Australian Football Coach 2019
Announcing Australian Football Coach 2023
Australian Football Coach 2023 is currently in production and is now available to wishlist on Steam! Check out the new design and the new features at the AFC2023 store page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2238710/Australian_Football_Coach_2023/
The game should be ready in the first few months of next year as old features are improved and new features are being added daily, including multiple human coaches in the same hot seat and player families. The game's GUI has also been completely redesigned.
Make sure to follow AFC2023 for all of the latest news and updates!
Version 1.3.3 now available
Hope you enjoy the update!
VERSION 1.3.3
+ Improved: Further nerfed overage (>21 years) players in the national draft
+ Improved: Added player label for the player in possession of the ball
- Fixed: Commissioner mode check-box was not persistent between save games
- Fixed: Minor player statistic issue fixed
- Fixed: Premiership years were disappearing on game load
- Fixed: Sound was not working on Windows
- Fixed: Tribunals weren't working, they were being created but the league that was supposed to review the tribunal wasn't saving
2021 update released!
The Australian Football Coach 2021 update features a full data update and a number of brand new features and fixes for PC and Linux!
Want to watch any game, not just your own team's? Now you can.
Want to compare team statistics? Check.
Want to see who won historical awards? It's all there.
Want to sub on a player? Done.
Not only that, but the player decision making code has been completely revamped, leading to a more realistic (and slightly, though possibly imperceptibly faster!) match engine. The AI list management has also improved, and sounds during the game make for a more realistic matchday experience!
Mac users should have the data update and will receive a full patch in a couple months due to issues with the port.
Hope you coach your way to many flags!
VERSION 1.3
+ Added: Can now watch any game (tick the "watch?" check mark on the league>scores tab)
+ Added: Crowd sounds (basic)
+ Added: Listed-retired status, adds a player to a team's list but makes them unable to play ("injures" them for the year with an injury of "retired") - does not exist naturally in the game, only added to allow players to have that status when loaded from a database to reflect 2021 list changes
+ Added: Team statistics now visible
+ Added: Contested marks statistic now visible in the game for players
+ Added: New awards screen
+ Added: 2021 substitution rule (should work, but not well-tested)
- Updated: All players now on new teams, some teams have updated contract extensions (working on it)
- Improved: Player decision-making code
- Improved: Players will now run onto the ball more often/decide to kick in front of a player more often
- Improved: Improved match engine speeds through optimising several slow routines
- Improved: Better AI logic for creating midfield congestion
- Improved: Better AI logic for boundary throw-in positioning
- Improved: Added player team abbreviation to leaders explorer
- Improved: Fatigue has a larger impact on "active" players (disposing, tackling, etc)
- Improved: Added additional weight to the national draft so the AI list managers have more of an incentive to draft younger players in the national draft, will still pick veterans if that's the best choice
- Improved: Tackling code improved
- Improved: Significantly increased the skill of U18/youth generated players, in order to make them more attractive in the draft
- Improved: Players with trade value no longer immediately de-listed if out of contract
- Improved: Leagues which serve as draft pools for other leagues now do not reset contracts until after the other league's draft (U18s now no longer get delisted and sign with state league teams before being drafted)
- Improved: Players now out for "months" instead of "weeks" in headlines
- Fixed: Pause simulation button now no longer overlaps commissioner combo drop-down
- Fixed: typo meant AI list managers would sometimes select worse players when a player had a high "natural" skill level
- Fixed: "Show matches screen" option was defaulting to the ladder
- Fixed: The closest players no longer run to the place where the out of bounds throw-in would take place instead of to where the contest would occur
- Fixed: Round leaders explorer rounds were not sorting properly
- Fixed: Players with negative contract lengths now get delisted (should never happen)
- Fixed: Mid-season drafted players would still appear in their old team's list
- Fixed: Mid-season drafted players who signed contract extensions would have those extensions kick in and have their salaries be very low
- Fixed: Players with a contract of 0 years loaded from disk on game load now have a 1-year contract if properly placed on a team (now fixed in the data)
- Fixed: Tribunal screen was not filtering by league
- Fixed: Player name sort issue on team screens
- Fixed: Semi-retired players will not ask for a contract extension with their state league clubs
- Fixed: Teams no longer continually hire list managers
- Fixed: Players were occasionally signing with a team the day after they had signed with another team, often for less money
- Fixed: Mid-season draft now only age 20 players and higher
- Fixed: A number of possible crash points when loading a data file have been escaped, especially when a team's league has not been defined in the leagues file
- Fixed: Clicks weren't registering on click-and-drags on the team selection screen
- Fixed: Could not change a team's parent club on the editor screen
- Fixed: Game would crash in a specific situation if a player was on a team that wasn't assigned to a league
- Fixed: Unhappy traded players now become happy with the trade
- Fixed: Centered the row headings on the ladder, which had become a real bother
- Fixed: Found two memory leaks in late testing and fixed one of them
Version 1.2.5 released
The patch also takes care of several reported issues. A couple of them were not positively confirmed before patching, so if you notice any issues, please get in touch.
As announced before, this update is only currently completely available to users on PC and Linux due to issues surrounding compiling the game for Mac. In addition, the 2018 season is not yet available on Mac, though the other data has been updated.
The full change log is below:
VERSION 1.2.5
- Fixed: U18 players now have separate delisting code so they can be signed by state teams
- Fixed: If you delisted a player who had most recently appeared in a state league game, the notification would display with the state league information
- Fixed: game would crash if player status in the file wasn't between or inclusive of the values 0 and 7
- Possibly fixed: Players would ask for the maximum contract immediately following the end of the season
- Possibly fixed: Players would get stuck in interchange mode when coaching a game
- Improved: Can now view team stats by year
- Improved: Per user request, adjusted size of height of awards panel on player screen
- Improved: If your team is performing very well, ambitious players will want to remain during the season
- Improved: Scenarios now sorted in alphabetical order on new game screen
+ Added: AI Trade Frequency setting (this works but the scale of this is untested - if you have it set to very rare and you're still getting a lot of trades drop a line)
+ Added: Updated historical team ladders database back to 2010 (to fix issue with 2014 season scenario)
+ Added: 2018 scenario (migrated from original AFC)
Goodbye Early Access - v1.0 released!
Version 1.0 is quite the update as well. Thanks to user feedback, a lot of bugs large and small have been patched. A common complaint was that the game was a little bit too random - a new database patch has replaced some of the database columns which were randomly rolled, such as player development, salaries, and leadership, with all new up to date data. Every team should be under the salary cap to start the game now as a result of this update.
Other bugs fixed include being able to pass in the draft and not being able to re-sign coaches. New features include an update to the draft screen, more refinements to AI list management, and smaller reserve teams. The game manual is nearly complete as well and should be done by the end of the weekend, which should better explain some of the in game concepts.
There's still a few things which will probably break or need to be fixed, and a hotfix is planned for early next week - but the biggest thing to come out of Version 1.0 is the end of the development cycle. Small bugs will still be patched here and there as they're discovered or reported, but the game is now feature-complete, and development will ramp up on new games unrelated to Aussie rules football. This is, in part, in order to try to create a sustainable video game income cycle: this game fills a very niche void - even rugby league managers have northern England as a market!
That being said, it's extremely likely there will be another Australian Football Coach. It's too early to tell whether this means a simple database update for 2021 or a completely new game, but one of the problems with sports management games: there's always something to add or make more realistic. A number of features didn't make it into this game that would be great to have, but I'm very happy with this game as it is and hope you enjoy it immensely.
A huge thank you to everyone who has been involved in the game so far - your willingness to provide feedback has created a better game. Whether you've joined the 100 hours club or have only played for a few minutes, thank you for being a part of the Australian Football Coach 2020 story.
New patch released & Early Access ends August 22!
Version 0.11.0 is now live on the Steam servers as well! While this was intended to be a simple bug fix, this version went above and beyond a normal minor version so it had to be released as a major version. New features include a league overview screen, designed for when you want to sit back and watch the world simulate by; a pause simulation button, which literally lets you stop time; the ability to save lineups into one of three different slots; and an update to club shields, including a new shield which allows you to flip the primary and secondary text colours.
Bug fixes include issues with stadiums in custom leagues, team prestige never changing over time, and some issues with saving and loading, including with your team's list manager.
A hotfix is planned for later this week as well, as there's still a known crash when disbanding/adding teams to a league. Not entirely sure what the issue is yet, but as soon as it's patched version 0.11.1 will come out, along with some other possible bug fixes and minor feature additions.
There's still a small number of things to clean up before the game's full release, which will signify the end of the 2020 development cycle, though bug fixes will still be applied after the 22nd as needed. Thanks again for all your support!
The list management update - v0.10.0 now released
Many users have written in or discussed the game on Discord, with the biggest complaint being that the AI didn't do a good enough job with offseason management. Superstars were being picked in the national draft, players weren't re-signing enough, state teams weren't being active in free agency, and trading was a bit of a mess.
That's all been fixed in the last patch! After over 50 distinct iterative simulations, the AI list managers have been made a lot smarter. New code was written to help the AI estimate just how good a player will be over time, which also impacts the length of their contract offer. Additionally, a bug was fixed where basically any player who was even barely homesick would not re-sign with an interstate team. As a result, a couple superstars will make it to free agency every year, but this will happen rarely as clubs try to lock down players who will help make their list better for years to come.
State clubs now do a better job of asking for free agents, including amateur leagues - there was a bug where they wouldn't re-sign any players at all.
The one area which still needs some work is AI trades with other AI clubs - the AI wants to make trades, but doesn't do a good job valuing draft picks and tends to avoid making draft pick trades entirely. Even then, the AI will now trade a lot less. Also, the AI will still draft mature aged players in the national draft, though this has also been significantly reduced - instead of picking the best available player, which could have been a delisted player who wasn't quite good enough to make a free agency signing, the list managers now consider potential much more strongly. The code for youth players has also been tweaked so the game doesn't keep recycling the same skill 70-75 players over and over again in the draft.
All in all, the game world has become a lot more realistic in just one patch. If you see any discrepancies or oddities, please get in touch on the Steam forums, on Facebook, or on Discord.
Those who love tracking history will also be happy to know you can now see the result of any draft for any league over time in this patch.
A tease for the future as well: There's probably one major patch between now and the game achieving v1.0 status. Once the game hits v1.0, the game will be complete and will not receive any further updates with the exception of bug fixes. The final features planned for AFC2020: league expansion/contraction, improved AI in-game tactical adjustments, reworked AI trades, and adding seasons 2015-2018 to the list of playable seasons, along with a planned 17-game 2020 season mod. If there's anything else you'd like to see added to the game this year, now's the time to get in touch!
Hope you enjoy the upgrade and as always a big thank you for all your support of the Australian Football Coach series.
v0.9.0 - One step closer to leaving Early Access!
Version 0.9.0 has been uploaded to the Steam servers for Mac, Linux and PC. This patch features some exciting new gameplay options and a revamped GUI.
Two big items on the "needs to get done before full release" have been added to the game. First, players now have a form statistic. If a player exceeds expectations, they'll improve their form, while if they have a bad game their form will decrease. Form directly impacts player skill and it's designed to simulate fringe players moving in and out of the team every week and adds a little bit more randomness to some of the better players in the competition. Second, AI coaches just got a little bit smarter. It may not be all that obvious in the game, but look for some teams to take longer kicks, some teams to handball more often, and others to play with a slightly faster tempo. In the past, all coaches played vanilla football, in part because the match engine changed frequently enough that AI coaching instructions would make things more difficult to debug.
There's also a number of new features for players who like to play fantasy drafts. Users can now draft a full fantasy draft using commissioner mode as opposed to just with their team and player contracts are updated based on which round the player was selected in. The stats almanac, which was a very generic HTML dump, has been improved and is now a functional website. It's still ugly and it's still in progress, but players should at least find it more usable. Editors will also like that injury proneness is now an attribute you can set in the Players.csv game database file.
The GUI has been revamped as well. The glaringly white screens are now a thing of the past - while most panels only have slight transparency now, the game looks a lot better, and the scores screen has been redone.
Full release is just around the corner. There's a decent number of things on the list: A couple known bugs need to be cleaned up, need to make sure all of the list management features are working properly as state league teams sometimes don't sign players, 6-6-6 needs to be enforced better, league expansion/contraction, and a couple other features that are planned but not yet ready to be announced.
Thank you again for all your support and hope you enjoy the newest update!
VERSION 0.9.0
- Fixed: Removed year drop-down from Game Explorer tab
- Fixed: You should no longer get news notifications for players that were delisted from your team prior to a fantasy draft
- Fixed: Issue with selecting yoke/wings logo in team editor
- Fixed: Game was jumping ahead several days after a user's match was played live
- Fixed: Issue with scroll bar on scores tab of match engine
- Improved: Added game round string to game stats/game history tables
- Improved: Not glaringly white anymore! Batch-added transparency to every panel, then went back and fixed the panels that shouldn't be
- Improved: Coaching meetings won't be implemented for 2020, so they have been replaced
- Improved: Players can now improve multiple skills in the same day
- Improved: Young players now improve more quickly if they are playing in a match
- Improved: If commissioner mode is on, you can draft players for teams you do not control
- Improved: Fantasy draft players now have a salary rank based on where they are drafted
- Improved: If the game conducts a fantasy draft, it should appear for the player regardless of whether they are employed or manage a team in that league
- Improved: Fantasy draft scouts will scout all players to make for a more interesting draft selection
- Improved: Almanac export should now be more usable/legible/interesting (not entirely done yet)
- Improved: Players are more likely to attempt a set shot at goal from distance
+ Added: Best performers by round table on League>History tab
+ Added: Player form - player skill will now vary based on their performance
+ Added: Players with good form will now have a slightly better chance of a successful training session
+ Added: Added injury proneness attribute to players.csv - this won't necessarily be persistent if you import/export, though, due to the complexity of the game's injury system
+ Added: AI coaches now make non-uniform tactical decisions and can be adjusted in Coaches.csv
Patch v0.8.1 released
Also fixed are issues with rucks getting too much of the ball because they were playing in multiple games due to a variable reset issue in new code and a contract bug where a player would accept any offer you made due to code not triggering properly.
Some issues are still known to exist, such as the "draft pick trades" bug - occasionally the game will decide the draft pick you're offering is incorrect and stops the trade from going through - and not being able to accept a job offer when unemployed (though this may have been fixed and didn't make it to the change log - need to double check.)
Change log here:
VERSION 0.8.1
- Fixed: Can now see kicks/handball heat maps during the game normally and can see all heat maps after the game has ended
- Fixed: Team stats were switched again on the match engine screen
- Fixed: Players would accept any offer during a contract extension due to the code to check the amount not triggering
- Fixed: Players still won't re-sign with you, but they won't complain about the team not having a winning culture if you've just made it to the grand final
- Fixed: Recently resigned player was displaying as zero on the salary chart screen
- Fixed: Rucks from other teams were not resetting properly and taking the ruck contests
- Fixed: Scoring summary now shows the correct score at the start of the quarter, not the score of the first score after the start of the quarter
- Improved: Migrated contract extension news to Articles.csv and added new contractual variables
- Improved: Contract screen now lets you easily add/subtract years to a contract
- Improved: Added morale to contract offer screen
- Improved: Players now do a better job of running to/defending kicks to the hot spot
- Improved: Players do a better job kicking away from the corridor when clearing the ball
- Improved: Players are forced away from the corridor
+ Added: Your list manager now gives you hints as to the player's mind-set during re-signing
+ Added: Player morale improves slightly when signing a contract extension
+ Added: Player morale declines slightly when rejecting a contract extension
+ Added: Contract now shows a + sign next to extended players on squad list screens
Australian Football Coach 2020 - now for Mac
Mac updates may be a little less frequent than regular updates unfortunately but should be good for the next couple months. A Mac version was one of the most requested features.
Version 0.7.1 also gets the game closer to getting out of early access with some big improvements in the match engine, fixing a number of bugs and changing a number of rules about player behaviour making for a more realistic outcome. Unfortunately a keen user has already spotted one issue that desperately needs fixing (forwards handballing back and forth when play moves downfield too quickly) but will be on that one for v0.7.2, possibly this weekend, along with hopefully some more analytics!
Please enjoy AFC2020 on Mac and get in touch if you have any problems on that particular platform - will try and sort them as quickly as possible.