How has the gaming world changed today? Developers still get attacked for stupid things. Heck, the developer for Aethersx2 a PS2 emulator just announced they are stopping developing because of the harrassment they are receiving.
By change, I meant the overall market and expectations of sales. When Jim was selling his game there was no Steam Market, and Jim was able to get a lot of publicity and reviews in major magazines (I think I reviewed his football game for Computer Gaming World back then.) It was nominated for best sports game in Computer Games Magazine (formerly Computer Games Strategy +) back around 2000 or 2001, IIRC. I think the year I reviewed it for CGW (1999?) it was nominated for Sports Game of the Year. Jim was able to get a lot of publicity for his little game in the top magazines, before the internet took over and the magazines died. Just a different world back then.
One of the things Football Coach College Dynasty does at player generation is assign a home town by zip code.
So if a player gets randomly assigned a zip code that belongs to a corporate service center then their home town ends up like this:
There is also this game that is being worked on. Caution, this is still early in development and from what I heard the latest release is pretty buggy.
What’s the game engine like? There is a single Steam screenshot showing a game in progress, but I couldn’t find a single video showing someone actually playing through a single game, calling plays, etc. Does it show anyting of the field action, even with little circles? Does it describe the play outcome like FOF at all?
If you play the game rather than simming it, the onfield action is [You pick a play] vs [AI picks a play] and then you see the results.
If you’re on defence you’ll see the offensive personnel and set, so you can change between base and Dime or whatever, but on Offence you don’t see anything.
Post play you’ll see the results, plus the specific playcall for the Offence and Defence. If you then click into the play you’ll see things like who the defender in coverage was for a pass play, who made the tackle, who made a pancake block, who, if anyone, got QB pressure etc, but that’s it. No 2d representation of players in motion.
Right now it doesn’t even have specific substitutions. You can alter your depth chart to promote WR4 to WR3 to make sure he’s on the field for a specific three receiver set, but you can’t click on a guy and say “swap him for him.”
That’s fine for me, because my entire reason for playing this is years not games - I want to crank through seasons and see players come in, develop and leave and have that sort of grand career narrative. If you’re all about play-by-play minutiae, then it isn’t here yet.
How fast can you simulate a game or an entire season? Is there feedback from the simulate games or seasons so you can make adjustments?
I’m most interested in the team management and year to year aspects, and much less in coaching every play.
Yeah, this is the only gridiron football manager I’ve ever seen where the UI wasn’t an immediate turn off. The developer made a mobile game a few years ago like this one—apparently had to make the PC game from scratch due to engine restrictions— so he’s probably much more experienced with modern UI than the other developers in this space who seemingly haven’t updated or learned UI design in 20 years.
He’s also very active with updates and has a clear roadmap laid out that seems manageable. For those craving realism, you should know that right now game universes are capped at 10 conferences with a max of 16 teams per conference and no independents. He plans to expand this in the future. You also can’t seem to disable conference championships, which is bad for me who would prefer 10-team conferences with round-robin scheduling and no conference championship game, but then that’s hardly realistic anymore. On the other hand, the game has NIL, the transfer portal, and various playoff settings—ranging from the BCS, to the soon-to-be implemented 12-team, to a 16-team playoff, each with options on how teams are selected (top x conference champs or straight rankings). All of these can be toggled on or off if you don’t want to deal with a particular aspect, though.
So I started a Coaching career game (instead of a single school-focused game) and wanted to eschew the big schools for a smaller option, but in picking Boise State I inadvertently chose a big fish in a small pond because I hadn’t realised how bad the rest of the Mountain West Conference was.
So while we were crushing Colorado, Nevada and rivals Wyoming, I always had an eye on “#4 LSU” on the schedule as the first chance to get an idea of what my players would look like against a real team and… it wasn’t pretty.
LSU outgained us 496 yards to 260 and were ahead 24-0 at the two minute warning of the first half.
Only two red zone interceptions - one of which we returned for a touchdown - saved the scoreline so we “only” lost 31-17. It wasn’t really a contest though.
One thing that has been good to see has been how players handle injuries - my third string Runningback Louis Hardy has been complaining about playing time all season long, so I promoted him to 1st at halftime in the one-sided victory over Wyoming.
He immediately injured his “upper body” and had to be pushed down the depth chart and his requirement for “more playing time” instantly went away.
This is something Football Manager still trips over, with players complaining about time on the field at the end of long term injuries.
Hardy is still showing as someone who might transfer to another school at the end of the season if he doesn’t get more touches, but he doesn’t have a sad face on the depth chart any more.
I know someone who used to work there; they’ll get a kick out of this, lol
Well, here’s the season so far. Aside from a humdinger with UNLV and the smackdown from LSU it has been a bit of a cakewalk.
Against Wyoming I was tempted to rest players in the second half because I was so far ahead, but I had four potential recruits in to watch the game, so I wanted to show them the biggest win possible too.
Eventually when we crossed 50 points I sat all the starters and on the very next play the Wyoming QB threw a pick-six.
The Athletic Director set me a performance target of seven wins, so if I can beat Air Force I could trip and fall over that line, because the rest of the schedule might have only one good team on it.
You guys forced me to grab yet another game. It seems pretty deep with lots of things to adjust/select but after spending a while doing recruiting at the start I eventually just did auto. I’ll get back into that at some point.
So practices don’t affect anything, correct?
Picked UCLA due to wife’s family affiliation and I couldn’t find a Colorado State to try. Anyway, got crushed by #1 OSU in game one, but then beat Colorado handily and after winning the stat sheet against rival and #4 USC but still losing by 10 at halftime I came back and beat those private school jagoffs.
So far it’s great that I can auto-play enough to almost just click thru and then add more things to my plate as I go by turning off the automatic stuff from game to game. Or not and just play along at a fairly surface level depth.
Would be nice to have real school names, but I’m assuming someone somewhere will mod that in.
Mods already exist with real names, check out the discord channel or the steam forums.
Thanks! I easily found one after my last post when I decided to you know, look.
That’s right - the options you lock in actually do affect performances (practice RPOs… stop deep passing - those choices) but the place where you practice play-vs-play is just so you can get a feel for what works for your team and your playbook and is entirely optional.
You can tell this is a good game, because it gets me to shout at the screen like Football Manager does.
I dropped the Boise game and restarted in the same Conference as Hawaii because I didn’t want to be Boise-good that fast and win that much.
When I started in Hawaii the game suggested I needed to recruit a new Kicker that year, which surprised me as I had a Punter and a Kicker that were still Sophomores. But it turned out to be prescient because… Holy Shit, Parker Duncan.
“Wants to win.” [citation needed]
Whereas Boise were rated around the low 30s for both Offence and Defence, Hawaii were about #105 for both. This meant we just didn’t have the depth or even the front line talent to cover for mistakes and would have to play pretty clean football to have a chance to do anything.
It’s ok though, because the Athletic Director set a target of only three wins, which seemed really comfortable. Then even more comfortable with 15 seconds to go in our third game…
We’d split our first two games but there was some ominous foreshadowing in the 24-17 win over Utah State where the game should have been comfortably in hand if only Parker Duncan hadn’t missed three field goals.
So in the third game we’re hanging tough with a Wyoming team that would end up going 10-2 and had returned a fumbled snap to the Wyoming 20 with only 20 seconds left.
Three plays later with zeros on the clock Parker Duncan missed a 36 yard field goal.
We lost in overtime.
After that the wall planner continued to fill in with red as part of a six-loss run before we finally beat San Diego State.
One of those six losses was 28-27 because Parker Duncan missed an extra point and in another we had to go for a late-game Hail Mary because we were trailing by five because Duncan had missed three field goal attempts.
Even the win against SDSU was heart stopping because a Duncan missed extra point meant San Diego’s last-second field goal was potentially a game winner until it went wide so we hung on 34-32.
We won our final game of the season over rivals San Jose State to grab the third win at the final opportunity and I practically collapsed in my chair with relief at a 3-9 record.
That was much more fun than going 11-1 with Boise.
In the off-season both Kickers I targeted signed elsewhere, so in 2023 it’s Parker Duncan time.
Great story - that probably gets me to pull the trigger on getting this game.
One thing about being Hawaii is that it gives you the potential to pull “She’s Out of My League”-level steals in recruiting.
If you can just find someone who’s a highly rated prospect that’s from Hawaii and has the primary motivator of “wants to be close to home” then you immediately have a two thousand mile advantage on everyone else.
If that person has a secondary motivator of “wants playing time” then you’ve got that too, because anyone with any real talent is going to be on the field for every minute of the four years they’re here.
This was how I managed to hang in on the recruiting battle with Honolulu’s Zion Orlando - the 7th rated Wide Receiver and 61st rated player overall in the country.
Every one else I went after was, at best, 61st rated at their position.
I’d normally be thousands of points behind by halfway through the process with a player like this, but I managed to hang in, and hang in, and going into the final week of the season I was a nose in front of Penn State as favourites to land him.
That week he committed to Penn State.
Turns out they had flown him out to their final game of the season, stood him in the middle of the field in a packed stadium and just sort of waved their hands at everything.
This year’s recruiting crop isn’t quite so good, but the #29 rated CB Dominic Villa is from Kailua Kona, wants to stay near to home and it looks like my primary rivals are going to be Oregon, so…
So can you get files to play with real team names and logos? Does it have the BCS and bowl games?
And will it let me have a career as a coach as in FM, where if I do well I get offers from bigger schools?
Yes, no, yes and yes.
There are already multiple different universes available from Steam or from the Dev’s Discord that add in all the real schools and conferences, but they do not include logos and things for potentially obvious reasons.
At game setup you can choose things like a four team playoff, a ten team playoff, no playoffs… several options. Also options about when students can transfer and how many years of school they need before they can declare for the draft.
You can also turn off the NIL if you don’t like that nonsense.
There are two game modes - one where you’re a school and can’t change and one where you’re a coach. In coach mode you start at 30 years old and every time you gain experience you get to unlock buffs like “8% improvement to Offensive Line player development during training sessions” etc.
At the end of the season there’s a chance you’ll get offers from other schools. My exciting 3-9 record with Hawaii got me an offer from Arkansas State who had gone 1-11.