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08-15-2017, 11:01 AM
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#51 | ||
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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That didn’t take as long as expected! Here’s the draft file I’m going to use for the season: (attached)
Some things you’ll notice, and some things to watch for during the season
Other than that, it’s time to get going! I’m going to really try to do a good job in the draft, so it might take some time. We’ll be using these teams for the next couple weeks (at least) so I want it to be effective. This is so exciting! 🙂 |
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08-15-2017, 03:46 PM
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#52 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Here’s the final draft order, with team focus:
Yellows: 2-Way Balance Blues: Offensive Specialists Reds: Defensive Specialists Greens: It’s me! Pinks: Best Player Available Purples: “Unique” Game Engine Breaking Players First up in the draft are the Yellows. The Yellows narrowed the top players down to these:  Major Hecker seems to be the obvious choice due to him being near the top in 4 positions. However, he’ll never play OL since he’s the top QB, and he’s pretty close to the slowest player in the draft. Willard Correia is the #2 WR and S, and is also one of the fastest players in the draft. The Yellows can’t pass up that balanced potential, and select Willard Correia with the #1 overall. Next up are the Blues.  The Blues have the field narrowed down to these 4. Again, Major Hecker seems to be a smart choice, but Donnie Jarmon is intriguing because he’s the #1 WR by a wide margin, and he’s the fastest player in the league. Nicky Tolliver is interesting because of the slim RB skill in the pool, but he doesn’t really have a chance at the pick. Guillermo Faria is a dark-horse pick. He’s a respectable QB, but is a beast in the return game. The Blues stay true to their focus on offensive specialists and take Major Hecker to hold down the QB spot. Next up, the Reds  The Reds are in a pretty good spot. They get the pick of the litter, when it comes to pure defensive talent. Want the best cover guy in the league? Take Sterling Healy. Want a ball-hawking safety? Take Arturo Aponte. Want the silky-smooth LB that can transition effortlessly to pass coverage? Simon Fishman is your man. Or do you want the beast on the d-line? Kirk Slade. How about a technician CB who can hit? Donnie Viera is the guy. You can’t go wrong with any of these guys. In the end, the flexibility of Simon Fishman is too hard to pass up for a defensive minded coach. Now we’re on the clock (Greens) Honestly, I really wanted Fishman. grrrr……. What I’m looking for on my team are guys who keep my attention. I want guys that I can zero in on, and be invested in every play. That means high impact players, and in this game that means speed.  My top 6 are among the fastest players in the game. Donnie Jarmon leads the pack at the unquestioned #1 speedster at the WR position. He’d be fun to watch. I just wish he were better on kick returns. Kenneth Urquhart is a beast at the KR position, but you can’t take a KR with your #1 pick…. can you? I could go defense…..but I won’t. 🙂 It’s obviously going to be Donnie Jarmon. Now the Pinks are up  The Pinks are shopping for the BPA. By that, I mean the highest rated player in in any position, with speed and power factored in. There were 7 players on the interest list, but it really comes down to the top 5. I think it’s a toss-up between the coverage skills from Aponte and Healy compared to the line dominance of Kirk Slade. After debating it over and over again, I decided the overall value of playing both sides, combined with tackling, is valuable so Rodrigo Millar becomes the close choice. Last up for round 1, the Purples  Honestly, this one is easy. There are 2 potentially engine breaking talents on the board. The elite kick returner with few other skills, and the QB/KR with 81 scramble tendency! Yeah, it has to be Guillermo Faria. Round 2+, coming soon. |
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08-16-2017, 09:48 AM
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#53 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Coming back around to the Purples, to kick off round 2.
 Looking for engine breaking talent again, I’m noticing some other guys I overlooked with the last pick. Kim Tudor has a little skill in a lot of positions, and has a potentially engine breaking combo of speed and power. Hong Langlois has the chance to break the OL logic with his skill and speed. Kim Tudor is too odd to pass up. The Purples can try him at multiple positions to see what happens. The Pinks are in a good spot with their board.  All their guys from the last round are still available. The Pinks are a little more strict on the BPA philosophy this time, and take the dominant lineman Kirk Slade. Greens are back on the clock.  This is a hard one. I still really want to pick the return specialist Urquhart, but it feels too early. I don’t want to waste my first pick (Speedy WR) by not having any QB talent, but Thurber is another specialist player. I’d be using my top 2 picks on 1-dimensional players. Tolliver could fill both the RB and 2nd DE spot, but he’s not really high-end talent enough to justify the 2nd rounder…? I do really like Dick Klinger’s (hehehe) balance and speed. He’d be a nice LB, backup WR, and KR/ST player. I think he’s going to be around for another round or two, though. Hong Langlois is intriguing because he can do a little bit of everything. I ‘m going to bet the Reds and Yellows aren’t going to take Thurber, allowing me to wait on the QB. I can’t say the same for Dick Klinger (hehehe). If I take a QB with one of my next 2 picks, that leaves Dick Klinger (hehehe) for a potential 4th round pick. He’ll never make it that far. UGH, WHAT TO DO! I think my best course of action is to take the QB Rubin Thurber now, and evaluate Dick Klinger in the next round. Reds are up.  With the first round, the Reds took a dynamic LB/CB speedster. Adding another top-end CB would allow for defensive personnel flexibility. They could play Fishman at LB or CB, depending on the matchup. That sounds pretty sweet. The Reds take Donnie Viera. Blues are next.  The Blues took superstar QB Hecker in the first. The top-end offensive talent isn’t really there in the skill positions, but the top OL is still on the board. That seems like a good fit. The Blues take Ivory Callender Last pick in the 2nd round, the Yellows  The Yellows have an easy pick here. The 2-way talent of German Cruse is too hard to pass up. Since they are picking back-to-back, the Yellows follow up with the guy who can play almost anywhere, Forrest Foltz. |
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08-16-2017, 05:57 PM
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#54 |
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College Benchwarmer
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: calgary, AB
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Really fun to see how this is coming along. Great work! Keep it up
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08-16-2017, 08:07 PM
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#55 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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The Yellows took the well-rounded Forrest Foltz with their 3rd rounder (as seen at the end of the Round 2 post)
The Blues are on the clock again.  With their first 2 picks invested in the top QB and OL, it makes sense to continue to capitalize on the passing game, and take the speedy WR/RB Young Thurston The Reds are up next.  This is an interesting pick for the Reds. They already have a star LB/CB and a 2nd star CB. They could build a formidable secondary by taking the star S Aponte or CB Healy. They could also start developing some defensive balance by taking some high end DL talent like Wicks or Flanagan. I don’t think they could go wrong with any of these guys. In the end, I think Arturo Aponte is too elite to pass up. Now the Greens are up!  I really want to take Dick Klinger (hehehe) with this pick, but he’s just not talented enough. This really isn’t that hard of a pick. Nicky Tolliver is by far the #1 RB in the draft. Even though I wasn’t planning on having a running offense, you can’t pass him up in the 3rd round. Besides, he could fill in as a 2nd DL/S, depending on how my roster ends up. Now the Pinks.  The Pinks already have a LB/WR and DL. The top-end CB skill, combined with some ability to play on offense, makes Sterling Healy a great fit for the Pinks. Now for the Purples back-to-back picks.  These are going to be easy picks. The pure speed of Hong Lanlois at the OL/DL position is going to be potentially engine breaking. They are going to use their 4th rounder on the lines also, and pair him up with Thanh Wicks. |
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08-16-2017, 08:08 PM
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#56 | |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Quote:
Thanks! I appreciate knowing that someone (besides me) finds it interesting.  |
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08-17-2017, 07:28 AM
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#57 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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The Purples picked lineman Thanh Wicks at the beginning of the 4th round, as round 3 wrapped back around.(see round 3 post)
That puts the Pinks back on the clock.  BPA is getting a little harder now. I think it comes down to Galvan and Finn. Both are top talents at the OL position. Both can play a little defense and can tackle. I think the edge goes to Abraham Galvan due to his elite-level tackling. Next up, the Greens!  I can’t screw around anymore. I need to start paying attention to my defense. Luckily, Martindale is a top defensive talent with good speed….so I obviously take my KR Kenneth Urquhart. 🙂 Reds are next.  The reds have dominated their secondary so far, but have nothing on the line. The top 3 DL prospects all would fit nicely. Matheny is a better pure defensive lineman, but the flexibility of Earl Flanagan is hard to pass up. Blues are next  This is pretty sweet, for the Blues. They already have the top rated OL. The 2nd rated OL is actually their QB (Hecker). Now they get to draft the 3rd rated OL Art Finn and completely dominate the position. This is going to be one heck of an offense. Now the Yellows get to go back to back.  It’s getting hard to find balanced players who still have talent. The Yellows go back to back here. It looks like Dario Simon is an easy pick for round 4, and then Derick Hutcherson would be a smart pick to start stacking the line with. |
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08-18-2017, 07:25 AM
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#58 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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I finished up the draft this morning. Once we got past round 4, I found that I was running out of interesting per-player observations and just needed to power through the picks. I’ll post the full draft results pretty soon….
I did have some observations that I want to get down before I forget. It was an interesting exercise, going through each player and team with focus and attention. You kind of lose perspective when all you’re doing is hammering out code every day. It was fun to look at everything as a game again. Observations:
Right now I’m finishing up a few things, before we can kick this off.
Other than that, everything is ready to go! |
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08-18-2017, 04:53 PM
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#59 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Auto-depth charts done!
I use a sort of “better than replacement” style algorithm to determine depth charts, and it seems to work pretty well. There are some issues with overall positional value calculations, but it’s a good start. Here’s how the Greens roster worked out: Offense  It looks like I locked down the QB/RB/WR trio fairly well. Jarmon is going to be a FREAK! Outside of that, my offense looks pretty bad. I’m not sure why Urquhart was listed as OL3 instead of Willette. (I’m sure it has something to do with the speed) I can adjust the positional value formula to fix that. The rest of the offensive depth chart looks ok, though. Here’s the defense  One thing is for sure, I’m going to have a fast defense. The skill might not be there, but they can run! It looks like speed is getting used too heavily in depth chart generation here, too. My DL3 and DL4 should probably be flipped, but it’s pretty close. Here’s where I need to make my money, special teams.  Between Urquhart and Dick Klinger (hehehe) we need to do some damage in return game. I imagine the defense is going to give up a lot of TDs, so we’ll need to strike back quickly. I’m also hoping the team speed will help on coverage, even if the skill sucks. Maybe I’ll move Dick Klinger (hehehe) to ST instead of KR….. One thing I’ve noticed while working on the depth charts is that I don’t really like how they look. It’s not easy enough to find the information quickly. Also, the colors (reds) are too distracting. I’m also noticing that I really want to see the secondary ratings. (tackling, scramble…) I’m not going to fix it right now, but that’s going on the list to be addressed soon. I’ll post the depth charts of the enemy team as they come up on the schedule. Hopefully that will help figure out what’s working and what’s not. I just have to finish the stat recording, and we can get rolling! Open Items List
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08-19-2017, 11:36 AM
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#60 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Obscure code error of the day:
So I've been having a LOT of problems with my kickoffs since I updated the trajectory formulas. The math always worked out, and the target indicators always were at the right spot, but the ball rarely landed where it was supposed to and the KR never ran to the right spot. To make things worse, it didn't happen every time. WTF?? Today, I was messing with pass stats and I accidentally called the kickoff play. "Well, might as well see what Urquhart has for me." so I ran the play. Sure enough, the play bombed out again. Ball landed in the wrong spot and Urquhart ran the wrong way.  However, I noticed that the ball landed in the exact same spot as the last pass incompletion. .... o..m..g.. When I updated my kick physics, I accidentally recorded the kickoff location with the passing variables. Urquhart didn't know where to go because the ball was being kicked to the last place I threw a ball. He was looking at the kick variables. passLocation != kickLocation ugh. Sometimes programming is maddening. |
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08-21-2017, 03:09 PM
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#61 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Everything looks like it’s ready to kick off the season! All the stats are in place and I haven’t had any game-crashing bugs in over 50 plays. It’s go time!
Here’s the schedule to far:  I’ll fill in weeks 6-9 after week 5, when I know which team I want to experiment with. After everyone has played each other, we’ll have a little championship game with the top 2. I might try making videos of the games to look at later. Might be easier than trying to catch everything as I play. We’ll have to see how the workflow works out. We should have the first game done today! (if everything works out) |
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08-22-2017, 12:49 PM
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#62 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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I’m really glad we finally got to the detailed playtesting phase, because I’m finding a LOT of things that need to be fixed. The first thing is that I’m not able to take video. I’m pretty sure it’s because the game engine is still too heavy, and the screen recording killed my game. I was able to do video before, so this probably has to do with the latest AI updates.
That being said, it was still a success! We played the defensive dominant Reds. Here’s their depth chart:    Outside of the defense, they are pretty brutal. I wanted the game to last about 15 minutes, so I set a timer and just played until it ran out. We ended up running 60 total plays. After trying to use the depth chart screen some more, it really needs more work (details in a later post) First off, the Greens won 49-28!
Offense: Reds QB Earl Flanagan went an impressive 2/17 for 18 yds and 1 int. I say “impressive” because our QB Rubin Thurber went 0/10. Some of that had to do with the weird throwing glitch, but most of it was because of the insane coverage the Reds put on us. I only had an open WR 2 times, and Thurber messed up the throw both times. On the other hand, Flanagan had a lot more open WRs. His problem was that he couldn’t hit anything. His throws were almost always off. On the ground, the Reds killed us. Reds RB Eusebio Jack killed us on 8 rushes for 197 yards and 4 TD. We just had no answer for him. Missed tackles are what doomed my defense. It seemed like every time Jack came around the corner, I was missing tackles and he just sprinted upfield. Our RB Nicky Tolliver never really got going and only ran 3 times for 2 yards. I probably should have kept trying, but I got lost in the passing game…. Defense: Dick Klinger got the only Int of the game! woohoo! Nicky Tolliver led the game with 4 sacks, followed by Reds Hai Matheny with 1. I would have thought the sack total to be higher on their end, but I guess my switch to max protection worked. Special Teams: Here’s where the game got out of hand. Urquhart was completely unstoppable. The Reds KR had 6 returns for 173 yards. That sounds pretty good until you see Urquhart’s line 5 kick returns for 380 yards and 4 TD, 4 punt returns for 265 yards and 3 TD. Yeah, he was that good. It’s really fun to watch Urquhart bob and weave through the middle of the defense, but come on! That’s a little too much. There are a few obvious things that need to get tightened up here. The first is defensive pursuit angles. That was really the biggest problem. If the defense would have tried harder to get in front of Urquhart, it would have made a huge difference. Also, missed tackles are a plague on the league. It’s bad enough that guys miss so many, but when they miss a tackle they get in the way of other tacklers. Urquhart’s uncanny talent for finding holes makes missed tacklers turn into extra blockers. I kept a log of observations and things that need to get worked on. Here are the new items:
Now for the good stuff!
Here’s the updated list. To be attempted before the next game
For later:
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08-24-2017, 09:43 AM
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#63 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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I finished up the updates I wanted to get done post-week1, and we’re ready to head into week 2.
Here is the list from Week 1: To be attempted before the next game
For later:
Blitzing is fixed now. It was a pretty simple fix, and I’m surprised I didn’t catch this sooner. The problem goes way back to when I created the master AI controller. I never updated the blitz AI to work with the new controller. Passing has been fixed. The problem here wasn’t the passing formulas, but how the WR velocity was being calculated. Once I made that calculation more stable, it started working again. Missed tackles (and tackling in general) has been significantly upgraded. I changed how we calculate missed tackles, to bring in back into a more realistic range. I also put some extra features into the system that turns off collisions for players who miss tackles, so they don’t block other players. It’s a little bit of a hack, but it will do until I put the final missed tackle animation in there. Defensive pursuit angle has been fixed. I really struggled with this one, until I changed how I was thinking about it. Originally I was thinking in terms of the wolf and the rabbit. The rabbit runs around, trying to avoid the wolf who wants to eat him. The wolf doesn’t run straight at the rabbit, he tries to anticipate the rabbit and cut him off. That’s what I wanted for the defensive pursuit angles. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to figure out the math, and the equations I was generating were complicated, and were going to slow down the engine even more. I was trying to solve too much of the problem all at once. All I needed was to solve the intercept point for a single AI cycle. I don’t necessarily need to anticipate what the rabbit might do in future cycles. So instead of the wolf chasing the rabbit, I thought in terms of simply giving the wolf a shotgun. Now all the wolf needs to do is know how fast the rabbit is going, what direction, the distance between them, and how fast his pellets go. He just aims for the point where the rabbit and the pellets will intersect. Now if you do this calculation each AI cycle, any speed/direction/position changes for either the wolf or rabbit will automatically be adjusted for. This also takes care of that final close-range calculation to actually hit the rabbit, because the distance is so small that you’re essentially putting the barrel of the shotgun right on the rabbit. [end metaphor] I can also eliminate all the other pursuit AIs, and just use one! I didn’t get any new plays added yet, but enough stuff has been updated that we can move on to week 2. |
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08-25-2017, 01:40 PM
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#64 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Next up, the Yellows!
   The game overall was much better than week 1. It started to feel a little more realistic. That being said, I found a whole bunch of new stuff to fix. First, the results… The Greens topped the Yellows 49-21. Again, we played for roughly 15 minutes, and ran 60 plays. Offense: Thurber had a much better day passing with 1/3 for 58 yds and 1 TD. 🙂 We leaned a lot more on the running game this time, as Tolliver had 8 rushes for 249 yds and 4TD! The Yellows QB Rosas kind of sucks, but he has 2 nice WRs. He was able to go 4/8 for 91 yds, 1 TD and 1 INT. Not too bad… RB Beaulieu did not have a good day. 14 rushes for 18 yds. Defense: The Yellows did an ok job getting to Thurber. Rosas and Foltz both had 2 sacks. That being said, the Greens defense totally dominated the Yellows line. Tolliver and Sturgeon both had 2 sacks, and Dick Klinger led the whole defense with 7 tackles, 1 int, and 4 sacks. He’s turning out to be a game changer. Special Teams: It was a good day for Urquhart again, but the recent changes tamed him a little. His final line was 2 KR for 78 yds, 4 PR for 165 yds and 2 TD. Still impressive, but not quite to the level of week 1. Notes I focused a lot more on the running game this time, and there are a lot of things to work on. Overall, it looks like blocking might be a bit too effective. At the start of the game, the DL isn’t getting off the ball very well and sometimes the OL blasts the guy back 5 yards. (not every time, though) However, the rest of the defense is actually attacking too quickly, and is getting sucked into the line too easily. If the RB breaks the run outside, he’s usually gone for a TD. We need a little more balance there. I’m also seeing that sometimes the runner gets ‘stuck’ behind the line if he breaks a tackle in the backfield. He pauses for a split second too long, and usually gets swarmed. I need the RB to be a lot more fluid in his running. Kick returns are much better, but need more work. It’s weird when the KR/PR is catching the ball. It’s leading to some odd running behavior, if they don’t catch the ball cleanly. I don’t know what one has to do with another, but it needs to get cleaned up. I’m also noticing that the pursuit angles are much better, but the defenders are waiting too long to make the adjustments. I need to them to start cutting the returner off at least 10 yards earlier than they are. (I think this has to do with the scanning range of the defenders. Easy fix) Overall, the passing game is working better. I was happy to see that the Yellows WR Simon was able to make a play, even though he’s really slow. I guess it’s not all speed after all. The passes are starting to look like they are far too slow, though. You can really see it on slant plays. The WR will be wide open on a quick-slant, but then 2 defenders will be there when the ball finally gets to the spot. I’m pretty sure this is why the passing game is suffering so much. The other reason the passing game sucks, is pass rush. It’s clearly a problem that speed rushers are killing the OL. I don’t want to artificially slow down players, but I need to find a solution. It’s just not right that you can drop any fast guy into a pass rushing spot, and dominate the line. Anyway, lots to work on! Now for the good stuff: 2 games in a row without a single crash or error! WOOHOO!!!! To be attempted before the next game
For later:
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09-02-2017, 11:06 AM
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#65 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Here's the pre-week 3 list:
To be attempted before the next game
For later:
I got cracking on the list, and then ended up spending 3 days lost down the rabbit hole. It started off innocently enough. I knocked out the special teams scanning range issue in a few minutes. As I was testing that, I got really sick of the ridiculous hang-time for punts and kickoffs. So I started messing with the kick power and aim point. Seems simple enough... type...type...type.. No, that doesn't look right. Now the kicks are getting to the spot too quickly..... maybe if I adjust the ball physics, just a little bit... *enters the rabbit hole* 3 days later I've completely scrapped my kicking and punting physics, and replaced them with cannon ballistics scripts. (modified to control kick height) Since I was messing around with ball physics, I also thought it would be groovy to scrap all my QB passing scripts, and replace them with more ballistics scripts that have been modified to adjust throw height/speed and take into account running receivers. *emerges into daylight, and marvels at the sun* I didn't plan on fixing all this now, but I did. It makes a huge impact on gameplay, too! QBs don't seem so helpless now. The ball comes out with zip, and the passes scale the height appropriately for the throw. Let's hope pass completion gets above 10%.... Now that the QBs look like they know what they are doing, I can't just have them getting sacked every other play. I also don't want to mess with speed/power at all. The solution I came up with is pancakes. OL and DL have a chance to pancake eachother now. The idea is an answer to the situation where you'd put your fastest player at DE and just out-speed the OL. Power isn't really a good answer, since it's really just there for pushing physics. Fast guys won't get pushed by slower guys very often. Let's say I want to put Urquhart at DE, what things would stop me? .... ... I wouldn't do it if he got pushed all over, but that's not going to happen on pass plays. The pass blocking equivalent of pushing a DE around, is smacking him to the ground -> pancake. If I know there's a good chance the OL is just going to flatten Urquhart, I probably won't put him at DE. He's not doing any good if he's laying on the ground. I'd be better off putting a slower guy who at least has a chance of staying in the play. The same idea works the other way, too. Even though there's a speed advantage for the DL, I'm finding that skilled non-speed DL are getting stopped regularly by bad OL. I think the pancake method would address this issue, too. I can't put Urquhart at OL to stop fast DE, because he might get smacked down and run over by a skilled slower DL. Initial testing seems like it's the right way to go. I'll need to monitor and adjust the frequency of pancakes, but it seems pretty good so far. Now that I've gotten out of the rabbit hole, I can knock out some of the smaller items on the list and move on to Week 3! To be attempted before the next game
For later:
Last edited by GoldenCrest Games : 09-02-2017 at 12:31 PM. Reason: update progress |
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09-02-2017, 01:47 PM
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#66 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Week 3: Greens vs Purples.
Here’s the Purples team:    If you remember the draft, the Purples were trying to break the game engine with their selections. It was nice to see that nothing out of the ordinary happened during the game! No crashes, bugs, or weird glitches! Now, for the game itself…. This was a tight one, which I actually thought I’d lost. I don’t get to see the score until after my 15 minute timer goes off because I don’t have an in-game interface for that stuff yet. (We won 42-35 in 76 plays) RB Tudor absolutely dominated. He started slow, but then was unstoppable as he went for 262 yds and 4 TD on 22 carries. After the first 2 possessions, I wrote a note in my log to take a look at inside running plays because they seemed like they never worked. I ran a few more inside running plays, to try and see what was going on… 16 yards, 12 yards, 8 yards, 20 yards and the Purples are at the 2. Next play up the middle ->TD. O.M.G. To be clear, it wasn’t all Tudor. The inside blocking was insane. The strength of the Purples OL was making massive holes, even when I ran a 3 DL front. I just couldn’t stop it. Unfortunately for the Purples, that was it. They had no passing game and no return game at all. We had a much better offense this time. Thurber threw 6/14 for 270 and 4 TD, 1Int. MUCH better than the previous 2 games. His speedy target Jarmon finally got to break free from coverage and make some plays. 5 rec for 198 yds and 3 TD (plus 2 drops) Tolliver couldn’t match Tudor and only managed 52 yds on 9 carries. 🙁 The other thing you might remember about the Purples is that they were the only team that drafted for special teams coverage. It made a difference. Urquhart’s line really suffered, considering how many opportunities he got. 5 KR for 183 yds and 1 TD, 3 PR for 31 yds. Yikes! Urquhart had 8 chances and only housed 1??? Now for the notes:
That’s it for Week 3! It went really well, and is starting to feel like a football game. To be attempted before the next game
For later:
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09-02-2017, 01:50 PM
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#67 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Home alone this weekend, so hopefully a lot of progress!
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09-02-2017, 06:27 PM
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#68 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Something weird is happening. The game is going too fast…?
To be more specific, there’s too much progress each frame. I’ve been investigating the incomplete pass problem, and it’s not a ratings or formula problem. The problem is the ball. It’s moving too fast.  Here’s a good example. The QB just threw the ball from the upper left of the picture. In the next shot, you can see it’s been a few frames, and the ball is nearing the pass location. (the yellow spot)  You wouldn’t expect to try to make the catch yet. I would imagine that’s going to be the next frame or 2. Well……..  That’s the next frame. He’s already missed his chance. Something is going on here, and I don’t really know what. I have a feeling it wasn’t happening before, but the engine was in such sad shape that it’s impossible to know. Somehow I need to slow the ball down without giving the defense too much reaction time. I have to slow it down, without slowing it down. sheesh. I have a few ideas, but no clue if they will work.
This is going to take some thought. I really have no idea what’s the right thing to do here. |
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09-03-2017, 12:49 PM
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#69 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Before I get to the game, I think I solved the pass catching issue. I basically reduced the pass velocity a little bit, and compensated by reducing the gravity. Since I only use gravity for ball flight trajectory, there’s not other impact on the game. By messing around with this for a while, I found that it’s really the gravity that was causing the issue. The ball was falling to the ground too fast near the end of its flight, causing the player AI to miss the catch opportunity, and causing a ton of incomplete passes that had nothing to do with player ratings.
Once I fixed that up, I fired up the game against the Pinks.    Score: Greens win 56-7 with 79 plays. Frankly, the Pinks are atrocious. The offense has a little success running to the right, because my DE2 is terrible. Other than that, they couldn’t do a thing on offense or special teams. Their defense was fairly stout, except for trying to contain WR1 Jarmon. He’s just on another level. 6 receptions on 6 targets for 169 and a TD. Jarmon also took an Int back for a TD. The Pinks special teams coverage is flat out embarrassing. Urquhart had 1 KR for 90 and a TD, followed by 3 PR for 74 yds before I took him out. He almost housed all 3 PR, but the last guy caught him. I put Sturgeon in and he managed 2 PR for 169 and 2 TD, despite being rated 28 in KR. You’d think that KR and PR are broken by the stats, but nobody else seems to be able to get solid returns on the Greens. I’ll start looking at the blocking and coverage over the next few games, to see what the difference is. It can’t just be returner speed. (maybe overall team speed?) With the newly implemented pancakes, the current pancake leader is DE1 Acker with 12. He dominated the LT of the Pinks every play, which is why they had to run right exclusively. Notes: I’m starting to feel like the top end speed is a little too fast. Guys who run in the 410+ range for speed are looking a little out of place. It’s hard to describe, but it doesn’t look quite right. I’ll have to start taking note of the weird looking speed for future adjustments. The QB reading for open WRs is off. If they have the time, the QB almost always correctly identifies a wide open WR. It’s the guys in traffic that often get thrown to when they shouldn’t. Huge plays are starting to annoy me. Nothing looks out of place during the play, but I’m getting frustrated with every scoring play being a 20+ gain. I’m wondering if my defense AI is too aggressive. It’s like one missed tackle and the guy is gone. I should see if there’s a way to be a little more conservative. Eventually I’m going to have to tighten up how I control the game situation. Now that I’m paying attention, I’m seeing there is too much chance of going “off script” and making the game flow weird. (like calling kickoff on 2nd and short) The list: To be attempted before the next game
For later:
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09-06-2017, 08:58 AM
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#70 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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For the final regular season Greens game, we take on the Blues
   The Blues drafted for offense, and they look scary! I just made major updates to how the QB sees open WRs, so taking on Major Hecker should be interesting… It wasn’t. 🙁 We ended up winning 63-21 in 70 plays. It was really a QB show, however. That was kind of cool to see. Our QB Thurber went 5/11 for 304 and 4 TD while Hecker went 6/15 for 179 and 2 TD. Both QB were seeing the open guy and making great decisions the whole game. The only reason the stat lines weren’t doubled, was because of dropped passes. That’s really starting to become a plague on the season. In this game, there’s no excuse for dropped passes. Hecker is starting an 81 and 79 at WR1 and WR2. Dropped passes shouldn’t happen for open WRs that good. That’s something that needs to get fixed. Hecker also had a hard time with DE pressure. (Much harder than Thurber) Hecker has the best OL in the league, so he shouldn’t have had a problem at all. In fact, the Blues OL should have been killing me all game. I did a decent job of getting to the QB and I bottled up the running game pretty well. I should have been getting my — handed to me. It really comes down to speed. Speed is killing everything else right now. My DE speed is too much for the OL to handle. My blitzing LB speed can’t be adjusted for either. In fact, that’s also why my special teams is so dominant. This game I made a point of not watching Urquhart (dominate again) but instead watched the special teams coverage and blocking. I also swapped out all my good ST players for speed, to test my theory. We dominated again, while the Blues struggled. Speed is the difference. My blockers get to almost every block, almost every time. If you look at the field from high, it’s often set up perfectly with a green blocker on every blue guy. All Urquhart needs to do is weave his way through the traffic. Even if my blockers are getting pushed around, they hold their blocks. That’s another thing about speed, fast blockers stay in front of the slower defensive guys. The Blues blockers that successfully make a block, will often lose their guy eventually. The faster Greens defender can break free or run around the block to make the tackle. That’s what I see on special teams, and I think it’s what is happening on offense. Even if the OL makes a block, my DL speed can adjust. Pancakes help a little, but it’s not fundamentally fixing the problem. Re-reading all that, I make it sound like speed ruins the game. That’s not necessarily true. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with this game being 80% about speed. I actually like the idea that there’s a real difference between fast and slow guys. That’s one thing I hate about Madden, NCAA football, and NBA 2Kn. There’s just not a meaningful difference between speed ratings. The problem in this game is that I need to find a better way to handle that speed difference. I can’t have OLs getting killed by crappy DL, or have ineffective ST players. Skill has to also mean something. I went into the Blues game planning to take on the defense AI for my next batch of games. Now, I’m not so sure. The Blues struggles with low-skilled high-speed players exposed a flaw that probably needs to be corrected before I spend a ton of time in the defensive AI. I’ll stick with the Blues for the next round of games, and try to address the speed/skill imbalance. My list of items to get fixed is getting pretty nit-picky, too. I’m keeping a trello list instead of trying to log it in the blog. (it’s public if anyone is interested regen3 trello) I’ve been thinking of what needs to get fixed, in terms of how I’d draft a team if I were starting a league. It might seem weird, but it help’s me see the state of the engine at any moment in time. When I look back on these posts, it might be a better way to measure progress. Here’s how it works. If I were to draft a team today, what would I look at and how would I draft? Draft Strategy
A couple of other items that we’ve been tracking. A 15 minute (70 play) game feels a little short. I think we’re going to need at least 100 plays. I’ll start going 100 plays, and see how that feels. Also, top end speed (450) is definitely too fast and the low end speed (150) is definitely too slow. I’ll keep tracking to zero in on the right range, but as of today it looks like 200-425. |
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09-09-2017, 09:37 AM
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#71 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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This is another one of those “I might want to look back and see why I made these decisions” kind of posts. (I have a poor memory)
Pass blocking has been a huge pain in the butt. The Greens team is a perfect example of why it’s not only “off”, but completely broken. I simply have too much team speed, almost no defensive skill, and I’m able to dominate the line against the Blues. That just shouldn’t happen. I spent a lot of the last 2 days’ worth of keyboard time trying out different ways of fixing the problem. Pancakes was an option I implemented last week, but it’s already annoying me. I hate seeing players get run over constantly. It doesn’t seem like football anymore. I lowered the pancakes down to a realistically rare level, but the blocking problem remains. My first attempt was to implement decision making time into pass rushing again. The theory was that pass rushers would take bad angles and run themselves out of position, allowing the OL to maintain proper blocking position. It really didn’t work. The fast DEs would run out of position, but they are so fast that it often left them with an easy path to run past the OL. Even if it wasn’t perfect, it was often good enough to get the QB. Not only that, but it just looked weird. The second attempt was to increase the blocking (collider) range of skilled OL. That kind of worked, but the DL were often able to adjust and slip the blocks to get around. In the end, it really didn’t change anything. I also tried making massive power increases with both of the first options, but it made no difference. Power only seems to show up in run blocking and special teams. So that made me rethink how I was handling pass blocking. All I really want is for blocks to matter, and for the skill of the blocker to be more important than speed. After all, most great OL are going to be slower than great CB/WR/RB. So I came up with a block engagement system. Here’s how it would work. When an OL is blocking a DL, they are put into the block engagement system. While in that system, the normal ratings don’t apply. There’s an adjustment in this system that takes into account blocker and defender skill, and moves the effective ratings around to model the way it should work. Ex: The Blues 100 OL would engage with DL Tolliver who’s rated around 40. While those guys are battling, the Blues guy’s skill would nullify Tolliver’s speed and it would look as if Tolliver was a 200 speed guy instead of a 400 speed guy. (throw in per-play randomness to keep it interesting) If Tolliver broke away from the block, he’d automatically be back at peak ratings performance again. It’s kind of cheating, but not really. 🙂 I ran a bunch of tests between the Greens and Blues, to try it out. The Greens have a poor OL and a fast DL. The Blues have an insane OL and some ok DL. When the Greens had the ball, nothing was dramatically different. I ran 10 long pass plays and got sacked on around half of them. That’s expected from my team. I have no OL skill at all. When the Blues had the ball, I ran 10 pass plays and had 0 sacks! Not only were there no sacks, but there wasn’t really any pressure at all. The game felt right, and the players didn’t’ look weird either. It just looked like the speedy DL were getting handled by better OL. Nice! I think I got it! I might want to add this into the special teams blocking, too. It might fix that problem as well. |
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09-12-2017, 08:40 AM
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#72 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Made a bunch of updates to the engine over the last few days:
With all the new updates, I thought it was a good time to run a couple of the Blues games. Just sit back and play, to see what pops up. Week 6: Blues vs Reds Blues win 42-14 The good: The good part of the game is that there were a lot fewer huge plays. Over the whole game, we only had 3 30+ yard plays. One KR, one pass, and one run. That's a pretty big step. The pass blocking was legit, too. The Blues OL did a great job against the Reds. They got a couple sacks, but overall I was pleased. I also started picking up on a few things I hadn't noticed before. In the running game, teams are having a lot more success against Man defense. When the defense switches to Zone, they usually have an easy time holding the RB to small gains. However, zone defense is getting beat in the passing game pretty regularly. Man defense is having much more success defending the pass. Not good or bad, just interesting. Now for the bad: The Reds offense was embarrassing. I get that they were a defense first team, but no team should look that bad on offense. 90% of the plays were either no gain or less than 3 yards. Come on, the Blues don't have a stellar defense. The Reds should have been able to get something going. Also, kick returns still are still a little overpowered. Not all are going for TDs, but I can tell that Urquhart would have housed at least 4. It's looking like edge containment is the problem. If the KR can get to the outside, he's usually got a pretty clear path. Week 7: Yellows at Blues Blues win in overtime 28-21! The good: This was a fun game. It was more of a defensive struggle than I expected. For some reason, the Yellows DL was getting to Hecker regularly. I couldn't figure out why, because the Blues OL is dominant and the Reds couldn't get this kind of pressure. I'll have to look at the ratings to see if there's a clue... It made me adjust my gameplan, which is kind of fun to see. Again, there were very few huge plays. Whenever there was a catch, there was usually someone in the area to quickly make the tackle. The one area the Blues were able to exploit was the WR1/CB1 matchup. If I could get the Blues WR1 on a quick slant, he was usually able to turn it upfield for a pretty nice gain. The speed difference was a killer. The bad: I found a ton of problems with this game. There's something that broke the Yellows passing game. Early on, it looked fine, but when I made defensive coverage adjustments with the Blues, the Yellows QB just broke. He'd sit in the pocket forever, just cycling through WRs. He never took off running, and could never find an open WR. It makes no sense. Hecker took off running a few times, so I know scrambling works. Why the Yellows QB won't run, I have no idea. Also, the Yellows OL was getting pushed into the QB a lot. This was causing the QB to "slide" around. It looks like he's standing on ice. On one play, he actually slid backwards 20 yards before getting sacked. wtf? There was also something weird with the KR game. The Yellows KR was extremely effective, way above his ratings. The Blues had a hard time containing him. That's weird. Overall not too bad. I'm happy with how the engine is coming. I have to tighten up some of the QB AI and special teams, but it's looking pretty nice. I should accomplish everything I wanted to in Exhibition Season 1 before the playoff game. I'm starting to draw up the Exhibition Season 2 and 3 goals now, and it looks like that's all I'm going to need. If everything goes well, we'll then move on to real seasons! |
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09-15-2017, 08:39 AM
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#73 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Just finished up the games with the Blues. Today we played the Purples and the Pinks.
Before getting into the results, I should mention that the stint with the Blues was largely a success. I took on the Blues to tighten up offense, and it's safe to say that it's light-years ahead of where we were during the Greens games. I just updated the run blocking logic and now both pass and run blocking are really effective. In fact, they might be a little too effective. Granted, I'm using the Blues team, who have the 3 most elite OL in the league. For run blocking, I changed how OL select their block targets. Before, I was using a really simple "who's closest" system based on identifying key defenders that need to be blocked. Now I use a system that figures out the angle between the point-of-attack and the key defenders, and then figures out who the best OL is to make the right block. After that block is determined, it goes down the list of defenders until everyone has a blocking assignment. (all pre-snap) Post-snap we just go into the open-field system. Once the blocking AI was updated, I really needed to redesign my running plays to take advantage of new blocking schemes. If you don't pay attention to where you line blockers up, and where the PoA is, you'll get weird blocking responsibilities. Now on to the games! Week 8: Blues vs Purples This was a fun game. The Purples have a lot of weird players that have skills I wasn't prepared for. In the end, the Purples rolled us 21-42. I had no answer for the Purples RB and special teams. The Purples special teams is so good that their KR was able to house a kick, even though he has (at best) average speed! It seemed like it took him forever to get there, but he slowly bobbed and weaved his way through the excellent ST blocking until he finally plodded into the endzone. I'd never seen a slow guy take back a kick until today. It was pretty funny. The Purples also had some success with their running QB. Halfway through the game, I started calling plays I knew would result in the QB taking off. It was actually fairly effective. Week 9: Blues vs Pinks Once again, the Pinks were atrocious. We were up 56-21 after about 10 minutes when I called it. Frankly, it stopped being fun. Something in fundamentally wrong with the Pinks. They suck at every aspect of the game. I'll have to dig into it after the season and figure out what the difference is. On offense it didn't matter what play I called, it was almost guaranteed to be a first down. On defense, I just had to try and not let them break a run. The home-run ball was their only hope. In the arms race between offense and defense, the offense is clearly winning. Now that the games with the Blues are completed, I'll take over the Reds for their 3 remaining games and try to tighten up the defense. After that, we only have 3 games left in the season! Based on the engine updates made while running the Blues, here's the new draft strategy:
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09-17-2017, 05:49 PM
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#74 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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I don't have a lot of mental energy on the weekends to do hardcore programming, but I was able to play around with the depth chart screen!
I really like the functionality. I can move players around while looking at the formation and play, which is really useful. (not to mention just being able to see who is lined up where, and the speed/power of who I'm lined up against) I still need to refine the colors and the panel transparency, but it's definitely going in the right direction.  |
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09-20-2017, 07:27 AM
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#75 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Reds vs Yellows
Just for recap, the Yellows drafted for 2-way players and the Reds were all defense. That being said, the Yellows dominated this game defensively! Final score: Yellows 14 - Reds 0. That's right, 0 points. The first ever shutout. Granted, if I'd put field goals in the game, the Reds would have gotten a couple of those. We moved the ball a couple drives, but just couldn't punch it in. The Yellows just had too much talent on both sides of the ball. It didn't show up against the Greens because WRs were so bad, but now the Yellows passing attack is really hard to stop. With the upgraded defensive AI we were able to stop the homerun ball, but my poor Reds just got dinked and dunked all the way down the field. The score would have been a lot worse if it weren't' for several goal-line stands we pulled off. Here are a few things I learned from the game: 1. Speed is the #1 rating in this game, there's no way around it. The Yellows were faster than the Reds, and it really showed on the field. Even though my defense is extremely skilled, I had to run a zone almost all game to deal with the difference in speed. On the other hand, the Yellows were able to stay in base man defense and blanket my receivers. That allowed them to send blitzers and kill any passing attack I was able to get going. For Exhibition Season 2 I'm going to have to tightly control the distribution of speed, and use it appropriately in the draft. 2. I need field goals. I really wanted to turn punts into a potential scoring play, but it's not going to work. It got really frustrating to get inside the 5 and have no options for salvaging a few points on 4th down. Punting from the 5 just seems stupid. I'm going to have field goals in before the next Ex-Season. 3. The overall skill level of the league sucks. Frankly, I didn't make enough good players for this season. I'm ok with every team having scrubs, but this is ridiculous. Every team on the field is made up of 1-2 studs, 1-2 average guys and 4-6 complete garbage players. (not to mention the 4 guys that were so bad they didn't even make it on the field) That's just not going to be fun. That's probably also why there are so many huge plays. If I spread the talent out more, the game flow will probably be better. 4. Play design is going to be important for defense. I'm already seeing that I ignore a couple defensive plays because they put my players in bad spots, and it shows up on the field. I didn't really put a lot of effort into defensive plays because it never really mattered in Madden/NCAA/2K. With 8 guys instead of 11 on the field, each player's positioning and coverage really matter. When I was designing an 11 player game, I could just throw 11 guys out there in any fashion and have a reasonable defense. There are a couple things to tighten up before I run the next game. (mostly having to do with bad RBs pausing at the line of scrimmage and scrambling QBs) If nothing crazy pops up, I should be able to finish off the Reds games this week. That just leaves the last 3 games of the season for special teams refinement, and then we're at the championship! |
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09-21-2017, 08:01 AM
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#76 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Reds vs Purples
This game went into overtime, where the Purples finally pulled it out 2-0. That's not a typo. 2-0. Technically, I don't have safeties in the game (I completely forgot about it) but the Purples made a run-stuffing tackle in the end zone to "end" the game. I have to give them credit for that. Both teams moved the ball a little but, but couldn't seal the deal. This is another game where field goals would have made the difference. (definitely coming in Ex-Season 2) It was kind of nice to see a whole game without a 30+ yard breakaway. There was also a nice mix of passing and running. One area that didn't look right was the QB scrambling. It might be a ratings issue, but they QBs look really dumb when trying to take off. They run into the line, then run away, then spin around, then try to run again.... then get tackled. Granted, the Reds DL is pretty good, but the Purples scrambling QB should have been able to do more. I'll have to dig into that before the last Purples games. Other than that, most of the remaining items are probably going to be done in the offseason. The last few things on the list have to do with game-flow and big changes like field size, field goals, ratings balance, play design, safeties ...etc. If I can get the QB scrambling thing down, before the end of the season, we can call Exhibition Season 1 a success. 4 games left! |
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09-21-2017, 08:18 PM
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#77 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Reds vs Pinks:
Reds lose another one. 7-14. The Reds have a stellar defense, but the offense just can't sustain a drive and punch it in. The Pinks are generally pretty bad, so I was really trying to figure out what's wrong with the Reds. Obviously the team speed is an issue, but we can't run the ball, either. In fact, the Pinks had more success running against the elite Reds defense than the Reds could get going against either the Pinks or Purples. (both pretty bad teams) Thanks to the new depth chart feature, I was able to figure it out! I shuffled the OL around a few times until i started getting some success on the ground. The difference was power. I've never been looking at power before, but now I'm seeing it in the depth chart screen, and it makes a big difference. 2 of the top 3 OL for the Reds have a 1 power rating. Most of the top DL/OL are in the 7-9 range. That's a huge difference. We're getting no push at all, and my line is getting pushed back. They are also getting pushed back into the pocket on passing plays, which is killing my scrambling. wow. As it turns out, your line needs to be strong! Well, it also helps to have a QB that can get the ball in the same zip code as the WR. All of the Pinks points were on turnovers. The first TD was on a interception return for TD. The second was an Int that was returned to the 7 or 8, and then punched in a couple plays later. One other thing that happened in this game is that I started relying on some of the other plays that I'd been ignoring. With no downfield passing game, I started running a passing play that has the RB swing out of the backfield. I almost never run this play because most of the time the RB catches the ball and gets tackled behind the line. However, with the Reds, there aren't many other options. It actually made some positive yardage. It was interesting to be forced into adjusting my play calling, and then to see it start working. Almost like a real game! 3 games left! All between the Purples, Pinks, and Yellows. All 3 teams have a shot at the championship. The Greens have locked up the top spot by going 5-0. The Blues have finished all their games and are 3-2. The Purples are 1-1 with the Pinks and Yellows at 1-2. The tiebreaker is going to be point differential. The Pinks and Yellows are fairly negative right now. It looks like the Purples are going to be the favorite on the strength of the 42-21 win over the Blues in week 8. A Purples vs Greens rematch would be fun! That was a close one last time. |
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09-22-2017, 08:12 AM
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#78 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Purples vs Yellows
Purples win 21-0. This eliminates the Yellows from playoff contention. It's down to the Blues, Purples, and Pinks for the remaining slot. The Purples have that great running QB, but I think there's a timing issue in my scramble AI that causes him to stay in the pocket too long. I abandoned that strategy pretty quickly and went to a straight-up ground game. After 3 drives, I found the weakness in the Yellows defense. Runs to the left seem to have a lot more success than any other, so I put the hammer down and kept going. The Yellows threw every defense possible at it, and had very little success in slowing it down. There is a play that blitzes off the left that sometimes worked, so they were forced to keep calling it. Eventually the Purples started varying the offensive play call and ran to the right, which nullified any hope the Yellows found. On offense, the Yellows didn't have much. They have a couple nice WRs, but the QB is so bad that it just didn't work. 2 deep Ints broke the back of the Yellows offense. The Purples turned those takeaways into 10+ play drives and ate up the game clock. Overall, a pretty fun game. No special teams excitement, which is kind of a bummer. We'll probably have to wait for the Greens and Urquhart to take the field to see that again. 2 games left! |
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09-22-2017, 10:48 AM
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#79 |
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Behind Enemy Lines in Athens, GA
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This may have been mentioned/discussed previously, if so I apologize for overlooking it.
It's also something waaaaaaaaaaay the hell down the road, so apologies for that too. But ... just looking at your depth chart screens, the rating at every position & so forth, I couldn't help but think how that approach would make a darned good base for a high school football game.
__________________
"I lit another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you to the contrary, I am always lighting another cigarette." - from a novel by Martin Amis |
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09-22-2017, 05:24 PM
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#80 | |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Quote:
I'd planned on a college version, but I hadn't thought of a high school version. I imagine a high school version could provide for some really interesting and varied gameplay. Each level of football would require a different management/coaching focus, and could create a completely different experience around the same engine. Besides, it would be fun to see your high school stars move on through college and then maybe to the pros. There's a lot of potential there! |
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09-22-2017, 05:51 PM
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#81 | |
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Behind Enemy Lines in Athens, GA
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Quote:
The campaign mode would get awfully complex -- the need to account for not only skill development but actual physical growth at a considerably larger scale than needed for higher levels/older players, just for one thing -- but seeing the players laid out more as athletes (that you had to determine how to utilize) instead of players with fairly well-defined positions/roles, it fit perfectly with a discussion I had a few days ago about how one of the real challenges at small/medium sized high schools (think: rosters of 30-60 players) was figuring out how to allocate talent to each side of the ball*. Then on top of that, how much/how little to use players on both sides of the ball once their primary roles are set. It's not unusual to have your best QB also be your most capable LB and no worse than your second best RB ... but at the price of fatigue, increased injury risk, and diminished practice time. It'd be one helluva expansive model to get right, but your basic concept seems like it would lend itself to tackling the problem. *my HS alma mater is currently averaging around 40 ppg through four games ... but giving up nearly 45 ppg, which would be the worst scoring defense in the 60 year history, by a fair margin. Basically the offense has all the experienced players and most of the talent, the defense is playing as many as nine Fr/So at a time, the tradeoffs are rather obvious.
__________________
"I lit another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you to the contrary, I am always lighting another cigarette." - from a novel by Martin Amis Last edited by JonInMiddleGA : 09-22-2017 at 05:52 PM. |
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09-22-2017, 07:05 PM
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#82 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Pinks vs Yellows
What a difference it makes when you're not playing against the Reds defense! The Yellows dominated this one 35-7. The Pinks couldn't slow down the Yellows offense at all. It was a completely different feel than when the Yellows were up against the Reds. While the Yellows QB has a really hard time with the deep ball, he's great at the 0-10 yard range. I just ran a bunch of drags and slants for the fast WRs, and worked my way down the field. It's a little hard to believe they are eliminated from the championship, after playing them against the Pinks. But hey, that's how Exhibition Season 1 rolls. That officially eliminates the Pinks. Now it's down to the Purples and Blues. Frankly, unless the Purples get completely blown out here, they get in. The Purples are 3-1 now with the Blues at 3-2. The Blues have a +2 point differential while the Purples are currently sitting at +37. I think it's safe to pencil them in. |
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09-22-2017, 07:36 PM
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#83 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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In the last game of the regular season, the Purples took on the Pinks.
This was a surprisingly ugly game. I had assumed the Purples would roll over the Pinks, but they barely pulled it out 14-7. Not much offense on either side. There was one section of the game where both teams traded '3 and outs' about 6 times before someone got a first down. Just plain ugly. Honestly, I was pretty happy when it was over. However, the Exhibition Season 1 title game is set! Greens vs Purples. |
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09-24-2017, 01:17 PM
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#84 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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We made it to the championship of Exhibition Season 1! After it all shook out, the final game is between the Greens and the Purples. The Greens were 5-0 with the Purples going 4-1. The lone Purples loss was to the Greens in week 3 42-35.
The engine went through a lot of refinement over the season. I think we ended up in a good spot, which allowed me to get through the rest of the season pretty quickly, and with few engine changes. On to the game!
I'm a little sad my Greens didn't pull it off, but it was a pretty fun game. Overall, I think the biggest problem with the engine right now is speed. Everything else looks like it might be pretty good. Shrinking the field might be a good idea, too. I'll have to look into that for Ex Season 2. Here's the final TD.  |
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09-29-2017, 06:10 PM
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#85 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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The prep for Exhibition Season 2 is cruising along! I’ve cleaned up a lot of the bugs found in Ex1 and I’ve started putting some serious time into special teams. There’s a lot to be done here. Kick returns were being brought back for TD at an alarming rate, special teams defenders had almost no chance against decent blocking, and the punt return team had all the discipline of a box of kittens. It also become pretty obvious we need field goals.
I’m going to spend the next few days concentrating on special teams. Here’s the priority list of what needs to happen:
After the special teams overhaul is done, I can move on to the new play calling interface. From there, I should be able to tackle the draft screens and then it’s off to Ex2! |
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10-07-2017, 10:25 AM
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#86 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Before we get into the play calling stuff, it’s been a while since I’ve logged progress so there are a few things to catch up on.
Special teams needed the most work, coming out of Exhibition Season 1. I really made an effort not to call ‘good enough’ on the special teams upgrades until I’d be happy with them being included in the final game. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I think I finally got there.
I set up the new play calling system to be able to work with the upcoming coaches system. The basic idea is that you have to hire a coach for your team, and that coach comes with a playbook. The only control you have over which plays you get, is who you hire as a coach. The reason I use this system is because I want each team to have different style of play. I can control style of play by limiting what is in each team’s playbook. As an example, my Greens team is going to probably have a wide-open passing attack while the Purples might rely more on screens. I’m sure the Blues will just run the ball. Having limited access to plays isn’t enough. The CPU teams need to know which plays work in which situations. They also need to know if a play hasn’t been very effective, and call that one less often. In order to do that, I need to link the plays themselves to the coach AI in some way. The most effective way I could think of was to have the coach AI own its individual playbook. Each coach would be able to track the effectiveness of each play. Each AI coach could also tailor their roster management to the plays in the playbook, so they are able to build effective rosters. As the player, you’ll do the same thing. I imagine the system will start to create interesting roster and coach management choices. Do you take the star RB in the draft, even though you have a pass-heavy playbook? Do you fire your coach and get a new one to take advantage of the RB? Do you skip him and take a less talented player who fits your scheme better? That sounds like fun to me! So that’s how the system is designed. The output of all that is a playbook that’s limited to 40 offensive plays and 40 defensive plays. (not counting special teams) That’s all you get. Most coaches won’t have 40 of each, but that’s the max. I’ve started implementing the interface, and it seems to work pretty well.  I know I’m really button-heavy right now, but I am doing everything I can to avoid sliders. I absolutely hate sliders. They cause far more problems than they solve. However, that means I need to get creative about my button usage. Kind of the same way the depth chart is evolving, I expect this will get refined as we go. The basic design seems to work, though. The individual play buttons don’t have anything but the play name on them. I toyed with the idea of putting the personnel package on the button, but scrapped it because it took up too much space. Instead, when you click on the play button it immediately is drawn on-field. You can cycle through all the plays you want until you see one you like, then you have to click the “Call Play” button to commit to it. Before you click that button, you can browse as much as you want. You can also toggle the player names and depth chart position if you want. (the N button) Right now you have the ability to change your depth chart at the play calling screen, but I think I’m going to remove that before Exhibition Season 3. I want to avoid the tactic of moving your 1 stud WR around on every play, just so you don’t have to develop any depth. I’ll mess around with it over the next season to be sure, though. One thing I hadn’t anticipated when implementing play calling is the amount of work a game is now. I have to do a lot of clicks to call both the offense and defense. That’s super annoying. Before we hit Ex2, I really want to get some basic CPU play calling AI in place. There’s no way I have the patience to call plays for both teams all season. |
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10-07-2017, 10:31 AM
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#87 | |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Quote:
Just to follow up on this. I've been planning the next projects and my development cycle lately, and I think the idea of doing a HS version has real promise! As of right now, I'm going to plan on following this project up with a HS version, instead of moving to a college version. I'll fill the gap between the regen3 project and the HS project with a college game sometime later. I can think of so many interesting things that a HS game brings to team management, that I just can't wait to get cracking on it! |
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10-09-2017, 09:12 PM
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#88 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Quick update:
The last thing I need to finish up before kicking off Exhibition Season 2 is almost done! Coaches, playbooks, and AI playcalling has been implemented. (more on that in another post) I've also finished up a lot of the game flow stuff, so I only need to worry about my own team during games. That's really going to let me focus in on exactly what I'm calling and how it works out on the field. I decided to hold off on the in-game draft screens until Ex Season 3 or Regular Season 1. It's not necessary for what I'm trying to accomplish this season, so it's not really worth holding up the season for it. I'm a little stuck on draft pool generation right now. It just isn't looking right. We're not getting the right balance between star players, good players, and scrubs. I think I'm going to have to sleep on this, and tackle it again in the morning. Hopefully we'll get to start the draft sometime this week. #GoGreens! |
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10-10-2017, 08:08 PM
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#89 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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…and just like that, we’re officially ready to kick off Exhibition Season 2!
Exhibition Season 1 was focused on making the game engine work correctly. Now the engine is working pretty well, and plays a pretty entertaining (and believable) brand of football. Exhibition Season 2 is going to be focused on moving from simulating a single play, to simulating full games. Here are the specific items I want to accomplish this season:
As before, I’ll try to limit my programming time between games to 3 days. If something is going to take longer than that to implement, I’ll try to break it up or move it to the offseason. So with that, on to Ex2! Most of our teams are back from last season, with the exception of the Pinks. Frankly, they were embarrassing. The Pinks have been replaced with the Oranges, who will lead off the draft with the #1 overall pick. We have a completely new draft pool, except for 1 player… That’s right, Urquhart is back. 🙂 I made sure to add a section in the player generation code to preserve my favorite player(s) from each season. Urquhart will have all his key ratings exactly preserved, but will have the opportunity to gain (or lose) points in his other skills. I don’t know exactly what he’s going to look like yet, but he’s going to be 99 rated in KR and keep his 412 speed. Here’s the draft order (in reverse standing from Ex1) Oranges: The Oranges come in with a focus on offensive and defensive line excellence. They are going to draft for line. Reds: The Reds will draft for defense again. It didn’t help them much last season, but maybe the changes to the engine will make a difference. Yellows: The Yellows have slightly shifted strategy from balance to Best-Player-Available. Usually BPA is going to be the same as the most balanced, though. Blues: The Blues will draft offense again. They did ok last season, but it’s going to be interesting how effective it is now. Greens: My team. I’ll just go by gut feel again. Purples: Since it worked last season, why change a good thing? The Purples are going to try and draft unique engine-breaking players and special teams. I should have the draft file ready by tomorrow. It’s go time! |
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10-12-2017, 11:23 AM
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#90 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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It’s draft day! ok, actually the draft is already over, but here’s how it went, pick-by-pick. (with the results spreadsheet)
Results Spreadsheet Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
Round 5
Round 6
Round 7
Round 8
Round 9
Round 10
Round 11
Round 12
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10-13-2017, 12:30 PM
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#91 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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As we head into the second exhibition season, it’s probably a good idea for me to get down all the things I’ve noticed about the game and process. I’ve found myself looking over old posts a lot lately, to see what I was thinking. I’m sure I’ll come back to this one before too long.
Ex2 Draft: This is the last time I do an offline draft. It’s a huge pain in the butt! It’s hard to put yourself in the mind of each team’s GM and pick players like they would, while still being totally invested in your own team. (not to mention the logistics of getting it all into the game) By the later rounds my attention was starting to wane, and I made some bad picks for the Greens. I’m going to make sure the in-engine draft is set up before the next exhibition season. The Greens Roster and Play Creation: My team sucks. I should have a legit running game (and Urquhart), but my passing game is going to be embarrassing and I have almost no defense. That being said, it gives me a real incentive to create new plays. Almost all my plays so far have been made for the Ex1 Greens so they are based around a spread offense. Now that I have the opposite, I have a reason to start developing the power running game and the screen game playbooks. It’s already making a difference with the game engine. I uncovered a bunch of bugs with the way OL pull out for screen passes, and how the QB AI breaks down on designed roll-out plays. I never would have been as focused on those details if my entire offense wasn’t going to be based around the run and screen passes. I’m going to bet that I’ll get a lot closer look at punting, too. 🙁 College Draft: That needs to happen soon. It’s funny, but I can’t help but look at my team and think “I’m going to take a QB #1 in next year’s draft….. oh crap. There’s no daft.” It’s weird to be looking forward to something I haven’t started planning yet. I think that just means it needs to happen soon. Keeping it Simple: I’m having a hard time with scope-creep in the engine. I have to continually remind myself that this is a 1st generation game, and I shouldn’t try to cram every AAA-quality feature into it that I can. I need to focus on getting the core game experience right, and then I can add the frills. Keep repeating that……… The Depth Chart Interface: I love it. 🙂 The usability is awesome. I bring it up a lot during testing to swap players around, and it’s really easy. However, it’s not going to be intuitive for a new player. I’ll have to figure out how to deal with that. It makes perfect sense to me that you click on a player, and then click on the position you want to swap him into. I can see how that might be hard to understand the first few times you play, though. The Playcalling Interface: ……..eh. I like the idea, but the execution isn’t working for me. Not sure exactly what’s wrong, but it’s kind of “stressful”. I have to find a way to capture some of the depth chart feel. Defense: I fear there are still holes in the defensive AI, specifically when it comes to defending the screen pass and outside runs. ugh! That’s frustrating. Player ‘Platforms’: I almost decided to take them away (again) because it seems to “gamey”. Frankly, it’s kind of dumb to have guys running all over the field, but then also have them stuck to plastic game piece platforms. That being said, I don’t know that I want the game to be realistic. Maybe I need to commit to the concept and start pushing the realism closer towards the ridiculous? Just abandon the whole idea that these might be real players. Don’t even pretend there’s the possibility, and just embrace that these are game pieces. On the other hand, that kind of messes up the whole point of a football league. Maybe the best idea is somewhere in the middle. Keep the players as real players, but use the platforms as an implied “augmented reality” view of the game. I kind of like that idea, but I’m still not sure how it works. Presentation is coming later in the development plan, but I might as well start thinking about it now. |
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10-16-2017, 01:44 PM
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#92 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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So we played the first game of the Ex2 season, and.....well...... I'm not so sure it went real well.
Overall, it was nice not to have to call the CPU plays. The game itself flowed a lot better. It was also nice to see how the engine runs with completely different players. That being said... Urquhart broke the game. 3 KR for 108 yds and 1 TD, 9 PR for 404 yds and 6 TD. yikes. Frankly, that's why I kept him in the league. I need to make sure freaks of nature don't completely break the engine.....and he broke it. I'n not 100% sure what to do about this. It could be a matter of the Oranges ST being so crappy. I've been testing my updates against the Purples team, and I don't see anything close to this. It was just sad to watch the Oranges try to catch Urquhart. I wanted to cry for their dignity. There was also the problem of the Oranges offense. We ended up winning the game 65-7. They have a top-2 QB and the best OL, but couldn't manage even the slightest bit of offense. The WRs couldn't get open, and that was pretty much the end of it. That's really not acceptable. I'm going to see what I can do with the punt coverage and offense before the next game. If I can't get Urquhart under control, and get more reliable offense from WR-poor teams, we might have to call a false-start on Ex2 and make some more engine adjustments before trying again. |
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10-16-2017, 02:16 PM
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#93 | |
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Behind Enemy Lines in Athens, GA
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Quote:
Either that yardage is a typo OR those were some normal kick returns with one medium/long one for a TD.
__________________
"I lit another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you to the contrary, I am always lighting another cigarette." - from a novel by Martin Amis |
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10-16-2017, 03:04 PM
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#94 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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The kick returns were ok, it was the punt returns that were alarming. The Oranges had no chance on punt coverage.
Last edited by GoldenCrest Games : 10-16-2017 at 03:05 PM. |
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10-17-2017, 07:31 AM
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#95 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Ever have one of those "OMG I'm dumb!" moments?
I've been dissecting the punt coverage code and can't find anything I want to change. I really like how it's set up. Then I took a look at the players to try a few things.... The Oranges have an embarrassingly bad special teams roster. So I started down the road of trying to figure out how to make ridiculously bad ST be able to cover punts against a team who invested a lot into ST, when it occurred to me. Why the hell would I do that? If you don't invest in special teams, you should pay for it. That being said, we can't have teams giving up 6 punt return TDs a game. Then it dawned on me. There's actually such a simple option, that I feel dumb for not thinking of it sooner. Why not just punt the ball out of bounds? Ugh. If I'm the Oranges coach, I'm obviously not going to kick the ball to Urquhart every time. I'm also not going to go for it on 4th every time. I'll be kicking that damn ball as far out of bounds as I possibly can, and just take the poor punt distance. I should have this implemented within the hour, so we're back on track! |
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10-18-2017, 07:38 AM
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#96 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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I should have known that the success in Exhibition Season 1 was too good to be true.
I made a bunch of adjustments to address the punt return issue and the "slow WR" issue, and replayed the game against the Oranges. Still a blowout, but a little more realistic. My log of items to fix got pretty long during the game, though. Before diving into the fix-log, I played the Reds. I just wanted to be sure what I was seeing was real, and not just because of the Oranges. The list got even longer. UGH! I think the new player pool is exposing a lot of things I didn't see in Ex1. Some of the heavy-hitters are:
I'm not going to waste any more time trying to get Ex2 to work. I'll just use the player pool to try and balance the engine again, and then see where we end up. I'm going to give myself a week to fix everything. After that I'll generate another player pool and see if the engine holds up. If it does, we'll have to see if Ex2 still makes sense, or if we start preparing for Ex3 instead. |
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10-19-2017, 01:03 PM
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#97 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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There's a small chance I was being overly dramatic in my last update.
I put quite a few bonus keyboard hours in since then, and I think I have everything sorted out. Here are the heavy-hitters: Slow WRs being useless: Even in Ex1, slow WRs were kind of useless. I thought I'd made enough changes to the engine so that it's possible to have a highly skilled slow WR be effective. It didn't work at all. The Oranges have a skilled slow WR crew and they couldn't do a thing. What I ended up doing was rethinking how I handle WR skill. I've tried a bunch of things to model WR skill, but they haven't been working very well. Now I'm using something I call "coverage radius" to model the difference between WR skill. I'm assuming that any WR, no matter the skill, can run routes. What separates the good WRs from the bad ones is the ability to catch. Specifically, the great ones can catch in traffic.  This is a good visual. The WR on the left is rated 81, and the one on the right is about 60. The circle around them represents the distance they are considered 'uncovered' for catching calculations. The better WRs will have a much smaller coverage radius than worse ones. This means that a great WR could be covered fairly tightly and still have a high probability of making the catch. A really bad WR will have a lower chance of making the catch if any defenders are around. The net output of this is the ability to catch balls in traffic. Slow WRs with great skill can now catch balls when defenders are around. Bad WRs need to be wide open. The catching calculations also take skill into account, but in a pretty uncomplicated way. I also implemented decision making time for the defense breaking on the pass. For lower skilled CB/S, they don't break on the ball immediately, and skilled WRs will sometimes get that little extra room. Breakaway Plays: Still had waaaaaaay too many breakaway plays. I think the player pool for Ex2 made it worse. This one took a lot of experimenting, but the final solution ended up being relatively simple. It has to do with intercept points and decision making.  Here's the Greens RB breaking a run outside and turning upfield. That little yellow sphere is what the Orange player at the top calculated as the intercept point to hit the RB. It's actually correct. There's nothing wrong with that calculation. However, if the Greens player deviates at all from that path, the decision making time of the Orange player could cause him to continue to aim at that yellow sphere for too long. What usually happens then, is that the Orange player ends up aiming at a point behind the Green player and gets into chase mode. That almost always means a breakaway TD. I adjusted the intercept calculation so now the Orange player is aiming at the white sphere 3-5 yards upfield of the actual intercept point. That small change made a huge difference. The Orange player will take a conservative intercept angle until he's within a smaller distance to the Green player, at which point he'll change to the actual intercept point (tackle attempt). And just like that, breakaway plays are not nearly the problem they were before! QB Skills: This was easy. I tweaked the accuracy formula and got a better range of accuracy. While I was at it, I monkeyed with the progression reads and made it so highly skilled QBs can read progressions faster, and can cycle through them easily. Bad QBs will struggle to get through the progressions once. (But every QB can read the first progression) Blocking: Made a lot of updates to the blocking system, and it's looking good now. Power offensive lines can move the DL at a good rate. Speed offensive lines can pass block like crazy. However, both need high OL skill to be effective or the DL will eat them alive. Special Teams: (the Urquhart problem) The intercept angle update helped this a lot, but I also made changes to special teams coverage/blocking. Coverage players can break off blocks a lot easier now. Also, when the runner passes by, the defender can break free and pursue. This helps on those plays where Urquhart makes a ridiculous weave back through the blocks to get across the field. It always looked cool, but completely unrealistic that nobody hit him. There were a lot of other small items I had to fix. I ended up taking care of them when I got stuck on these big items. In the end, it looks like Ex2 is still a go! |
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10-23-2017, 10:33 AM
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#98 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Lots of interesting progress since last time!
Exhibition Season 2: I’m definitely ready to kick off Ex2, but I’ve made a lot of progress on some cool features so the plan is being adjusted. (More on that coming) Coaches: Here’s where a lot of the recent work went. Frankly, it was a huge pain to call plays for both teams. My laziness cause me to move up the AI coach system from Ex3 to now. At first, I just hacked together a system that would randomly call an offensive or defensive play, just so I didn’t have to do it. It quickly became apparent that I still had to call special teams plays for the CPU, or the game would crash. Ok, I’ll just have them call those too….. In order to do that, I had to put situational awareness into the coach AI. Cool, that’s not hard. I’ll just add some basic situational awareness in……. Now it works, but I have to double-check that the CPU isn’t calling my really bad plays. (I have some really poorly designed plays). I’ll just remove those from the playbook……. Now I don’t have enough plays. 🙁 No problem, I’ll just start creating plays……. Of course, all the plays are created for the Greens roster. I really don’t need to see pocket passers running the QB dive. Now I have to double-check the CPU playcall, which is just as bad as calling it myself. I can fix that, I’ll just have the coach AI keep track of which plays worked and which didn’t! Then they can focus on the plays that work…….. Ok, in order to do that, I need to create a system to track how each play worked during the game….. and I might as well track over the whole season. Wait, if I want to track over the whole season, I need to be able to save and load that information…. ugh! *down the rabbit hole we go* When I came back out of the rabbit hole, the entire AI playcalling system was done! Which then brings us to the bonus activity and the Ex2 plan. As I was setting up the Ex2 schedule and getting ready to replay the Oranges, a thought occurred to me. I don’t really want to play the games for the non-Greens teams. I don’t really care who wins between the Yellows and the Reds. *DING!* OMG, I already have everything in place for CPU vs CPU games! I just need to make a few changes so the game keeps running when I’m not clicking the buttons.  And there is it. I put all 4 teams on CPU mode and let both games run for 100 plays each. (simultaneously) I even walked away and got a cup of coffee while it ran! No crashes, no stoppages, and no errors! The first actual CPU-CPU game(s) in regen3 history!! The purpose of Ex2 was to make sure whole games could be played. I’d anticipated that it would take all season to get it working, but we’re already there. Ex3 was planned to start rolling this into a league-wide structure, but I’m not quite ready for that yet. So here’s the new plan: Ex2 is going to be more like Ex2.5. I’m going to add a couple more teams and regenerate the player pool. I’ll also create a way to do the allocation draft from within the game. Once that’s done, I’ll kick off Ex2.5. During the season, I’ll finish up all the animation stuff I wanted to do in Ex2, and build the league stuff I wanted to have done in Ex3. Once we get to the end of Ex2.5, we’ll see if there’s a need for another exhibition season, or if enough was completed that we can just roll into the first regular* season. Exciting times! *The difference between the exhibition seasons and the regular season is history. Once regular seasons start, players and history carry over from one season to the next. |
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10-27-2017, 06:58 PM
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#99 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Instead of a long-winded explanation of the progress since last time, I thought a screenshot would do.
 I've run through the draft a few times from beginning to end with no errors or unexpected happenings, so that's pretty cool. I still have to put draft AI for the different coaches in before the Ex2.5 draft is a go. I'm definitely not drafting for every team again. I have the system set up so that each coach will have its own style, and won't draft the same way as everyone else. (more on the details when it's completed) I really hope to have it functional by the end of the weekend. It feels like there's about 3 hours of work there. The tough part is finding those 3 hours. |
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10-30-2017, 08:31 AM
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#100 |
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High School Varsity
Join Date: Jul 2016
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Well, I found those hours after all!
I want to fine-tune the player value calculation a little before kicking off Ex2.5. I don't imagine this is going to take too long, so we'll probably be ready to draft this week! |
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