding onto it in the cache, these objects never get deallocated. Realistically, though, since I'm loading each object only once, my RAM usage is probably lower.

This change will be published along with the other changes, post PCCL.

 

[sohum]

July 18, 2010
Did a lot of work on the tournament manager. The tournament manager will allow you to create new tournaments and custom tournaments (from a tmnt file). It will automatically build fixtures and keep track of points tables. It will also allow you to view statistics for a particular tournament/round.

Still working to get it complete by the start of PCCL. After PCCL starts (or maybe right before it), I will probably make a 2.1 release which will have updated probabilities for ODs as well as the first build of the tournament manager.

 

[sohum]

September 14, 2010
PCCL 2.1.0 has been released. The major update in this version is the tournament editor. This allows you to create and manage your own tournaments. Unfortunately, it is not fully functional (it doesn't let you view points tables or statistics, yet), but it is something to start with. Here are a few sample tournament files. The files are XML files and pretty easy to follow.

Champions League
Bilateral OD Series
PCCL OD
PCCL Preseason
Triseries