BuzzerBeater Forums

Has BB considered changing the lineup screen to drag and drop, like the flash lineup in HT? The current system is pretty much a data entry test, made harder by the fact that the positions for the starters and reserves are in a different order.

I could see something like the 5 positions laid out in a court formation, with a three players in the depth chart together. The entire roster would be listed to the side, perhaps ordered by name, nominal position, or jersey number based on manager preference.

If you have 12 players in your lineup, you would have to drag someone off before you can bring in a new 12th player. Otherwise you could just drag new players into the depth chart. It's just busy work to separate setting the 12 players, from setting the depth chart.

When you move a player into the depth chart any others are just displaced, so if you move the 2nd SG to the 1st SG position, the current 1st slides into the 2nd position (they swap). If you bring someone entirely new in, then everyone is displaced downward, with the player in the 3rd position dropping off - and if he isn't used elsewhere is removed from the 12 players in the lineup.

If you drag a player into a 2nd starting position, his old positiion would be empty and highlighted, or the current starters could be swapped. This would work OK for swapping most positions. And if someone wants to move their 5'11 player into the post, what's wrong with a 7'2 guy coming up top?

If you

this has been considered and will probably show its head at some point in time. It's all a question of how much time is involved and what other things need to be done first.

The lineup page was done in HTML and in that way simply because it is ( believe it or not ) the most complex html page on the whole site. We needed something that a) everyone could use easily and b) could be done bug free.

My opinion is that a game consists of only three elements
1) an input device ( the lineup )
2) an engine to process the input
3) an output device ( the match viewer )

the 1st two are more important that the last one purely for the fact that they simply have to work. Output can always be tweaked if the other pieces are good.

I built the HT lineup tool in flash, so I know what's involved in making something like that, and I have some ideas how to do it .. it's just going to take a while before we get to it. My list is still not getting any shorter..

I continue to use the regular lineup tool in HT because that is what I have become familar with. But long ago, I started figuring out my lineups on paper, where I arrange the players in a 4-4-2, and then use arrows to indicate repositioning and individual orders. So if I am using a 3-5-2, I'll place the 3rd IM in the back line and then draw an arrow up between the other two IM. If one of the IM is a played defensive, I place a small arrow next to him. This is enough for me to visualize the actual positioning, but allowing simple data entry, as I walk through the 1-4-4-2, using the pulldowns to select the player and his re-positioning/individual orders

I think the layout of the BB lineups are confusing, the starter positions are layed out left to right (1-5), with the vertical position used to indicate players toward the center of the court or more to the wings. But the substitute positions are laid out vertically (1-5).

I don't really think of the lineup as 3 separate teams, but rather a 5 separate depth lists, one per position. So that is the way I work things out on paper, and even if I have a player listed in two posiitions (starter at PG, 3rd at SG) this is easy to see.

If this were a hockey sim, it could make sense to define the lines and defense pairings as a team, but BB treats players more as individuals.

And because of the depth charts, I think that drag and drop would help a lot, because that is simply an easier way to re-order a list.

Simply changing the arrangement of the pull down menus would help me a lot for the current system.