This game is great.....

[simmer]

With the help of all of you (and a little from me), I am in the process of having a great NCAA league. The scoring is very competitive and I look forward to creating the bowl games since you can play single games outside of the league. I am using every plabook ever created and with the random distribution of all 15 playbooks.......The game is everything that I wanted........................My Two cents worth.......

[Tbird]

I don't post much here these days but I'm still playing the game also [&o]

[Mykal]

Well I'm still playing aswell
and taking part in online leagues

[Bobolini]

Is there like a "all-in-one" download for a NCAA league?

[simmer]

I was hoping to find a replacement to th FBPRO game.....and this game fills a void and alot more........I tried to get into the Madden Game but just I just could not find a happy medium. Now that I know how to make the schedules (Thanks to Gary and Mykal), The NCAA game can be replicated for years to come..........DL the files at Mykal's site Bobolini.......I will have more to come......
Who knows????????????A NCAA empire next season with the stadiums and fight songs.......And hopefully Hack's plays for every NCAA teams.

[Mykal]

adding fight songs would be very tricky as the game only uses single sound files
you would have to keep swapping out the sound files for each college

do-able but very tedious

[simmer]

I already have them all of wav files and made.

[Old Coach]

If you can deal with some of the games imperfections, it is a blast to play.

Below are some more pictures from Old School College play. The 1st two pictures are from a game between Michigan and Boston College in the snow in Boston. I'm using Gary's "Old Coach" stadium. This game ended in a 7-7 tie and is the first tie I've had in all my testing and gameplay. The other two pictures come from action in which Tennessee defeated LSU 26-7 at night in Baton Rouge and a rain game at Legion Field in which Alabama defeated Tulane 32-27.

Old Coach

[DreamTeams]

ORIGINAL: simmer

I was hoping to find a replacement to th FBPRO game.....and this game fills a void and alot more........I tried to get into the Madden Game but just I just could not find a happy medium.

My sentiments as well, simmer. This is my favorite game to play and love how I can make open ended custmization as my league moves forward.

[Old Coach]

I guess MaxFB has to be like a hobby. It's not something that you just casually sit down and play every now and then. It does require some time investment to work with the PDS, uniform and field art and player ratings. Out of the box, it's not ready to play and it should have been. I've been working on the team since 2003 and I've had that long to put together my art and mess around with ratings and PDS to get the game where I want it to be. Being on the team, I had "heads up" about problems, changes, etc. Constant interaction with David and other team members helped me to navigate through the game's quirks. I'm not suggesting that one spends 5 years getting the game ready to play. For an old guy like me, it fits OK. For me, though, no football game is ready to play out of the box. I played FBPro98 for 4 years; I have Madden 2005 & 2006 and also NCAA Football 2004, 2005 & 2006. With everyone of those, I took time setting up teams (uniforms, rosters, ratings, etc) & plays/playbooks before I really started any serious game play.

Old Coach

[Bobolini]

Thanks Simmer and Mykal.

[Frido1207]

I´m also  following the discussions & the latest development of this forum in the last days.
I think, i will stay with MaxFb, despite its problems.
I also own Madden 08.
But where are the advantages?
 
- Does Madden 08 get any developer support. As far as i know & understand: no.
- Was Madden 08 developed as an easily to moddable / customable games. Not that i know. You depend on 3rd party / user developed tools.
- Can you easily set up & play CFL rules or Indoor. No, see above.
- Can you easily set up a league with less than 32 teams. Its not so easy, & see above.
Etc.
 
So i might ask , why not support Marauders in his attempt to save this community. I think although there is no more developers support, the things are now in the hands of long time beta test team members, & maybe some things can be done to improve this game, that weren´t possible, because the original developer didn´t followed their suggestions.
 
Its sad to see very active members leaving , who stayed here for several years. That has a flavor that all the efforts to improve this game in the past years has been wasted.
 
As a last thing i want (also) to ask Marauders to be a little more specific about what can be done in an official upgrade (for which we have to pay for), what cannot be done or isn´t been done by user efforts (here i mean uniforms ,staduims, playbooks.)
Sorry for my bad english.
-th-

[Marauders]

As a last thing i want (also) to ask Marauders to be a little more specific about what can be done in an official upgrade (for which we have to pay for), what cannot be done or isn´t been done by user efforts (here I mean uniforms ,staduims, playbooks.)

 
There are areas that I know can be cleaned up with 2.x, and areas that I am digging into to see if they can be.  I'm not going to get into the details until I am sure what can and will be done.
 
 

 

[Mykal]

As a last thing i want (also) to ask Marauders to be a little more specific about what can be done in an official upgrade (for which we have to pay for), what cannot be done or isn´t been done by user efforts (here i mean uniforms ,staduims, playbooks.)
Sorry for my bad english.
-th-

Would it be official ?
not unless David and or Matrix were involved it wouldn't

[DreamTeams]

ORIGINAL: Old Coach

I guess MaxFB has to be like a hobby. It's not something that you just casually sit down and play every now and then. It does require some time investment to work with the PDS, uniform and field art and player ratings. Out of the box, it's not ready to play and it should have been. I've been working on the team since 2003 and I've had that long to put together my art and mess around with ratings and PDS to get the game where I want it to be. Being on the team, I had "heads up" about problems, changes, etc. Constant interaction with David and other team members helped me to navigate through the game's quirks. I'm not suggesting that one spends 5 years getting the game ready to play. For an old guy like me, it fits OK. For me, though, no football game is ready to play out of the box. I played FBPro98 for 4 years; I have Madden 2005 & 2006 and also NCAA Football 2004, 2005 & 2006. With everyone of those, I took time setting up teams (uniforms, rosters, ratings, etc) & plays/playbooks before I really started any serious game play.

Old Coach

Can't agree with you more, Old Coach. The investment in time and effort customizing the game into what you want, despite its flaws, is still worth playing, to me. I have no other game quite like this one. The closest would be OOTP, which I also enjoy, but it's text based. I'm happy to stick with MF and feel it will become a classic for some who see it for what it is. Perhaps it's not designed for the masses, but it certainly was designed with the tinkerer and hobbiest in mind.

[mbsports]

DT I couldn't agree with you more - you almost HAVE to be a tinkerer and constantly dedicated towards getting what you want out of it.  The first step there is knowing what it is you want to see.  I've had Max FB for about a year now and here's what I've been able to do.
 
#1. Run a League effectively

• This was a massive undertaking b/c I wasn't really good with the DB structure and I still have problems with it, but I've gotten around it.  The big thing was getting a reasonable set of stats out of it, which I think we have.  Runs average a little too much for us per the last season so we'll take that down and we had a lot of completions but we can take those down a notch too
• Rating the players has gotten easier with JD's tool - Nothing's perfect but JD designed a tool that allows for pretty easy tweaking. 
• I was able to take the output for Max FB and modify it enough so that it functions with MadCat for Madden.  This makes for a pretty nice website and it does a good job at keeping track of things like leaders, records, team pages.  I'm constantly trying to make things a little better but I'm really pleased with what I have today.
• I've been able to get CFL & CIS leagues going which creates a nice continuation of a players career.  Just b/c they're done in one league doesn't mean their career is over.  I've also been able to move players from Bowl Bound College Football into Max FB which means that we have players from NCAA Division 1 FBS, FCS, and Division 2 who are going to have careers in a football league after they're done with college without impacting our NFL realism type league
• The Indoor setup has provided a very good framework for our soon to be launched Arena and AF2 leagues.  Again the players from the college leagues have somewhere to play now - they don't just fade into the depths of the league DB - they move on and their career grows.

I'll give you my standard example.  Gary Novak led our Renegades to the Grey Cup in his rookie season.  Now we get to see if he can avoid a sophomore slump.  We have Joseph Ornelas out of Iowa playing for the Saskatoon Thunderbirds and just starting to make a name for himself there after rushing for 1,955 yards in his senior season.  His backup Israel Stepp is a 5'11" 181 lb. scatback with a 3.79 GPA who just makes guys miss. Stepp probably goes onto the CFL but say we have a bruiser of a back like Brian Fernandez at Notre Dame - 5'10" 247 lbs.  He's a great runner and a strong player but probably not suited to the CFL - I'd say he ends up trying out for the Chicago Rush and maybe has an AFL Career ahead of him. If he washes out there and gets cut maybe he ends up playing for the Quad City Steamwheelers. 
 
The whole world is at your disposal with MaxFb despite it's flaws.  You really can do just about anything in football with it, and if you're willing to take the time to put into it what your expectations are and you're willing to learn it, it gives you an unmatched framework. 
 
Now the real tough part - how do you sim a couple thousand high schools with the thing!
 

[DAWUSS]

If only there was a game that carried the versatility of Maximum-Football with the polish of Madden and an unprecedented amount of realism...

[garysorrell]

Ya know, OldCoach, DreamTeams, and mbsports have summed up the positives of this game incredibly well. This game is a hobby, for the PC football hobbyist. And im not talking an arcade player so to speak, Madden and gamepad. Im talking the guy that played 'Football' on the Atari 2600 and kept stats! The guy that bought every PC football game that came out, hoping for the features of Maximum Football, and was always left disappointed.

FootballPro9X and Madden 2002 were the best up to this point. But Maximum Football has come as close as any to perfect. We know it has a few issues, but barring any further patching, it's a darn great experience. I have not played any game as much, and have NEVER modded a game, or been this involved in any game community, as much.

Much like DreamTeams has done with his Metro Football League, that is what I have always wanted from a PC football game. The ability to create my own football universe from scratch and watch it grow. I've never HAD to control a team, I can play commissioner, or team owner and have as much fun. But we can do it all with MaxFB, and it is a competetive game with a good set of playbooks(Hack).

I want to look back, after season 20 and see all the history. That to me is cool as heck. See a guy with the rushing record, and a guy 10-12 years later on the verge of breaking it. And the best part, for me, is when a computer generated QB or DB is as fresh in your mind after he retired 10 seasons ago, as Thurman Thomas or Dan Marino. Your universe. Your version of Gale Sayers or Jim Brown. Your "Throwin Samoan" or "Gallopin' Ghost". Your Eagles v Cowboys, or Steelers v Browns.

I think I have spent too much time dwelling on the negatives and really needed to just start enjoying the game. Which is what im doing now. I probably will churn out a stadium or 2 this week. Im off 4 days. And just enjoy the game.

I am with Mykal in feeling a strong attachment to the game and all the great people in this community. I have had more fun here than someone should be allowed, and met some really great people. I could never leave, thats for sure.

Anyway, my wife convinced me to keep paying my little monthly web fee. So the site should remain in good standing. And I will continue to make stadiums. Just not as often as I have, but they will still come. And like Mykal, I probably wont be able to take requests. But I am open to suggestions, especially in the area of atmosphere. Simmer has mentioned some things that I will likely add to future stadiums. I cant make promises, but I am open to ideas.

[DAWUSS]

The only ideas I might have would be the closest things you can get to NFL stadium replicas in MFB.



Anyway, one thing I probably should do (and was planning on doing several years back) is try to write a football story. It shouldn't be that difficult as MFB keeps the playcall logs and all of that, and it'll be easy to know who's running what. Just insert some vivid imagery and hope the whole thing doesn't get too repetitive or too detail laden - which can be easy to do considering how much description can go into one play.

[redwolf1]

Oh hell...that mushy warm feeling....
Guess there's no harm in keeping open...feeling a bit like a lemming, but what the heck, I'll keep my site open for any newcomers, but certainly can't promise anything new (currently texmodding Madden), but will check back in from time to time - indeed, it is a great community! [:)]