Have a break. Have a Crackdown.
I decided to take a little break over the weekend as I was going slightly insane working on the tournament creations. It didn't help when someone pointed out that the Scottish Premier League does a funny split after 3 rounds, and another person mentioned that American leagues tend to play teams that aren't even in the same division! Then of course there are regional divisions that will need to manage promotion and relegation correctly. I thought I was so close to completing the tournaments and then the carpet was pulled out from under my feet!
Often when I hit a wall I turn to a gaming console for, wait for it, consolation. (Oh dear.) So during my time-out I picked up Crackdown for the Xbox 360. It's a great game in the vein of Grand Theft Auto but with an amazing physics engine that really sets it apart. Shooting the tires of innocent truckers and watching the lorry fly off a bridge shouldn't be so much fun, but I'm afraid it is. Must be some form of stress relief.
So, getting back to the grind stone, I decided to nudge the data editor a little closer to completion. I'm currently working on an autostat feature that will create random abilities for the players. I say random, but they will be influenced by the player's Position, Age, Squad Status, Club Strength, Height and Weight. Basically if the club's strength is 80 (out of 100) then a defenders tackling skill will be somewhere around the 80 mark too. Of course, his dribbling skills won't be all that if he's 6' 5" and weighs in at 14 stone, and his shooting will be pretty low (otherwise he'd be a striker right?).
It may sound quite straight forward but it's quite tricky getting the balance right, especially when you have to take into consideration the age of a player. Youngsters will generally have lower abilities than a player in his mid-twenties but some abilities such as Pace will be highest during a player's earlier years and decline slowly as they get older. Still, it's all good fun and will serve me well later when the game has to generate new players as the seasons pass and old players retire to that beach bar in Tenerife. (Hopefully some will stick around and replace the retiring managers, but that's a concern for another day.)
So that's where we are now and I'm eager to get another version of the editor out this week. Then I can get back to setting up the ramshackle tournaments - inbetween crazed bouts of van sniping, no doubt.
Often when I hit a wall I turn to a gaming console for, wait for it, consolation. (Oh dear.) So during my time-out I picked up Crackdown for the Xbox 360. It's a great game in the vein of Grand Theft Auto but with an amazing physics engine that really sets it apart. Shooting the tires of innocent truckers and watching the lorry fly off a bridge shouldn't be so much fun, but I'm afraid it is. Must be some form of stress relief.
So, getting back to the grind stone, I decided to nudge the data editor a little closer to completion. I'm currently working on an autostat feature that will create random abilities for the players. I say random, but they will be influenced by the player's Position, Age, Squad Status, Club Strength, Height and Weight. Basically if the club's strength is 80 (out of 100) then a defenders tackling skill will be somewhere around the 80 mark too. Of course, his dribbling skills won't be all that if he's 6' 5" and weighs in at 14 stone, and his shooting will be pretty low (otherwise he'd be a striker right?).
It may sound quite straight forward but it's quite tricky getting the balance right, especially when you have to take into consideration the age of a player. Youngsters will generally have lower abilities than a player in his mid-twenties but some abilities such as Pace will be highest during a player's earlier years and decline slowly as they get older. Still, it's all good fun and will serve me well later when the game has to generate new players as the seasons pass and old players retire to that beach bar in Tenerife. (Hopefully some will stick around and replace the retiring managers, but that's a concern for another day.)
So that's where we are now and I'm eager to get another version of the editor out this week. Then I can get back to setting up the ramshackle tournaments - inbetween crazed bouts of van sniping, no doubt.
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