The Regen3 Project (A football game development diary)

[GoldenCrest Games]

Quick lesson learned..

I had a developer friend who used to always tell me not to start writing game logic until I figured out how I was going to save and load the data from file. I used to laugh at him and call him old.

Well..... as it turns out, he might have been on to something. Fancy data storage classes look cool in the logic part of the code, but they are a huge pain when it comes to saving/loading. I really wish I'd used something a lot simpler for moving data around.

ugh! I hate it when he's right.

[GoldenCrest Games]

I've been working on this for so long that my Pandora ran out of music and started playing Avril Lavigne.



However, NO MORE BUGS!

Back to features!

[GoldenCrest Games]

Still hammering through new features, but it looks like I'm going to miss the goal of being fully functional by the end of the week. I'll probably have everything working, but won't have the AI in place yet. Still, not bad!

I spent the last couple days working on a FA system. I'd really like to have the option of starting the league with an 'Allocation Free Agency' instead of the draft. The draft is cool and all, but I like having a little more control over who I build a team with. Besides, if the FA system works for allocation, it should be just fine for offseason FA.

Here's a quick shot of the progress. I don't have the "interest" AI working yet, (or the contract demand AI) but that's next on the list. I set contracts to a max of 8 years, just because I like the idea of 7-year extensions. It might be a little long, especially in the world of guaranteed contracts, but it's a good start and should give you a lever to pull for those superstar free agents.

[GoldenCrest Games]

Ugh, going back to 1 hour of programming a day is a real bummer. I should really think about investing in the lottery so I can stay home all day.



The free agency AI is taking shape! Player AI is all done, and seems to work pretty well. Player interest in your team take the following things into account:
1. What they feel their skills are worth, compared to your available cap space
2. Would they be a starter
3. Would they start on both offense and defense
4. Do they already have an offer that exceeds your cap space

That's the interest feedback you get from the main player window. If you've already made an offer to a player, he shows up in the offer window and the interest feedback is slightly different. That is the player's interest in the contract you have on the table. It's basically the same as the other interest, but the player also weighs your offer against other offers he already has.

If the interest goes down during free agency it's because:
1. He got a better offer than yours
2. You ran out of cap space
3. You ran out of roster spots
4. You signed other players and now this player isn't going to be a starter

Right now you can adjust your offer to increase the interest again. Soon you'll be able to cut players as well, to manage the roster during FA.


So far it seems to work pretty well. I'm going to start hammering through the team AI now, so I'm bidding against more than just myself, Twisters, Swarm, and T-Pain.

[GoldenCrest Games]

Free agency was much more difficult than I thought it would be, but I think I got it now!

This was the last thing I needed to have working before I could start Development (Regular) Season #1. It's pretty close to working now.

I just have to tighten up how I move from one screen to the next, run a few tests to make sure I didn't break anything else, and do a few save/loads to see that all the data is being written/read correctly and we're ready to go! After spending so much time in free agency, I changed my mind and am going back to the expansion draft to kick the league off. I just can't take FA anymore.

Wouldn't it be great if I could draft this weekend??

*crosses fingers*

[GoldenCrest Games]

Finally! It’s time to kick off the first Development Season #1! (formerly known as regular season #1)

All the screens and phases of a game season are in place, and are tenuously tied together. It all works well enough that I can start playing real seasons with players that carry over from one to the next. It’s going to be really helpful to start playing the game like it’s going to be played by everyone else. I think the improvement is going to take huge leaps forward now that I can see how it all works together. It’s always hard working on individual components, because you never really know how the experience is going to work when you finally get to play it.

Besides, actual games are a lot more fun than messing with screen and engine functionality. 🙂

The Development League is set up with 20 teams this time. The 10 teams from last season are all back:

• Reds
• Blues
• My Team: Greens (Now the Treefrogs)
• Cyans
• Yellows
• Pinks
• Avocados
• Silvers
• Purples
• Oranges

We’ve added 3 new “sponsored” teams to the mix:

• Twisters
• Swarm
• T-Pain

and we round out the league with 7 new ones:

• Rainbows
• Grays
• Browns
• Eggshells
• Slates
• Olives
• Maroons

So, you might have noticed that I’m struggling to find color names for the teams now. So true. Even though we’re reaching the bottom of the barrel, I stuck with the colors on purpose. As a reward, the two teams who reach the championship each season will get real team names and custom team logos! For the teams that already have names, they still get the logos. That should be pretty cool, right?

Everything looks good so far for the season kickoff this weekend. We’ll start with an allocation draft. Since this is going to be for the long-haul, I need to do some real scouting on the draft pool. I’ll generate a pool and post it in the blog. Hopefully I can also post the results in excel format for anyone to see how their favorite team did.

As a development goal, I’m going to try and fix 3-5 things between each game. Outside of that, we’ll just see where the league takes us.