Some very nice suggestions from lordscarlet and nero. I may not be picturing a change like this but it seems the game screen would be cluttered some, again maybe I don't have a good visual of how it would look.

Last night I watched my game and took note of what I was seeing on the screen more than usual. I have a simple solution that mirrors what nero was saying about user controls.

There is already a user control for speed of the action on the field along with the pause button. Sometimes (not every play) I will pause the action on the field to read what just happened on the play. Now, I noticed that when I pause the screen the text will continue to scroll and go away at its own pace. My thoughts were to either have a separate pause and speed button for the text or to incorporate the text into the speed and pause button that is already there. Basically my thought would be to pause the text when I pause the screen so I can read the text of the play and possibly the play before as well.

I think this would be something simple to do for now. It would put the control on the user and that might not be for some.

Thinking about this, I may have another short-term suggestion. Make the most recent action be at the top of the scrolling list. This way, when you look down, you have a slightly better idea of what the most recent action was. In addition or instead of, perhaps highlight the most recent action or have an alternating BG much like the player list table. I would say never make a play disappear as well, just continually add to the top of the log, but I'm not sure where that would fit.

Been really enjoying watching this discussion. Thanks to everyone who has given their input.

I just pushed an update to the game center using some of the suggestions in this thread. I've added a selector to decide whether the play-by-play is displayed below the field (as it was before) or overlayed on top of the field. I also added a drop-down to choose the speed between plays, with a "pause" option if you want to click the play button to start up the next play. I also added some alternating shades of gray to the play by play below, and switched it so the latest one displays on the top. Let me know what you think!

BTW, the play-by-play is not formatted after FOF, I modeled it more after the NFL website play-by-play.

Many thanks JDB for the quick response and the quick action to make changes. I for one am looking forward to checking out these changes, I'm sure they will be a big step up.

Huh. It seems similar to it, but I don't play, so I don't know. :) It's useful to read after the fact or on its own, but not in the high-speed realtime of watching the playing field IMO.

I watched an old game with the new features added. I really like what was done here. There is enough user selection here to control the speed of the play/text. I tried all the options that you added and really like the flexibility to watch the game with the control of the text between plays. I think these additions make the viewing of the game so much better and still have the option to view the game fast (as before) or slow things down if the user wants to read every play.

Great job JDB!!! Awesome upgrade.

I think just the overlay change is a big improvement. The pause on every play can get a bit annoying, but I'm not entirely sure of a good solution. One may just be to have some sort of movement rather than it looking like the screen froze? Just the appearance of something happening?

Maybe a countdown timer to the next snap right below the overlay?

After a few weeks with the overlay, I no longer have a problem with the text string. :) I think it was all about placement, movement, etc. The only nit-pick introduced is the game goes so much more slowly with the pause. The overlay also covers the yellow alert boxes.