Differential FPL v1.8.4 Released: Sharing

Sharing - that's the point of Fantasy Football isn't it? Bragging to your friends/rivals after you have a good gameweek or make an inspired transfer, or pointing out the weaknesses in their team.. Maybe just showing everyone in your minileague some enlightening stats.

So the major new feature in v1.8.4 is sharing. On most screens, you can hit the 'sharing' icon (it may be on the actionbar at the top of the screen, on the menu, depending on your device) - this will enable you to share what you are currently looking at via any means available on your device (that could be email, twitter, facebook etc - whatever you have installed).

As you can see, the image that I emailed to myself in this case shows more than you would normally see on-screen on a standard device. I hope you have fun with that!

Some other features to be added in the last few weeks since the initial release (alonside varous fixes):

• Players your your squad are now highlighted on the vidiprinter, and a filter button allows you to show only thse events
• Enabled the viewing of future gameweeks on the 'Matches' screen
• Added player transfer stats: gameweek transfers in, gameweek transfers out, gameweek net transfers in
• New rival stats: bank, team value, total value

If you have any ideas for new features, then please let me know below, or by email (there is a contact link on the 'About' screen). The app was originally designed around what I would like in the Fantasy Football tool - but I'm sure that others have great ideas about how to improve it!

Differential FPL is now live!

Finally.. Differential FPL is now available on Google Play.

I would like to say a big thankyou to all of you who helped beta-test for the last year.

Release Candidate

After several months of beta testing, during which bugs have been fixed, new features added and interfaces refined, RC1 was released to testers yesterday. This means that a full release is (hopefully) to folow very shortly.

The release candidate looks very much like this:

Recent additions have included player game previews, FPL notes sync, new widget sizes, player performance pie graphic, and a whole load of stuff in the background.

I'll be posting a user manual of sorts on this blog soon, and hopefully be releasing onto Google Play (ie the Android Market) just as soon.

Beta Testing

I'm (finally) ready to start some beta testing of Differential (a new unofficial Android app for the Fantasy Premier League game).

If you are interested in trying it out, and especially if you are willing to submit some feedback & bug reports, then (edit: comments don't let me see your email, so) please leave a comment on this post with your email address, or drop an email to stevesjp4@googlemail.com

Differential requires a device with Android 2.1 or higher.

There are a couple (ok, a few) of things I should point out:-

• This is Beta software. It has been tested by me, but not on a wide variety of devices and not with more than a couple of FPL teams. There are no guarantees.
• This app will use mobile data to get the latest player/league/scoring/fixture data, if your system settings allow. You can choose whether updates are done automatically in the background (recommended) or manually.
• At the moment, FPL are continually changing the website as they add (restore?) features to the game after the big redesign. These have the potential to break Differential. I will endeavour to fix these as soon as possible...
• Since the App is not yet on the Android Market, you will have to enable "Unknown Sources" for App installation in your phone settings
• The Beta version published today expires about a month from now. Beta testing may end before or after that, but new versions with bug-fixes and new features will be released before then..
  
• I take no blame for your captain scoring 2 points / transferred-out player scoring a hat-trick / benched player grabbing that clean sheet away from home ;)
  

If you do decide to give it a try, please do submit a bug report if anything goes wrong. If Differential crashes (the dreaded Force Close) then a notification will be genereated - if you click on this then you can submit a bug report which will help me fix the problem.

I would also love to hear general feedback on usability, performance, accuracy, and anything else you have to say. If it isn't entirely clear how something is supposed to work, then let me know (I've been looking at these screens for 4 months, so I have little perspective on how a new user will view them!).

Thanks!

So what is Differential?

You can pick your fantasy.premierleague.com team, make transfers and view points while out and about.... plus some more bits

Selection

You can make transfers/substitutions/captain choices for the next gameweek all in one go. Your watchlist is sync'd with FPL. There is a deadline countdown so that you don't forget to change your team.

Players

A listing of every FPL player, with complete season history back to 2006/07 (and detailed match stats for last season). Various extra stats are calculated for each player based on their match performance (eg goals per 90 minutes, points-per-game when played 60 minutes or more, team goals whilst o pitch). Players can be compared based on each stat. You can also see how many rivals own each player.

There are a few graphical displays of player data: the points 'worm', season history/upcoming fixtures ticker, and season graph.

Live Updates

Live updated points of for every player on matchdays, plus for all of your minileague rivals (including auto-subs, vice-captain etc without waiting until the end of the gameweek), so that you can compare actual scores - also tells you how many players each squad has left to play.

Minileagues

Players that you select as 'rivals' are gather together so that you can see one live-updated league table throughout the gameweek. You can view a graph of each rivals season against your own, and a vidiprinter of events for each squad.

Notifications

Android status bar notifcations on events such as goals/assists, price changes, rival transfers (all configurable. Points/scores, player prices, etc are updated in the background (also configurable) so that you can receive updates while doing other things. There is also a homescreen widget showing your current score and latest event.

Upcoming fixture/score ratings

To be used as a rough guide only... "traffic light" tickets for player and teams, for fixture difficulty, attacking/defensive potential and predicted points.

Vidiprinter

A filterable list of events: Goals/Assists/etc, Bonus Point awards, Transfers, Price Changes, Player News.

Teams

Team ratings and stats (home/away breakdowns, clean sheet stats). There is a also a goalkeeper rotation helper to assist your choice of keepers.

Resources

Direct links from each player to google/twitter searches, and official twitter accounts for some. Also a set of useful fantasy football links for your mobile browser.

Differential FPL - A New Android App

Differential FPL is a new Android app for managing your fantasy.premierleague.com team on the go. It is not yet available, but is coming soon - I hope to do some beta testing before the season starts.

I will go into more details soon, but here are some headline features: -

• Make transfers and substitutions (+ captain choice, etc)
• Live points during matchday, including for rivals/minileagues (including auto-subs etc)
  
• Masses of extra stats for each player, team and rival (eg ppg in a variety of categories, ppm, % of team assists, team home/away ratings and form ratings, just as a small selection), all filterable/searchable
• Background updating/processing with Android notifications on events (eg goals, price changes)
• Filterable Vidiprinter showing every fantasy event as it happens
• Home screen widget showing latest points
• Predictive ratings for each player, with upcoming fixture difficulty "traffic lights"
• Direct links for each player to Google News / Twitter searches
  
• Goalkeeper rotation ratings

Becuase of the new format of the FPL website this year, Differential FPL will not receive a full release until after the season has started and all features (ie score updates, transfers) can be fully tested.

I'll post more details here soon..