Back in the game!
Yeah, I know... Long time, no post. The reason for this is simply because Lucy and I went touring around Australia for 3 months and it's hard to find time (or power, or the internet) when you're living in a camper van! Anyway, I'm back in the UK now and working hard to get the game finished, and there's simply no excuse for not working every minute of the day when the English summer is so bad.
At the moment I am concentrating on the background processing, basically ensuring that the skills for all the CPU players in the database increase/decrease and that their career stats are collected. Making sure this all happens without slowing the day to day flow of the game is quite important. I'm sure you'll agree that hanging around watching progress bars is not much fun. You should be able to include up to 10 leagues in the final version, but the only way to keep the processing times down on low-end machines will be to include less leagues.The leagues you include at the start of the game will be simulated fully which allows you to transfer to that league if you so wish.
The one crucial element that needs work is the competition system. I need to make sure that the clubs are promoted/relegated, advance through cup stages, qualify for European competitions and so on. This is really tricky because errors can occur in two places. One, the game code may be buggy. Two, the competition settings in the database may be wrong. I intend to dedicate some serious time to this issue in the coming days.
One feature that will have to be omitted from the game is the management mode. The game is quite capable of letting you control team selection and tactics but suddenly the lifestyle side of the game doesn't make sense. All the relationship incidents are designed for a young footballer, not a middle-aged manager. Bidding for players and negotiating transfers is also another huge element that will need to be created, along with handling the club finances. I know it's disappointing but I feel that this is a feature too far for NSS4 and will have to come along at a later date.
My only other worry is that the lack of training challenges takes away some of the enjoyment that was present in NSS3. Now that skills range from 1-100 it doesn't make sense to have 100 training levels for each skill. I decided reward the player for making accurate manual passes, shots etc by increasing the relevant skill level. This works very well and is similar to the Kudos system in Project Gotham Racing. However, I cant help feeling that training mini-games would give NSS4 that final element that elevates the game from good to great. They would need to be more general challenges than those seen in NSS3 so that I don't need to create 600 different challenges for each skill level, but they could work in unison with the match-play skill increases. Of course, there is only one drawback to adding mini-games. Time. I don't mind telling you that I am desperate to release NSS4 for numerous reasons. The main one being that it has been in development for over 2 years now and it's simply about bloody time! (Check out the first NSS4 blog entry from October 2006.)
What this means is that I will strive to get every essential element complete in the next few weeks, then consider the training issue. It may simply be that I have to hold training challenges and the management mode back until NSS5 but I can tell you something for sure: there won't be another 3 year wait!
At the moment I am concentrating on the background processing, basically ensuring that the skills for all the CPU players in the database increase/decrease and that their career stats are collected. Making sure this all happens without slowing the day to day flow of the game is quite important. I'm sure you'll agree that hanging around watching progress bars is not much fun. You should be able to include up to 10 leagues in the final version, but the only way to keep the processing times down on low-end machines will be to include less leagues.The leagues you include at the start of the game will be simulated fully which allows you to transfer to that league if you so wish.
The one crucial element that needs work is the competition system. I need to make sure that the clubs are promoted/relegated, advance through cup stages, qualify for European competitions and so on. This is really tricky because errors can occur in two places. One, the game code may be buggy. Two, the competition settings in the database may be wrong. I intend to dedicate some serious time to this issue in the coming days.
One feature that will have to be omitted from the game is the management mode. The game is quite capable of letting you control team selection and tactics but suddenly the lifestyle side of the game doesn't make sense. All the relationship incidents are designed for a young footballer, not a middle-aged manager. Bidding for players and negotiating transfers is also another huge element that will need to be created, along with handling the club finances. I know it's disappointing but I feel that this is a feature too far for NSS4 and will have to come along at a later date.
My only other worry is that the lack of training challenges takes away some of the enjoyment that was present in NSS3. Now that skills range from 1-100 it doesn't make sense to have 100 training levels for each skill. I decided reward the player for making accurate manual passes, shots etc by increasing the relevant skill level. This works very well and is similar to the Kudos system in Project Gotham Racing. However, I cant help feeling that training mini-games would give NSS4 that final element that elevates the game from good to great. They would need to be more general challenges than those seen in NSS3 so that I don't need to create 600 different challenges for each skill level, but they could work in unison with the match-play skill increases. Of course, there is only one drawback to adding mini-games. Time. I don't mind telling you that I am desperate to release NSS4 for numerous reasons. The main one being that it has been in development for over 2 years now and it's simply about bloody time! (Check out the first NSS4 blog entry from October 2006.)
What this means is that I will strive to get every essential element complete in the next few weeks, then consider the training issue. It may simply be that I have to hold training challenges and the management mode back until NSS5 but I can tell you something for sure: there won't be another 3 year wait!
posted by newstarsoccer.com at
4:52 PM
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