Voice of Text Flex

Quick Predict: championship games

2012-01-22T14:06:00.000-08:00

Here are the tXtFL quick predictions for the NFL championship games:

Ravens 19.251
Patriots 20.2148

Giants 19.7385
49ers 20.6131

The predictions are based on 10,000 simulations each using total stats from the regular season, run on tXtFL 3.

Based purely on postseason stats, however, the Giants-Niners match-up takes reverse course:

Ravens 19.2607
Patriots 21.1289

Giants 21.9757
49ers 21.7534

The Giants of course have more data to support the simulation, but from the looks of it, their postseason has been on a roll. Can the Niners stop the Giants' (Antrel) Rolle, and roll?

tXtFL tips: import spreadsheets

2012-01-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

This post kicks off our new series highlighting some of the new features in tXtFL 3. Keep checking back for new tips!

In previous versions of tXtFL we had a separate program for loading your own teams and players via spreadsheets. Now we've built in the function directly into the tXtFL app so that you can load up your entire league without leaving the app.

The import tool makes use of the built-in browser on the left-hand side of the tXtFL window. Using special syntax, you can direct the app to load your custom spreadsheets. Here are the steps:

Fill out your league using the online template. We'll have more details on how to do that in a separate post.
Download the "league", "teams", and "players" sheets as .csv files (File > Download as > CSV). Make sure that the names of the files have the names of the respective sheets.
Move the .csv files to your home directory (eg C:/Users/mike on Windows 7).
From within tXtFL URL bar, type the following command, replacing the name of the files with your own:
txtfl://import:Demo League - league.csv|Demo League - teams.csv|Demo League - players.csv
Press Enter. Note that you'll need to refresh the list by choosing Next and then Back again (to be fixed in the next version). If you see your league appear in the leagues list, you can now run it!

If you encounter errors, check the spreadsheet to make sure that all values are entered correctly (it's a bit nit-picky at the moment). Also feel free to email me/comment to help troubleshoot. More info to come on designing your league!

tXtFL 3 goes live!

2012-01-02T17:52:00.000-08:00

Version 3 of the tXtFL engine and desktop app went live this past Christmas. tXtFL 3 is a major new version with a completely reworked design that allows it to power multiple form factors--whether mobile, desktop, or server/command-line. It's already served as the engine for tXtFL Mobile on the Android platform and our tXtFL Desktop pre-releases. After 11 pre-releases, we felt it's high time to call it final.

So what's in it? Here are some of the highlights.

Performance improvements for automated simulations

tXtFL 3 is built for running multiple simulations of real games. We use it to test our engine using real stats against outcomes from real games so that we can constantly improve our football model. You can also use it to predict scores for your own fantasy leagues. As you can see, one of the huge benefits of modularizing our engine was to dramatically improve simulation speed, from barely 0.02 games per second in the previous version to now nearly 30 games per second. That means that you can run 1,000 simulations of each game for each 16-game week in under 10 minutes.

Many, many game model enhancements and fixes for improved realism

While our old engine was fairly accurate in overall scores, running it play-by-play revealed small but annoying bugs such as safeties after interceptions and the inability to complete extra points after time expired. Not only has the new engine corrected those errors, but it's also increased sophistication of the model with improved AI decision-making (eg punt/play, pass/rush, and fair-catch choices), overall game stats (eg average time and yards per play), and strategic play-calling (eg timeouts, onside kicks). Player abilities are also now a much more complex integration of each player's skill values.

Completely revamped stats engine

The old stats engine worked but was clunky and, on occasion, error-prone. We decided to completely revamp the stats recording system by making it far simpler and as a result far more flexible for adding new stats. To prove our point, the new version now includes many new stats parameters (eg sacks, INTs, fumbles, and returns), with more to come (note that the database does not yet record these stats, but you can see them during game time).

Season improvements

As an added bonus to the automated sims improvement, seasons now allow you to load spreadsheets with season schedules for predicting scores of real team match-ups. And just how do you do that? The built-in browser can handle that through the URL bar (more documentation on that to come). We've also fixed many season bugs to keep away the "seasonal flu" that you may have experienced with the old version--things should work much more smoothly now on your way to the tXtFL Bowl!

Import entire leagues from the web

Using the built-in browser, you can browse through available leagues online and download them into your simulator. If you'd like to submit your own league, we can host it for you!

Updated, "cozier" interface

Although we've left the familiar layout mostly intact, we did make a few updates to steamline the user experience, which we'd like to call "cozier" for your coaching comfort. You'll notice the 3-column choices layout that also organizes plays by left/middle/right and distance. The app should also display better on both small screens and at higher resolutions for an overall more comfortable experience.

Installation

We continue to support Windows, Mac, and Linux (yes!) platforms in both 32- and 64-bit (yes yes!) flavors. Instead of having to choose all the right combinations yourself, running and launching tXtFL is now as easy as clicking on a link. Java Web Start handles the entire download and launch process and will even keep your app updated with each new release.

tXtFL 3 was a year in the making, and what better way to celebrate the new year than by treating yourself to a new engine? As the professional season winds its way to the big Bowl, we hope you'll have fun coaching your new team or even managing an entire league on its way to your own championship.

Mobile website

2012-01-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

I happen to be sitting in an airport with a speedy, free WiFi connection, but alas, most airports are not as such, and I rely upon my smartphone to do all the heavy lifting. With one hand toting luggage and the other juggling between a cup of coffee and my phone, I very much appreciate smooth mobile websites easy on the one-handed operation. But alas, the Text Flex website was not one of them.

That's all starting to change with the first incremental release of our mobile-enabled website. Following responsive web design principles, we're modernizing and adapting our site to make it easy on the mobile eyes. Starting with the tXtFL homepage, you'll find a simple single-column format of all the football simulator's highlights, news, and download sections. Downloads of course point to tXtFL Mobile rather than to the desktop version, and all blog links should take you automatically to the mobile-enabled articles.

You'll notice though that links to any other page on the site will take you to the full desktop layout. We'll be working to fully mobilize our website, and as we're still in very early stages, we greatly appreciate any comments or suggestions! Please let us know how zippy or unzippy, happy or unhappy you are with the site, and we will do our best to make for the smoothest on-the-go Text Flex experience.

tXtFL Christmas releases

2011-12-28T17:39:00.000-08:00

They say that good things come in small packages. So this year for Christmas we've made a couple small but significant tXtFL releases that we hope you'll enjoy. And as usual, we've tried to keep the download size small as well.

tXtFL Mobile 0.99.13

We've been on a bug-hunting spree lately and focused on performance and stability for this release. You may not notice a difference if you have the latest and greatest Android device, but the app should purr along more smoothly on the less elite devices now.

The database upgrade experience should also be smoother now. In the last mobile release we introduced the ability to control your upgrade, and we've worked out a few kinks for this release.

tXtFL Desktop 3

After 11 pre-releases, we felt it's finally time to mark our stamp of tXtFL-3 approval. If you've been following the pre-releases on our Java Web Start channel, you won't notice a whole lot of differences from the last desktop release as the tXtFL engine has stabilized over the past few months.

If you're new the channel, however, we hope you'll enjoy the greatly streamlined, more realistic football game engine. You'll also find a broader array of stats in our revamped recording system. And we hope you'll find it all easier to use with our "cozier" interface, including a better organization of plays and improved window sizing.

More details on version 3 to come. In the meantime, what makes us particularly excited about all this is the opportunity to start development on tXtFL 4 as we kick of the new year. Happy Holidays!

tXtFL Mobile 0.99.11 and 0.99.12

2011-12-23T23:50:00.000-08:00

Over the past month we've posted a couple new tXtFL Mobile releases that brought a completely new scoreboard. Underneath it all was a completely revamped way of recording stats that's much more efficient and flexible, which translated into many new stats that are being recording during each game.

With the changes unfortunately also came a fair number of bugs, which we've been seeking to stamp out in subsequent releases. Many of these bugs had to do with the new way of recording stats as well as database upgrades. tXtFL Mobile 0.99.12 doused a number of those issues and also introduced a way to give you more control over how the database gets upgraded. Now that you may have imported entirely new leagues that you may or may not want to keep--and which may also have new versions ready for download--you can choose whether to transfer those during upgrade. You can also choose whether to keep your modifications to existing teams, keep new teams for existing leagues, or skip the data transfer entirely and take the pristine new database as is.

Since then we've also discovered a number of additional, long-standing bugs that have been fixed for the upcoming release, 0.99.13. Should any additional bugs or suggestions come your way, please let us know!

Text Trix 0.9.4 released

2011-11-22T16:51:00.001-08:00

Text Trix is back in the mix for the holiday season with a new release bringing in a few small features and fixes. The feature we've found the most useful is drag-n-drop file loading, which supports dropping in files from Windows Explorer, Linux file explorers, or MacOS Finder. If you pull the file into the Text Trix tab area, you'll see a blue border followed by your opened file. This feature is courtesy of the public domain FileDrop package.

On the horizon, we've started work to integrate a new syntax highlighter with a modern feature set and improved performance. The highlighter is a customized version of jsyntaxpane, and we've released an early alpha build as preview in the pre-release section.

On The Mark development update in light of JavaFX 2.0

2011-11-15T15:28:00.001-08:00

On The Mark and its sister application, Spreadshift, have been undergoing a developmental transition as we navigate the new waters of JavaFX 2.0. Oracle has been clear and open in its documentation that this new version of JavaFX, the programming platform in which the On The Mark behavioral suite has been written, is largely incompatible with the old version.

The downside is that we'll have to completely rework the original application to continue active development, and the video function no longer appears to work on Windows (it works just fine on the Mac, however). The upside is that the new version of JavaFX offers a ton of new features that should not only bring new functionality to the software, but also make development itself easier to maintain and extend.

As we look ahead to the next stage of development, we're excited for a couple reasons. First, we'll be able to rework the software from the ground up based on feedback on making On The Mark more useful to the scientific community. Second, we can continue to use many of the existing technologies, including the cloud connectivity via Google Docs, with mere refinements in the upcoming versions. Finally, we'll be able to leverage many of the new technologies in JavaFX 2.0 to expand the reach of the suite to new platforms and simply work better on even existing platforms.

Most importantly, this is a time when we can use your feedback the most to impact the direction of the next stage of development. Please let us know your thoughts--we welcome you to our team at any level.

New scoreboard, stats, and league import

2011-10-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

I was "watching" the World Series from the MLB.com game cast and couldn't help bug admire the slick layout. Even the scoreboard is beautiful. Midway through the game, I popped out my phone and pulled up tXtFL Mobile. And with the game cast right next to me, I immediately realized that the tXtFL Mobile scoreboard needed a full overhaul.

Scoreboards through the ages (top: through v.0.99.9; middle: v.0.99.10, bottom: v.0.99.11pre)

Hopefully the new board is rather self-explanatory, but what I'll highlight is the emphasis on the key parts of the game--the scores and the clock. The little football also points out more clearly who actually has the ball, and the down and yards to go display is a bit more concise and precise (finally says "& goal"). My hope is that the end result is that you'll not only find it easier to pick up what's going on in the game, but also find it easier on the eye as well.

Under the hood, I've also finished a more extensive overhaul of the stats recording system. The old system worked but was overly complex, prone to error, and most importantly, difficult to upgrade to include additional stats. The new system is much more straightforward and flexible. To celebrate the remodeling I've added a bunch of new stats--previously played but not recorded--such as sacks, more extensive INT parameters, extra points, and returns. Now when you pull up the player in Manager, you'll find these stats recorded for posterity.

For desktop users, league import is making its debut on the desktop front in addition to its mobile release. The Game Box browser page loads the same list of shared leagues, which can be directly imported by clicking on the links. Of course, you can design and share your own league as well.

All the features are slated for the upcoming release. As usual, let me know if you have any feedback, suggestions, requests!

tXtFL Mobile 0.99.10 released

2011-10-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

A new version of tXtFL Mobile is out the door with a focus on importing new leagues from the web. The game engine has also undergone extensive testing to improve realism and reward your hard efforts at coaching.

League Imports

In the Manager screen--renamed from Stats screen to reflect its growing role as a team manager/league commissioner--you'll find a new option: "Import new leagues." Choosing this option will load a list of leagues contributed by fellow users for download into your app. You can browse through the available leagues and choose any that are interesting to you.

Don't like the league you downloaded? Another new option is to delete any league or team that you want. Long-press the item in Manager, and you can choose to wipe it off your phone. (Note that default teams will reappear when you update the app or reset the database, though.)

Another option, of course, is to create your own league. Each league has been customized by coaching weights and player skill values, as well as player stats, which until now had not been available for customization in the mobile app. You can find instructions here on how to build your own league simply by editing a spreadsheet.

Game Model Refinements

On the inside, tXtFL has undergone many improvements in the game engine to provide more realistic play. Plays are now ordered by distance, from shortest to farthest, so that you can see more quickly which play to select for the given yardage situation. If you select "Choose for me," the simulator will also make more intelligent play calls, including better distribution among different receiver targets. Player ratings are more sophisticated based on your choice of player skill values and coaching weights. Choose skills wisely for each player!

To give you even more control over the management of your team, you have two more major coaching options at hand: timeouts and onside kicks. Wise use of these two rules can dramatically alter the endgame as you drive your team downfield in the two-minute drill.

As usual, the new release also includes many bug fixes. Most significantly, I had discovered that the previous version of the app might crash after upgrading from an older version of the database. The workaround was to reset the database (from the Settings menu), but now this bug has been fixed in the latest release. Should it (or any bug) continue to plague you, send me a line so I can track it down.

I hope you'll enjoy the new release and another wild week of football!

Creating leagues to play and share

2011-10-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

The upcoming release of tXtFL Mobile will feature a new tool for importing new leagues from the web. Previously you were limited to coaching the existing leagues in the app, whether you liked them or not, but now you can import entirely new leagues. And where do these leagues come from? Anyone can build a league and share it for downloading straight from the app.

How do you create a league? Building a league is as simple as using an online spreadsheet to add and rate your own teams and players. If you head over to the main Text Flex website, you'll find a link to the spreadsheet template. Once you copy that spreadsheet, you can edit it freely to fit your own number of conferences, divisions, and teams.

For each team, you can weight various areas of coaching, such as heavy QB coaching for pass friendly teams. You can also customize players with both subjective skill ratings as well as objective stats. Even the league rules can be modified, including field dimensions and play clocks.

Once you've built your league, you can submit it using the Share button (see the address on the first sheet). From within the app, you'll be able to see your league available for import from the Manager screen. And so will everyone else who uses the app! Note that there may be a short delay before your league appears, and it is subject to modification to ensure that it loads into the app properly.

Future releases will work to polish the import process and add new features and customization parameters. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to post! In particular, much thanks to Antonio Grasso for very helpful testing and creating the first importable league!

tXtFL on the desktop side

2011-09-03T19:33:00.000-07:00

With most postings here focused on tXtFL Mobile for the Android platform, it may be easy to forget its older brother, tXtFL for the desktop. But alas, forget about it we have not! tXtFL on the desktop is alive and strong, and in many ways it continues to be the workhorse for our simulator.

If you last used tXtFL version 2, you'll notice that the interface has taken on a slightly new look ahead of the upcoming tXtFL 3 release. I wanted to spice up the Game Box area from the drab brown tone to a fresh grassy image, and I was happy to find that some pleasant alpha blending worked well with the scene. I also made extra room to view the changelog to see what you've got or, if you're running an older version, what you can easily get.

Which brings us to another tXtFL desktop feature: getting updates through Java Web Start. As you may have noticed, our tXtFL 3 pre-releases have been distributed via the Java Web Start channel rather than as separate downloadable packages. The advantage is that you don't have to keep track of updates yourself, since the program checks for updates each time you load it. You also don't have to worry anymore about picking the right Windows/Mac/Linux 32/64-bit combination just to get it running! Instead Web Start will pick the right package for you and keep it updated.

New for our latest pre-release is the 3-column selection format in the center of the window, which you might already be familiar with from our tXtFL Mobile release. By organizing the options in 3 columns, I hope you'll have less scrolling and can more easily see which pass is to the right, left, or somewhere in-between.

Under the covers, there's also a small new feature in this latest release that allows you to run multiple simulations on each game of each week in a season. It lays the groundwork for further testing of tXtFL against real games, which allows me to further improve the game engine for realism.

Looking ahead, I'm also planning to incorporate the player animations as well as team and league management from what we have in the mobile version. That's all still a work in progress, and I look forward to hearing your feedback in the process!

tXtFL Mobile 0.99.9 released

2011-08-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

tXtFL Mobile makes another debut just in time for the 2011 football season. This new release focuses on animation enhancements and many underlying tweaks for a smoother experience. And for those up North whose football season is well under way, we have another treat--the full suite of Canadian teams built in.

Animation highlights
Gone are the x's and o's, and in their stead are overhead football figurines. We've also sprinkled in a few new moves to make for a more dynamic animated experience. There's still lots of room for improvement, so keep your eyes on the lookout in new releases ahead.

New OpenFeint leaderboards
Previously you've been able to post your highest scores and largest point margins to leaderboards via OpenFeint. Now we've added two new leaderboards: Most Wins, and Best Win Percentage. Each time you coach your team to victory, you keep ratcheting up the Most Wins ladder. But it takes an especially gifted coach to avoid losses and top the Best Win Percentage board!

Under the hood
For the less visible improvements, we continue to tweak the game model for improved realism, and we've also fixed bugs for better stability and performance. Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" users will also notice a more seamless interface. When ending a game early, the rest of the game will be automated, and if you want to play shorter games to begin with, you can adjust a new option for minutes per quarter.

Enjoy, and as usual, feedback is always welcome!

Progress report on tXtFL Mobile 0.99.9

2011-08-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

With the lockout locked out and the preseason locked in, we're looking forward to another season of football...and another release of tXtFL. This release has focused on weeding out stability issues and bugs, but I've just managed to squeeze in a few tweaks to the animations as well. Comparing the x-and-o's depiction from the previous version with helmet-and-pads upgrade, you'll notice new player images and more player movements for each type of play.

x-and-o's in previous versions | helmet-and-pads in 0.99.9pre

Another deep pass route, with corner and safety pursuing.

The frenzy of special teams, kickoffs in particular.

Keep a lookout after the lockout for tXtFL Mobile 0.99.9!

tXtFL Mobile 0.99.8 released

2011-07-03T00:14:00.000-07:00

Creating your own teams and players has always been at the heart of tXtFL--for a long while it shipped with only 2 teams, plus instructions on making more--but unfortunately it wasn't very easy to do so. It involved finding the team and player templates, opening them up in a spreadsheet program, and then running an export tool to import them into tXtFL, hoping no errors would ensue.

tXtFL Mobile 0.99.8 seeks to right that. Last time, we added a dedicated stats viewer. This version builds on that by including player and team editors. Each time you pull up a player or a team, you can change the name, hometown, or even skill values. Consider yourself a run-first offense? Up the RB coaching. Prefer the passing game? Put your weight on the QB coaching. And for individual players, you can weight their arm strength/hand skills, running speed, or ability to survey the field.

Most importantly, if you're not satisfied with the stock teams, you can head over to "Create new team" and do just that. Once you've joined it up with your chosen conference and division, you can point yourself to "Players by team" to customize each and every player under your direction.

A few additional tweaks for this edition include more teams and better depiction of plays. Now while watching play animations, incomplete passes will really miss the target--or for interceptions, hit the wrong target. This release also went for an additional round of testing to hammer out many bugs and shore up the game model. Safeties after INTs should be a rarity now, if ever!

That's it for now, but the ball is rolling for the next release. And as usual--your feedback is always welcome!

Make your own tXtFL dream team

2011-06-12T17:38:00.000-07:00

One of the toughest things about watching the Draft is contemplating whom you might have chosen instead. That all changes--in tXtFL Mobile, at least--for the next release will allow you to create your own customized dream team according to your specification. After creating your team, registering it with the league conference and division of your choosing, and assigning coaching weights, you can head over to the player stats menu to customize each of your players as well.

Player and team editor in tXtFL Mobile

2011-05-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

Awhile back someone suggested that I provide a way for you to specify player strengths, so I added "skill values" as a way for you to customize the hands, feet, build, and smarts of each of your players. Unfortunately, it was hard to actually modify those values since you either needed to access the database or load in your own player spreadsheets.

In the upcoming release of tXtFL Mobile, customization gets a little easier through the player and team editors. When you browse to a player in the stats screen, you'll notice that the skill fields are really edit boxes. Tap on a box, and you can adjust the strength of your player. Of course it might be tempting to boost your star QB to "1000" for hands, but note that skills get capped at 4 points total. Distribute wisely!

Also new to tXtFL Mobile 0.99.8 will be basic team stats browsing. In the stats screen you can pull up each team to track all its past games.

You can also globally influence your entire team through coaching points. The concept is similar--weight your QB, RB, LB, DB, or special teams coaching according to what you as a coach prefer. If you're a Singletary-style coach, you might heap up some points on the RB staff. And if you're from the Walsh-era...

...QBs get the golden ticket.

tXtFL Mobile 0.99.7 released

2011-05-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

In celebration of all the NFL Draft festivities, plus Cinco de mayo on the horizon, I've released the fourth version of tXtFL on Android. This version has been baking in development for the past several months, so I hope you'll find a new football feature or two to suit your fancy. Here I'll take you on a brief tour of some of the new features in tXtFL Mobile 0.99.7.

The layout has been completely redesigned for smoother navigation. You'll notice that the options have been grouped into three columns to reduce scrolling, which will become more apparent later. Also take note of text coloring!

The three-column layout format becomes more apparent on team selection, which will hopefully save you some thumb strength by having to scroll less. If you scroll the area with the season standings, you'll also find a listing of all this week's games.

As part of the layout redesign, the game stats have been bumped to the top so that you can quickly glance at it while looking at the play results. And key play highlights are color bolded to keep the game moving even faster!

Perhaps one of the biggest additions to this release is play animation. Once you select a play, an x's and o's representation of the game should player and ball movements. If the pass is incomplete, the player fades. Note that the animation is in rather basic form for now, but I hope you'll enjoy a more visual representation of your team on the field.

Player stats and team drive histories were previously in separate screens but have now been combined in a Box Score window.

Not satisfied with game stats? You can now view all player stats by opening the stats screen. (Yes, the options menu is new, too!) If you click on individual players, you can also view stats by game.

In addition to finally including an options menu, the simulator also includes a preferences pane. Text To Speech (TTS) integration will cause the simulator to speak back plays to you. For more complete accessibility, turn on this option as well as the phone's systemwide Accessibility features. The additional preferences are game options you can tweak for more advance football features.

The new About screen shows a few hints as well as links to stay updated on the latest from tXtFL Mobile. I hope you enjoy the new release, and as always, your feedback is welcome!

NFL Draft 2011

2011-04-28T17:11:00.001-07:00

With the pending lockout, there's nothing like watching the NFL Draft as one last hurrah. At the very least these players will have the chance to practice on the teams of their future. Here's to the rebuilding of not only teams, but also the very league itself.

If you're on Java 1.4...or Java 7

2011-04-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

I love it when I can run new software on older computers. With my growing collection of abandoned hardware, I frequently find myself looking for ways to keep it alive as long as possible. As an aid to all who are like-minded (or simply have legacy hardware), I've finally fixed Text Trix and tXtFL to once again work on legacy Java software, back to version 1.4. These fixes will be coming in the next releases, so stay tuned if you're on the bleeding edge of Java 1.4.

And what about Java 1.3? I finally figured out how to install it again from the Java Archive but ran into some library problems while launching my software. If there's need to run these programs on Java 1.3, let me know so I can give it another look.

UPDATE: I'm also starting to regularly test Text Trix and tXtFL on Java 7. So far, no changes required...

Progress report on tXtFL Mobile 0.99.7

2011-04-13T19:10:00.000-07:00

I embarked on the next tXtFL Mobile development cycle intending only to add a new screen for viewing statistics and to tweak the game models for improved realism. In the process, I decided to keep a running list of features and fixes to track my progress and prepare for future releases. As I added to the list, I also felt compelled to hack away at the issues, which ended up only revealing new bugs and new ideas--and the list kept growing and growing in an iterative process. And today it has reached the 100th issue.

Some of these issues are bigger or smaller than others, and not all of them have been fixed or fully implemented yet. It's been an invigorating experience as the list continues to grow and testing reveals new ways to make the game play less frustrating and more engaging. Getting a new phone has made testing especially delightful as now I can test wherever I go, flipping back and forth between tXtFL and checking MLB scores. And it's been a great way to pass the time while waiting for the next football season to begin, especially in light of its uncertain beginnings.

If you're curious about what's new, I'll keep posting screenshots, and don't forget that you can always give the underlying game engine a run on the desktop version! Feedback welcome, as usual.

The new integrated Box Score dialog pulls together the Stats and Drives views, along with a scoreboard on top.

Under the hood with tXtFL

2011-03-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

A football simulator is only as good as its engine is, and experimentation with our simulator has revealed some areas that could use improvement. While the overall scores of games have been fairly reasonable and accurate compared to real-world games, sometimes the individual plays can prove unrealistic. For example, I realized that punts of 25 yards and kickoff returns of 40 yards were not altogether unusual in the simulator. And when the computer picked plays, it often "went for it" on 4th down even while backed up against its own end zone.

So I've been working on a few tweaks to the game engine, and in some cases completely new models for certain play situations. The changes mostly involve special teams situations, and here are some of the highlights:

Punts
Previously, you could choose a punt play with a preferred punt distance, and the engine would aim for that distance, adjusting based on punter ability and protection from the offensive line. The problem was that in real life*, the punt distance is usually determined by two simple factors: 1) punt as far as you can, but 2) keep the punt within the opponent's 20 yardline. Instead of aiming for a fixed distance, the simulator should instead aim to punt within these goals, with accuracy based on punter ability and protection. Now when you select to punt, you simply choose which side of the field to aim for (left, middle, right), and the simulator takes care of the distance. More skilled punters and better blocking protection means less "wiggle room" in achieving that distance, including less chance of punting into the end zone.

Kickoffs and rushing
Kickoff return yardage has been too far, and rushing plays too short. It turns out that kick returners had been enjoying heavy weighting of their ability, which rushing players were just a blip in the equation. That's been normalized now.

Automatic play selection and decision-making
The decision to go for it on 4th down is based on many factors. Most importantly, the pressing need to get a touchdown rather than settling for a field goal when your team is down as the end of the game draws near may drive a coach to bold play calling. But another crucial factor is simply the distance involved--hardly a coach would go for it on 4th down from their own 10 yardline, unless of course it were almost the last play of the game. The simulator finally incorporates the distance factor as well as the point spread.

Similarly, kick/punt returners are now more likely to make a dash for it rather than fair-catching if they catch the ball near their own end zone to avoid pinning their team in safety territory.

Another smaller matter is that now the simulator will automatically choose defensive formations based on special teams 4th down situations, such as punts or field goals. My goal is to take out just enough of the randomness of the "Random" button to make the automated choice a wise one.

These tweaks under the hood will hopefully make for a positive gaming experience over the hood as well. You'll find them in the upcoming tXtFL Mobile 0.99.7 release (to come), or you can check them out now in the desktop version pre-release.

Punt with impunity--even from your opponent's 33 yardline.

* speaking as a layman--feel free to correct me!

Sneak peak of tXtFL Mobile 0.99.7

2011-03-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

While the NFL players are trying to fix football in the courts, tXtFL Mobile has been getting fixed up and taking on new features in preparation for its 0.99.7 release. Under the hood, I've been tweaking special teams to improve kickoffs and punts and fixing some bugs to make game play smoother and more realistic. Over the hood, the interface has a new look for easier navigation. Here's a few sneak peaks of the tweaks!

Colored text serves as highlights for each play.

Season summaries include a preview of the week's matchups as well as league standings.

A new 3-column format lets you pick from plays organized by side of the field.

There you have it. Stay tuned, and as always, let me know your feedback!

Stats, realism, and more on the way...

2011-03-05T22:51:00.001-08:00

I've heard your feedback on tXtFL Mobile and am happy to say that many improvements are in the works! The football season may be over, the next season may be in jeopardy, but the tXtFL marches on.

A few of the highlights:
-all-new stats screen for viewing full player stats for each game
-realism improvements
-season bug fixes
-color text!

Stay tuned for more, and keep letting me know your feedback. Thanks!

Benchmarking tXtFL 2 vs. 3pre

2011-02-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

Games per second on tXtFL 2 vs. tXtFL 3 pre

One of the limiting factors we faced with predictive simulations has been the time and CPU consumption required for automating multiple games. In tXtFL 2, we could only crank out roughly 500 simulations at a time, which could easily take an entire night and cost us half a gig of RAM (from storing all the text from every game).

With the new engine in place for tXtFL 3, we were able to reach 100,000 simulations for tXtFL Bowl 5.0 in a fraction of the time it took for 1,000 simulations on tXtFL 2 (over 2 sessions). The tests above show simple benchmarking of default teams (2009ers vs. 89ers), where tXtFL 3 runs about 860x faster. Put another way, tXtFL 2 takes 47.5 sec per game, whereas tXtFL 3 takes only a fraction of a second--0.055 sec--per game.

tXtFL 3 is still a work in progress, and we'll continue to focus on accuracy of predictions as well as speed.

Analysis of tXtFL Bowl 5.0

2011-02-19T15:08:00.000-08:00

We've posted our brief recap and analysis of tXtFL Bowl 5.0 by comparing the predicted scores from tXtFL 2, tXtFL 3, and none other than Madden NFL 11 against the real thing. Take a look for yourself and let us know if you see any improvement we can make to the engine!

tXtFL Bowl 5.0!

2011-02-05T12:02:00.000-08:00

Our results for tXtFL Bowl 5.0 are up! We have a 4-way battle going on as not only the Steelers and Packers duke things out, but tXtFL versions 2 and 3 (pre-release) battle for the predictive victory as well. With the new engine for tXtFL 3 in place, we were able to crank out 100,000 simulations in a fraction of the time it took tXtFL 2 to produce 1,000 sims, but the end results were similar.

UPDATE: Although tXtFL Bowl 5.0's prediction (Steelers 31, Packers 22) was the reverse of Super Bowl XLV (Steelers 25, Packers 31), we were happy to see newcomer Rodgers on fire. And also that our predictions correlated well with that of Madden NFL 11 (Steelers 24, Packers 20). More analysis to come!

Starting the super countdown...

2011-01-30T13:58:00.000-08:00

The Packers and Steelers players are taking some time out to rest while watching beachside Hawaiian football in the Pro Bowl. In the meantime, we're firing up our simulators to run the virtual version of these very players through the gauntlet of thousands of simulated Super Bowls. If only we had some burgers to bake on our fiery hot CPUs.

Every year for the past 4 years, we've simulated the Super Bowl through our tXtFL Bowl. We take the complete Super Bowl teams and all their players' stats through the course of multiple games to calculate a predictive score for the real bowl. Last year we were particularly excited to predict within 3 points of each team the final score and winner.

On this 5th year anniversary, we're capping off tXtFL Bowl 5.0 with a few enhancements:

tXtFL 2 has been released, and we're running our usual 1,000 simulations.
tXtFL 3 is well on its way, and with it's sup'ed up engine, we're cranking out 100,000 simulations. Yes, one hundred thousand sims.
We'll be comparing the two simulators, as tXtFL 3 has a number of realism enhancements for us to test in the Bowl.

So keep your ears tuned for our predictive postings! And don't forget to download tXtFL Mobile for your Android phone so you can enjoy playing football while watching it at the Bowls.

tXtFL for Android : championship style

2011-01-22T22:46:00.000-08:00

In honor of the conference championships tomorrow, we've put out a small update to tXtFL Mobile with a couple new teams so that you can simulate the Pickers vs. the Boars and the Rockets vs. the Stealers. When you're on defense, you'll also notice that picking plays that are better matches for the distance and the side of the field of the offensive play will give you better success at defending against the pass. Man-to-man coverage is great against midrange passes (eg crossing, curl), while nickel and zone are better against the longer passes. Make your best prediction!

Have fun at the games, and as always, feedback welcome!

tXtFL for Android : new teams, model improvements

2011-01-15T20:52:00.000-08:00

If you can't get enough of the NFL playoff action, you can bring the NFL--or shall we say, the tXtFL--with you on your phone! We've already told you about our recent release of tXtFL on Android phones, and now we wanted to update you on a new release. This release features 8 new teams and updated QB stats so that you can follow more of your stars in the simulator. You'll also notice that QBs make a bigger difference too. We've heard your feedback that it's been hard to complete passes. Now that's only the case if you've picked the wrong QB!

We've also fixed a number of bugs, particularly in playing seasons. And when you finish a game, you can check your SD card to find a game summary for downloading onto your computer and tracking individual player stats.

As you're aware, we're constantly working to improve the game, and we're stoked about all the feedback you've given us so far! Keep posting comments, and we'll keep improving the game. Have fun watching the playoffs and with tXtFL!

Season 2010: Week 16

2010-12-26T21:19:00.000-08:00

The best part of the season--the part where you can enjoy football on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and even Tuesday--has arrived. It's also that part of the season where your fantasy wager is on the line. We wish you the very best in your fantasy finale (or consolation, whatever it is) and many happy holidays stuffing yourself with football in front of the tele.

So how's it going to end? On Monday Night's game, the Falcons are playing for home-field advantage, while the Saints are a long shot away from winning the division. But the Saints only need 1 of 2 games to secure a wild-card spot, and if the wild world of predictive sporting is correct, they'll get that win tomorrow night. But if our tXtFL simulator is correct, the Falcons will be taking home-field advantage, and the Saints' wild-card berth awaits another week. Who's it gonna be?

And this week, in lieu of our fancy graphs, we're displaying side-by-side predictions from our new gaming engine, currently under heavily development for tXtFL 3. Some bugs have been worked out since our last run, and we've thrown in a few new tweaks as well. Follow the battle not only of the Saints and the Falcons, but also of tXtFL 2 and 3!

Monday Night Predictions

tXtFL 2: Saints 13, Falcons 22
tXtFL 3 (early development)*: Saints 10, Falcons 26
Final score: Saints 17, Falcons 14
Analysis: Drew Brees can beat a computer any day.

* tXtFL sports a much more efficient gaming engine that allows us to routinely crank out 3000 simulations rather than the 300 we typically use for tXtFL 2-based predictions.

tXtFL Mobile on the Android Market!

2010-12-25T13:09:00.000-08:00

On this day of Nativity, we're happy to announce a native Android app of tXtFL. While on the shuttle to work or in-between meetings—or sometimes at meetings—I find myself itching for something light and easy but fun to do. Then it dawned on me. Why not make tXtFL available wherever you are, whether you're commuting to work, slaving at your desk, or trying to survive a meeting? Thus was born tXtFL Mobile.

With this new Android app, you can play the full version of tXtFL directly on your phone. If you've played tXtFL 1 or 2, you'll be familiar with the setup, but this version incorporates optimizations we're working on for tXtFL 3. Performance is faster, and game engine tweaks bring improved realism based on our extensive testing against the 2010 season.

One particularly exciting feature is integration with OpenFeint. If you're familiar with Facebook (sorry, we don't mean to insult your intelligence), you'll find that OpenFeint is a social networking gaming platform complete with even Facebook connections. Now when you win a game of tXtFL, you can shout that out to the world through OpenFeint leaderboards. And if you play other OpenFeint-enabled games (they have a huge and growing network), you'll accumulate achievement points that you can use in other games.

As this is our first mobile release, we can't emphasize enough how important your feedback is to us. Enjoy tXtFL Mobile, let us know your feedback, and have a very happy holiday!

tXtFL Mobile on the Android Market (FREE!): market://search?q=pname:com.textflex.txtflmobile (launch from Android browser)
Feedback: please help us improve tXtFL Mobile

Season 2010: Week 15

2010-12-19T23:50:00.000-08:00

The season draws to an end, and the hunt is still on. After a wild Patriots/Eagles game ("59 minutes of competitiveness, 59 seconds of failure," or something to that effect), we turn to the Monday Night Football special as the Bears take on the Vikings. If our predictions are correct, this should be another spectacular game up through the finish. Will the Vikings have a merry Christmas, or will the Bears make Chicago pizza of them?

Monday Night Prediction: Bears 17, Vikings 20
Final score: Bears 40, Vikings 14
Analysis: Even though the standings are close, the in-game blowouts are blowing us away...

tXtFL Mobile for Android Beta Program

2010-12-15T21:20:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: tXtFL Mobile is now available on the Android Market! Please try it out and let us know your feedback!

tXtFL is coming to Android phones! We know that there's no better time to lob a deep pass on the deep route than while waiting for the train on your commute to work, or that sitting in a meeting while your boss rants and raves is perfect timing to sack the QB. Now you do all that from the comfort of your smartphone with tXtFL Mobile.

If you're looking to get in on the action during the holiday season, sign up for our beta program to get tXtFL onto your mobile device (for free!). Please note that you'll need a non-AT&T Android-based smartphone to install this pre-release app on your device.*

And after you've given it a shot, we'd love to hear your feedback!

*While installation on most devices is pretty straightforward, it's a little tricky on AT&T devices. Once tXtFL Mobile is released on the Android Market, you'll be able to easily download it onto your device, AT&T or otherwise!

Season 2010: Week 14

2010-12-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

Some years, the playoff mix is clear by week 5 with a few blow-out teams and many blown-up teams. This year, we're approaching the final week of fantasy football and the start of the playoffs, and many teams are still vying for the division crown. For fans, the climate couldn't be better.

Tonight we highlight one of the crucial pre-playoff games, the hunt of the Chiefs and the Chargers. Who will win? If our predictions are correct, the Chiefs will edge the Chargers, just barely. If the Chiefs can win it, 5 of 6 AFC slots will have their div victors. But I'm sure the Chargers, even though in 3rd place, are keen to stop that.

Sunday Prediction: Chiefs 20, Chargers 18
Final Score: Chiefs 0, Chargers 31
Analysis: What happened?? I guess what happened is that the Chiefs + appendectomy of their QB don't sit well together. The Chargers remain alive in the playoff hunt, keeping things as interesting as ever.

Season 2010: Week 13

2010-12-05T22:02:00.000-08:00

We missed Sunday's match-ups, but our engines are rolling for the Monday Night shootout between the old guard and the new. Watch as Tom Brady dukes it out with Mark Sanchez in another battle of the quarterbacks...and their 9-2 teams.

Monday Night prediction: Jets 18, Patriots 22
Final score: Jets 3, Patriots 45
Analysis: How often does one team beat another by 15x? Our simulator's combined team points didn't even match that of the Patriots alone. And Brady's 148.9 passer rating, over 5x that of Sanchez? I think the Jets are gonna jet outta there as fast as they can.

Season 2010: Week 12

2010-11-28T10:35:00.000-08:00

The Kansas City Chiefs battle to keep its hold on the AFC West, while the Seattle Seahawks strive to retain their margin over the weak NFC West in an afternoon brawl today. The outcome?

Prediction: Chiefs 29, Seahawks 12
Final score: Chiefs 42, Seahawks 24

Monday Night Football: As an avid Niners fan, I can't say I'm happy with this prediction, but this is what the "boss" says... And what we really can't believe is that in the dilapidated NFC West, the winner of this game will only be a game out of first place. The stakes are high!

Prediction: 49ers 18, Cardinals 20

Final Score: 49ers 27, Cardinals 6. Yup, I'm sad but happy about this one...

Season 2010: Week 11

2010-11-21T01:08:00.000-08:00

I couldn't help but indulge in a tXtFL duel of the quarterbacks, Manning v. Brady. Some people are calling Brady past his prime, but tXtFL thinks otherwise. Tomorrow we shall see!

Prediction: Colts 11, Patriots 26
Final score: Colts 28, Patriots 31

Season 2010: Week 10

2010-11-13T23:11:00.000-08:00

The predictions march on as we enter double-digits week number.

Sunday prediction: Patriots 24, Steelers 19
Final score: Patriots 39, Steelers 26

Season 2010: Week 9 - with tXtFL 3 update

2010-11-07T14:16:00.001-08:00

Our "predictions" for the Dolphins vs. Ravens game are coming after the fact, so we decided to throw in a preview of tXtFL 3 for score comparison instead. tXtFL 3 has been under heavy development to improve performance and allow it to run on a much wider variety of platforms, including smartphones. Automated simulations has taken a huge performance leap, from requiring roughly an hour per 100 simulated games to less than 1 min. Score predictions aren't quite comparable (nor accurate), however, so we'll continue to focus our bug busting in that direction.

Yeah, if only the teams were flipped, at least from a predictive standpoint. But as Joe Flacco's on my fantasy team, I'm not personally all that disappointed.

Go Giants!

2010-11-01T20:16:00.000-07:00

The game we know is football
tXtFL is what we love
But we cannot help to celebrate
The Giants in the cove.

GO GIANTS!!!

Season 2010: Week 8

2010-10-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

Sunday's NFL West prediction: the Raiders will dominate the Seahawks. Raiders 28, Seahawks 13.
UPDATE: Raiders 33, Seahawks 3. Yes, even we were surprised.

Monday Night Football prediction: Texans 30, Colts 18. Clearly, we're going out on a limb again...

Season 2010: Week 7

2010-10-24T01:05:00.000-07:00

We're nearing midway through the season, and so far the season's been chock full of upsets. Who will be upended this week in the Favre/Rodgers duel? Our simulator is telling us that Favre and the Vikings will edge the Packers, but only by a field goal.

Prediction: Vikings 22, Packers 19
UPDATE: Favre and the Vikings played as predicted. Rodgers and the Packers surprised us yet again. Final score, Vikings 24, Packers 28.

Monday Night Football prediction: The Giants will romp all over the Cowboys. Giants 31, Cowboys 11.

UPDATE: The game was higher scoring than we anticipated, with an equally unanticipated breakage of Tony Romo's clavicle. The only thing we anticipated was the winner. Final score, Giants 45, Cowboys 35.

Sad news for Java on the Mac?

2010-10-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

Java took another blow in its tumultuous relationship with the Mac platform. On a day that would otherwise be cause for great celebration in Macland--the release of Update 3 for Java on the Mac--the release notes stated that Java had now been relegated to "deprecated" status. The next version of the Mac OS, dubbed "Lion," may not even contain a version of Java, and there's no guarantee that Java for Mac will be available for others to carry on the torch.

Although somewhat surprising, the news certainly isn't shocking, as anyone who tossed and turned in sleepless nights during the last long hiatus in Java releases for the Mac will well attest. And this threat may never even come to a head, just as Apple backed off in its licensing requirements that had prevented iPhone applications from being created in anything other than very Apple-centric languages and development. Only time will tell the impact that this announcement will have for the role of Java on the Mac.

Even as a long-time Java-centric company, we at Text Flex aren't so sure that this move is such a bad idea. While we are firm believers in giving the user choice on the platform--whether Flash or Java and HTML 5 or whatever may be your fancy--we understand that manufacturers have a choice in which platforms to support, just as consumers have a choice about which platform to buy into. We're obviously saddened that those who bought into the Mac thinking that they would have a long-standing Java supporter backing them up might very well be disappointed, but we also realize that things have changed greatly in the computing landscape over the past few years.

While Java has made things easier for us, there are certain aspects that have been especially tough. The tXtFL football simulator, for example, requires platform-specific packages because the underlying toolkit is SWT rather than Java Swing. In this case, Java becomes yet another requirement to the package. Granted, this is not the fault of Java, but it's one of the reasons that our first order of business for development of tXtFL 3 is to separate out the game engine from the GUI so that the tXtFL GUI can run on multiple platforms, independent of Java. We've also never made great use of Java Web Start or Java applets because performance has never quite kept up with what we can do withe standard Javascript and HTML 5. Our handy editor Text Trix, however, has benefited greatly from the cross-platform availability of Java.

Regardless of Java politics, we'll continue supporting our software on as many platforms as we are able and will keep looking to broaden our reach. Java still has plenty of gas in the tank, and the Android/Java platform are only growing stronger. Technology is a moving target, and we're excited to keep moving with it.

tXtFL 2 released

2010-10-18T16:02:00.000-07:00

At long last, tXtFL 2 has emerged. This major update has been baking for the past year, and 3 alphas and 2 betas later, we're committing to two-point-oh. So what's in store when you download?

Complete Seasons

"It's just one game in the whole season," or coaches say whether they took a painful loss or smashed their opponent. Now that's true of tXtFL, too, as one game is but a step on the trek toward the playoffs and the vaunted tXtFL Bowl. You define how many weeks to play, and you coach your team to the title.

Many Leagues

Whether you're living in the US or Canada, whether you're playing professional or collegiate, or whether you're opting for Arena-style football, tXtFL supports them all. Each league comes with its own set of rules, including 50-yard fields in Arena football and 3 downs per cycle in the CFL.

Flexible Team Management

The underlying team and player management has been completely rewritten for tXtFL 2. You can create entire leagues, rules, teams, and players through a set of simple spreadsheets that load into a database. And rather than dealing with hundreds of files, you can control all your stats through this one master database.

More Accurate Gameplay

Many bugs have been fixed to ensure a smoother and more accurate football experience. For example, points scored in overtime or as the half or game expires are properly recorded for posterity. And networking has been fixed for helmet-to-helmet play.

Graphics Tweaks

Like color? Crucial plays and key players are highlighted in color throughout gameplay. The all-new Game Box (and expandable browser area!) gives you a tXtFL portal for following the latest news and development in tXtFL.

And of course, the finishing of tXtFL 2 really just means the beginning of development for tXtFL 3. Stay tuned!

Download tXtFL 2 | release notes

Season 2010: Week 6

2010-10-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

Another round of score predictions from tXtFL! We're now running full sims on the final release of tXtFL 2 (more on that later).

Will the Eagles dominate the Falcons today, 25-18?
UPDATE: Final score, Eagles 31, Falcons 17.

Monday Night Prediction: Jaguars 15, Titans 22.

UPDATE: Final score, Jaguars 3, Titans 30

Season 2010: Week 5

2010-10-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

Prediction based on 300 simulated games: Giants 20, Texans 35
Final score: Giants 34, Texans 10
Analysis: The prediction would have been close...if the teams had been flipped.

Next up (n = 300): Vikings 23, Jets 35
Final score: Vikings 20, Jets 29
Analysis: This was a close one, but Sanchez &co. pulled through in the end.

(We're having some difficulties with a statistics package upgrade and will post pretty graphs later.)

Pre-release: tXtFL 2 rc1

2010-10-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

We're nearing the final stage of tXtFL 2. Release candidate 1 brings fixes to a few long-standing bugs and a revised Game Guide, highlighting the new and updated features of tXtFL 2. Following a more aggressive release schedule, we have no further plans for the upcoming release, so barring any bugs, this could be equivalent to the final release!

Download | release notes

Season 2010: Week 4

2010-10-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

New predictions for the Ravens vs. Steelers game today:

Pardon for the graphics, as we only had access to our (trusty) Octave rather than Matlab. If you want the numbers, we're looking at a prediction of 28-12, Steelers on top. UPDATE: The real score ended up being 14-17, Ravens, meaning that our Steelers prediction was too optimistic while McNabb made himself at home in Philly despite wearing his opponents' uniform.

And here are predictions for the Patriots vs. Dolphins game:

Dolphins on top?! The stats (which we solely use for our predictions) must be all over the place. Nevertheless, we'll see...

Season 2010 predictions: Week 3

2010-09-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

Continuing our long tradition of score predictions, we're putting tXtFL 2 pre-release builds to the test on 300 automated simulations of tomorrow's 49ers vs. Chiefs game. The testing revealed a couple bugs, included a long-standing negative clock bug that we've finally fixed. Given how the 49ers have performed this year so far, could our predicted score be but another bug? We'll find out tomorrow.

UPDATE: As you probably know by now, the blowout by the Chiefs of 31-10 means that, yes, our predicted score was a "bug."

We also have another treat, a 973-game prediction of tomorrow night's Packers vs. Bears. Scores earlier in the season are harder for us to predict as we have less data to go by, but we're giving it another shot. Apparently our simulator is giving a shout-out to the Bears.

Pre-release: tXtFL 2 beta2 with many refinements

2010-09-20T23:19:00.000-07:00

We've been itching to get tXtFL 2 beta2 out to you as this new pre-release contains a number of refinements that should make this more of a truly "tXtFL 2" experience. So what's in the lineup?

Faster database loading

Our metrics indicated that while database loading could be speedy on a Core 2 Duo machine, the database could take up to 30 sec or more to load on a trusty Pentium-M computer. To speed up the processing, we adjusted the database to load in parallel with the graphics engine. Initial loading still shows a lag on older machines, but subsequent loads are much brisker.

League rule-sets, foreals

One of the defining features of a new league is a distinct set of rules. While our last pre-releases introduced rule sets, we realized that a bug was preventing them from being loaded properly. Now rule sets are not only properly loaded, those rules are actually applied during game time. Don't like fair catches? Turn them off. Want shorter play clocks? Dial it down.

Updated for 2010 season

Like the tXtFL 1.1.3 release, this pre-release includes links to the latest season for all the greatest statistical glory. And now between weeks, all newly downloaded player stats will overwrite the old ones so that you can keep your players updated from week to week.

Best of all, tXtFL 2 is nearing final release! Stay tuned, and in the meantime, download a pre-release and let us know your feedback.

Download | release notes

Update (2010-09-23): If you've had trouble running tXtFL 2 beta2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, try downloading a new copy. Let us know if you run into anymore troubles.

tXtFL 1.1.3 released for 2010 season

2010-09-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

You've been patiently waiting for the NFL 2010 season, and it's finally come. And so has tXtFL. 2010 season stats have been included in our release of tXtFL 1.1.3 to kickoff the new season. Additional improvements include a fix to networking for head-to-head (or "helmet-to-helmet," as we like to call it) play and a fix for points scores in overtime.

This is our last planned release for the tXtFL 1 series. Here's looking forward to tXtFL 2!

Download | release notes

Pre-release: tXtFL 2 beta1 with playoffs, championships

2010-09-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

We're always excited to announce a new pre-release, but we've been waiting for this particular one for quite some time. Today we're kicking off the first official beta of our upcoming major upgrade, tXtFL 2. We found it only fitting that with the passage of the final pre-season games in the NFL last night, we're introducing the first tXtFL version that contains complete seasons, including playoffs heading into the final championship, the tXtFL Bowl.

The previous alpha release introduced seasons, and this beta release extends upon that with the post-season. If the original 16-week season is dissatisfying now that the NFL seems assured of the 18-week season, you can customize season lengths at will. (Of course, that means a quick 5-week season is just as available.) At the end of the season, the divisional winners and top wild card teams duke it out in divisional playoffs until conference champions emerge. These final victors go on to vie for the title in the tXtFL Bowl.

To have divisional and conference playoffs, the league must have divisions and conferences. Now you can set up just that with your own customizable leagues. Each league can specify its own rule set, including field dimensions, play clock limits, and whether to include punts (a la Arena-style). Load up your league settings in the leagues spreadsheet, and you can have your own MyLeague.

We wish you and your team all the best in the 2010 season. And keep checking back—we'll be having more betas and need your feedback as we head toward the final release of tXtFL 2!

Download | release notes

AddictiveTips reviews Text Trix

2010-09-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

The tech website AddictiveTips picked up on Text Trix for review in the article, "TextTrix: Multi-Featured User-Friendly Text Editor With Easy Navigation Support." We were delighted that they highlighted one of favorite and most oft-used features, Line Dance, which "serves the basic need of remembering an important line in the document." It's one of those tools that helped us power through our first tXtFL 2 beta release.

We were equally delighted—and slightly amused—that they also picked up on the plug-in Letter Pulse that we've included as standard in Text Trix. Several years back, I wrote the plug-in as a birthday present to my sister. According to the article, "Another noteworthy feature it offers is Letter Pulse, which helps in finding out the hidden messages in the document." That hidden message was, "Happy birthday, Priscilla!" and I'm glad that it continues to make people happy today.

18 week season with tXtFL

2010-08-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

Word has it that the NFL is moving forward with the 18-game season. The players might not be happy, but as veteran fans from the couch or bar, most of us probably have no complaints. If next season is too long for you to wait for the 18 week season, you can move forward with the latest preview of tXtFL 2 on the Java Web Start snapshot release. This latest snapshot includes our playoff preview mechanism, complete with league conferences and divisions and the first round of playoff games. While creating new seasons, you'll also find the option to determine the length. So whether you're a fan of the 16 week, 18 week, or 1000 week season, tXtFL won't leave you stranded.

Text Trix 0.9.3 released

2010-08-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

This latest release of the Text Trix editor includes a spell checker with inline highlighting. English, German, and Spanish dictionaries are included, with the ability to add new language packs as well.

If you find yourself multi-tasking with multiple Text Trix windows, you'll find that tabs are now saved across windows. Text Trix now also notifies you if a file is updated elsewhere (e.g. via Subversion or CVS) so that you won't end up overwriting the file with old contents.

For those of you stuck with Java 1.4 (or who just prefer the good ol' days of Sun-style Java), we've now included separate "jre14" builds that run on your system. Now you can take Text Trix with you on everything from your OS/2 and Linux workstations to your Windows 7 desktop to your Mac machine. Have at it!

Download | release notes

Pre-release: Text Trix 0.9.3

2010-07-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

A third release candidate for Text Trix 0.9.3 has finally arrived after a long hiatus. This pre-release fixes a right-click menu bug, and the final release should be on its way soon. Please let us know if you catch any last-minute bugs.

Happy trixing!

Download

Pre-release: tXtFL 2.0.0alpha4 with leagues and rule-sets

2010-06-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

One of our most oft-requested features for tXtFL is for inclusion of NCAA football. In this latest pre-release, we decided to up the ante with both Canadian and collegiate football. Now you can play with NFL, CFL, or NCAA rules straight from tXtFL, or create your own leagues with customizable rule sets.

My house, my rules: tXtFL now plays Canadian football under Canadian rules, including 110-yard fields, 3 downs per cycle, and 12 players on the field per team. We'll continue adding additional features to capture the fine nuances of our Canadian friends, such as "singles" and other special kicking rules.

Geaux Tigers! or Go Bears! or go wherever your alma mater is. College football is for the most part very similar to the NFL, even more so now that the NFL (and tXtFL) has adopted the venerated two-point-conversion. But there's nothing like hundreds of additional teams to follow to keep the football spirit alive all days of the week.

Of course, these leagues are but a few of the professional football organizations that can be included in tXtFL. Arena Football League is attempting a two-point-conversion of its own as it makes a 2nd try after bankruptcy, and the league with the coolest rules (in my opinion) will of course get representation in tXtFL. You can also generate your own Pop Warner and high school football leagues to complete the development pathway and track players from birth til Hall of Fame.

The pre-release comes with a few additional features, including an upgraded graphical toolkit (SWT 3.6 final) and database checking and backup to ensure that you're running a compatible version of the FootballDB. Future pre-releases will focus on including more leagues, teams, and the ability to download teams and players. What makes us particularly excited about this pre-release is that it marks the final 2.0 alpha release--look out for tXtFL 2.0 beta on the horizon!

Download | release notes

Managing Your tXtFL Database

2010-06-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

If you've checked out a tXtFL pre-release, you've probably noticed the new database for storing all the team and player information. We're really excited about the database because it provides a lot more potential for expanding the game. Our last pre-release included a way to keep track of seasons, and we have just added the ability to create new leagues, each with its own rule set.

Of course, a database is only as good as the ability to get data into and out of it. The tools included in tXtFL so far allow you to import player and team information from spreadsheets, but nothing more fancy. Fortunately there's another tool that you can use to access and update the database, from modification of individual player stats to addition of whole new teams and leagues. We'll take you through the setup to hook up with your database and make modifications.

There are a number of ways to access the database, but the way we recommend here is to use OpenOffice.org (OOo). The advantage of OOo is that the same program includes a spreadsheet editor for player and team spreadsheets, and the entire program is completely free (not to mention an awesome alternative to Microsoft Office). OOo runs on every platform on which tXtFL is supported (Windows, Mac, and even Linux).

Here are the steps to access your tXtFL database. It looks long, but once you've completed the steps once, you'll have a file that you can simply double-click to re-access the database.

If you haven't already done so, download and install OpenOffice.org.
Run OOo, open Tools > Options > Java.
Click on Class Path > Add Archive. Select the file derby.jar, found in your tXtFL directory (e.g. Libraries\Documents\tXtFL-2.0.0alpha3-win\derby.jar). Press OK in the Class Path and Options windows. UPDATE: If you're using the Java Web Start download, you can grab the derby.jar file from the Derby website (the lib.zip file should suffice).
Select File > New > Database.
Choose "Connect to an existing database", select JDBC, and press Next.
In the Datasource URL field, enter derby:C:\Users\[username]\.txtfl\FootballDB. Adjust the path to point to the copy of .txtfl\FootballDB on your computer. UPDATE: As of tXtFL 3, the .txtfl folder changed to .txtfl3, so the full path is derby:C:\Users\[username]\.txtfl3\FootballDB.
In the JDBC driver class field, enter org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver, and press Next.
Press Next again, as you do not need a username/password.
Save the file with whatever name you like. This file will allow you to access the database without having to enter all of these steps again!
Click on Tables on the left hand side, and start viewing/editing the database as you like.
When you're done, don't forget to completely exit OOo, as tXtFL won't be able to connect to the database while OOo is still connected.

Now you can tweak your team at will and micromanage every aspect of it...and just create every fancy league with the most exotic rule sets you can think of.

Go Ubuntu 10.04!

2010-05-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

In honor of Ubuntu 10.04, we've posted a shot of tXtFL running on the latest Ubuntu offering. Ok, so that was self-indulgent...

But seriously, we just wanted to show that, yes, tXtFL runs successfully on the latest version of the OS so many have come to know and love. (And for the observant, that's tXtFL running in LXDE in a standard Ubuntu install. Go open source!)

NFL Draft Day!

2010-04-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

I hope you're watching the 2010 NFL Draft. But if you missed it, or can't stand having other people do the drafting when you've done your own research--make your own picks using tXtFL Draft!

Pre-release: tXtFL 2.0.0alpha3 with seasons

2010-04-21T01:21:00.000-07:00

"Green twenty-two! Red thirty-seven! Alpha three!" Alpha3? What kind of quarterback audible is that? In the tXtFL, it's nothing less than the 2.0.0alpha3 pre-release, right on our doorsteps!

High on the heels of--yup, you guessed it--alpha2, the alpha3 pre-release brings with it the addition of Seasons that we've been talking about. Seasons allow you to coach your favorite team through 16-weeks of tireless action while tracking your standings and automating other teams' games. But as alpha3 has a few additional features, we highlight them all here.

Seasons

The 2010 season may be a long time off, but you can start a new season anytime you like with tXtFL. Starting a new season will generate a 16-week schedule against all the other teams in your league and allow you to pick off your opponents one-by-one.

Once you've started a season, the games are automatically assigned for each week. In this case, the 2009 Niners take on the glory days' Niners for a wild week 1.

For now the scheduling is fairly rudimentary, but future versions will focus on assigning teams to divisions and scheduling them accordingly.

Not unexpectedly, the glory day 89ers whooped the present-day 2009ers. Following each game, you can track the standings to see how your team is faring against the competition.

In this case, only one game has been played, leaving the Boars vs. Gigantics match-up unplayed. Not to fear....

The rest of the week's games can be completely automated so that you don't have to worry about those teams. Until you face them in the next weeks' games, that is!

Highlighting

As you've probably noticed already, tXtFL has reached the color era of computing. Key plays and players are highlighted not only in red or blue, but also bold font styling. Bold move, isn't it?

Input area layout

On a smaller note, the input area underwent a small reorganization after usability tests identified the original layout as a cause for confusion. The "Next" button has become a "Go" button to emphasize that it will execute the selection or typed command. In response to mouse hesitations, tool tips will pop up to guide your way.

Java Web Start compability

One of our favorite updates is actually independent of alpha3 by definition--the tXtFL Java Web Start release for posting software updates even in-between "official" alphas, betas, et ceteras. We'll be pushing these updates more frequently so that you can test our very latest features. Your feedback, as usual, is always welcome!

For those of you whose sights go beyond the NFL to the likes of the NCAA or CFL, we'll be focusing on flexible rule-sets to support additional leagues in alpha4 (see roadmap). But for now, enjoy tXtFL 2.0.0alpha3!

Download | release notes

Joining the chorus of Mac-mania

2010-04-08T19:50:00.000-07:00

On a day of good news for all things Mac/iPhone, we'd like to add our own trumpet to the chorus: tXtFL Java Web Start has landed on the Mac. Yes, the Web Start release is now running on our three main target platforms--Windows, Linux, and Mac--as we continue to work on making tXtFL a cinch to install and play.

Give it a shot, and let us know how it fares on your box!

Seasons update

2010-04-06T00:22:00.000-07:00

To kick off opening day of the Major League Baseball regular season, we've released a small update that brings a complete regular season to tXtFL. Now after starting a new season, you can play each game of the 16-week season. For the truly ambitious, that means that you can play every game of every team, but if you're like me, you might just want to play for your favorite team. In that case, you can now automate the rest of the games for each week, letting the same automation tools tXtFL uses to generate thousands of simulations to predict NFL games to determine how your rivals are playing.

Anxious for the update? It's already available in the tXtFL Java Web Start release*, our new testbed for the latest development. Post-season, championships, and leaderboards are still to come!

* Alas, it's not quite working yet on the Mac because of a bug in the underlying graphical toolkit. For our Mac users, stay tuned for updates, or try the latest development release. UPDATE: Now working on the Mac!

Java Web Start enabled tXtFL

2010-03-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

We're pleased to announce a new tXtFL release that just keeps on giving. The Java Web Start enabled tXtFL release can be installed straight from your browser and will automatically keep itself updated with the latest software updates. Plus, it automatically detects your platform and Java version to make sure that it downloads the correct version for you.

One of our goals in this release is to deliver snapshots of the latest development so that you can try out the latest features and provide us with testing and feedback. We'll be pushing updates on a more frequent basis than either of our official Development or Stable releases, so you'll be living on "the cutting edge" of tXtFL. Be aware of course that these snapshots may have a tendency to break or not to work all, so keep your copies of tXtFL Stable for your NFL Draft Day parties.

Another goal is to simplify the download/installation process. Right now you have to pick among 6 different packages based on a combination of platform and Java version. To add to the confusion, the 32 vs 64 bit refers to Java, not the operating system. Java Web Start takes care of this mess by automatically identifying which package you need and installing it for you.

Note that this release has been tested successfully on a variety on Windows and Linux platforms, but it's currently a no-go on the Mac because of a possible bug in the underlying graphics toolkit we use, which unfortunately we don't have control over. Once a fix or workaround is available, we'll post it so that Java Web Start can keep on giving.

Install Java Web Start tXtFL release | release notes.

First look at seasons in tXtFL

2010-03-26T00:51:00.000-07:00

Seasons for tXtFL has landed in the source code repository. Now you can create a new season, which automatically generates a 16-week schedule by randomly shuffling all the teams within the season to set match-ups. Play a game or two, then resume the season later, and it'll bring you right back to the next game and the trek toward the championship.

See here for more on the new seasons, including additional features planned, and don't forget to click on the image for an old-school animated .gif!

Blog refresh

2010-03-23T00:44:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, our blog underwent a complete refresh. Thanks to many new features that we discovered at Blogger, plus a few customizations of our own, we're happy to roll out of fresh look. Our goal at Voice of Text Flex is to keep you abreast of the latest news and updates on Text Flex products as well as pointers to other interesting sights in the open-source software world. If you have any thoughts or suggestions on how we can do this better, we'd love to hear from you!

Background to tXtFL 2 development

2010-03-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

In case you've been following tXtFL 2 development and are looking for a little more background to the major directions, see our posting here. Since then we've added a few additional features that are currently becoming part of the alpha3 release that we hope to make soon.

tXtFL 1.1.2 released

2010-03-08T18:04:00.000-08:00

Over the course of the football season we racked up a number of bug hits that we needed to tackle. tXtFL 1.1.2, released over the weekend, brings with it some minor fixes that will hopefully make your post-season blues a little more cherry.

The most important fix is for our beloved Mac users, who may have noticed that downloading teams through Draft gets you the players but not the teams. That's ironic and no longer the case now. We also uncovered a small bug where if you tried to download all offensive players (not the crass kind, but those on offense) or defensive players separately, nothing would happen, like all too many draft busts. We traded away that bug.

See here for the complete list of fixes, including a few smaller ones to smoothen the experience. We're excited to make this release for your post-season pleasure and in parallel with continued development of tXtFL 2.0. See you again soon.

Download tXtFL 1.1.2 here.

Football season's not quite over yet...

2010-03-01T23:38:00.000-08:00

The Super Bowl has passed, heck, it's not even Super Bowl month anymore...

But for all of you for whom the football season lives on, still breathes deeply inside your heart, we're happy to say that the tXtFL season is only just beginning. tXtFL 2 development rumbles on as we tackle the ability to play full seasons, tracking your team to the championship. It's still in early stages, but in the meantime we've added some eye-candy in the form of color mark-up to highlight the significant parts of each play.

And for those of you satisfied with tXtFL 1 (for now), we thought you might be happy to know that we're wrapping up version 1.1.2, a bug fix release.

So if your football longings have only grown with the Olympics now behind us, keep an eye out for the start of tXtFL Seasons!

tXtFL Bowl 4.0 score comparison

2010-02-16T00:40:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of competitive sports, we've posted a brief analysis of tXtFL Bowl 4.0 along with a score comparison against Madden NFL's prediction and Super Bowl XLIV!

Open-source gaming

2010-02-13T20:10:00.001-08:00

I just saw this article from last year published in the New York Times on the excitement brewing from "open source" gaming. The idea is that if the community gets involved early in the gaming development, everyone benefits because the game is built in the direction that makes the most sense to the people that play it. Makes sense to me as well!

At Text Flex much of our effort has been focused on making tXtFL to be the best football simulator available. While there are a number of other text-based football sims out there, many of them highly enjoyable to play (we assume), we're excited that tXtFL is open source and free for you to play anytime, without a dime.

tXtFL Bowl 4.0 follow-up

2010-02-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we posted the results of our 1000-game simulation of tXtFL Bowl 4.0. Today we saw the results from XLIV. We're shocked. It's crazy. Analysis to come.

Update: Analysis with scores comparison posted!

tXtFL Bowl 4.0 results posted

2010-02-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

Results from the 1000-game simulation of tXtFL Bowl 4.0 have been posted!

Symbian OS goes OS

2010-02-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

Good news for the open source world and, by extension, the world itself: the Symbian Operating System has gone Open Source. Yes, the Symbian OS has gone OS.

What is the Symbian OS? It's the leading smartphone operating system powering 330 million devices, almost the number of all its rivals' outfits combined. Today it's considered "geriatric" by iPhone and Android standards, but with an install base that big, plus now a development base as big as open source itself, Symbian may yet have a few tricks up its sleeves.

As big fans of open source, we're excited to Symbian going OS, joining Android and (mostly) Maemo and a number of other devices. One day we hope to get our open source software on some of them!

A treat from SWT

2010-02-01T23:18:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, we decided to switch from a Swing-based Java toolkit for tXtFL to a SWT-based one. SWT (pronounced "sweet") is an alternative graphical toolkit originally developed by IBM that provides native widgets so that the graphics are both lightweight and a seamless fit into the look-and-feel of the user's desktop.

So why SWT for tXtFL? At the time, we were focused on delivering Java-independent executable to the Windows platform for those users who didn't have Java installed, and SWT + GCJ (a GNU compiler for Java) was the perfect fit. Now that a good 90% of desktops have Java installed, the need to for such workarounds to Java has become less important, and the sweetness of SWT seems less appealing...at first glance at least.

SWT 3.6 milestone 5 was released this past weekend, and right away we could load it up to start using its new browser cache fix that all tXtFL downloaders can now enjoy.

Upon looking back at tXtFL development since the 1.0 release, what I've seen how much tXtFL has benefited from SWT. With upgrades in Swing, we would have to wait until we figured that a large number of folks have installed the latest Java version before we could expect people to see the new feature work on their tXtFL install. The beauty of SWT is that when a new feature comes out, we simply package a new version of the SWT library with tXtFL to take advantage of it. Since we don't want to require that people install the latest version of Java just to get our simulator to work, SWT is once again helping to make tXtFL less reliant on Java while still making use of the near ubiquity of Java and the powerful Java platform.

Another advantage of SWT is the number of widgets it supports out of the box. Granted, coding SWT graphics are a little more cumbersome at times than similar coding for Swing. But seeing a fully operational browser window integrated right into the tXtFL interface using SWT is truly worth the cost in development time.

We'll be looking forward to introducing new features from the latest releases of SWT into tXtFL!

tXtFL 2.0.0alpha2 screencast

2010-01-23T18:16:00.000-08:00

The tXtFL sim has been undergoing lots of changes under the hood, but for those who are new to the scene, we realized you may have never seen the hood in the first place. So we thought we'd put together a quick screencast of the simulator in all its football frenzy and demo a few of the new additions in the latest alpha release.

And if you really want to check out those changes under the hood, why not give a test run?

Divisional round-up

2010-01-17T21:21:00.000-08:00

While the victories this round of the playoffs were (mostly) no surprise to tXtFL, the scores definitely were. For this round of automated game simulations, we decided to add in preliminary tXtFL database (2.0.0alpha2pre) stats alongside the usual tXtFL 1.1.1 delivery. You can check them out side-by-side on the sims chart. We encountered a few bugs along the way in the pre-release, so we'll be reporting here the 1.1.1 predictions.

The simulator was spot-on for the Cardinals vs. the Saints, predicting within a field goal for the Saints and within a TD for the Cardinals, only to get it all wrong later that day in predicting that the Colts would fall to the Ravens (why?? did it do that??).

I didn't get a chance to watch the Vikings dominate the Cowboys today, but tXtFL was as surprised as I was when I got home to see the blow-out score. When I finally did get to the TV to watch the Chargers make green eggs and ham of the Jets (in spite of what tXtFL was telling me), I found myself watching a green comeback as the Jets piled onto the bus out of San Diego for next week's championship game.

Once again, tXtFL isn't doing such a shoddy job predicting the victors (3 of 4 this time, and 3 of 3 last week), but it shows clear evidence of work needed for absolute score predictions and player stats. We'll keep working on that for tXtFL 2.0.

Wild card sims

2010-01-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

Wild card simulations have been posted. Ravens will take over the Patriots? Cardinals hang on to their quest for a Super Bowl victory? We're firing up our grill to find out why the scores are so high, but in the meantime, enjoy!

UPDATE: We can't believe it. An almost-comeback by the Packers, stopped just short by a defensive TD. Brady goes down at home for the first time in a playoff game. Romo holds down the ball in the clutch and brings up the Cowboys to their first playoff victory in 13 years.

Oh, and tXtFL goes 3-for-3 in predicting wild card games (we missed the first game, but you can try it if you have the team/player stats). What got us was how the high scores that the simulator was predicting didn't turn out to be that far from the truth. The Cardinals and Packers were just packing in the points and even beat our prediction of 44-32 (and Arizona survived at 51-45 for Neil Rackers to rake in a few more next time).

But just as the wild card is but the first of a long road to the title, so also we've got a lot more predictions to make. Looking forward to it!

Early alpha pre-release for tXtFL database

2010-01-05T00:31:00.000-08:00

Every other answer to requests for new features in tXtFL seems to start with, "Once we have the database in place..." Well, we're taking one step forward in that direction with our first database build. It's "early alpha pre" for a reason, since it's working but not quite up to par with the stable 1.x series.

But don't let that deter you from giving it a spin. This build comes with an Apache Derby ("100% pure Java") embedded database that manages all teams and players. It's one of those "more for less" items, where one database takes care of what used to require thousands of player and team files.

There's plenty of work ahead. In the meantime, be the first to post a suggestion on our new IdeaTorrent, or create a ticket for bugs you might find!

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

We hope you are having warm and merry celebrations this holiday season. To help you celebrate the season, we've been keeping our keypads warm crunching out tXtFL database code and, in the meantime, have uploaded a tiny Text Trix treat in the form of a new release candidate (rc2) for Text Trix 0.9.3. From all of us to all of you...happy texting!

Release candidate 1 for Text Trix 0.9.3

2009-12-22T16:36:00.000-08:00

After plugging a few more holes in Text Trix 0.9.3, we've posted the first release candidate. Fixes include better handling of document refresh and notification. We hope you'll find it refreshing for the holidays! And if you get a break in-between family and football moments, please let us know your feedback before we make the release foreals.

Find bar in OpenOffice.org

2009-12-16T01:38:00.001-08:00

One of our favorite programs, the OpenOffice.org complete office suite, recently blogged about a new feature: the find bar. Simply type in the bar, and you'll be brought to the first occurrence of your search term.

We're excited this new feature has landed in OOo. And if you're as excited as we are and can't wait for it to land in your copy of OOo, we're happy to remind you that a similar feature has been a part of Text Trix since 2008.

Have fun finding!

tXtFL 64-bit build for Windows

2009-12-12T21:48:00.000-08:00

If you've picked up a new computer for the holiday season and found to your horror that tXtFL wouldn't run, we've got good news for you. Chances are, you've picked up a 64-bit version of Windows 7, and you need a 64-bit version of tXtFL for Windows. We've just built and uploaded that, which you can find on our website's redesigned downloads section. Now you can have your pumpkin pie and eat it too.

Week 10 updates

2009-11-15T22:12:00.000-08:00

We'd like to post a couple graphs comparing our simulations with real NFL Week 10 games. Both simulations were run prior to the game at 200 automated games apiece, using the newly released tXtFL 1.1.1.

Seattle vs. Arizona

Even into the 2nd quarter, Seattle appeared on top and ready to topple our predictions. But Kurt Warner knows his magic, and Arizona capped off the victory just in time for our predictions to come within a field goal for each team.

Bears vs. 49ers

With Jay Culter of the Bears throwing away 5 INTs, one would expect the Niners to capitalize for more than 10 points. Well, our predictions couldn't have all things their way, but at least the winner was predicted.

We're pleased with the predictions, but there's obviously plenty of room for improvement to our game engine. We need more rigorous testing, for starters. And we totally should have run predictions for the Pats vs. Colts upset!

tXtFL 1.1.1 released

2009-11-15T15:19:00.000-08:00

If you downloaded players but found empty stats, then you're in need of tXtFL 1.1.1! This maintenance release fixes stats downloads and also corrects a number of other issues, such as program quitting even well you tell it to cancel (now it brings you back to the game), or running automated games and finding that your QB threw 1000 passes in a game (now it clears out previous games' stats).

Also, if you ever clicked to the side of an entry in the table but found that the default choice was made instead, you won't have to worry about that anymore in this release. For those of you whole import stats by spreadsheets--some fixes have been made there as well.

The only major new feature is that Game Statistics can be accessed from the interface when choosing game type. Stay on the lookout for tXtFL 2.0 updates for major new features now in the works.

Download tXtFL 1.1.1 here.

tXtFL fixes coming your way

2009-11-11T15:36:00.001-08:00

A number of bugs, mostly involving stats and drafting, have cropped up since the release of tXtFL 1.1. For example, players can be downloaded, but they mostly have 0 stats. Funny thing is, the predictions have still been pretty accurate! But we're working on some fixes now and have uploaded a quick pre-release for your perusal.

Check it out if you're in quick-prep mode for Thursday-night football!

tXtFL 1.1 released

2009-10-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

Whoops, you already knew that. tXtFL 1.1 was released back on September 18, 2009, and although we covered all the pre-releases and post-testing, we somehow neglected to tell you that the real thing is out.

So here it is. Have fun!

Oh, and why you should download it...

"The tXtFL 1.1 update brings player and team stats links up-to-date with
the 2009 season and supports 64-bit platforms. The underlying graphics
libraries have also been updated, and the Windows installer has a
simplified and improved installer.

"Summary of changes:
-Statistics links updated for 2009 football season
-Supports 64-bit Java on Mac and Linux
-Reintroduced installer for Windows platforms"

New Score Predictions

2009-10-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

While we can't labor with our hands and feet on the field, the least we can do is some mental laboring on our laptops at home. Right now we're letting our CPUs crunch out game after automated game to give us a picture (we hope) of the NFL Week 7 scores.

Here's the 49ers vs. Texans predictions (the real thing awaits the middle column, with difference adjustments):

That's almost a reversal from the 3 point loss the Niners are supposed to experience, so we're putting ourselves out on the line here...

UPDATE:
So it looks like the "official" predictions were correct in absolute value (a score difference of 3), just in the opposite direction from the final score of 24-21, Texans on top. tXtFL was 2 points shy of the Texans, and 1/3 of a point over-reaching the Niners, but predicting the correct winner.

If you've run your own predictions for other teams, let us know!

tXtFL 2009 Season Simulations

2009-10-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

We're a little late out the door, but hopefully better late than never! Track our game stats here:

Score summaries at the bottom. More detailed stats to come...

Pre-release: Text Trix 0.9.3beta2

2009-10-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

If beta1 wasn't enough for you...now we've got beta2 awaiting your desktop!

At first we thought that beta1 might be a sorta "rc1" but wanted to keep it beta status since so many new features had worked its way into the code over the past month. Good thing we did, because we found ourselves continuing to fix bugs and round out the corners, especially for the new spell-checker integration and file modification poller.

We figured we would get those updates to you right away. Check out beta2! And let us know what you think.

Beta2 in the files page

Pre-release: Text Trix 0.9.3beta1

2009-09-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Text Trix has been slowly chugging along, and a few new features have landed that we think are worthy of wrapping up in a next-version-beta pre-release. In our last release (0.9.2), we incorporated an open-source syntax highlighter, and this time, we've integrated an open-source spell-checker to round out the highlighting experience. Our goal is to make this a truly general purpose editor, and since we want to make sure we've crossed our t's and dotted our i's before sending our text, we figured a spell-checker is an integral part of any editor for daily use.

During daily wearing, we also realized that we had to close down the editor anytime we updated files via Subversion. The files would be silently updated in the background but don't show up if the files were already open in the editor. Now Text Trix has a background poller to check for file modifications and to notify one to refresh the page.

Another feature that landed in the last release was multiple windows as a quick way to view files side-by-side in separate windows of Text Trix. Tabs from new windows didn't get remembered in the last release, but now all tabs are remembered and reopened in each window when you next launch Text Trix.

Of course, the syntax highlighter, spell-checker, and tab memory can all be turned off in Preferences. But we hope you won't find the need to!

Check out the new 0.9.3beta1 pre-release (and the spazzy new Forums from SourceForge!).

Happy 2009 Season!

2009-09-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

Text Flex and tXtFL would like to join all you football faithful in welcoming in the 2009 football season.

Go Niners!

(AP)

Sorry, we just happen to be San Francisco based.

(re-)installer for tXtFL

2009-09-12T16:22:00.001-07:00

Long, long time ago, we packaged the Windows build for tXtFL in an installer for quick setup and launch. When we made the switch to Java binaries (rather than Windows executables), I didn't think that it would be necessary to include an installer since most people could simply unzip the package and double-click on the tXtFL.jar file. I didn't realize the confusion that people would have over which file to launch, however, and what an obstruction this would be to football statistical fun.

So we just checked in some fixes to the original installer so that people can install and launch Java binaries like any normal Windows application. The Mac packages will still have their standard .dmg installer (it's so easy on the Mac!), and Linux builds come in straight up .tar.gz archives (we know you're tech savvy...). We'll be posting builds shortly, so while you're grabbing a beer for your first game of the 2009 season, grab a copy of tXtFL!

64-Bit builds + 2009 stats in tXtFL

2009-09-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

Now you can stay up-to-date on the new 2009 football season with tXtFL! This is just a pre-release, but I wanted to make sure to get it out ahead of kick-off for the 2009 season. Not a whole lot of changes other than links to 2009 stats (which won't really be available til kick-off) as well as support for 64-bit platforms on both Linux and Mac. I'm also building in Java Web Start support, but this won't be available until the database gets integrated somewhere down the field.

Anyway, enjoy, and let me know your feedback so that I can include it in the final release!

Download the 1.1rc1 releases from the Files page.

Another tXtFL web start update

2009-09-07T10:49:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's right, what you're looking at is none other than the Java console. The Java console with Java Web Start launching tXtFL, that is!

A few fixes checked in last night have tXtFL loading on Windows and Linux Java Web Start, with a fully operational browser pointing to the tXtFL Game Guide. There's still a lot of work to do, as the team files cannot be accessed quite yet, and quite frankly, it's hard to play the game without any players.

But we're working on that, and hopefully soon we'll have a prototype of the new database-enabled tXtFL simulator up and running. In the meantime, stay tuned for a 2009 season release!

tXtFL Java Web Start update

2009-09-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

One-click install and launch. Have you ever heard of that? It may seem like but a fantasy, but that's what Java Web Start (JWS) can do, given all the proper conditions and environments. tXtFL has not traditionally been the best at creating those conditions, but with the promises of JWS, maybe that can become a reality.

So far we have a working prototype of tXtFL via JWS that runs on Windows, starts but stalls on Linux, and doesn't run at all on the Mac. tXtFL has always had a complex path discovery system that has proven challenging for JWS, but we hope to simplify the system once we integrate a database. In the meantime, we're planning to ready a tXtFL-JWS version that can serve as a preview for the standard installation and a testbed for further expansion of the JWS domain.

We're also integrating new SWT libraries (the graphical toolkit) for the Mac so that those running the latest and greatest 64-bit Java implementations on the Mac won't be left out. These libraries will be available for both the JWS release and the standard install, along with season 2009 stats updates. What way to celebrate the new NFL season and your new Snow Leopard install than with a new 64-bit tXtFL download?

Preparing tXtFL for the 2009 season

2009-08-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

The 2009 football season is upon us, and tXtFL is gearing up for the action. Along with link updates for stats in the next season, tXtFL will be gaining some improvements to make launching easier and updating quicker. The new Java Web Start edition of tXtFL is still in early testing phases, but we hope to have an early test version in the near future.

tXtFL roadmaps

2009-08-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

New roadmaps have been posted for tXtFL versions 1.1 and 2.0. The 1.1 update will bring 2009 season links and also new SWT graphical interface libraries, which will hopefully expand platform support for all you football-on-Mac fanatics. The version 2.0 release is much more far-reaching and will take careful planning and lots of input.

Feedback welcome!

Wikispaces -> Trac

2009-08-13T02:42:00.001-07:00

In case you've been wondering, the Text Trix, Jar Ajar, and tXtFL wikis have been transferred from Wikispaces to Trac. This was not by our design--SourceForge.net decided to completely deprecate Wikispaces--but we think it's for the better. Trac has a slick user interface and integrated roadmap and ticketing system that we think you'll like. The roadmap is particularly key, as we can now give more up-to-date notifications of what the next versions will hold and what tickets are associated with them.

Where to find these new wikis? They're still integrated within the Text Flex software pages. Give them a try, and let us know what you think!