UHS Build 7081 – August 7 2014
This build is pretty massive…. I had a good run where I had minimal to no pain, so I was able to power through some items that I’ve wanted to do. We now have a status update section built into the League Home page. You’ll need to log into UHS in order to actually use that, however, you will be able to view it on the public sites.

We also added Player Faces… this is something I’ve wanted to do for a LONG time… the faces are definitely very cartoonish and rough around the edges, however, as time goes on I might be able to get back and revisit it.

We added in some AJAX so that we can reduce the number of page refreshes and keep page load times down…  primarily this was done for the status update development, however, over time we’ll incorporate it into other sections as needed.

COMs can now Reset Queued games, set Rookie eligibility requirements, set Standings tiebreakers and now set a Farm Salary Cap.

Status Updates
We’ve added a new feature to allow all league members to post a status update. These updates will be shown on the right side of the League Home page (just click the League link at the top of the nav menu). The Game Results section has been moved (more on this later) to make way for the Status Updates.

You will also be able to see the Status Updates on your Public Site, however, you will not be able to make any posts unless you are logged into UHS.

When posting your team’s logo will appear beside your name. For league owners and commissioners, the league logo will appear there instead. If there are no logos available, the UHS cog will appear by default.

This new area will only be available if you are running a browser with javascript / scripting enabled.

Player Faces
As I’m sure you’ve noticed when you look at player profiles you’ll see a silhouette of a player with the UHS name on it. Well…  I finally was able to put together some healthy time and create a ton of graphic assets. I’ve created a script that will automatically generate a random face if one doesn’t already exist. So…  some things to keep in mind when looking at the faces:

1. I am NOT a graphic artist… as can be evidenced by the “great” work I did on the faces.
2. The eyes and mouths look like anime? well… that’s because they are. They were the only eyes and mouths I could find outlines for that I could fit into the design of the face.
3. There is a bleed effect on moustaches…  yep… in some cases there will be.
4. Goalie masks will obscure most of the face except the eyes.

This is my first run at randomly generating faces… perhaps as time goes on and health permits I’ll be able to re-visit it. Or if there is a talented graphic artist out there that would like to donate their time, please contact me using the support system.

Farm Salary Cap
We’ve added a new option for leagues that want to play around with a Farm Salary Cap. If enabled your team’s Farm salaries will be accrued and shown in your Finance page. If a team is over the Farm Salary Cap whatever fine method you’ve selected will be applied. Please note we will only check for violations when the Pro team plays not the Farm team. This is mainly due to the Pro team owning the overall finances whereas we do not keep a record for Farm finances. You should also be aware that Junior prospects do NOT count towards the Farm Salary Cap…  only players assigned to your Farm team.

Unlocking / Resetting Games
We’ve added a new tool to allow Owners and Commissioners to reset games that are stuck with a status of “Queue” or “In Progress”. It is highly recommended you only use this tool if the game is stuck for at least 5 minutes. Typically games take anywhere from 3-20 seconds to sim depending on server usage, however, as we grow and more leagues are using UHS, the queue job will take longer to sim your queued game.

A game will typically get stuck because a roster change gets made AFTER the game gets queued up and BEFORE it actually gets simmed. We do have error checking for that so the game won’t actually get simmed, however, it will be marked “In Progress” and remain that way until a request was made to us to fix it. When queuing up games, please remember the league is locked for a reason. We want to ensure our data integrity before the games are actually simmed, so we prevent people from logging in to make changes. We intentionally allow COMs and Owners to remain logged in so they can carry out their business, however, they should be aware that touching Rosters are pretty much a no-no. Even unlocking the league shouldn’t be done…  once all the queued games are simmed the league will unlock automatically so the COM doesn’t need to worry about this.

Additionally, when you use this tool to reset a game, your league will automatically unlock so that necessary cron jobs can run and potentially fix whatever roster issue was happening to cause the lock in the first place.

You will find this tool in Tools > Reset Games.

Standings Tiebreakers
COMs now have the ability to set their league’s tiebreakers. By default the tiebreaker rules will be Pct, Wins, Goal Differential. COMs will have the ability to set up to four tiebreakers. The COM can pick of the these tiebreakers:
– Pct (points percentage), highest to lowest.
– Wins, highest to lowest.
– Wins – OT Wins, highest to lowest.
– Wins – SO Wins, highest to lowest.
– Wins – OT Wins – SO Wins, highest to lowest.
– Goal Differential (GF – GA), highest to lowest.
– Goals For, highest to lowest.
– Goals Against, lowest to highest.

Rookie Eligibility Settings
COMs now have the ability to set the maximum age and minimum games a player must have in order to qualify as a Rookie. The minimum games is actually a percentage of games that have been played in the season to date, so as the season continues the list could potentially change depending on how many games the player was actually in. You’ll find the settings in Settings > General.

Game Results Changes
You’ll notice that the Game Results have been moved to a section under the Commissioner’s Corner and above League Activity. You’ll also find that we are now only showing either your Pro, Farm or Junior league game results. Previously we showed all of them since we had a lot of vertical space. The move to the new location prevents us from showing all three leagues since there just in not enough horizontal space. I will eventually be adding a few more things to the Game Results area to “fill it out” as it looks like there is a lot of wasted space.

You will see Pro, Farm and Junior links… clicking these will refresh just the Game Results section… so you won’t get a full page load (trying to reduce these).

Personnel (show all leagues)
We’ve added a list of all the Pro, Farm, and Junior players your team owns in one big list (like it used to be prior to UHS Dark)…  you’ll find this list on your Personnel Home page… just click Team > Personnel and you’ll see it beneath the Summary area.

Bug Fixes
– Fixed an issue where the Free Agency End Date and Trade Deadline were not being automatically set when the Pro league’s schedule was created.

Hot Fixes
– Fixed an issue where errors would appear when saving Play-off settings for leagues that did not have a Farm or Junior system set up.