FM2006 beta demo released

[Marc Vaughan]

In case anyone is interested - pop over to sigames.com for the download.

Have Fun,

Marc

[Passacaglia]

uh oh

[Coffee Warlord]

Fuuuuuuuck. There goes my evening.

[marshall881]

Oh Crap!! Just when I thought i had some extra free time.

[SirFozzie]

You noticed they released it RIGHT after the Ashes ended..

didn't want to be upstaged, Marc?

(and yes, crap, free time go byebye!)

[scooter]

Are there any mirror sites set up yet? I can't get SI's server to work.

[wbatl1]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

In case anyone is interested - pop over to sigames.com for the download.

Have Fun,

Marc

Interested!! How bout willing to kill someone for it

[Fouts]

I'm downloading, and it is taking all day.

[Raiders Army]

Trying to download...

[Fouts]

Got it downloaded and enjoying the heck out of it. My team beat a team (score 4-0) that was relagated into our conference this year (and they were heavily favored). Hmmm, is this coded to get me hooked on the game?

Please offer digital download for this game on release. Thanks.

[Fouts]

BTW, I really like the homepage where you get a look at all kinds of stuff at once (standings, stats, next match, etc). I'm not sure if this was in the last version.

[cthomer5000]

trying to download.

[DaddyTorgo]

OMG. OMG. *dies of happiness*

first the "faggoty joystick jockey" goodness of Madden 2006, and now this!?!?! THIS!!! THIS!!!!

*SI Fanboy*

[Coffee Warlord]

BTW Marc. Although I very well might just start a new game...are 05 saves gonna be importable to 06?

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

BTW Marc. Although I very well might just start a new game...are 05 saves gonna be importable to 06?

they never have been in the past CW. issues with new statistics and database structures and what-not I'd guess.

[Coffee Warlord]

I doubted it, and it's not a big deal (considering I'm barely a season into my current game), but was curious.

[Fouts]

Speaking of which, how long can we play this demo. I didn't see it stated.

[DaddyTorgo]

*drools all over FM2006*

Dammmmmn. This is great. I can already tell I'm going to love it.


as an aside, I never would have thought that of the games I'm planning on getting this would have been the first one I'd see a demo of.

[MrBug708]

I like the contract issues.

[RPI-Fan]

These beta demos, year after year, seem to jump up out of nowhere.

I don't have enough free time to play it yet, so anybody who can post some impressions on the new and/or revamped features is greatly appreciated!

~rpi-fan

[GoldenEagle]

Anyone seen any new features yet? What about more American leagues?

[DaddyTorgo]

something i just noticed that i'm going to miss is the coaches reports on individual players not being accessible from the player's screen.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by GoldenEagle

Anyone seen any new features yet? What about more American leagues?

tracking of media comments made about individual players is something I don't think was mentioned before. It's under player history. player training regime for individual players is now accessible from the player screen

also: found the coaches report on individual players under "overview" submenu under training. slightly more cumbersome, but i suppose I don't use it all that often, so it's okay. And that's also a sweet looking and useful screen.


just playing around and looking at new bells and whistles right now

[FrogMan]

just couldn't get on the sigames website but I found this mirror:

http://www.fminside.net/downloads/pa...ion=file&id=32

It's going quite fast for now...

FM

[WSUCougar]

A list of changes from SI:

*Half Time Team Talks - Interact with your team at half time, or with individual players. Can you turn a 1-0 loss into a 2-1 win with your comments?

* Unhappy Player Interaction - How do you cope when one of your players is unhappy with their role in the team? You now get the chance to talk to the player and try and find a solution to his unhappiness.

* New Training Module - Much easier & quicker to use, the all new training module give your backroom staff a real purpose in the game, with much more obvious effects on the players.

* Referee Profiles - An easy way to see how harsh the ref for your next game is likely to be, with profiles and league tables.

* "Basic" and "Advanced" player positions, with the advanced positions with their own special screen in the game, with also reveal the players preferred moves.

* Manager Contracts - The SI community have been asking for them for years, and now they are in. Interact with your board, negotiate your transfer budgets, and your wages.

* Virtual player contracts - Have you ever spotted a "greyed out" player making up the numbers in your squad who could actually make a difference? Ever tried to manage a lower league side and find that you can't sign enough players to even make up the squad for the season? Well, now you can, by offering the "virtual" players contracts, and letting them live their virtual dreams of becoming professional footballers.

* Snapshot - a great new screen in the game that gives you a homepage of all of the info that you need as a manager - budgets, forthcoming fixtures, a competition overview, team stats and lots more.

* Man Of The Match news - A new regular news item giving feedback on the man of the match for youth & reserve games, as well as key first team matches.

* Increased Tactical options - You can now tweak those tactics even further, with options for players to interchange positions, more specific target man instructions and even wasting time! * Key highlight replays in match engine - Want to see match highlights over and over again? Key highlights are now instantly replayed for those managers who want to pick every move apart. * Formation panel on match screen - An easy way to see the formations of both your team and your competitor at the same time without having to pause the match, updated live.

* New shirt graphics - Thought the team kits looked good in FM2005? With thanks to the FM community, and especially Jesper from fm.lemonish.net, they now look even better. And with licenses galore, there will be more real life kits in FM2005 than any previous Sports Interactive football title.

* Match Commentary revamp - Heaps of new commentary lines used in match for added atmosphere and detail to identify what's happening on the pitch.

* "Player Form" & "Player Stats" screens - More pertinent information regarding a players form and match stats, presented in a user-friendly manner.

* "Quick" tactic mode - Now you can shout from the touchlines to make small or full tactical changes without having to stop the match.

* Improved match engine realism - Working with Ray Houghton, the ex-Liverpool and Republic of Ireland player, SI have analysed every area of the match engine looking for areas to improve the engine to make it the most realistic experience ever.

* Injury module revamp - No more "physio reports" needed after injuries as the physio's now come to you. Full feedback on injuries, including various treatment options.

* General UI improvements - Improvements to the user interface make it easier to find your way around the game and reduce the amount of mouse button clicks.

* Ticker Bar - Not only can you gain score updates during matches but a configurable news ticker bar updates you on news from around the globe, or just locally if you prefer.

* Media overhaul - Loads more information is now given through news items using an all new "player bio" system, this is inclusive of, but not limited to, club landmark year news, better feedback on your start as a manager, more celebration of success and much more info about players in media items.

* Full Time Team Talks - With the addition of Half Time team talks to Football Manager 2006 , Sports Interactive felt it only fair to add full time team talks to allow you to comment on team or individual performances at the end of the match to the players. How will they react?

[FrogMan]

didn't have time to save a screenshot, but from Marc Bircham's position screen, in his "preferred moves":

* argues with referees
* gets crowd going
* dives into tackles



There was another player, Kevin Gallen I think (both from QPR) that had something like "places shots to goal" and "plays with his back to the goal" or something to that effect...

I really like that position screen btw, much more intuitive when trying to find a place to play a player...

FM

[TroyF]

Great. . . Just when I think I'll get to bed fairly early, all hell is going to break loose. Ughh.

[DaddyTorgo]

i agree with the Froggy. The position screen is my new best friend.

[scooter]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

just couldn't get on the sigames website but I found this mirror:

http://www.fminside.net/downloads/pa...ion=file&id=32

It's going quite fast for now...

FM

I'm a little concerned to see that there is a mirror. According to the initial post over at SI, they don't want them. Here are some comments from Miles Jacobson, their managing director:

There will be no mirrors. The load will likely be better spread tomorrow, or you could always try first thing in the morning when you wake up, at which point I expect it'll be faster.

I know it's not ideal, but we will not be having any mirrors for the download. This is because it's not a gold demo, it's there for people to be able to experience and give us feedback to help in the run in to finishing making the game.

As MV has said, we've doubled our bandwidth, and hope it'll die down a little bit as the load is spread tomorrow.

When it comes to the gold demo, there will be a plethora of mirrors, and we'll try and get it out to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

When asked why:

because we need to be able to control the distribution of the beta. It's NOT a gold demo and therefore we don't want it spread too publically as people might think it is (despite the big disclaimers!). Hence we decided to make it for registered users of the website only. The initial hit of anything like this is always going to be big hence we kept it quiet, and went live at time that we thought the website load would be a bit less, but it looks like word has spread pretty fast. I'm not going to change the policy on mirrors though for the beta - for the gold demo, it will be everywhere, but this beta is for people to try it out and gives us feedback during the last few weeks of development so that we can try and get the game as good as possible for release.

[yabanci]

damn, I finally break down and buy FM2005 and they release a new version already. I haven't even played the "old" version.

[Izulde]

I haven't had FM 2K5 that long and now they're releasing FM 2K6 demo?

*eyes his backlog of Magazine Writing reading to do*

*glances at demo*

Fuck it.

*downloads demo and forsakes all hope of sleep though he has 4 classes tomorrow*

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

BTW Marc. Although I very well might just start a new game...are 05 saves gonna be importable to 06?

Afraid not - sorry, we've added too much stuff and also a lot of the competition formats have changed which could easily confuse an existing save game.

Apologies,

Marc

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

*drools all over FM2006*

Dammmmmn. This is great. I can already tell I'm going to love it.


as an aside, I never would have thought that of the games I'm planning on getting this would have been the first one I'd see a demo of.

Please bear in mind it IS a beta and not a Gold demo ... as such it does need bug fixes, tweaking and hasn't got the final database in it.

Any feedback which people can give to help improve the final build would as always be appreciated

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

something i just noticed that i'm going to miss is the coaches reports on individual players not being accessible from the player's screen.

They are - if you click on a players profile and go to his training overview you'll find the coach report on that.

Combine this with the 'quick flick' menu next to the title bar (top left - cycles through associated items in the case of a player its his team-mates) you can view all the coach reports very quickly.

Hope this helps,

Marc

[Izulde]

I got to 91% and the d/l stopped. I go to resume and I keep getting Error.

[Marc Vaughan]

I'm afraid the site is somewhat flooded - we did double our bandwidth in antipation of the beta release but we're still struggling a tad.

This is partially because we're trying not to let the beta get mounted all over the place (both on other websites and magazines etc.) - this is simply because it is important to note its a 'beta' and as such isn't indicative of the final game at all, its been released to attempt to get feedback to tweak and tune the final game with.

[Bee]

My wife is going to be so pissed...

I've been playing Space Rangers during almost all of my free time and I told her last night that I had almost beaten it and would set it aside for a few weeks...now this. And our sofa is very uncomfortable.

[Coffee Warlord]

How's the actual game speed thus far? Noticably faster/slower?

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

How's the actual game speed thus far? Noticably faster/slower?

The very question I was about to ask. I have memory issues, and FM05 is a very very slow game for me (esp. with my current dynasty). What can I expect from FM06?

[MalcPow]

I can't decide if I want to force a delay in a major project at work so I can play the demo, or lock myself in my office for the next month or so to clear out some time for the actual release.

Or just quit my job and play FM...

[Coffee Warlord]

Can't even get to SI's site to download now. Bah!

Slow day at work, perfect time to screw with it too.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

The very question I was about to ask. I have memory issues, and FM05 is a very very slow game for me (esp. with my current dynasty). What can I expect from FM06?

To be frank (and contrary to what some posters on the SI Games forums are saying) the beta is most likely slightly slower than FM2005, however the final game shouldn't be as we haven't approached optimising the match engine for this version yet.

Generally each version is slightly quicker than the last as the code base matures and we spend time optimising the more stable (and less likely to require changing) parts of the game engine.

[Bee]

What about print options? This is important to me since I like to print out information and take it to meetings and pretend to work...

[WSUCougar]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Generally each version is slightly quicker than the last as the code base matures

Funny, I actually found I could last longer as I matured, and...oh, damn. Wrong thread, sorry.

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Bee

What about print options? This is important to me since I like to print out information and take it to meetings and pretend to work...

I was thinking about dynasty reporting but that works for me too...



FM

[Coffee Warlord]

Dammit, I still can't get to si's site.

Anyone have a fast server they can upload it to an PM me the link?

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Dammit, I still can't get to si's site.

Anyone have a fast server they can upload it to an PM me the link?

and why don't you try the mirror I posted before? I know SI doesn't want a mirror, but I downloaded it from them and it forked fine. In English no less, despite the fact their whole site is complete jibberish to me...

FM

[Coffee Warlord]

'Cause I totally forgot about it.

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

'Cause I totally forgot about it.

time to get them glasses checked, or get some stronger coffee for the warlord

FM

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

time to get them glasses checked, or get some stronger coffee for the warlord

FM

You Posh bastard.