Australian Football Coach 2019
New and improved match simulation and interchanges! - Version 0.7.0 Released
One of the biggest requests, manual interchanges, has been added back into the game, making the game more interesting for hands-on coaches. Simply click on two players on the interchange tab to switch them out - it couldn't be simpler! The code is relatively fresh so there are a couple other improvements planned for the display, but this should make the game more interesting to a few users.
Another piece of feedback has been that the match engine isn't quite realistic enough, especially in terms of rucks getting too many disposals. A whole season's worth of games was simulated to see how exactly the match engine was working and then all of the disposals were normalised for pitch height/width to create a heat map. It turned out the rucks weren't quite hitting the ball far enough, so frequently won the first loose ball after winning the ruck. This has been fixed - rucks should still get a decent number of disposals as they're midfielders, but it should be much less extreme. Centre bounce player positioning has also been updated.
Benchmarking the game also allowed several other quirks with the match engine to be fixed, especially one which showed a particular bias - it turns out the ball wasn't bouncing randomly enough on the pitch, and that was impacting game results!
These tweaks have really helped make the simulation more realistic and those of you who are stat-minded should see a definite difference. There's still more work to be done, especially in regards to player positioning, and any feedback is welcome.
There's also a new match preview screen complete with predictions and information about your upcoming match, which means you don't jump straight into a game unless you're ready.
More good news as well, version 0.7.1 should be coming out in the next couple days as a couple things didn't get added in by the 0.7.0 release deadline, so be on the lookout for some new information/displays and headlines and (possibly) a complete overhaul and update of the 2020 lists!
Hope you enjoy the newest version!
The AFC2020 Roadmap from Early Access to "Full Access"
A number of users have asked what's next, so what better way to celebrate a month on sale than to discuss next steps for the game?
Before the features, a big thank you to everyone who has gotten in touch with their support and recommendations to improve the game. The launch has been great and based on the statistics and feedback it seems as if quite a few of you enjoy the game - the average per-user playtime at the moment is over six hours! Thanks also to those who have sent their save game files to help patch the game - when something goes wrong, the save files have been extremely helpful in fixing it.
So, what needs to happen for AFC go to "full access?"
First, the game must be completely crash-free. The game's at a point where crashes still occur, but the events leading up to each crash get a little more random. Many of the crashes end up being oversights or minor programming errors which don't get caught until the game crashes. Perhaps this sounds a bit unprofessional, but for instance, one recently fixed crash only occurred when a player who had been selected for his league's best 22 had I believe retired from a career ending injury before being selected to the best 22. Many of the fixes being made are minor and shouldn't impact the majority of users, and almost every reported crash has been patched within 48 hours and usually under less than a day, and several features added since launch, including requiring team confirmations and the ball trail, were user suggestions.
The game must also be comfortably bug-free. Many of these have been fixed over the past months, a couple known ones remain, including the fact you get too many notifications when free agency begins, and two players will occasionally interchange over and over again with each other. These'll hopefully be fixed by v0.7.0.
There's also a few features missing that should be added before the game can be officially called "full access:"
1. Player meetings should be up next. This hasn't been completely written yet so may get pushed back, but you'll have a certain number of meeting points you'll be able to use each week on a certain number of actions. Trying to make unhappy players happier will be more "expensive" than chatting with your contented star about training. You'll be able to access this through the "Coaches Meeting" tab.
2. Hotseat multiplayer. This has been written but it hasn't been tested at all, apart from determining it wasn't ready to go at the launch date a month ago. The game's optimised for multiple human coaches to play on the same device, but the final touches haven't been made yet due to the prioritisation of launching the game before the start of the season.
3. Manual interchanges. Much requested, this shouldn't be terribly difficult to implement, and will be in the game as soon as it works. This hasn't been a priority based on the game's design plan of making a working simulator and then "dropping in" human coaches.
4. More league customisation options. Since the original AFC, several users have asked for customisation options like league expansion, folding teams, and promotion/relegation. Pro-rel may not make it in as it's very niche, but league expansion has been placed on the short list. Also, did you know you can make your own scenarios if you want a bit more control than the custom league editor? Being able to export your current league instance to a scenario is on the to-do list.
5. More seasons dating back to 2014. This is just a straight data migration issue. 2014 is almost done, and the 2015-2018 seasons need to be adjusted. This doesn't seem to be that popular of an addition based on feedback but it also requires no programming. If you have any interest in creating seasons dating even further back please get in touch. The game has basic features built out for adding in rule changes over time, but a lot of the rules (rolling interchanges versus the old substitution rules, the veterans rule) haven't been implemented.
6. The game supports women's football leagues, but scoring needs to be made more realistic before these leagues are turned on.
7. A better sense of media. Currently all news articles are being migrated to Articles.csv, a text file, which lets the game pull from any number of generic story templates. More "hooks" will be added with time to allow the world to have more interesting news articles and media.
8. Stats and website export features - this is basically implemented but a more robust export feature will be necessary for the users who want to use the game to run online leagues.
9. Make the game more tactically interesting by working on AI coaching. This is the hardest one.
Once all or most of this is done, the game will be ported to Mac, probably the biggest request/question that's come in from users. The Mac port should be relatively easy, but it's difficult to support since Macs require a Mac and the game's sales won't justify purchasing a Mac to launch on Mac.
Thanks again for your support and if there's anything you think was missed or any further suggestions you might have please get in touch on the Steam forums, on Facebook or Twitter, or on the game's Discord channel!
Game patched up to v0.6.5
Still some issues that haven't been resolved yet, such as an odd interchange bug - those'll come soon, don't worry.
VERSION 0.6.5
- Fixed: Game would crash if a player on a best 22 had been dropped/retired before the season finished
- Fixed: Game would occasionally crash after load processing a deleted contract
- Fixed: Rivalry buttons/Stadium buttons on Team Editor would not work if they were the last thing on the editor screen you had tried to edit
- Fixed: Body of one way rivalry articles was not showing up
- Fixed: Draft picks weren't displaying properly on trade screen after one season of play - quick untested fix, but it would have fixed this exact issue, still likely caused a knock on effect somewhere
- Improved: Clarified text explaining why you couldn't sign an out of contract player
+ Added: Add Stadium button
VERSION 0.6.4 (one-day emergency patch)
- Fixed bug: Game crashed whenever user tried to hire/fire coach or a apply for a job - this was because of a line of debug code that wasn't removed properly
- Fixed bug: Some articles weren't swapping out variables properly from Articles.csv file (%team1 wins game, etc)
VERSION 0.6.3
- Fixed bug: Coaches being loaded from the database didn't have their ids registered properly, causing issues with associating coaches to teams on load games
- Fixed bug: Available jobs disappeared on game load
- Fixed bug: Stadiums would update, but it wouldn't be clear to the user until they advanced a day
- Fixed bug: Could not add zoned players to squad
- Fixed bug: Team/league record text strings were not being saved/loaded properly
- Fixed bug: Highest/lowest was switched in the record checker
- Fixed bug: Years were not being recorded properly with team records
- Fixed bug: If a league has both a draft and a zoned player rule, AI teams will now save room on their squad to be able to draft players
- Fixed bug: Game could crash if you started a game unemployed + with a fantasy draft
- Fixed bug: Stats for playoff games weren't displaying properly
- Fixed bug: Teams weren't being awarded premierships, minor premierships, or wooden spoons in the premiership tallies
- Possibly fixed bug: Finals matches not displaying correctly on match overview screen
- Improved/Fixed bug: Added "emergency" code which re-selects a team if the AI has selected fewer than 22 players (should fix the state leagues scoring several hundred points bug, since that was a result of one team selecting less than 18 players)
- Improved: Can now only delist players during the offseason
- Improved: Migrated more news stories to Articles.csv
+ Added: Improved player editor - can now edit player attributes, injury, current contract
+ Added: Can now select custom league games directly from custom league setup screen
+ Added: Can now create state level leagues in the custom league editor
VERSION 0.6.2
- Fixed bug: Rivalries on team editor wasn't firing the trigger to actually update the edited rivalries
- Fixed bug: In theory, fixed issue where sometimes teams would offer really good players for really bad players in trade negotiations
- Fixed bug: Some checkboxes weren't staying persistent on Coach > Options page
- Fixed bug: AI List Management checkbox wasn't triggering AI list management so was functionally useless
- Fixed bug: Occasionally a player would attempt to interchange with a player who could not be interchanged with, causing a game crash
- Fixed bug: Some fixtures weren't saving the year of the fixture properly, causing the box score to not be displayed
- Improved: Team abbreviations on box score screen
- Improved: Updated club rivalries
- Improved: Deleted trades are no longer saved to disk
New version with Linux support! 0.6.0 released, 0.6.1 patch now live
To go along with supporting a new operating system, the game also adds support for a fantasy draft and a user-requested feature that, if selected, forces you to confirm your squad before each game. Some users prefer to simulate seasons and others prefer to play out each game live and this should make for a more enjoyable experience for the one-game-at-a-time players! Also, rivalry games now have an impact on coach perception - lose a big one to your hated rival and it might just be the last game of your coaching career (assuming your job was on the brink, of course.)
Several bugs have been fixed as well, especially in the match engine where some interchange issues were occurring, back pockets running to the bench but not interchanging, as well as the dreaded away team advantage. The game should also be more stable with a number of crashes patched.
The game's improving with each version so hope you enjoy your latest coaching career!
Changelogs:
VERSION 0.6.1
- Fixed bug: Auto-select used a cached list of old players after drafting a fantasy draft
- Fixed bug: You have to re-draft your team each season if you start with a fantasy draft (same reason as above, code wasn't triggering properly)
- Fixed bug: Display issues with historical team history/records (were partially resolved in a previous fix but a different bug came up)
- Fixed bug: Percentages should now display properly in historical league records and not be rounded to the nearest whole number and then display a .0 afterwards
- Fixed bug: Players were overlapping on interchange bench
- Fixed bug: Back pockets weren't interchanging properly
- Fixed bug: Game would occasionally crash checking contract code
- Fixed bug: Fixtures were all over the place with regards to dates - fixed it so it's back to primary day Saturday, some games on Thursday or Friday, some games on Sunday
- Fixed bug: Home field advantage should now exist and not be away field advantage - this was only a partial fix but fine with it for now
- Fixed bug: Players would sometimes mark ball from an out of bounds position
- Improved: Added delist player button on player screen
- Improved: Noticed rivalry code had been copied over from old version but wasn't currently used, winning/losing a rivalry game now has a larger impact on job security
+ Added: Started new article system which will allow you to add/modify news articles based on specific triggers (right now only works with rivalry games)
VERSION 0.6.0
- Fixed bug: Several more players had the wrong season/career statistics
- Fixed bug: News items would occasionally cause game to skip days (probably creates a new bug, we'll see)
- Fixed bug: May have fixed finals issue where winners of the qualifying finals played themselves and then advanced directly to the grand final
- Improved: Updated 2020 coaches database (updated coaches, contracts, and hot seats)
- Improved: Updated 2020 player database (tweaked a number of attributes)
+ Added: Start-of-game Fantasy Draft
+ Added: For hands-on managers who don't want to miss selecting the team for any game, an option to require squad confirmation
Patch 0.5.15 released - fixes two big match engine issues
1. Players should no longer run off the field during kick-ins (haven't entirely confirmed this is fixed, but it doesn't happen anymore, and it should be fixed.)
2. Players were occasionally sitting on the bench the whole game.
This should conclude all of the major bug fixes from release meaning version 0.6 is next!
The next big features planned in the road map for v0.6:
- The "Coaches Meeting" tab was introduced but has a "coming soon" label - this is the most important feature that didn't make it into launch. You'll be able to coach players weekly on morale and training... or as always, simply leave it up to your assistants
- Start your game off with a fantasy draft
- More immersion with content and news articles
Also, the older AFC scenarios have started to transition to the new AFC2020 data format, starting with the 2014 season. While data updates won't be version-specific, some users enjoy season replays, and the data formats aren't wildly different, so you may see some older seasons appear in your new game list as time goes on. (You could, if you wanted to, create a season sim for any season in history if you tweaked the attributes properly.)
VERSION 0.5.15 Change log:
- Fixed bug: AI no longer automatically picks zoned players for human-controlled teams
- Fixed bug: Game would crash if a contract tried to save without an attached player
- Fixed bug: Several bits of the league editor screen weren't calling the "save edits" code properly, meaning your edits wouldn't save unless you edited some other part of the league which then triggered the "save edits" code
- Fixed bug: You can now get hired by a team if you're unemployed
- Fixed bug: Contracts weren't being resolved due to fix of a bug in 0.5.14
- Fixed bug: Cannot definitively confirm a fix, but players should not run off the pitch anymore during kick ins
- Fixed bug: One player had stats combined with other players with the same name
- Fixed bug: Could create leagues with one team
- Fixed bug: Interchanging wasn't working properly
- Fixed bug: User's record/rank in the upper right now updates daily
- Fixed bug: You could occasionally be fired if the senior coach wasn't fired when you were hired due to a bug in the game
- Fixed bug: Display issue for finals matches
- Fixed bug: Fixture generation was occasionally overlapping rounds
- Fixed typo: Typo/mismatched pronoun on contract extension request
- Improved: Added Australian suburbs to cities list
- Improved: Added transaction window information to league reports page
- Improved: You can now sim to the start of the next month
- Improved: Slight adjustment to the 4-team double elimination finals
Patches 0.5.10-0.5.14 pushed this week
There's still some reported issues that haven't been fixed, especially around the match engine, so that's going to be the focus going forward into this week. The one that's been most reported is players running off the field entirely during kick-ins.
Look out for more changes over the coming week!
Here's a full list of all the changes:
VERSION 0.5.14
- Fixed bug: Game would occasionally crash trying to pick the best 22 players in the league (don't know why it wasn't doing this 100% of the time before)
- Fixed bug: You should be able to trade draft picks now
- Fixed bug: Rows for read messages were still showing green (finally figured this one out)
- Fixed bug: Disposal average sorting wasn't always working
- Fixed bug: AI would offer free agency contracts on your behalf since the game didn't check to see if a team was user controlled or not
- Fixed bug: Game would occasionally crash in training due to a day of week offsetting error causing the game to think the day was negative
- Fixed bug: Career stats were aggregating by team, not league, so players would have duplicate records
- Fixed bug: Game would crash on game load if any human players were unemployed
- Fixed bug: Game would crash on out of contract player selection if active human player was unemployed
- Fixed bug: Salary extensions now save properly
- Fixed bug: Multi-year contracts should now properly update the player's salary after each season
- Fixed bug: Teams should now not delist declining superstars at the end of the year but rather players at the bottom of their list with the lowest perceived potential
- Fixed bug: You can now edit players' secondary position (a bug, not an improved, because there was a typo causing the secondary position combo not to display)
- Fixed bug: Team history was displaying oddly on the Leagues > Premiers tab
- Fixed bug: Previous team seasons on the history tab should now display after you load a game
- Fixed bug: Secondary stadiums now editable in the Team Editor page - the secondary stadium was previously copying the result from the primary stadium
- Fixed bug: Player game stats did not have an associated league, causing a couple display issues
- Fixed bug: Updated fixture creation for bye rounds designed to reschedule games for odd-numbered teams not playing a full round robin
- Fixed bug: Subsequent offers from the same club caused the offer to be withdrawn during free agency
- Fixed bug: Free agents now have time pressure to sign at the close of a free agency window
- Fixed bug: Superstars should not be offered slightly better than minimum salaries by the AI teams anymore (cannot confirm this fix)
- Improved: Added career stats to Player > Career Statistics screen
- Improved: Changed initial skill levels for generated zoned players
- Improved: News item for when player wins the best on ground award in the grand final
VERSION 0.5.13
- Fixed bug: Any contracts offered were not loading from a save game properly
- Fixed bug/Improved: AI teams will now re-hire assistant coaches
- Fixed bug: Custom team logos/jumpers weren't loading Team Nickname.png, just Team.png causing some conflicts
- Fixed bug: Game should no longer crash when accepting a user-initiated trade
- Fixed bug: Added Frankston club, changed colours for a couple other clubs
- Improved: Career Stats now visible on League > Player Stats screen
- Improved: Basic stadium information now editable
- Improved: Automatic abbreviations for teams with spaces in their names (Los Angeles goes from "LOS "
+ Added: Add additional leagues/youth leagues to custom games
VERSION 0.5.12
- Fixed bug: newly added reserve team player news was only showing up for finals games
- Fixed bug: Retired players were displaying as "must be drafted" if you were trying to offer them a contract
- Fixed bug: Reworked scout's assessment of potential a little bit
- Fixed bug: Draft picks should now work properly on the trades screen
- Fixed bug: Players on opposition trade screen were selecting, but once this happened you couldn't drag them nowhere
- Fixed bug: Match engine pause/play button now appears as ">" whenever the game is paused
- Fixed bug: Adjusted kick-ins: may not have fixed the players running to the corner bug as I haven't isolated that yet, but did make positional adjustments
- Fixed bug: Player training now saves when you adjust a player's schedule/intensity
- Fixed bug: Individualised player training did not work at all (was the same as training for skill)
- Fixed bug: Contract reset date may not have been loading properly, meaning contracts never went down and players didn't get delisted
- Fixed bug: Accept AI trade offers screen finally now works after a workaround
- Improved: Accepting a trade offer clears all other trade offers for that player
- Improved: Rover now roves to the ball's position
- Improved: Expanded commentary list from 1 to 5
+ Added: Can now rename league leading goalscorer award
+ Added: Delete all read messages button to user screen
+ Added: Basic filter to scouting reports screen
VERSION 0.5.11
- Fixed bug: Fitness training wasn't actually impacting player fitness
- Fixed bug: Fitness now decreases less over the offseason
- Fixed bug: Game would occasionally crash if a player without a team was selected to play in a game
- Fixed bug: Durability was not saving properly
- Fixed bug: Best Player league award wasn't saving properly in certain circumstances
- Fixed bug: News always said designated home team had defeated the designated away team regardless of score
- Fixed bug: Players weren't being selected for the reserves properly
- Fixed bug: Renewing players would display that they were considering another offer, but this was a result of a typo in the game logic
- Fixed bug: Adjusted salary rank now loads properly from save games, was the reason why some players were accepting minimum salaries to re-sign
- Fixed bug: Can now properly click on players on the trade screen
- Fixed bug: Can now properly click on players on the out-of-contract screen
- Fixed bug: User-proposed trades will now work
- Fixed bug: Seasons drop-down now doesn't over-populate years on game load
- Fixed bug: Now can no longer offer retired players/disinterested players contracts
- Fixed bug: Game wouldn't always display the right round on the match scores screen or when clicking the buttons - may still not but things should be improved
- Fixed bug: Players who bounced back and forth between reserves and main team were having season stats double up
- Fixed bug: Wrong financial amount available for contracts would display when offering players a new contract
- Fixed bug: You can now only offer free agent contracts to players who were in your league, all other players have to go through the draft
- Fixed bug: Players don't offer to take pay cuts in contract offers anymore unless they're veterans (you can still try to offer lower, and they may still accept)
- Improved: Hopefully made it easier to scroll through out of contract players with up/down buttons on player screen
+ Added: Checkbox to ignore all news for easier simulation
+ Added: Information about the players on your team who played reserves that week
+ Added: Can now change name of Best Young Player award in a league
VERSION 0.5.10
- Fixed bug: Labels were not deleting properly if the scoring locations screen was up when you finished a game
- Fixed bug/improved (not in 0.5.9 change list): Round labels for finals games; round labels now display properly (0.5.10)
- Fixed bug: Two players with ??s instead of 's in the database
- Fixed bug: Removed duplicate player from database
- Fixed bug: League > Player Statistics should select correct player after previously clicking on a player and returning to stats screen
- Fixed bug: Occasional crash when offering a trade
- Fixed bug: Game was not resetting to January 1 if you started a game, stopped, and then started a new game
- Fixed bug: Teams kept getting added to the team to trade with combo box on trade screen
- Fixed bug: Draft picks now display on trade screen
- Fixed bug: You can now make free agency offers to players who have been offered by other teams already
- Fixed bug: Free agents now want more than $-1,000 to play for your team
- Fixed bug: Unselected first team players should now be made available for the reserves
- Fixed bug: Occasional crash on game load when checking to see the active player stats
- Fixed bug: Occasional crash on game save
- Improved: Player positions now editable on Player > Editor screen
- Improved: Added player positions to in-game stats screen
+ Added: Resolution selection screen
Patch 0.5.9 (and 0.5.8, 0.5.7) released
This doesn't fix everything, so please post if your game crashes at any point. A couple of the crashes fixed this time around would happen relatively frequently, so hoping things calm down.
The next big push will be to work on defensive positioning - too many goals are being scored because a player wins a 1-on-1 and then runs the ball into the goal untouched due to differences in acceleration/speed - and also to work on time on ground, as there appear to be a few issues there as the game currently focuses too much on fatigue/stamina and not enough on skill when determining who should rotate on.
Resolution is also an issue for many users, which is difficult to handle but will be a focus next week. If your screen size is 768 pixels high or you use a high resolution monitor, the game already supports a fix, but you have to hack the game's Settings.txt file to make it work. The work next week will make sure that it's easier for you to handle resolution issues.
Here are the change logs for the previous patches:
VERSION 0.5.9
- Fixed bug: Players would sometimes sit on the bench without interchanging properly
- Fixed bug: Team > Statistics screen now displays the correct player when you click on them
- Fixed bug: League > Player Statistics now displays the correct player when you click on them
- Fixed bug (2020 version only): Two players with the same name, one had all of the stats for both players, the other had none of the stats
- Fixed bug: Team List Management injury list displayed oddly
- Fixed bug: Coaches are now hired for their proper role
- Fixed bug: Hired coaches now receive a salary
- Fixed bug: May not have eliminated it completely, but you should see far fewer notifications that a player wants to renew their contract when they don't want to renew
- Fixed bug: Retired players were getting and signing contract offers from teams
- Fixed bug: Some players no longer have leading spaces after their names
- Fixed bug: Trade notifications were only being displayed for one team, blank for the second team
- Fixed bug: User could accept/reject trades, but accepted trades weren't removing themselves and rejected trades didn't always match
- Fixed bug: Trades were saving/loading, but not associating team information properly, leading to blank trade screens after load
- Fixed bug: Leading goalscorer award now awarded immediately following end of home-and-away season so finals don't influence the result
- Fixed bug: Transactions were going in reverse after game load
- Fixed bug: Scouting reports screen
- Fixed bug: Scouting reports screen made wider for easier player addition
- Fixed bug: Game would crash when resolving a trade if a player had been delisted after the trade proposal was initiated
- Fixed bug: Game would crash when trying to save if a team didn't have a head coach or list manager
- Fixed bug: Game would not change its save game name if copied on the hard drive
- Improved: Can now click on players from scouting reports screen
- Improved: Can now click on players from shortlist screen
- Improved: Can now removed shortlisted players directly from shortlist screen
- Improved: Players now display as retired instad of unattached on player screen
- Improved: Changed some player attributes
- Improved: Better scouts won't make hyperbolic assessments of young players potential
- Improved: Team Best and Fairest award now appears in coaching news and the top five players should display now
- Improved: Not user-facing yet, but started programming the code to make a functional back button
+ Added: Ball trails
+ Added: Made background image wider/more stadium-like, so you can now see interchange players, and increased focus on the pitch
VERSION 0.5.8
- Fixed bug: Career stats actually save
- Fixed bug: You can't add injured players to your team selection anymore, and selected injured players are automatically removed from team selection after each game
- Fixed bug: Upper right hand corner coaching wins/losses indicator now uses team ladder position, not draft position
- Fixed bug: Teams in zoned player leagues were not displaying the zoned players in the coaching screen
- Fixed bug: Extra periods were a little bit too long (knock-on effect from change in version 0.4, not noticed until now)
- Fixed bug: Notify delistings and retirements didn't check for team and crashed (did not test the fix so may still crash but may be okay now)
- Fixed bug: Players must play for a team to be eligible for the mid-season draft
- Fixed bug: Changed ruck positioning
- Fixed bug: Injured players would sometimes remain on the pitch/get interchanged back onto the field
- Fixed bug: You can now accept/reject AI offered trades again
- Improved: Scouts are now automatically assigned different leagues on game start
- Improved: Removed numerical security indicator
- Improved: Allowed the screen to display better on larger monitors (not fully implemented, this still requires a hack)
- Improved: Made drop-downs in tables more obvious
+ Added: You can directly add players to shortlist from scouting report screen
+ Added: Labeled substitutes on selections screen
+ Added: You can now clear your player selection
+ Added: Deleting user messages now automatically selects the next message
+ Added: Variable quarter lengths (you can change these on the League>Editor screen during league offseasons)
VERSION 0.5.7
- Fixed bug: Scouting should now work (though you will have to manually update your scouts at the start of the game, this will be fixed tomorrow)
- Fixed bug: Fatigue no longer starts at ~52% in-game
- Fixed bug: Stadiums with a roof now block out inclement weather and temperatures
- Fixed bug: No scouting reports were showing since the function to update the scouting reports table never got called anywhere
- Fixed bug: A player who suffered a career ending injury could still be selected if you didn't take him out of the team
- Fixed bug: Players should no longer randomly wander off of the field
- Fixed bug: Clicking on a player on the team stats page now filters by year and /should/ return the proper player
- Fixed bug: Career stats were not loading/saving at all
- Fixed bug: Trades were saving but not loading
- Fixed bug: Contested marks were not saving
- Fixed bug: Match stats would occasionally appear duplicated
- Fixed/improved: Some player skills/minor data issues
- Fixed/improved: Players were getting time-on-pitch for periods when the clock was stopped
- Fixed bug: Game was not saving team points, meaning points were only recalculated when a team won/drew a game, leading to issues with finals
- Fixed bug: A typo was causing the transaction log date to not load properly, leading to blank dates in the transaction log
- Fixed bug: Game would occasionally crash when you selected "Free Agents" on League > Player screen
- Fixed bug: May have fixed Free Agents display on display screen
- Fixed bug: Players who have re-signed now display statuses properly instead of crashing the game
- Improved: Player fatigue now a function of both fitness and stamina, not just fitness, and should be generally improved if not complete
- Improved: Added indicator if player is injured in the middle of the game
+ Added: Players can now improve skills through playing in a game
Patches 0.5.5, 0.5.6 released
A couple more issues remain - for instance, there's an occasional crash after save games are loaded, and the problem with scouting is mostly fixed but couldn't get sorted by the cutoff time. These should be fixed tomorrow.
A larger bug is the "chasing squirrels" bug where players wander off the pitch - this one has been around for awhile unfortunately and always comes back just when you think it's been fixed. Hopefully will fix this tomorrow as well.
The biggest bug fix shows how much a small change can impact the game - the only difference between a game you watch and a game that's simulated is maybe 20 lines of code, which has not changed since the early alpha, and that unchanged code was the difference between the game generating proper results and the game generating high-scoring results.
Also fixed/improved is an issue dating back to the original AFC: hit outs don't have to be done by rucks, meaning rucks will get fewer disposals and be properly positioned throughout the game, especially when the ball's in the team's forward pocket.
The only true addition apart from news stories is sortable stats when you're in a game.
VERSION 0.5.6
- Fixed bug: Ruck issue from 0.5.5 (other players besides ruck can perform hitouts) didn't quite get fixed, now live
- Fixed bug: Accept/reject AI trades wasn't working when you clicked on either button
- Fixed bug: Hid game score/Brownlow columns in stats field to not give away award surprises
- Fixed bug: Birthdates now randomly generated on game load if save files were impacted by them
- Fixed bug: Game-by-game statistics should now save and load properly
- Fixed bug: Stats centering issue on player game stats screen
- Fixed bug: Season stats were duplicating on game load
- Fixed bug: Never fired, but fixed potential issue with different human head coaches having different options for games with multiple players (the game is designed for multiple human coaches, but this feature is not yet available)
- Fixed bug: Only a couple types of coaches (head coaches/list managers) were being assigned to their teams, which caused random crashes
- Fixed bug: Fired coaches now disappear from your coach list immediately
- Fixed bug: You can now hire staff
- Fixed bug: Games that weren't played out by the player were generating too many scoring chances
- Fixed bug: Even though the checkbox functioned properly, you could not turn off not getting notified that it's time to select your team
- Fixed bug: Assistant coach training checkbox should now work properly and not turn off randomly
- Improved: You now can hire up to 7 scouts and one coach of each type (as opposed to hiring indefinite numbers)
+ Added: In-game player statistics now sortable
VERSION 0.5.5
- Fixed bug: Weather was not being passed properly to the game engine, so all games were played in sunny weather
- Fixed bug: AI no longer tries to offer every single potential acceptable trade for each player to human coaches
- Fixed bug: "Renew" button on Expiring Contracts screen wasn't working when you clicked on it
- Fixed bug: Game wasn't loading scores or information for completed fixtures
- Fixed bug: Game wasn't saving team selections, leading to games where you didn't field a team
- Fixed bug: Scoring shots chart finally actually resets after a game (fixing a bug thought to be previously fixed)
- Fixed bug: Zoned players weren't being generated in the first season after selecting a league to use zoned players
- Improved: Team statistics page now sorts properly when you click the headers
- Improved: Rucks no longer automatically run to any ball up - if they're too far away, another player with the best hitout skill will take the hitout
- Improved: News event from trade offers
- Improved: Players now have more difficulty picking up/playing the ball in difficult weather
- Improved: Players now are slower in more difficult conditions
+ Added: Notifications about zoned player windows
Patches 0.5.2, 0.5.3, and 0.5.4 released
Change logs are below. Version 0.5.5 is in the works now as well, which so far increases the influence of inclement weather on any particular game.
VERSION 0.5.4
- Fixed bug: Players occasionally were instructed to play man-to-man defense against each other, which caused neither of them to move
- Fixed bug: Players would scatter in all directions if the player designated to take a kick-in wasn't on the pitch; they still might scatter, but the game now ensures the player designated to take the kick-in is on the pitch and then picks a different player and then moves that player to take the kick-in if not found
- Fixed bug: Positioning issues caused by a decimal (float)-to-integer rounding error caused players to play more narrowly than they should have
- Fixed bug: Some young players were being classified as veterans, should now reclassify them as starters
- Fixed bug: Contracts were not loading properly
- Fixed bug: After loading a game, there were issues with the drop down menus (teams/simulate until)
- Fixed bug: Game was not saving players' birthdays
- Fixed bug: Game was not loading logos or jumpers on a load game
- Fixed bug: Unused list of scouts was crashing the game
- Improved: Made sure game menu was visible on resolutions with max 768 height
- Improved: Ball throw-in positioning
- Improved: Automatically scales screen to 768 if no larger graphics mode found
- Improved: Changed false leadership attribute for a random player
+ Added: Height and weight to draft screen
VERSION 0.5.3
- Fixed bug: If you can't save the game, you get notified instead of having the game crash
- Fixed bug: Game now attempts to create save game folder if does not exist
+ Added: You can now choose to have timestamped saves (ie "gamename_21February2020.sav" as opposed to just "gamename.sav")
VERSION 0.5.2
- Fixed bug: Game wasn't autosaving monthly
- Fixed possible bug: Game was randomly delisting players on human teams if the team had too many players
- Improved: Logic around player retirements
+ Added: Notification about upcoming delistings and player retirements
Patch v0.5.1 released!
Nothing game-changing here, but a couple obvious bugs are fixed, and some minor improvements on places like the selection screen. Expect another patch in a day or so as work continues, and please continue leaving feedback!
VERSION 0.5.1
- Fixed bug: Scoring shots would stay displayed on the screen in some instances
- Fixed bug: Fixture lists loaded from a file didn't display on the matches screen properly
- Fixed bug: Unhappy players no longer request contract extensions
- Fixed bug: Game wasn't saving on exit
- Improved: Assistant coach selects team now turned off by default
- Added: Height and weight added to player selection screen
- Added: Force white/black jersey numbers
- Added: Player morale to Renew Contract screen
- Added: Option of opaque or transparent players on matchday screen