Beta testers blog

[nmleague]

When release 3 goes public there will be a number of playbooks available this time.  Using PDS 2 several beta team memebers have been creating playbooks.  I have created a number of pro and college type offenses and defeneses which I have used to create 4 pro playbooks and 9 college playbooks.  They have all been tested and Im satisfied with the plays.  But the playbook profiles need work, I have set some profiles, but after watching a number of CPU vs CPU games lately I have seen that each offense and defense needs a number of additional profiles set.  After the release if anyone is interested in testing the playbooks and helping create profiles let me know.  Here is list of the playbooks that are ready for the release, I may add an I formation offense to increase the pro playbooks to 6.
 
Pro playbooks
 
   T formation offense, pro 43 defense
   T formation offense, pro 34 defense
   One back offense, pro 43 defense
   One back offense, pro 34 defense
 
College
 
  I formation offense, 52 college defense
  I formation offense,  college 43 defense
  I formation offense,  62 defense
 
  Wishbone offense, 52 college defense
  Wishbone offense, college 43 defense
  Wishbone offense,  62 defense
 
  T formation offense, 52 college defense
  T formation offense, college 43 defense
  T formation offense, 62 defense
 
Im sure many people will want to create their own playbooks or modified those that come with the game.  But the additional playbooks will allow users to assign a great variety of playbooks to the teams of a league.  In testing it is interesting to see how the different defenses and offenses matchup.

[simmer]

Thank you,  saves me work....Can we now release the game ?

[nmleague]

Here is more detail on the team/draft profiles.

Users will be able to edit a teams team/draft profile.  You will be able to edit which position will be taken for each round of the draft, and assigning the two atributes that are the main and secondary ranking to determine the player.  As it is now you can determine the draft order for only a max of 35 rounds of the draft, if the draft is longer the remaining players are draft by the computer to fill the teams profile.  So you can only set the draft specifics for 35 round, but you edit the rest of the 45 slots to get determine the number of players  for each position on the roster.  Hope that isnt to confusing.

Now for a good part, these edited team/draft profiles can then be exported, they are saved in a folder in the Maximum game folder.  These team/draft profiles can then also be imported to different teams.  As example I have created 3 custom team/draft profiles, Strong defense, Run offense, Pass offense, and have exported them, when I set up a new league I can now import a team/draft profile for every team in the league.  As long as the roster size is the same the profiles can be used for any number of teams and leagues.

Better yet, I think this correct, if you set up a league of say 16 teams with one team being human controlled.  You can import or edit a team/draft profile for that team, the computer will then randomly assign team/draft profiles for the rest of the teams using profiles that are saved in the team/draft profile folder. 

It will take a little work at first, or maybe not as a number of team/draft profiles have alreay been created by beta team users, but the system is a nice improvement over the initial release.  This should give the teams in a league much for variety and is more realistic.

[Brockleigh]

A couple of things for the Beta testers when trying the Punting Return Rules in the Candian game, using mnleague's post from 10/3:
 

There is no fair catch in Canadian football

Yes, that's correct.

nor touch backs,

There are. They result in a single point being awarded to the punting team, and the ball being brought out to the 35 yard line.

and if the punt is live so either team can get the ball once punted.

Yes and no. Most of the punting team must respect a five yard halo around the ball until the returner touches it, but the punter (and any member of the kicking team behind the punter at the time of the kick) are onside and may recover the punted ball prior to it being touched by the return team.
 
For this reason, in the Canadian game, if the returner wanted to let the ball bounce into the endzone for the Single and Touchback, he'd have to retreat into the endzone and down the ball. 
 

[David Winter]

ORIGINAL: Brockleigh

nor touch backs,

There are. They result in a single point being awarded to the punting team, and the ball being brought out to the 35 yard line. and if the punt is live so either team can get the ball once punted.

You're correct. I think what the poster was getting at is that they're not touchbacks in the US Football sense of the word as the ball placement is different and there is the single point aspect.

The game processes the Canadian rules in this regard properly.

[dreamtheatervt]

speaking of fixing rules...how feasable would it be to set the timing rules closer to the "old, better timing rules" for college football, i.e. no 1/2/3 minute warning and clock stops temporarily on first downs (like get 6-7 seconds to call the play before the clock winds in the last 5 minutes). First one seems easy, second one might be too much to ask for, but I can ask.

[nmleague]

"HUGE NEWS"

I know everyone is waiting for release 3 to be released, and the time is drawing near. But just so you dont think David is wasting his time. He surprised the beta team with a new build today that basically gives the PDS/game the same coverage abilities that FSP 91-98 had. You can have m2m coverage, cover backs or non backs, use speed or hands or whatever to allocate the defenders to receivers. You will be able to bump on the line, and have under, over or deep coverage shading. Something Im not sure that FPS allowed is to have one defender just assigned to the "hot" receiver. I have spent some time today editing the defenses I created, man to man, blitzes and double coverages, and I can say it is working fantistically.

The zone coverage template has not been changed. Im not sure that cant be worked around, I have created a number of zones with just 2 deep coverage. I give two DBs a move to command, deep, to locations that kind of split the field, and then give them zone coverage, it seems to work. If I recall, even though you could draw out the zones you wanted in FPS, many times it was beter to make the zone a very small box, vs a large box, so this is similar.

[Dark Horse]

That IS huge news NML! Thanks for the update.

M2M sounds great. There was a game out there where you could tell a defender to cover the "hot" receiver. i can't remember if that was FPS or Playmaker... i think it was playmaker.

Too bad about the zones. Although i do remember drawing the small zones in either FPS or early (pre-consoles) Madden. It helped keep offenses from being able to flood your zones. So, if you can move a player to a particular spot and have him "sit", that won't too bad. But still i would like to be able to draw a zone in future releases, if at all possible.

[Marauders]

There was a game out there where you could tell a defender to cover the "hot" receiver.

 
FPS98 had that ability.
 
There was a game out there where you could tell a defender to cover the "hot" receiver.
 

Although i do remember drawing the small zones in either FPS or early (pre-consoles) Madden. It helped keep offenses from being able to flood your zones. So, if you can move a player to a particular spot and have him "sit", that won't too bad. But still i would like to be able to draw a zone in future releases, if at all possible.

 
David has stated that he would like to get zone changes, be it templates or drawn areas, done prior to Release 4.  It is sort of on his Release 3.5 to do list, but there have been major changes in defensive logic and only so much time can be taken in one area.  As soon as I know more, I will post an update.  I believe that defensive changes in Release 3 will really help those waiting for a robust AI.
 
 

[Frenzy]

Has David worked on the interface for the next version? There were a few things I noticed like on some menus you could get a drop down and others you couldn't. Another thing I hope was addressed was when viewing a roster for one team and switching to another team it would reset the view. For instance if I was viewing my QBs on my team and switched to another team I would have to reselect the QBs for that team. This made it hard to compare positions, injuries etc. I know neither of the examples is a bug but if David tweaked the interface maybe these were changed in the process?

[nmleague]

Im pretty sure that this has not been done for release 3, as example if Im looking at the draft/team profile for one team if I swtich to another team Im at that teams roster screen not their draft/team profile screen, so you have to move to that screen.

[BigSmooth]

This may have been addressed already. In regards to the draft, will the next beta allow you to create a roster in Quick Play, use that roster in League Play and then run a 7-8 round draft after the season using draft profiles for each team?

[Marauders]

In order to use a league in quick play, one must seed the teams with players from an initial draft.

The game can seed the teams without a draft.

[Marauders]

Here is a quick update:

Release 3 is coming along well, and barring some major unforeseen problem, I believe a public beta release is close.  In my opinion, it is important to get this out to the Maximum-Football community.

To have a public pre-release is a risky thing to do, because there will be some minor issues that David and the beta team know about that people will blow up in the public as a sign of great demise, and there will be new things that the development team just did not have the resources to test all at one time.  The key here is to get the update into the hands of the community and allow feedback on a much greater scale than the beta team alone can provide.  It will also allow game owners to see some of the new stuff the game will provide for them.

Some recent defensive code changes have been given a primary test by the beta crew, and they are working pretty well from a code point of view.  We will still have to try to check for AI breaking and that sort of stuff with the new defensive code.

Along with my playbooks, I am trying to get the default playbooks recreated for when Release 3 becomes the standard release in the near future.  Because of a few work related delays, and because of changes in the defensive code, I don't believe I'll be able to get my playbooks ready for the public beta release.  Because of this, I have actually made the default playbooks the priority over my playbooks.

nmleague and Old Coach are testing some of their playbooks as well.  I suspect both members will need to make a few updates to their playbooks because of the defensive changes and other factors.

David has been testing some updates to the fatigue code.  Of course, finding the right balance will take some time with the new code in the game.  The ability to do this, and to make changes in other areas, is enhanced because David has kindly placed more variables into the data constants tables over the last few months.

That's about it for now.  Please leave feedback on these items if you wish to, but be aware to consider that the Public Beta Forum area is primarily for members of the Maximum-Football community that own the game and wish to contribute.

Thanks all.

- Marauders

[nmleague]

I agree with Marauders that the release is very near.  My pro playbooks should be ready for the release, I have changed all the defensive logic for those playbooks.  In addition Im currently trying to get some more basic profiling complete so that the playbooks will be ready "out of the box" to be used for computer controlled teams, and should provide a competitive opponent.

My college playbooks are a question at this time.  I may be able to update all the defensive logic, but I doubt I will have time for the profiles.  They could be released with the defense ready but users may have to create their own profiles.

Both the pro and college playbooks have been giving me very realistic results in the beta test.

I asked Shaggy to remove my old playbooks from FBmax, which he has done. As soon as the new playbooks are ready I will have them up on FBmax ready for download.

[nmleague]

There has been some concern from beta testers and some individuals that had read my post about how punts inside the 20 yard line were being handled.  In beta testing alot of punts that were hitting the ground between the 10 and 15 yard lines were being downed inside the 5 yard line.  It was brought to Davids attention that the general rule is that the PR man will either return or fair catch punts between the 10 and 20 yard lines, but will allow anything past the 10 to hit the ground and either go into the endzone or be downed.  This gives you an idea of how responsive David has been to needed changes, once this was reported to him, he let it be know that it would be changed to follow the rule of thumb.

[Shaggyra]

I have been testing out nmleague's playbooks as well and I think they are excellent.  The pro play books produce quite realistic results and the college playbooks are quite well done.  When the new defensive logic is put in the college playbooks we will have quite a good selection of playbooks to choose from.  Marauders and Old Coach play books are close also.  (Old Coach has some great "old school" defensive schemes that are fantastic.)
 
The game it self is coming around very nicely.  It think most will be pleasantly surprised.[:)]