Maximum-Football Release 3: Public BETA Now Available.

[David Winter]

Maximum-Football Release 3

Public BETA Announcement (copied from the Beta Forum as posted on Thursday November 2nd)

I’m pleased to announce that the Public BETA for Maximum-Football Release 3 is now available.

Please visit the Matrix Members area to download your latest copy.

The condensed release notes will follow at the end of this post.

Comments.

I would like to thank everyone for their continued patience during the development time. It was about 2 months longer than I expected but I think the wait was worth it. What you’ll be getting a look at is almost a completely different game.

The BETA testers and I have spent a lot of time (that’s probably the understatement of the year) on this release. We have done our best to find all the major bugs and address them. However, this is still a BETA release. There are bugs I still know about and a lot more I don’t.

To avoid any confusion please do not download this build expecting to see Player Trade AI, a salary cap system, online play, rebuilt quick sim, or any of the other features that has been reported many times as not being built into R3.

I’m releasing this now for the following reasons;

1 Of the bugs I know about, I do not think any are show stoppers in any way shape or form. None of them should prevent you from enjoying the game. They will be fixed in the next couple of weeks.

2 I need more eyes on the project to find the bugs, big or small, that neither I or the BETA team found. The shear volume of people playing the game will no doubt find things buried in places we never had the time to get to.

3 I’m also releasing this so that people know that progress is being made to improve the game. The overall position I’ve always taken is that the game will improve and evolve over time. I think this will go a long way to show that’s the case.

What to do if you find a bug.

In the words of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Don't Panic". There are bound to still be bugs in the game at this stage. I'm making this release public so that the private testers and I have more help finding them. The best thing to do is to report it in the Public BETA forums on the Matrix message board (this is the Public Beta Forum). Please post the following with the bug report.

- The build number (it’s on the top left of the title screen)
- The teams you’re using.
- As much step by step details as you can provide.
- If there are repeatable steps to reproduce the bug, please detail them in bullet point form.

Keep in mind you will be using a BETA build. Finding a bug, and simply posting a complaint that the game ‘still has bugs’ isn’t going to help anything. In fact it’s simply going to make things more difficult.

Also, please do not be discouraged if I do not reply to every single post or bug report. I will always post if I need more information, or if I know a quick work around to help you out. But as I need to spend most of my time fixing the bugs you report, It doesn't leave me with a lot of time to answer posts.

What we spent our time on.

The testers and I have spent a lot of time trying to accomplish four major things.

1. Fun Game Play. Most people actually want to take to the field and play the game with either a controller or in coaching mode. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to improve the ‘fun factor’ of the on field play. One of the major items was ensuring you could not pick one single play and drive all the way down the field with it. However, we may have missed something along the way, so if you find that there is a play that is particularly potent, please let us know so we can try it out. Give as much details about your teams as well.

2. Statistically Real World Accurate. This is often at odds with item number one, because fun game play doesn’t always produce real world results. That said, the BETA testers spent a lot of time in CPUvCPU mode to ensure that the computer run 3D games were generating statistics that were accurate within reason. You’re not going to get decimal point accurate NFL or CFL statistics with this, or any other, real time 3D football game. The best I can do is come close. The testers think that the game is pretty close.

Much more of the game has been opened up to help adjust this to suit personal tests. Many of the base value used for physics, defensive read times, passing accuracy, etc are all available for users to edit with nothing more than notepad. By changing the values in these files, it’s possible to produce very different game styles. What this means is that if your personal taste leans more toward higher passing accuracy, it’s very easy to make the games passing more accurate by simply adjusting some base values. If you find a combination that works best for your personal wishes, feel free to share those files with other users.

3. Rules. The initial release of Maximum-Football had the majority of its secondary rules made very generic. This was done on purpose for the sake of simplifying development. For this release though I’ve tried to de-generalise those rules and connect them to the field you’re using. For example the kick off penalty processes are different if you’re using a US field as compared to a Canadian field.

4. Bug Squashing. And finally, but most obviously we’ve tried to find all the major show stopping bugs we could. But then, that’s why I’m asking all of you to take a look at what we have so far and let us know if you find anything more.

What to do when you install the update.

You can install the update on top of your existing installation.

You must reset all leagues. The database structure for the league files has changed quite a lot and if you do not reset your leagues, they may not work as expected causing a lot of false alarm bug reports.

That’s pretty much the only extra step you need to take when you install the update. Oh.. that and have a look at the manual. It has been completely rewritten so that it should provide better guides and be a better source of overall information on how the game works.

Plays and Playbooks.

The plays and playbooks that are included in this release are more or less the same as those in previous public releases.

A number of the testers have created new plays and play books specifically for R3. It’s my understanding that those will be made available as soon as the release goes live.

The original plan was to make those standard plays. Unfortunately I was unable to get those into this build as a default set of files so I highly encourage people to download those files once the testers post their location.

The plays and playbooks that will be put into the game for the ‘gold release’ will be completely new. It’s just they’re not ready at the moment and I felt it better to move the process along rather than wait for them to be finalized. My hope is you’ll agree.

What is the Public BETA patch release schedule?

At this time I honestly don’t have one. My schedule, the private testers schedules, Matrix’s schedules, how long it takes to fix reported bugs, etc.. all that plays a roll in the time between builds. As a general rule of thumb, I get a major build to the private testers a minimum of once a week (that’s been the case since about April). Often there is more than one a week, sometimes there are more than one a day.

However there needs to be a critical mass behind a build before it’s released to the public to avoid a situation where there are so many updates and patches that nobody can keep up with them.

It’s an unfortunate case of having to play it by ear for each public build.

Thank you

I would like to send my thanks out to the private testers for their continued support of the project.

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Maximum-Football R3
Official Release Change History
Build 1.3.84

Current as of October 31, 2006

New Features:

1. Completely redesigned Play Development System. The PDS moves from an external 2D application to an in-game 3D version of the same tool. New PDS Features include;
- Defensive pre-snap commands to line up on players.
- Key on commands to tell defenders to follow certain offensive players.
- QB Read progression. Instead of a single ‘primary receiver’ in the original PDS, you can now assign players to a read progression.
- Camera panning and zooming.
- WYSIWYG play design.
- Ability to change location of ball.
- Man To Man Coverage redesign.

2. Added help tips to the loading screens.

3. From User Request – Added the ability to define draft rounds. The game now supports leagues with no draft, or drafts with up to 60 rounds.

4. From User Requests – Added Team Profiles. These are individual profiles for each team. They can be exported and imported for use. There are a collection of stock profiles to chose from, computer controlled teams will use on of these profiles to stock its roster.

Existing Feature Functionality Changes:

1. General overall defensive play improvements.

2. Linebackers using the [READ] or [KEYON] commands now do a better job of following a running in the offensive backfield. This reduces the yardage gained on sweeps.

3. More advanced Man To Man coverage features allowing for a wider variety of coverage’s. Players in Man To Man coverage can be told to line up against players that mean certain skills. This means you can assign your fastest defensive back to line up against their fastest receiver.

4. Many minor rules for various leagues now ‘attached’ to field size selected. For example, the kick off rules for US football and Canadian football are now attached to the field types.

5. Improved schedule system now generates simple round robin schedules for all leagues. An additional external schedule editor has been included in this release to allow users running leagues more flexibility in schedule design.

6. Various subtle interface design changes.

7. New depth chart system.

8. New on field player substitution system.

9. You can now back out of the formation selection screen to the play type selection screen.

10. Improved ball physics.

11. Improved ball carrier open field running.

12. Removal of 30 Frame Per Second frame limit. (This can still be turned on via an ini file).

13. In arcade mode, eligible receiver icons are now displayed from the snap of the ball rather than from the time they start looking for a pass. This allows you to pick a target before that target may be ready to catch the ball. However, whether or not they are looking for a pass is still taken into account for the catch determination.

14. New animations and transitions between animations.

15. The ability to play the game in a 800*600 window on your desktop. This is a trial solution to those wanting to play the game on multi-monitor systems. Window mode play can possibly effect the game performance. There is currently no way to switch between the modes in game play. To play in window mode. Create a text file in the game folder called 'windowmode.txt'. This window has no taskbar group or ability to move the window on the desktop.

North American Regional Settings.

Some regions around the world use different formats to denote numbers and dates. These differences can cause a wide range of known problems for Maximum-Football.

When Maximum-Football starts, it does a very simple check to see if your systems regional settings are set to something other than North American (Canada and the US). If they are not, the game displays a warning but lets you continue.

Some of the known issues include;

- Database storage problems, especially with records that have dates in them.
- Player movement can be effected. Players will move at a single speed (very fast).
- Ball Physics. Ball physics is seriously impacted.
- Various other minor issues.

If you have been shown the Regional Settings warning and are experiencing these sorts of problems you should set your Regional Settings to English(Canada) or English(US). Other regions may also work as long as they use the same date/time and number formatting as North America.