Drafting Issue Resolved

A bug was brought to my attention that prevented teams from being drafted manually.  When checking to ensure the drafted team contained unique members, the check would always come back with an error.  I believe that this issue has been fixed.  You should be able to draft teams manually now.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused when trying to set up your league.

If you spot any other bugs or problems with the site, let me know and I can try to get those fixed.

200 Users!

Wow! There are now over 200 people registered to play Congress: The Game. I want to thank everyone who has signed up, liked the site, tweeted about it, or anything to help get it here.  I hope we can keep growing the site and have some awesome new features as it goes forward.

It appears that some high school government classes have found the site and started playing in their classes.  This is great! I hope the game can be a fun educational tool for keeping students engaged and interested in politics.  If there is anything that you want or need to make this a better tool for your classroom, please let me know.  I would love to work with the users to make this site better for everyone.

Once again, thank you to the first 200+ Congress: The Game players.  You are awesome!

The OPEN LEAGUE

There is now an open league available to all registered users.  

This league lets you pick a team and play against everyone on the site.  

Pick your team and see if you can end the week at the top of the leaderboard.

Pick 2 senators and 5 representatives for the coming week. Your team needs to be picked before midnight on the Saturday preceding the week. 

Select another period to view your team''s performance and the leaderboard for that week.

Random Drafting Now Available

Today I was able to add a feature that allows for a commissioner to draft random members to players' teams.  This option is available on a team by team basis.  If there is someone who just doesn't really care who is on their team, but still wants to play you can leave them out of a draft now.  Hopefully, this feature will be useful to facilitate a quick start to the game.  The random selection will pull from senators and representatives who have not already been assigned a team.

Also, I was able to automate the updating processes today.  This should mean for more consistant updates and more reliable information.

113th Congress is in Session

The 113th Congress convened today and I have updated the databases to reflect the new session.  Drafting new members can occur and playing can start as soon as the teams are drafted

I am working on a 'how to play' page that should give some more direction to the site. If there are any specific questions you want answered, let me know and I can be sure to answer them.

Congress: The Game Launched

Congress: The Game is live now.

For the next couple weeks I will be using the lame duck session to test the site some more.  When the data on govtrack.us updates for the next session, I will update the game's data set.

Once the data is updated for the new session, drafts for the 2013 session can begin. Teams will need to be set by midnight of January 3, 2013 (the day the 113th Congress convenes).  The first period of January 3-10 will go active then.  From then on each period will run from Sunday-Saturday and points will be assigned weekly.

This site will be a continuing work in progress as I try to teach myself more and more about web design and programming.  I have built what I have so far through hours and hours of YouTube videos and googling things.  I have some big goals for the site over the coming year and I hope to get them accomplished as soon as possible.

Some things on that list are:

• An open league where users will pick members weekly and be ranked against others who play the open league.  No draft would be used and people could have duplicate members.  It would just be a league to show who is the best at picking members for the week.
• The ability to view other players teams.  This would allow for people to see who is on the various teams and how they choose to play the game.  This seems crucial and is a top priority.
• Smoother mechanics.  The clunky mechanics of the site now stem from my lack of familiarity with coding.  I am working on this and hopefully subtle improvements will be implemented as I get them worked out.
• A more professional looking website.  I have not focused on aesthetics much in the build of the site.  I was more interested in getting the game working.  Now that I think it is working for the most part, it is time to start making it pretty.  This is another place where I have a lot to learn.
• More useful statistics and interfaces.  Currently, I can provide some information on the various members of congress, but not nearly enough to make informed decisions.  Hopefully soon I can have relevant statistics that lead to more effective drafts.

There are many other areas I hope to expand upon that are not listed as well.  Over time I hope for this project to grow and evolve into a engaging, stable, attractive game.

If there is ever an issue or you have a comment or a suggestion, just let me know.  You can leave a comment here, email me, or post something at me on facebook.   Thank you for reading this wall of text.

- Philip

TLDR - The site is up. It will get better.