DDS: College Basketball 3 Released

[Gary Gorski]

Hey all - don't get around these parts much anymore but I thought I would drop a quick note to say that we just released DDS:CB3 for anyone who may be interested.

A quick overview of some of the new stuff

Recruiting Changes :
* International Recruits
* Recruiting Pipelines
* Improved AI
* Recruiting Difficulty Level

The first is pretty self explanatory. The pipeline feature is new so that when you successfully recruit a kid from a state you build a rep there. After X number of gets from a state you start to get a bonus when recruiting in that state. The last feature is pretty cool too because it allows you to add more of a challenge if you want - plus you can go into your league options at any time and change it if maybe you want to start at a small school and turn the difficulty way up but then want to normalize it again if you move to a big school.

Other Additions :

* Updated conference alignments
* Ability to select a "dream job"
* Improved game AI especially in terms of foul distributions
* Totally rebuilt UI

The dream job feature allows you to pick a school when you start your career that you would like to work up to. It doesn't mean you will get there but that one school will be a little more lenient in their hiring standards if you want that job. The AI in game has been worked on and is still evolving with some great suggestions. The biggest noticeable change of all is the UI. I totally redid it so while you will find the info in familiar locations its presented better, the game looks even nicer and there's more screen real estate to work with.

Also I took a couple of screens to show what the new UI looks like. You can see them in this thread. One thing to note - in order to do the new UI I had to take the min resolution required up to 1280x768. I'm sure that won't be a problem for 99% of you guys but I did want to mention it. As always you can download the game first and take the demo out for a spin and I still have some really good suggestions from my board that I plan on adding in so feel free to throw out your ideas too.

DDS:CB3 Screens - Wolverine Studios

Thanks for your support - hope to see some thoughts on the game from some of you guys.

[LastWhiteSoxFanStanding]

Beautiful game as always Gary.

Do you know if it works with crossover for the Mac?

Also, can you speak more about how gameplanning works? I am hoping that there is more to it than just setting the pace and movement and threes.

[Gary Gorski]

Thanks LWSFS - I'm not sure about the Mac. People report different levels of success so my suggestion would be just download it and run it as a demo. If it works ok as the demo you'll be fine.

Gameplanning works as it did in the past although I certainly would be open to suggestions for what you would like to see added

[MizzouRah]

Great as usual Gary.. I might have to dig into it this weekend!

[jbergey22]

I will end up getting this. How is it playing out right now? Buggy?

Do the stats/scores accumulate correctly? Ive always found Garys games to look great and tackle the recruiting areas better but for some reason FB college basketball seems to be better at the key areas I care more about. Game flow and statistical accuracy.

[Gary Gorski]

It plays out fine - there's an issue with a mod right now but I'm working with him to get it fixed up. There is also a poster who has been doing some statistical work to get the stats even better. I'm always working to improve the game and have been and will continue making small tweaks to get the numbers as close to perfect as possible but they're certainly very, very good at this point. As always I say grab the files, run it as a demo and see what you think of it.

[Scoobz0202]

Has anybody picked this up and have a "review"?

[LastWhiteSoxFanStanding]

I would be interested as well.

[MizzouRah]

I'm in the early stages with the demo, coaching at UMKC. The UI is improved and having a 24" monitor, Gary's done a great job putting all the information on the screen.

I'll dig into the engine a bit today and report back.

[Marmel]

I've purchased and played a number of Wolverine games and I feel I got my moneys worth out of them. I would call most of them good but maybe not great. I was excited to try this out. College hoops is by far my favorite sport and FBCB3 is excellent, but this game seemed to have much more in depth recruiting so I wanted to see for myself.

I downloaded the demo on this one and played for a while last night and I don't see myself purchasing this. I got pretty bored before I even got to the first games of the season. I was pretty excited about the recruiting, but it is all so much work to recruit and not really fun at all. I didn't even feel like I was getting any useful feedback from the recurits. The camps seem like a big waste and then all of a sudden 3 recruits committed to my school. There was a top 10 list, but I'm not positive if I ever moved up and down that list and I know I was never #1 on the lists. I only had the patience to recruit about 12 guys for 4 scholarships. All of it was so incredibly non-intuitive. I'm sure there are instructions or a guide somewhere, but nothing in game was helpful. The email is also difficult to read.

There are also some small bugs that were irksome. I didn't bother reporting them or anything, sorry.

The scope of this game seems pretty big, but it just doesn't work for me. I didn't feel like anything I was doing had any results. It was difficult to judge talent, especially with the recruits. It all felt like a day at work instead of a game. Simming games felt awfully slow and the screen moved to the next day as soon as it was done simming, so I always had to click back to review that day's games. Despite clicking the default to sim my games, the game always brought me to the "play it out" screen so I had to go back every game.

Also, I like how you are offered different positions based on your starting skill level, but there is no option that I can see to just take over whatever team you want to start a game.

The pro game was pretty good and I can recommend that one, although I think FBPB is far superior.