FanDraft Football 2011: Latest Feature Addition
If you haven’t already noticed, we just released update version 11.04 for “FanDraft Football 2011″. While a minor improvement to the player rankings was integrated into this version, the biggest addition is a new “Player Image/Video” feature. The new feature has a little explaining to go along with it, so we thought we’d write up a little information/instructional post to accompany it.
Most of our users tend to utilize the “Display Pick Announcements” during the draft. This is defaulted to “on”, but can be turned off in the “Setup > Preferences” area. It essentially acts as a graphic pop-up, which displays for a few moments following a draft selection (revealing the most recent pick and relevant information). By default the information that is displayed on here is the team and team logo that made the pick, information about the player and the selection, and then the “Team Owner” image. The most recent update to FanDraft allows for the opportunity to modify some of this information.
Player Images:
Unfortunately (due to licensing restrictions) we cannot prepackage FanDraft with the NFL player images. However, you are now more than welcome to supply your own images.
To do this, just go to the “Player Setup area, then select a player from the left-hand column, and click on the “Import Player Image/Video” button. If an image has been supplied, then this will now appear on the “Pick Announcement” area where the “owner image” once was. If no image is supplied, it will just display the owner image by default.
Player Videos:
If you would like to have a specific video displayed following a specific player suggestion, just follow the same process as importing a player image, but instead import a video file. Accepted video formats include AVI, Windows Media (WMV), and MP4. In this case, if a video has been supplied for a player, it will replace the “Pick Announcement” informational box with a video display. The box will automatically hide all background music/audio (if it is used), and disappear once the video has concluded.
A couple notes about using videos:
- It is a good idea to optimize video size so it doesn’t cause any software lag. This means you should try to keep videos at a 960×540 or less size
- You should try to make sure the length of the video isn’t too long. Besides issues that the software may have with this, most people at your draft won’t want to watch a video clip longer than 30 seconds in length.
- If during the draft you decide you want to bypass watching the video, you can always click on the header of the video (where it says “FanDraft Pick Announcement”), and this will close the video.
We hope you all find some creative ways to use this new feature. If you’d like to give any input on it, feel free to drop us a line via email, or discuss it on the FanDraft Football Community Forums.