Situation AI, Gameplans, and Playbooks

[Marauders]

David Winter stated- I'm in the process of adding an additional layer of AI to the play calling routines. The game specific situations you create in your playbook will remain intact and will always take precedence over any AI call, but the new layer of code is adding more smarts when there are no situations to choose from. This is allowing the computer to call a more pass or run plays at more appropriate times. At the moment the play calling AI is quite simple and relies heavily on playbook situations. This should reduce the dependency on playbook situations.

micvik stated: Sounds great David

I'm wondering if this means that the computer will know when to go for it on fourth down late in the game if they are down.

David Winter stated: It's something I'm looking at, but those sorts of situations are probably best left to the play book situation. The reason being is that no matter what I coded the AI to do, there would always be someone saying it wasn't how they wanted it to work. And as there will be no user ability to tweak, edit, or modify this AI code, the best solution is to leave those sorts of game specific coaching decisions to the playbook situation groups. That's what they're there for.

thanks
David

DreamTeams stated: I think this is good to a certain extent. But, we really need a way to destinguish which halves we want the 4th down situations to apply. As it is now the situations apply to both halves. It would be great if we could apply them to the second half only.

David Winter stated: I'm aware that having 1st and 2nd half playbooks is a wish list item. I'm looking at it for version 3 of the game.

thanks
David

DreamTeams stated: Great! Looking foward to this feature.

However, I was wondering if there a possibility to allow us to set the situations according to half, not whole playbooks, just the situations. Perhaps by adding this selection on the situation menu that pops up.

That would be fantastic. But, I'm willing to wait on this if it would be too difficult to add in an update.

David Winter stated: I've looked at it. It would break every existing playbook and would require a considerable amount of rewrite to the game itself.

thanks
David

DreamTeams stated: Ok. I understand. As it is I'm happy that I can make teams compete a little harder at the end of halves by using the current set-up for fouth down situations. Thanks for taking a look at this.

David Winter stated: For version 3.0 I'm working on a completely new and unique feature for working with game plans. So I hope that will address these areas.

thanks
David

[Marauders]

garysorrell stated: If we save a game at the half, exit out and change the playbooks, will the game use the new playbooks when you restart the saved game?

Kind of a pain to go thru, but if it would work it would be an option for now.

You could create a playbook for 1st half and second half with the appropriate situations in each.

David Winter stated: Hmmm.. that sounds crazy enough to work [:)].

I don't recall saving any playbook information to the save game file. I'm pretty sure all I'm doing is validating that the team being loaded from the saved game file has a valid playbook, but I don't think I check to see if its the same one the team started the game with. That portion of the saved game code was done a long while ago, and I don't recall off the top of my head if I made that check or not. I will look tonight and let you know. If I'm not doing this check, but simply ensure that you are loading a team from a saved game with a valid playbook, then yes, this work around might do the trick. I can't be 100% sure though. It will need some testing. And yes I agree, even if this did work, I think it would be a cumbersome solution at best. Which is why I'm evaluating various changes for version 3.0

thanks
David

DreamTeams stated: Hmm. Good idea, garysorrell. I'll give it a try.

Deft stated: If this is the case, could you make a small fix to ping the user to select playbooks for the second half? This way we don't have to exit the game.

David Winter stated: I'm afraid not. Sorry. That's not a "small fix" or a simple change.

If this works for you (saving, changing, and going back to the field) all you need to do is save the game, go to the team screens, change your playbook, then load the saved game to continue. All the playbook validation code and error checking for playbooks is dealt with on the edit team screen and during the team loading process. I can not add 2nd half play book selection screens for 2.2

thanks
David

[Marauders]

David Winter stated: I've looked at it. It would break every existing playbook and would require a considerable amount of rewrite to the game itself.

While I don't believe many people here would care if the playbook was broken because of this, I do understand the situation.

Would it be possible for the game to load one playbook for the first half and a second playbook at halftime? Then the playbooks would not have to break.

For team owners, it would be simple to duplicate the playbook by renaming it, and then setting up second half conditions. Of course, it would require some coding on your part which would not be as simple.

[Marauders]

David Winter stated: Multiple playbooks is something I'm looking at for version 3

thanks
David

Maruders stated: Multiple playbooks would be a stop gap for Version 2.x.

In Version 3, it would likely be better to have the ability to assign situations to halfs in the gameplan Group as shown in this graphic.

How much more code would be needed for the game to check the half in the game situation group (HANY, H1, or H2)?

[Marauders]

David Winter stated: The changes for version 2.2 have been listed above. I'm sorry but at the moment I only have time to spend on one area and I've already been asked to spend it on making changes to the quick sim feature to accommodate more variety in play outcome.

Multiple playbooks is something I'm looking at for version 3.

thanks
David

[Marauders]

David Winter stated- I'm in the process of adding an additional layer of AI to the play calling routines. The game specific situations you create in your playbook will remain intact and will always take precedence over any AI call, but the new layer of code is adding more smarts when there are no situations to choose from. This is allowing the computer to call a more pass or run plays at more appropriate times. At the moment the play calling AI is quite simple and relies heavily on playbook situations. This should reduce the dependency on playbook situations.

Playball335 stated: If it isn't being done already, it would be great if the cpu actually tracked your play calls during the game and adjusted it's play calling appropriately.

David Winter stated: Hi.

The game already does this.

thanks
David

micvik stated: Does it do it over a season or a number of seasons?

David Winter stated: Tendencies are only used and tracked on a play by play basis. They're used so the AI can adjust based on your play calling in the game.