FOF 9.0a Patch Released

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Solecismic.com Patch Notes

Version 9.0a Update

The 9.0a update was released on November 7, 2023.

Issues Addressed

• Frequent crash when trying to complete a trade for an opponent's player.

• Crash reported when trying to access Podcast. Unable to reproduce, but fixed issue with podcast running without sound and rewrote a piece of the voice code that might make a difference

• Players eligible for Injured Reserve (out or doubtful) cannot be placed there through player card.

• AI needs to be less aggressive about putting players on IR, though this still won't be perfect.
• First day of free agency now reserved for offers to your own players, “can't find player” message given in error.

• Restricted free agents on your team can now receive offers during early free agency.

• Text should be added for clarity when can't make offer because of cap room, and it's only because you need to leave space for the upcoming draft.

• Sort on Pancake blocks on individual and career statistics screen is returning random results.

• Illegal Touch on the Punt penalty is miscategorized and can result in the offense keeping the ball after the penalty.

• Typo on staff hiring screen when trainers are eligible for hire.

• Filter for individual statistics, qualifiers only, uses wrong criteria to determine minimum.

• Logic for AI retaining head coaches is not keeping them often enough.

• Number of new staff per season is a little too high.

• Should not show age of retired coaches in coach list.

• Pop-up and click-to-card for coaches in staff screen and staff retention screen should be limited to name field alone, to make it easier to select a coach for hiring or retention.

• When using coaches file, a coach is created with no name and demographic data, and co-assigned to Arizona as head coach.

• When using coaches file, play styles for coaches are reset when they should be loaded from the file.

• Still some question that certain screens and functions don't have a current idea of the defensive and offensive play styles of the coordinators - added some code to check this, but it should run when the coordinator is hired, so saved games will not be fixed.

• With a full allocation draft, a player's signed-to-team date is incorrect (this would explain a reversal in cohesion early in a universe).

• The recommend button on the ticket price screen is invisible.

• Controlled team's ticket prices are 0 for first season if setting to handle GM duties is off.

• Ensure that any player who can be traded appears on the trade screen (confirmed working - can't sign-and-trade the same year in this game).

• Preview screen is reversing visiting/home statistics.
• Function for returning college level text searches on the wrong information.

• Filter for end of experience range on player recommendation screen cuts off last season.

• Player recommend screen future evaluation can be misleading.

• Issue with scheduling algorithm with 32-team, 16-,17-, and 18-game leagues can lead to occasionally playing a conference opponent twice in a season.

• Year-end team jersey sales and merchandise totals are overflowing an integer buffer, producing random results (either far too high or too low).

• Improved the scope and logic for allowing GMs to highlight players during the amateur draft, added this to saved games.

• Mouse-over hint for assessment of rookie attributes during amateur draft refers to league scout rather than your team's staff.

• In Gamebooks, YAC per completion for quarterbacks in advanced passing stats calculated incorrectly.

• In Gamebooks, calculated statistics in Advanced Passing Statistics table are not displayed properly if more than one quarterback on a team.

• In Gamebooks, Pass Defense statistics list includes players on offense, who don't generate defensive statistics.

• Adding Special Teams rating for most players to player card and pop-ups related to the draft.

• Incorrect message if GM rescinds offer that player has agreed to consider in free agency.

• When weekly schedule screen requires scrolling, logos do not scroll along with results.

• On player's medical/transactions card, traded note refers to a dollar amount, not the team that traded away the player.

• Many past transactions refer to and link to an incorrect player (fix cannot repair saved universes).

• Error message was suppressed when minor roster decisions are not handled by AI and GM does not have enough have players active at an individual position.

• Text on player position change pop-up screen related to weight at new position is incorrectly categorized, though the screen works properly.

• Achievement for drafting a punter or kicker in the first two rounds is granted in any round.

• Achievement for calling plays is granted if you are letting the coach call the plays in the simulation at the end of the game.

• Tweak to QB/WR chemistry resolution to provide more variety (note that chemistry only applies when both QB and WR have been on the same roster more than one season).

• Actions on Strategy - Other screen (two-minute drill) have ordering issue, affecting saving and loading of entire plan from this screen.

• Player salary offers are not calculating the effect of changes to the number of years in an offer to the bonus per year, which is cosmetic at the time, but also affects sanity checks on the validity of the offer.

• Click on highlighted player on Team Year Offense (Rushing/Receiving) table in Almanac does not bring up player card.

• Added Receiving Touchdowns to Team Year Offense (Rushing/Receiving) table.

• Quarterbacks are more likely to play an extra receiver position if a WR is tired and no other options exist - this can't entirely be prevented, but work done to try and force a reasonable substitute and make it much less likely a quarterback is chosen.

• Function to bring roster to usable pre-season position distribution is run after the amateur draft when GM has turned off AI handling for minor roster decisions.

Enhancements Added

• Adding Current and Future Ratings to Contract View of Roster screen.

• One-line statistics bar added for current or previous season to main player card for active players.

• News items added to Team Management and Popup interfaces for free agents signing or rejecting GM team's contract offers during free agency.

Data Files and Saved Games

• Saved games can continue. Most fixes will work regardless, but a few noted above do not apply to an existing universe.

• For those who are working on customization, please remember to back up all your work. This update only changes three of the .csv files - 32_8_16_schedule.csv, 32_8_17_schedule.csv and 32_8_18_schedule.csv. These files have quite a few changed lines related to team matchups by division.

• Steam updates should not touch other .csv files, but we can't guarantee that.

Steam Update Process

Your installation of Front Office Football Nine will automatically update on its own. If you go into the Steam app's Library and right-click on the game and examine Properties, you can change the priority for Updates. There's a line at the bottom of this screen that tells you when your game was last updated.
You can also view the Credits screen in the League Menu within the game. This screen shows the game's version. This update is version 9.0a.

.

[Ben E Lou]

"Adding Current and Future Ratings to Contract View of Roster screen."<---LOVE having this here. Having the contract info on that screen actually makes this *better* than the way it used to be in FOF8 in my estimation. Easy to scan quickly and see "hmmm...that 38/38 guy saves me $8M if I cut him? Buh-bye!"

[cdcool]

I"m not seeing the Update on Steam

[johnnyshaka]

One thing to note about Steam updates...there is a default setting that will not allow games to download updates while other games are open. So, if you have FOF8 open all the time like I do then the update for FOF9 will not download unless you close FOF8 or change that behavior in the properties of FOF8.

[armyofone]

excellent work

[Cole]

While I've played both FOF7 and FOF8, I bought them both well after release when the games were many times patched and extremely stable.

I was dismayed to see so many negative thoughts and reviews, especially about the UI (which I enjoy) quickly after release. I had always assumed most of the complaints about Jim's games were about graphics/UI as opposed to bugs, etc. so I was expecting a pretty issue free release.

I also found it odd that where the game is sold on Steam, there's no customer support offered there. Yet, it's pretty obvious that Jim has a method to his maddness and does things in a way that works for him and have been proven over time.

Less than a week out we've got a fairly solid looking patch that addresses a ton of the issues people had with the game and even adds some QOL features (the line of player stats on the player card is huge!)

So, thank you Jim! I'm very much looking forward to getting into my long-term franchise in this game, as the depth and immersion in this version is astounding.

[manooly]

Thanks so much for this great game and the update! How can I verify in-game that the latest patch has been installed from Steam?

Thanks!

- manooly

[garion333]

Originally Posted by manooly

Thanks so much for this great game and the update! How can I verify in-game that the latest patch has been installed from Steam?

Thanks!

- manooly

It's the very last line in the patch notes above.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

"Adding Current and Future Ratings to Contract View of Roster screen."<---LOVE having this here. Having the contract info on that screen actually makes this *better* than the way it used to be in FOF8 in my estimation. Easy to scan quickly and see "hmmm...that 38/38 guy saves me $8M if I cut him? Buh-bye!"

Amen!

News items added to Team Management and Popup interfaces for free agents signing or rejecting GM team's contract offers during free agency.

This is a nice time saver as well. No more forgetting to check the Transaction Log while operating from the Management Screen.

[cupofjoe]

I'm really impressed with the first patch. It addressed a lot of the major issues.

[markprior22]

Trying to start a new career and having roster issues. Want to sim preseason but game keeps saying I have a depth chart issue. I've got one guy injured so I deactivate him, reset depth charts and get the message again. I've saved the game after making changes, I've toggled the AI control of depth charts, roster moves, etc on and off. Nothing seems to work.

Had same issue pre patch but was able to get around it. Anyone else run into this? Any ideas?

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by markprior22

Trying to start a new career and having roster issues. Want to sim preseason but game keeps saying I have a depth chart issue. I've got one guy injured so I deactivate him, reset depth charts and get the message again. I've saved the game after making changes, I've toggled the AI control of depth charts, roster moves, etc on and off. Nothing seems to work.

Had same issue pre patch but was able to get around it. Anyone else run into this? Any ideas?

Jim Posted this in the Steam forum for a similar (maybe) issue?

Temporary workaround: set the AI Handles Minor Roster Decisions to Yes. You can set it back after the draft. I will update the game this afternoon. This will work until then.

[rkmsuf]

Adding Current and Future Ratings to Contract View of Roster screen.



Magnificent!

[sovereignstar v2]

Looks like the 9.0b hotfix was released on Steam

[johnnyshaka]

Yup, fixes listed here.

[Ben E Lou]

I can't get my game to update to 9.0b. Is it working for y'all?

[sovereignstar v2]

Yeah, I close my game and steam pretty much immediately shows that an update is queued. Then after 15-20 seconds I can re-launch with the new version. I verified I'm running 9.0b on the credits screen.

[johnnyshaka]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

I can't get my game to update to 9.0b. Is it working for y'all?

Close any other steam games you may have open and then it should update.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar v2

Yeah, I close my game and steam pretty much immediately shows that an update is queued. Then after 15-20 seconds I can re-launch with the new version. I verified I'm running 9.0b on the credits screen.

I've done this several times and nothing. However...

Originally Posted by johnnyshaka

Close any other steam games you may have open and then it should update.

Effin' FOF8.

[Ben E Lou]

Yup, that did it. FOF8 was still open from this morning's IHOF sim.

[johnnyshaka]

Lol! There is a setting in the properties of Steam games that by default will not download other games while playing. I turned that off in FOF8 a long time ago!

[mbarry55]

Man am I glad to be back with a new game. Can't wait to dig into the new game this weekend.

[bblom23]

I reached the off-season, and it won't let me offer anyone contracts. It is past the stage where you can only resign your own players, but when I try to offer it tells me "You can only sign your own free agents today." But other FA's have signed with other teams.

Has anyone else had this issue?

Edit: Didn't realize this was addressed in the hotfix. My apologies.