Football Manager 2008: The Road To Release has begun!
 

http://www.sigames.com/news.php?type...rticle_id=1279

Things not covered in this first "new and improved features" blog (because they'll have their own sections later: awards revamp, board confidence, fan days, the international management revamp, match flow, as well as what's new in the match engine

Covered:

Customizable Pitch Sizes (You can set it at the beginning of the season, based on the competitions you're in. A fast burning team with plenty of stamina? Make that pitch as big as you can, and it'll help when your opponents are gassed in the 90th minute.

Team Captains Your team's Captain and Vice-Captain are set pre-season now. Choose an unpopular player, and watch out, there could be a bunch of trouble in the locker room!

Expanded Manager Interaction Other teams managers (both international and club) will attend your games.. International managers checking out if that young kid of yours is ready for a full national team call up.. rival managers might show up in preperation for an upcoming game, or worse yet, seeing a player they may want to poach from you!

Improved Handling of Foreign Player Rules: Amongst other things, you will see in his personal panel how long before he gains dual citizenship (important for the EU teams)


Better Team Selection Will consider more factors, like the importance of a match, injuries and such.

Improved realism Player Progression, Regenerated Players and injuries are all tweaked.

Coach Reports This is going to be absolutely huge for new folks to the FM series, or if you want to take a team you've never seen before. The coaching staff will give you a full report on every player in the squad like the one you get when scouting other team's players in FM2007. (IE, Clint Dempsey is a good pick for a mid-level Premiership side, and his strengths and weaknesses. A great feature for dynasties!

Better Reserve Handling In previous versions, for a player to play in reserve games, he had to be sent to the reserve squad (at risk of a morale drop if he was a first teamer!) Now there's an extra option on the squad status screen to allow the player to play in any reserve team games in the next seven days

There's more in the link.. but let the salivating begin. I'll summarize the blog each day with a link to Miles's official blog :)

*dies happy*

Does it mention arough estimate on a release date.

No Release date, but usually, its 6-8 weeks from the Gold Demo (which is Sunday), so an educated guess would be mid-November

WAIT A FRIGGING SECOND



so you'll be able to either view recently played matches or flag a player for match-viewing from the scouting screen??? NICE

But superleagues in the editor will still be a gargantuan effort. Oh well.

Do you guys usually get this through gogamer.com?

I do, except for downloading WWSM06. I've had no problems with them.

I usually wait until WWSM is released so I can buy it via direct download. When I did buy the FM import, I got it through gogamer.com.

Good news, this will beat shuffling players back and forth.

FM07 was good, my main gripes were with the match engine but I'm sure that will be improved at least slightly. I also wouldn't mind seeing transfer prices come down for the very high end players while making it harder for big clubs to make truckloads of money.

woot one less person trying to buy a copy!

I got FM07 through gogamer.com and have absolutely no complaints. I honestly don't buy a lot of games, but I intend to user gogamer for most of my future purchases.

But that is realistic.

So is WWSM expected to be released on the same day as FM?

No release date announced, although it's been hinted to me that it will be simultaneous this year.

http://www.sigames.com/news.php?type...rticle_id=1280

Day 3's blog is about the new Transfer/Wages system.

Always frustrated that you have to pick a budget at the beginning of the season, and then stick by it? in FM2007 you could have $50 million ready to buy that super player... but you couldn't afford to pay him if you bid for him? In fact you couldn't really even pay for a cheese toastie out of your wages fund, you're stretched to the limit?

in FM2008, mid year, you can ask the bosses (through the board room page) to adjust your transfer/wage on the go. (IE, move excess wage budget into the transfer kitty, or move some of your transfer budget into your wage limits)

this is long overdue

That alone is almost worh the price of admission for me.

pre-contracts for youth players from other countries are in the game as well now

Here's an interesting screenshot I found while trying to find one to show you the budget allocation system. Apparently, they will tell you EXACTLY what they want to see from the teams, in all competitions. For example, can you imagine the hotseat this manager would be under if Porto doesn't win anything that year?

yikes. pretty awesome

Not only that, but if you tell the board what they want to hear, they could shake some extra transfer funds/wages out.. but guess what? You'll have to back up anything you say!

Awesome, the more RPG features, the better.

Btw, i'm not too sold on the grey/metal skin, i'll need to look for a better one to use. I love the Black Aura one for FM07.

New versions of FM are usually released in late October, so I am going to pick October 26th (Games are usually released on Fridays in the UK)

EDIT - Amazon.co.uk agrees with me.

I've barely played FM07, and had pretty much decided I would take another look at CM instead this year (I tried the 1st one and it was horrible, but Pro-Zone has me interested).

Now looking at some of the early screenshots, FM has finally brought in some of the things that were badly needed - wages/transfer budget flexibility, more info on your own players, more control over who plays for the rezzies. And the football world is such that there is money all over the place, so the financial model is not as far out as it was. My interest has been piqued again...damn you SI!

But the owners would pocket more of it in real life, I mean you get to the point where you can spend £100m+ per season and still turn a profit, while having to shell out £60-70m+ (I think Zidane went for £45m or so and his is the record) for the best players. It just needs to be tuned a little bit.

Still reading these? Excellent. Although I suppose with the demo out on Sunday, it's next weeks blogs that will get missed.

Oh well - I'll worry about that then. Today's blog is about some of the changes to the news system inside Football Manager 2008.

Now, this is quite a strange blog to write, as there is so much crossover into other areas. So some of this might get repeated over the next few weeks in other blogs, but I'll do my best not to.

Every year we add more news items to the game and more variation too, to try and immerse the player, you, in the virtual world of football management. Sorry to shatter the illusions like that, but whilst FM is a way of life, it's not actually real. The news system is therefore imperitive for ensuring that you know what is going on not just at your own team, but throughout the football universe.

A few years ago we stopped the "one line" news items to go for more descriptive news items to get them to act more like short, informational, newspaper articles, and we've taken that a few steps further this year with the work of our "media corner".

This expansion includes non-player bio's, which provide a load of information about non-players for news items, referee bio's for, wait for it, yes, you've guessed it, a load of information about referee's for news items.

There's season ticket news, telling you how many season tickets have been sold so far, and how many are expected to be sold throughout the season, improved news items specific to records which your club or players might break, reworked media manager functions, effectively a tidying up of the triggers inside the game for news and lots more, even going as far as analysis of cup rounds, including news about shocks and progress for that round.

Then I could also talk about the new media items, such as when an ex-player returns to his old club, or the new transfer offer news items. But that would be giving too much away, and I'd rather you found some of those for yourselves when playing if that's OK. And if it's not, well, my lips are sealed, so it'll have to be.

If I was feeling really daring, I'd start talking about the increased inter-continental club competition media expansion, with things like pre-match odds and postmatch questions for those competitions. Or maybe I'd start going on about the past meetings button in pre-match news that makes it easy for you to see lots of information about past meetings, and even more info than you get in the "match flow" feature that will be blogged about much closer to release.

Maybe if you'd bought me a couple of drinks, I'd talk about the changes to the tickerbar and informational display, which shows competition news for the current manager and some competition statistics, but there'll be more about that in the next few days when I start talking about the interface changes. Or I might go on about the updated news system which means a highly likelihood of personal news that is more relevant to you in your inbox. Or even

But no. What I want to talk about here are 2 things.

One is more statiscal based news, such as "Marlon King breaks the 20 goal mark for Watford in their 7-1 demolition of (insert your own least favourite Coca Cola Championship team here)." which adds loads more personality to the news items.

The second. Well, the second is a whole new way of looking at news. Not only do you now get your own club news, you also get a special news section for the competition you are playing in, which shows and keeps all the major news that is going around in your division or competition, which can be invaluable in keeping you informed with what's going on at other clubs around you.

There's so much more I could talk about here, but I don't want to ruin the game for you by saying too much. So I'm going to shut up for now, and return tomorrow to start going through some of the new interface and usability changes inside the game, which is going to end up being a multi-day blog.

woot!

The last few versions haven't caught that magic for me that produced my massive dynasty. Of course, my free time has gone down from those days as well which might be part of it. Anyway, this version has some things that I think will re-hook me.

as an aside, some club or other offered a player name "godoy" to me the other day and my first thought was, "i don't need a right winger" before i realized that i have no idea who it was and i was only thinking of your dynasty.

that's just . . . sad.

I'm buying FM over WWSM this year. I want to be able to use the third-party tools that get released every year that make editing the game easier. The Premier League of America that I tried to create took me ages and with the editor they released with the game it took me FOREVER to be able to put something servicable together.

Surely there has to be a better, more flexible way to do this. But then, I know the strength of this series is the realism and all of that. So I guess wanting to play in a dream world where there are actual teams in the U.S. that play in something other than a wage capped league with few stars isn't a priority for most....but I'd still like to be able to do it if I want to.

A bit of bad news/good news for today's blog

http://fm08.footballmanager.net/en/a.../100/1652.html

Real players who they have licenses for will appear in the game. real players who they do not have licenses for will not show up as normal, and starting with the end of year one, the game generated fictional players will have FaceGen photos. Going to be a bit jarring five years in and realize that a third of your players pictures are real, a third of your players pictures don't exist and the remainder are computer generated. Of course, there probably will be folks going the extra mile to make a full player picture pack available.

There's a bunch of notes on graphical improvements and usability in today's entry as well.

eh. as long as the real players are there in name I am confident that there will be photo packs available at/shortly after release. And really...if not...that's a bit of graphical fluff that I can do without.

What do you mean, "will not show up as normal?"

from reading the blog it just looks like their pictures will not be in it, nothing to do with their name. at least that's what i hope/assume

Thats basically really bad writing imho - it means that they'll be displayed the same as they were last year (ie. a dark silhouette of a persons head).

So in brief:

* If we have a licence then you'll get a proper photo of the player.
* If we don't have a licence then a generic silhouette profile picture is displayed (ie. no attempt to show the player).
* If they're regen players (or you're using a 'fake' setting) then players will have facegen pictures created for them.

Hope that helps,

Marc

Cool, thanks. I'm pumped for this.

So..what time do you think the demo will be released on Sunday?

If I play with a fictional universe I assume all the players will have facegen pictures? Is that correct?

That's what Marc said..

If they're regen players (or you're using a 'fake' setting) then players will have facegen pictures created for them.

Oh man, at first I read that and feared real players would only be in from a few leagues plus other licensed clubs. Phew.

Marc, why not adding the option (like a button) to generate facegen faces instead of the silhouettes for the non licensed players? I prefer 100 times an unique facegen face for each player than a generic silhouette for all them.

Weird, I didn't see Marc's post. Thanks.

i think the blog-post said that that was a legal no-no


wouldn't surprise me if someone made that happen though

pbbt, i play with player pics off anyway

so can we buy it then or is it ONLY a demo?

Only a demo 9/30. Gold Demo in fact.

Full Demo usually is out a week before the game, and then.. Bedlam

i refuse to touch the demo . . . otherwise, i will get to attached to those bastards and have a tough time switching to the real version. this year's is a definite buy for me -- my last version was '06. the only question will be "day one" or "wait for patch 1 (maybe 2)".

say, with the start we are having, can you put in a good word with the data collecting people to understand that gooners should be rated pretty darn well? thanks, marc! :D

http://fm08.footballmanager.net/en/a.../100/1653.html

Today's blog is also about usability including something special for the folks who've had problems getting into the UI.

"The Advisor system was born out of the results of a study conducted into making our User Interface far more intuitive to the user. One of the points raised by this study was that new users could sometimes become lost in the game, especially the first few times they played. So, the idea to design a small system to help such users through their first steps in Football Manager seemed a good one.

The Advisor offers beginner level support and guidance to the user on some of the most common but most important actions they will take in the game. Items such as selecting your line-up, continuing the game, and buying a player are covered. The user will be presented with a list of suggestions for actions they may wish to take in context with what is on the screen at the time. If one is selected, they then take the steps through that particular advisor until they have completed it, at which point they will hopefully now know what to do in this part of the game.

For example, if the user navigates to their Squad Screen, the Advisor will appear and ask the user if they would like to pick their line-up. If they wish to do so, they will be shown how to get to the Tactics screen with both textual and graphical hints, and then advised how to actually make a selection and assign a player to a shirt and position.

The system is designed to be unobtrusive, clear, and concise. It covers the absolute basics of how to do something that the user will then find beneficial every time they play the game, with the ultimate aim of making the user feel completely comfortable with the interface and the actions in the game. Visually, the advisor appears as a small pop-up box, positioned to allow as much key information to be displayed without being obstructed - in particular areas the advisor is referring to.

Once a user has completed their way through the various advisors, they too can choose to turn them off, or to re-appear at a defined time should they find themselves needing a refresher."

Also, the tips and tricks that were on the game simulation screen have been suplemented by various stats from your team and league

Fozzie...you left out the "power users" things

Or I could point to the recently viewed players panel, which lists all the players you've looked at for the last 2 weeks of in-game time. Or the special "free transfers" filter on the world transfers screen.

What's the difference between the Gold Demo and Full Demo?