Football Sims

[Primal]

The last football sim I bought was TCY I also have FOF2. I’m looking for something new this year. I was thinking of getting FOF4, but it is a year old (no that it really maters with sim games).

Are then any other games I should take in consideration?

Thanks

[Hurst2112]

Year old shmear old. The age of Jim's games doens't matter when you can get an updated draft file and roster file. Besides, if you are playing anything past a 12 year career in FOF4, the players names aren't an issue.

There are a couple games coming out this fall that might be worth looking at. I would however, pick up FOF4. I think almost everybody here would agree that it is the best NFL football sim out there.

With that being said, realize that most of us are probably going to purchase anything new in regards to football sims this season. It's a very good thing to have as many sports sim games as you can get. You never know when you might have a craving for the "old standard".

[vulcan]

TPF ... aka Total Pro Football. Release date is OCT. 31st 2003. Here is their website:

http://400softwarestudioscom.siteprotect.net/tpf/tpf_overview.php

Forum:

http://www.400softwarestudios.com/invboard/upload/index.php?c=52

....and some screen shots:

http://400softwarestudioscom.siteprotect.net/tpf/tpf_screens.php

List of features:

Fast, Accurate Pro Football Game Engine

Developed from the ground up, based on 2000-2002 National Football League* game results. Simulate an entire season in minutes.

Extensive Player Rating System

Every player contains over 50 unique attributes.

Isometric View of Your Football Campus

Top-down, isometric view of your football campus shows your stadium and offices. Build new structures or earn bonus buildings to provide benefits to your franchise. More than 20 different building structures included.

Realistic Owner Types

Different owner personas impact how much (or little) control you have on the team. Owners rated for willingness to spend, sensitivity to profitability, sensitivity to winning and patience span.

GM & Coach Character Creation

Allocate points among traits and abilities such as negotiations, charisma, scouting and other attributes to tailor your gameplay experience.

Enhanced Player Interactions

Sign players on the spot, or schedule workouts to get better scouting reports. Promise players roles, such as "guaranteed to start" to gain leverage in contract negotiations.

HTML Reports from Every Screen

Send virtually any game screen to HTML. Every HTML page also includes a print button for easy printing.

Complete Preseason

Carry over 70 players on your roster during the preseason, and make the tough decisions on roster spots as opening day approaches.

Weekly Practice Schedules

Get ready for the big game by fine-tuning your practice schedule. Focus on scrimmages until your team knows the playbook inside and out. Hit the weight rooms to increase your line's stamina. Or, give players some free time to rest and relax.

Unique Team & Player Morale Modeling

Lesser teams with high morale will often overachieve while talented squads with malcontents will struggle. Almost everything you do in the game, from promising players' roles to how strenuous your practice schedules are will impact your team's morale (and their performance on the field). Player morale is also displayed visually in the player's photo.

Built-In, Integrated Support for Online Leagues

Easily create and manage an online league for you and your friends to participate in. Everything you need for multiplayer leagues is built directly into the game.

Comprehensive Weather Physics System

Historical data from the National Weather Service powers gameday temperatures, humidity and precipitation forecasts for all the cities in the game.

Interactive Play By Play

Graphical play-by-play screen lets you view each play as it develops. The stadium interface also gives you real-time stat updates and injury reports.

Infinite Customization

Edit all the players, all the teams, stadium data, city data and more. Create your own team logos and player photos to use in the game. Customize the number of teams and divisions in your game. Hand off team and franchise management tasks to your A.I. assistants.

Flexible Interface System

Navigate through the virtual football world with clickable graphical objects and smart tooltips. Or, use a standard Windows menu-driven system. Customize hotkeys to get to the information you want quickly.

Football is Big Business

Negotiate advertising agreements and stadium naming rights deals with corporate sponsors to increase your exposure and add to your coffers. Complete salary cap model with all the rules and nuances.

Fine-Tune your Gameplan

Choose how much, or how little, control you want over the gameplan. Manage playbooks, packages, gameplans and offensive and defensive sets.

Flexible Play-Calling System

Tailor play-calling to your strengths and weaknesses. Call both offensive and defensive plays, or choose to focus only on one side of the ball. You can also defer all play-calling to the coordinators using a gameplan and overall strategy you create.

Unique Offensive & Defensive Philosophies

Use real pro football philosophies on both sides of the ball to define your team's approach to the game. Focus on a 4-3 or 3-4 defensive formation. Try the quick-strike "Vertical Passing" game or run a "Smash Mouth" ball control offense. If you have the personnel, try some of the more skill-orientated offenses such as the "West Coast" or "Run ‘N Gun." Be careful though, as once a philosophy is chosen, a team must stick to it all season or face a penalty!

College Report

Keep an eye on the future by reading the monthly College Report to see which players you want to target in next year's draft.

Smart Scouts

Each week your scout tells you who missed holes, who made great catches and who had mental breakdowns in the previous week's game. Your scout also gives a detailed look at your next opponent, and gives a recap on well - or not - your team practiced during the week.

Network-Style Game Previews

Shows time and date, and weather conditions for the week's games. Also, the .400 Sports Network's Game of the Week gives you a breakdown of the week's marquee match-up, telling you "why to watch" and "who to watch."



An interview with the developer Arlie Rahn:

Ok folks I promised you that there would be more information about things coming and now I am going to deliver on my promise. I posed a few questions to Arlie the other day and now I am going to share with you the response that I received.


First we will go with a little background, future game, and specs for current game.

Erich Ingram: What lead you to create a football game, after working with college basketball for you last two creations?

Arlie Rahn: My true passion as a fan and sports-sim player has always been football. So, making a football sim is something I have always wanted to do.

EI: Do you see this leading to a college football game as well for .400 with your knowledge of creating recruiting, and having done both a college game and a football game?

AR: I am completely focused on making this football game the best that it can possibly be. But, once the game is completed, I think a college football game is something we would consider working on.

EI: What will be the system requirements and recommended settings for Total Pro Football?

AR: It’s hard to say at this point, but it won’t be any more stringent than TDCB. In fact, we are trying to have even lower system requirements for the football game.

Now into the stuff that people are itching to hear!!


The Draft

EI: Will there be trading of picks, and what kind of valuation will the AI have?


AR: Yes, there will be the ability to trade picks and the AI will have a standard algorithm for evaluating the value of each pick. Once the draft begins, those picks may either gain or lose value depending on who is available at that spot.

EI: How many rounds will the draft be, 7 like in the NFL, and/or will be it customizable?

AR: The current plan is to have a 7-round draft. But, we would be open to making it more customizable. We would need to gauge the interest in this and see if it is worth the effort though.

EI: Will the players be accumulating college stats similar to the High School stats for the TDCB recruits?

AR: The plan is to have the draft pool visible from the first game of the season. So, as the season goes on, you will be able to view the progress of college players in their seasons.

EI: Will there be a scouting combine, where players can have their stock rise or fall prior to the draft?

AR: Yes, the combine will be a key part of the draft process, just like in real life.

EI: Will the players be ranked by position and overall?

AR: There will be both overall rankings and individual team-based scouting info (dep on the ability of your scouting staff). We will also two or three media “mock-drafts” that update before and after the combines.

EI: Will the players possibly hold out missing valuable training camp time?

AR: There will be the possibility of rookie holdouts.



Coaching

EI: Will you be able to hire/fire coaches and trainers like TDCB?

AR: Yes, you will have the ability to customize your staff and expenses.

EI: Will there be separate coaches for offense, defense, special teams as well as positional coaches?

AR: There will be full coaching staffs for each team than impact on-the-field play, player development, health and intangibles.

EI: Will the coaches strive to be Head Coaches and leave for other teams?

AR: Some will, but not all will.


EI: Will the stats be accumulated for Head Coaches?

AR: Yes, Head coaches will have year-by-year and career stats tracked.

EI: Will the user be able to rely on the offensive and defensive coordinators to make the calls as well as calling the plays himself?

AR: The plan is to allow the coach to set the plays in his playbook, but that the coordinators will actually call the physical plays. There will be ways for the coach to impact the types of plays they call in certain situations though.

EI: Will the coaches have their own attributes/personalities and qualities?
AR: Yes, coaches will be as individual as the players.

Finances

EI: Salary Cap that can be toggled on and off?

AR: There is a plan to enable/disable the financial mode. The actual mechanics of this haven’t been worked out yet though.

EI: Ticket prices, concessions, et al., for stadiums including being able to set prices for multiple levels of tickets, more like FOF then OOTP?

AR: I'm still open on this issue, but I am going in a different way on this issue. IMO, it’s the job of the owner, not the coach/GM, to set the prices for things like ticket prices, concessions and parking. The job of the coach is to make sure there are a bunch of butts in the seats. For this reason, we are planning on having different owner personalities that may dictate how you sign FAs and draft picks, how stable your job is and how important winning is compared to just making money. But, I don’t see the player setting things like ticket prices and concessions.


EI: Will different cities actually have their own qualities and chances for success?
AR: Yeah, each city has its own initial fan base and expectations.

EI: Will salaries be able to be set up on a scaled level with differing values for each year?

AR: There is not a plan for this as it can get confusing over time. The cap will increase and they player’s demands will be based on that current season’s cap. So, I guess it may occur as a result of this process.

EI: Online play: What are we looking at here, how will it be set up, similar to OOTP with depth charts and coach/team tendencies and play books being FTP’d?

AR: Something similar to OOTP and TDCB is planned, but we plan on making some things a little easier for the commishes out there. We will be open to ideas from people on this issue to make the online leagues easier to get involved with and more fun to play.

Based on this response I would suggest those of you who are currently running online leagues with Madden and FPS to get your ideas in. If they are workable they might just get into the game. So continue to pound the wish list board.

Expansion

EI: Will it be available?

AR: I’m not sure at this point. It is one issue we will look into once the game gets closer to completion.

EI: If so will there be an expansion draft?

AR: If we have it, there will be an expansion draft.

EI: Will the cities be selected randomly by the computer at random times?

AR: If we do this, there will be a certain degree of randomness to the process.

EI: Will the user be able to take over the expansion team and do the draft?

AR: Yes, again if we go this route. We should have some method of starting as an expansion team though.

Almanac

EI: Will there be one, and will it be like OOTP5?

AR: We will track yearly player stats, personal, team and league records and numerous other stats.

EI: How deep will the player awards be?

AR: There will be award teams, MVP and rookie awards just like in real life.

EI: Career Stats/Records, will they be league only or team specific as well?
AR: The plan is for both.

EI: Team History, how deep are we looking here?
AR: Season and career records will be tracked

EI Will there be a manager mode where users can be fired by their team?

AR: Yes, in a manner of speaking. The personality of your owner and your performance will impact both your salary, coach prestige and job security. There is a plan to have this toggled on and off.

EI: Playbooks, how will they be set up, stock group of play that a user can select the plays and save them for use in the game, will they be team specific for AI run teams?

AR: This is also up in the air a bit. The plan is to allow you to add/remove plays into your playbooks that your coordinators can use.

EI: What will the news stories be like? Will there be a write up for each game, will the draft have stories?

AR: There is a plan to have "media-like" feedback, but we haven't decided on the exact process and scope of it yet.

EI: What will the game play look like?

AR: You will see both the PBP and stat info much like in TDCB. Since there are such fewer games, we also make printable game logs for each game (if requested in the game options).

Ok, guys there is a bunch of information, let me know what you think, feel free to PM me with more questions you would like to see asked in another interview session. As the time moves along I will try and get more interviews for you. If you would like to see some of the answers expanded upon let me know as well, I know that I did not hit the online or in game stuff very hard here, I will look to follow up more with that in the future, or Arlie may even put out posts himself responding to the possibilities of your ideas on both these issues.


Hope this helps. :)

[MizzouRah]

Yes, TPF looks promising. I'll wait until about a month or so after release to see what people from here are saying about the game.

The screenshots look absolutely beautiful.



Todd

[Primal]

Great, Thanks for the feedback guys.

[EagleFan]

Just to steer things back to reality, please look over all of the fiasco following .400's last release (Tournament Dreams College Basketball). I would wait to see if they have learned from there mistake yet before purchasing.Especially with all those promised features.

No, I don't consider OOTP to be their last release since that team was never truly part of the big picture of what is now .400. This means that TDCB is the only track record of that company, something to consider when it comes out.

[vulcan]

Originally posted by EagleFan
Just to steer things back to reality, please look over all of the fiasco following .400's last release (Tournament Dreams College Basketball). I would wait to see if they have learned from there mistake yet before purchasing.Especially with all those promised features.

No, I don't consider OOTP to be their last release since that team was never truly part of the big picture of what is now .400. This means that TDCB is the only track record of that company, something to consider when it comes out.

I see what you are saying but I truley think that TPF will be different in terms of release quality. Arlie is working on this title fulltime as for TDCB he wasn't. That can make a difference.

[Primal]

Total Pro Football

Any chance it is multi player?

I'd love to have an online league. Get some of the old guys from college back together.

[vulcan]

It will have multiplayer but it will not have H2H in this version. Checkout the forum and Arlie's interview. That will answer alot of questions for you. :)

[sabotai]

I'm so happy vulcan posted that whole thing because I don't know how to use links and URL's. :D

[vulcan]

Originally posted by sabotai
I'm so happy vulcan posted that whole thing because I don't know how to use links and URL's. :D

Ya, I should have just done that instead. Oh well. :)

I actually did that for the lazy ones who don't like to surf the net that much... (like me) :D

[McSweeny]

i'm pretty sure vulcan works for .400

[vulcan]

Originally posted by McSweeny
i'm pretty sure vulcan works for .400

lol

[Bonegavel]

Well, don't get too hyped over Vulcan's list of features for TPF. Until the game is out, they (game developers) should be required to list them as "INTENDED FEATURES" because, more than not, a fraction of the list makes it into a game. I would much rather they didn't make a list than to put things on the list that don't make it. That puts my panties into great big bunches that reach up into my duodenum.

[vulcan]

I am pretty sure that these features will be in the game. :D

[vulcan]

Originally posted by vulcan
I am pretty sure that these features will be in the game. :D

Besides, they aren't my features. These are the ones off of the TPF site. ;)

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally posted by vulcan
Besides, they aren't my features. These are the ones off of the TPF site. ;)

Other features from the website, haven't panned out in the past. So, I would still call them intended features. That being said, I'm really hoping this game can pull these features off in a well executed fashion. If the game can live up to the hype, it could quickly become my all time favorite game.

[vulcan]

I agree that they are "intended" to be in the game and nothing is for sure until the game is released but I have a real good feeling about this. :)

[Bonegavel]

Don't get me wrong, I hope all the features listed make it and I realise you ripped them right from the site. I wasn't dinking you. Past experience has shown me that Feature Lists should be renamed to Wish Lists. I have stopped getting excited over Feature Lists long ago. If you compare most games to their "feature's list" you will scratch your head and wonder if they are referring to the same game.

cynically,

bonegavel

[vulcan]

You bring up good points. Madden disappoints me every year.

[EagleFan]

Don;t get too hyped up on multiplayer yet either, that was supposed to be in TDCB at release but wasn't for several months after the release.

[Bonegavel]

Originally posted by vulcan
You bring up good points. Madden disappoints me every year.

I didn't mean to rain on your parade. It's just that I hate when they vomit out these Feature lists, get us all hot-an-bothered, and then wind up giving us a third of their promises. And, the stuff that they do give us is watered-down or broken. I realise that making these games isn't easy, but then I suggest that they don't make promises they can't keep.

Wow. I just realised that I hold my game developers to a higher standard than my politicians. Isn't that sad?

[vulcan]

I have heard that TPF will either make or break .400SS I truley think that everything mentioned will make it. H2H will not be in the game but alot of the features discussed will be. I hope that alot of you guys here like nilodor, 3ric, fritz and some others will make utilities for this game. Guys like that is what makes these games even better.

[vulcan]

Originally posted by BoneGavel
I didn't mean to rain on your parade. It's just that I hate when they vomit out these Feature lists, get us all hot-an-bothered, and then wind up giving us a third of their promises. And, the stuff that they do give us is watered-down or broken. I realise that making these games isn't easy, but then I suggest that they don't make promises they can't keep.

Wow. I just realised that I hold my game developers to a higher standard than my politicians. Isn't that sad?

You're right. To be honest I am a little hesitant about a few of the features but I am really excited because this seems to be the game I have been waiting for ... for a long time. FOF4 was good but it just felt as if the players were just numbers. TPF is adding some graphical content which helps the mind accept that this is a real sim football game (atleast for me). What I really hope really gets a lot of attention is the stats tracking. I would love to see retired players stats saved and as well as defunct teams history. I have never played TDCB, since I don't like basketball, so I am not sure on how the stats system is in that game. I have only played OOTP alittle but it seems that the stats tracking system in that game is really good. We'll see.

[Bee]

I agree with vulcan that all the features mentioned will be in the game, but my biggest concern with TPF is what kind of quality we'll be talking about. At the time of release "Total Control Football" looked like it would redefine the football sim...does anyone else remember that fiasco? Features are great but they not only have to work, they have to work well. I really hope Arlie and Co can pull it off, but I think it only natural for people to be a little skeptical considering their past release and their impressive list of features for an initial version of a game.

[Darkiller]

This game indeed looks superb "on paper".
In less than 2 months we'll see.

[Philliesfan980]

If someone could make a "Leihman (sp) Database" for that game,allowing you to import any season, that would be great. Would probably instantly become the "God of all sims" around here.

[vulcan]

Originally posted by Philliesfan980
If someone could make a "Leihman (sp) Database" for that game,allowing you to import any season, that would be great. Would probably instantly become the "God of all sims" around here.


They are working on something like this as we speak.

[Philliesfan980]

Vulcan;

How far back will it go? Any early idea's?

[McSweeny]

Originally posted by Philliesfan980
If someone could make a "Leihman (sp) Database" for that game,allowing you to import any season, that would be great. Would probably instantly become the "God of all sims" around here.

i'd bet that this would be very tough to do. In baseball stats match up with ratings fairly easily. However, i would imagine it would be tough to take past stats in football and turn them into ratings

[vulcan]

Originally posted by Philliesfan980
Vulcan;

How far back will it go? Any early idea's?

Not sure but here is the link that has some info on it:

http://www.400softwarestudios.com/invboard/upload/index.php?showtopic=39726

Arlies comments are on the 2nd page of that thread. Hope this helps.

[Philliesfan980]

Yeah, especially with Offensive linemen.