Football logo update

[Admin]

I have updated the logos available for use on your football helmets. 232 new helmet logos have been added for a total of 409 available logos. In addition, many of the existing logos have been improved or replaced.

Fun fact: the logos were the very first thing created for the game (on a computer at least, basics on the actual sim filled a notepad) way back when it was just a glimmer in my eye around 2002. They consisted mostly of clip art included with CorelDRAW 8 (my favored art software at the time) and a few I drew myself (and my mouse drawing skills were not great then). They were created at a lower resolution, as 1024x768 was the highest common screen resolution at the time.

In the intervening years, the rise in eSports has caused an explosion in the number of quality sport logos on the sites I license images from. Not only has this allowed me to add many new logos to the system but also replace older logos that are poorly drawn or I can no longer determine the licensing status (i.e. I can't remember where I got them). There are hundreds, possibly thousands, such logos available; however, few are ready to use. Most need to be tweaked to be usable in the game (mostly to be usable at the sizes in the game, or to remove extraneous elements). Then they need to be tagged in the database, sized to fit the helmets properly, uploaded and tested. This all takes more time than you would expect but it averages 20 minutes or so per logo.

You may ask "Why are you spending all this time and effort on unimportant things like logos?". It's a valid question. When I write code, I get to a point where I burn out and have to step away from it for a bit; when I have those moments, I go work on some logos for a bit until I am ready to tackle code again.

I intended to release these logos with the next round of football updates. I had hoped to have them implemented by summer last year; however, heart surgery, a divorce, and COVID have all gotten in the way. Football is being redesigned basically from the ground up. I wanted it to all go out as one big shiny update but I have no idea how much longer that might be (it's gotten to where the game engine is almost being rebuilt from scratch) but there is no point in sitting on these completed logos.

I have cleared the server's logo cache; however, you may have logos cached locally so if you don't see the updates right away, clearing your cache may help.

Chris

[CarlosRah]

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