Update

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Update

Post by Admin »

Just a brief update...

Of course right now I am tied up with server issues on the baseball side but I've been writing football code for 10-12 hours a day every day. I got a bit bogged down in formations and plays, but it bore fruit; the editor creates over 5,000 uniquely named formations, and tens of thousands of minor variations; each formation gets boiled down to a 4 to 8-character alphanumeric code, so people can swap formations easily.

I've written the code to pull the new formation data into the game engine and populate the individual player objects with their locations. Once I add the actual play data to this, we will have a whole new world: I'll know exactly where everyone is on the field rather than counting on probabilities. I've also started untangling the existing code to modularize everything.

I may bring the engine up to that point and add a shim to connect the old engine to it and release it, then start rebuilding the soft chewy center of the sim in earnest. That way people aren't waiting forever.

I also plan to simplify the way strategies are created and stored; for example, your strategies will be universal per owner, rather than per team and per zone, so the cumbersome copying around of strategy sections will no longer be necessary, and I want to be able to group strategies into a "game plan" so you can change everything at once. Beginners can use this one-stop shop to just select a pre-built game plan, and advanced people can tinker at whatever level they like: zone strategies, advanced strategies, playbooks, and creating new plays and formations (from top to bottom). Thus, owners aren't overwhelmed.

I want to start getting some of the new game plan stuff into your hands by mid-April at the latest; I'd like to get the full update released before football season starts. That's a pretty aggressive schedule, but I need to push or it'll end up being years (the current engine took two years to develop).

One thing I really want to do is start individualizing the players more. The sea of letter grades makes all the players start feeling interchangeable. I was thinking of having certain combinations of ratings enable special features for a player, but I worry that might be too "video-gamey". But I like the idea of different positions having different "types" of players, maybe some that work better together than others. I've also considered having the players' colleges make a difference, like maybe players from cold-weather colleges are better in snow, or having each college have a specialty and players from that college improve better in that specialty. Things to make putting a team together more interesting than just putting the highest numbers in the depth charts. Please let me know if any of that sounds awesome or just tedious.

Chris
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Cueball899
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Re: Update

Post by Cueball899 »

I think it all sounds great.

I also plan to simplify the way strategies are created and stored; for example, your strategies will be universal per owner, rather than per team and per zone, so the cumbersome copying around of strategy sections will no longer be necessary, and I want to be able to group strategies into a "game plan" so you can change everything at once. Beginners can use this one-stop shop to just select a pre-built game plan, and advanced people can tinker at whatever level they like: zone strategies, advanced strategies, playbooks, and creating new plays and formations (from top to bottom). Thus, owners aren't overwhelmed.


This sounds perfect. That why I can have a full game plan per opponent and want have to take so much time changing everything.

One thing I really want to do is start individualizing the players more. The sea of letter grades makes all the players start feeling interchangeable. I was thinking of having certain combinations of ratings enable special features for a player, but I worry that might be too "video-gamey". But I like the idea of different positions having different "types" of players, maybe some that work better together than others. I've also considered having the players' colleges make a difference, like maybe players from cold-weather colleges are better in snow, or having each college have a specialty and players from that college improve better in that specialty. Things to make putting a team together more interesting than just putting the highest numbers in the depth charts. Please let me know if any of that sounds awesome or just tedious.


This sounds great also. This is why I thought signing head coaches and defensive and offensive coordinators would play in. The coach and coordinator would have a specialty that would affect a player. Say the offensive coordinator is great at improving QB's. Then if you have that coordinator signed your QB's would get a higher IMP rate vs a team that did not have this coordinator. Maybe the defensive coordinator excels with weight training giving defensive players a strength boost. The head coach could be a motivator giving a boost in attitude and execution. Or developing young talent giving higher IMP chances to players under a certain age. Ect....., I could come up with hundreds of these.

Individualizing the players would be awesome. It would be great if they would hold out for higher contracts or want to test free agency or even demand trades if the team is not doing well. The salary cap needs to have way more meaning along with free agency.

This might be difficult and for something in the future but give the players a personality. Lazy and cocky like Randy Moss or a work alcoholic, disciplined Jerry Rice. Even greedy and unworthy of current contract like Kirk Cousins.
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Re: Update

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Individualizing the players would be awesome. It would be great if they would hold out for higher contracts or want to test free agency or even demand trades if the team is not doing well. The salary cap needs to have way more meaning along with free agency.

This might be difficult and for something in the future but give the players a personality. Lazy and cocky like Randy Moss or a work alcoholic, disciplined Jerry Rice. Even greedy and unworthy of current contract like Kirk Cousins.
The Attitude represents a lot of this. Players with worse Attitude to demand higher salaries than other players with the same ratings. Attitude also affects Conditioning week to week which is meant to simulate the workaholics and the lollygaggers.

I have roughed out ideas for a signing system but it needs to not be cumbersome. I found a book on Amazon that is solely dedicated to the NFL contracts and free agent system; once I get farther on the game core I will be looking at this as well.

Chris
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sjpode
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Re: Update

Post by sjpode »

I like the the look and operations of the beta league. When will it be transferred over to regular pay leagues?

One thing is that I am having a problem reading the time remaining in the side screen, and the players names because they are highlighted in blue. Would white work better?

I like all the ideas you had in your last post. Hope they all work.

Thanks for the hard work you are putting in.

Last question. Is the BPFL active now?
My subscription is not paid there.
Just wondering.

Thanks again.
sjpode
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Re: Update

Post by Admin »

Beta Premium might actually be running but it isn't an active test league.

We are still quite a bit away from the new code making it to the main site. My goal is to get it done before football season starts but I have gotten bogged down a bit. It's my own fault; it's a phenomenon we call "feature creep" where I start changing so much that testing will take longer and longer. But this is a hump I have needed to get over for years so it is worth a little extra time.

I'm currently adding the special teams and defense formations to the new formation system. I've added a couple more backfield and TE options so there are now over 20,000 individually named offense formations. I'm not going to add them all to the default playbook (that would be madness) but they will be available to Premium leagues through the formation editor. I will probably put in some sort of browser for Beta at least that can see all 20000+ formations so you can help me spot clunkers; every time I spot check I find at least one or two that have gotten named incorrectly, or have really awkward names. (A couple of iterations ago I got a formation called "Tight Tight Tight". "Tight Spread Queen" was another unusual one.) Every football team assigns different meanings to names, so I also need to document those.

For testing purposes at least, I can drop some 3 or 4 WR formations into the existing code; to do that I need to upgrade the game core and Dynasty Vision to understand the new system, as it constructs formations from algorithms rather than pulling them from the database.

My short term tasks are:
- Finish the special teams formations (I should be able to finish this tomorrow)
- Add at least one defense formation to the new system
- Make the game core understand the new formations
** At this point the code will be uploaded to Beta
- Update the formation preview to accommodate the new formations
- Add playbooks to store the new formations in
- Add a routine to calculate exactly where a player is on his route at any given time in the play, using the same code the Combine uses
** Next upload to Beta

During this process I need to figure out exactly which features I want to have ready for the main server by september, set deadlines for them, etc. I will probably have to trim down my list a bit.

Regarding the link colors: The way colors are handled is being rebuilt to allow theming, so there are clunkers on pages that haven't been fully updated yet (which is probably 75% of them). So much to do!
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Cueball899
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Re: Update

Post by Cueball899 »

One thing I have noticed that would make the draft page a little easier to use is to have a space every ten players. In that space would be the attributes heading. Overall, strength, speed, agility, ect..... Those headings. The way it is in the main site is way easier to see and line up the grades to the heading.

Try pulling up to rank the draft in Beta and the Main site. Do a side by side view so you can see both at the same time. Then you should be able to see what I mean. The main site's draft ranking page is much easier to use and see.

Also in the main site all the boxes are the same size. In Beta so of the boxes are different size's.

Thank you again for working on these updates. It will pay off in the end and bring in more owners.
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Re: Update

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Cueball899 wrote: Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:05 am One thing I have noticed that would make the draft page a little easier to use is to have a space every ten players. In that space would be the attributes heading. Overall, strength, speed, agility, ect..... Those headings. The way it is in the main site is way easier to see and line up the grades to the heading.

Try pulling up to rank the draft in Beta and the Main site. Do a side by side view so you can see both at the same time. Then you should be able to see what I mean. The main site's draft ranking page is much easier to use and see.

Also in the main site all the boxes are the same size. In Beta so of the boxes are different size's.

Thank you again for working on these updates. It will pay off in the end and bring in more owners.
In Beta the headers are supposed to "stick" at the top rather than scroll off the screen, which is why I removed the extra headers. The table itself is also supposed to scroll (for mobile support) which may help the header situation. I think I have that fixed at least.
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chromedome
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Draft Tables

Post by chromedome »

The draft table headers have locked fairly low for me. The table is showing only 7 players. It is scrolling fine, but a field of 12- 15 players would be nice.
shbo2
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Re: Draft Tables

Post by shbo2 »

chromedome wrote: Sat Apr 18, 2020 3:38 am The draft table headers have locked fairly low for me. The table is showing only 7 players. It is scrolling fine, but a field of 12- 15 players would be nice.
The draft ranking page is completely unusable for me on mobile. The draft position setting table takes up 60% of the screen and the actual list of draftees only fits 7 players before you have to scroll down and only fits about a 1/3 of the player skills before you have scroll over to the side. It's impossible to rank a draft this way.
chromedome
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Salaries of $0

Post by chromedome »

There is another oddity in the salaries of two of my players. It has been zero since the draft.

http://www.footballbeta.simdynasty.com/ ... ?id=765964

http://www.footballbeta.simdynasty.com/ ... ?id=764994
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