alefzero's corner

[gyboth]

here's a mail i got from michal. i'm going to address his points later. comments by others appreciated.

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Here are some suggestions/remarks - sorry that I don't use forum, but I don't
have permanent Internet connection here. Maybe you can repost it in forum if
you find it worth it.

Suggestions:
S1. Saving live games for later watching
This was already suggested and yesterday I played really memorable match for
promotion to Div. 1 (leading by 2:0, than it was 2:2, 3:2, 3:3, no goals
extra time and finally I won 11:10 on penalties, with 2 missed penalties for
both sides before the final round).
And it is such a pity I could't store that match...

S2. Delay after goals and before/after penalties.
Some extra second after each one will make it more exciting and realistic.

S3. Watching other games.
It will be nice if one can watch other games. As they are already simulated
properly, why not let user watch them? It will be nice to watch the match
when a team of your country meets Manchester United in Champions League
semifinal.

S4. Weighted team strength.
The game will be more realistic if the teams placed higher in the league
definitions have higher probability to get higher average skill. This way,
there will be more chances that Real Madrid, Liverpool or Bayer Munchen will
play in the cup finals, not some lesser known teams like Celta, Portsmouth or
Istres.
Also, that will make more 'game levels' - if you like to have easier game,
choose well-known team, if you want to have a harder task, choose the team
from the bottom of the last division.

S5. Team nationalities.
It will be nice if one can see the nationality of the players. I believe you
started to implement some national teams and World Cup qualifiers - with
things like that you may find that your star Nigeria player can't play in the
next league match as he plays in his national team.

S6. Line-up
It will be nice if one can see the players of both teams. What about using the
third Tab in the livegame for that?

S7. Larger livegame window.
With current text-generation system comments are often longer and they don't
fit in window. What about making window larger or, preferably, remembering
its position?
Also, it will be nice if the icons for changing strategy/boost are repeated in
the live game window, making it easier to quickly change strategy.

S8. Detailed scores
Again, as matches are simulated in detail, why can't we see the details of
those matches (half-time result, goal-scorers, cards etc.)?

S9. Game history
Some view when one can watch the results from the games played, one ofter
another, will be nice (something like my next games). F. e.

Week 3 UEFA Cup: Barcelona - Liverpool 3:2
Week 4 Premiership: Liverpool - Chelsea 0:0
etc.

S10. Transfer history
As above, only for transfers.

S11. League history.
Nice if one can look at the tables from previous leagues.

S12. Browsing other teams.
It will be nice if one can look at S9 also for other teams.

S13. Position graph
Nice chart showing how your position changed during the league may be nice.



Problems
P1. Penalty messages
Penalty shootout needs another set of messages, as those for penalties during
the play don't match and often are funny.

P2. Two-matches and extra times.
First match: TeamA - TeamB 2:1
Second match: TeamB - TeamA 2:1 and 1:1 in extra time.
In Bygfoot there will be penalties, but it most leagues/cups I know, TeamA
will qualify.

P3. Game balance with older talented players.
It seems that older (~28 years) players with very large skill and talent
difference are too good to buy. They are cheap and they advance much too
fast. I will suggest just not to generated such players (it seems improbably
to improve from 30 to 50 in such age).
I believe the large changes in player skill are what makes the game so easy to
win.

P4. Player names.
Why youth school players are so often generated as non-local players? Also,
very often most player on the transfer list are from international teams, but
perhaps that makes sense for some leagues.

P5. My league results
Cup games are displayed here as well, which is misleading.
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[vector]

wow hmm will have to re reade that b4 answering..too late now tho bed time on big ball

[gyboth]

S1. Saving live games for later watching

i'm working on this one currently (although i wrote there won't be new features before 1.9.1, this will be an exception)

S2. Delay after goals and before/after penalties.
Some extra second after each one will make it more exciting and realistic.

yes, this might make sense, even if it makes the code slightly more complicated.

S3. Watching other games.
It will be nice if one can watch other games. As they are already simulated
properly, why not let user watch them? It will be nice to watch the match
when a team of your country meets Manchester United in Champions League
semifinal.

they are simulated, but no commentaries are generated because that would make result calculation even slower. so you can't really watch them.

S4. Weighted team strength.
The game will be more realistic if the teams placed higher in the league
definitions have higher probability to get higher average skill. This way,
there will be more chances that Real Madrid, Liverpool or Bayer Munchen will
play in the cup finals, not some lesser known teams like Celta, Portsmouth or
Istres.

this can be solved by improving the cup definition files and reordering the teams in the leagues. i didn't do it because i considered this fine-tuning and had other things to do. the solution would be to 1) put the well-known teams to the beginning of each team list, and then 2) give a range in the choose_team for the league; eg. in the CL def you tell the program to choose one random team between places 1 and 5 from the english file. if you put manchester, arsenal, chelsea, liverpool and ... er... some other club to 1-5, you'll get a well-known one.

Also, that will make more 'game levels' - if you like to have easier game,
choose well-known team, if you want to have a harder task, choose the team
from the bottom of the last division.

now that would be too complicated. it would involve specifying different av_skills for different teams, and i'm not sure the benefits outweigh the code complication.

S5. Team nationalities.
It will be nice if one can see the nationality of the players. I believe you
started to implement some national teams and World Cup qualifiers - with
things like that you may find that your star Nigeria player can't play in the
next league match as he plays in his national team.

yes, maybe. nationalities have low priority, though; but the world cup is one of the things i'd like to implement for 1.9.2 (although i didn't work a lot on the concepts lately).

S6. Line-up
It will be nice if one can see the players of both teams. What about using the
third Tab in the livegame for that?

yes, we could do that.

S7. Larger livegame window.
With current text-generation system comments are often longer and they don't
fit in window. What about making window larger or, preferably, remembering
its position?
Also, it will be nice if the icons for changing strategy/boost are repeated in
the live game window, making it easier to quickly change strategy.

nice ideas. i don't think i can remember the window position/size, though. i never tried, of course. adding the icons to the window would be good but it isn't easy to implement because it would also require implementing 'change on-the-fly', e.g. BOOST=ON without pausing (at least that's what i'd expect were i a user).

S8. Detailed scores
Again, as matches are simulated in detail, why can't we see the details of
those matches (half-time result, goal-scorers, cards etc.)?

would you really want to? besides, stats aren't stored for cpu-only matches; same reason as the commentaries.

S9. Game history
Some view when one can watch the results from the games played, one ofter
another, will be nice (something like my next games). F. e.

Week 3 UEFA Cup: Barcelona - Liverpool 3:2
Week 4 Premiership: Liverpool - Chelsea 0:0
etc.

ah, this is a good one. i agree.

S10. Transfer history
As above, only for transfers.

maybe. i'm not sure.

S11. League history.
Nice if one can look at the tables from previous leagues.

hmph. the current history isn't enough for you, with best offensive/defensive teams etc.?

S12. Browsing other teams.
It will be nice if one can look at S9 also for other teams.

now this is getting ridiculous. we're talking about features that only a minority of the users would use regularly. i don't want to implement a complicated feature just so every 100th user takes a look at it twice per season.

S13. Position graph
Nice chart showing how your position changed during the league may be nice.

ok, this sounds nice.

Problems
P1. Penalty messages
Penalty shootout needs another set of messages, as those for penalties during
the play don't match and often are funny.

yes. we have to use the condition _TIME_ = 3 and _TIME_ != 3, which means 'penalties' and 'no penalties'.

P2. Two-matches and extra times.
First match: TeamA - TeamB 2:1
Second match: TeamB - TeamA 2:1 and 1:1 in extra time.
In Bygfoot there will be penalties, but it most leagues/cups I know, TeamA
will qualify.

a bug, clearly. thanks for reporting.

P3. Game balance with older talented players.
It seems that older (~28 years) players with very large skill and talent
difference are too good to buy. They are cheap and they advance much too
fast. I will suggest just not to generated such players (it seems improbably
to improve from 30 to 50 in such age).
I believe the large changes in player skill are what makes the game so easy to
win.

ok, this is a problem we'll have to address after 1.9.1.

P4. Player names.
Why youth school players are so often generated as non-local players? Also,
very often most player on the transfer list are from international teams, but
perhaps that makes sense for some leagues.

i didn't notice that youth academy name problem, i'm going to check.
for the percentage of players from cup teams there's a setting, 'float_transfer_cup_percentage' which is set to 25% currently. you say the actual percentage is higher?

P5. My league results
Cup games are displayed here as well, which is misleading.

oh, i didn't notice. tfr. gonna check.

gyözö

[mom2pp]

s1. good idea ive sometimes wished for this too

s2. hmm.... new idea, this would be good because it would let you have more time to read the commentary about the goal, which would be useful

s3. this is a good idea. gyozo maybe you could only simulate cup finals because these are the only games people would be really interested in anyway and your team is not usually playing at this point in the season (unless youre in the final of course )

s4. this would be good. on a similar note is it possible to make a team definition with only the average player skill, or the average skill plus the names of players? i would like to make quick definitions for a whole league but i cant be bothered to give each player skill and age etc.

s5. i was going to ask about this too. in definition files for teams you could have an extra tag called nationality. for randomly generated teams you could specify a list of nationalities for a league with the most numerous nationality at the beginning in the league file. this would be used to choose the nationality of only the players generated from random player names files.

s6. good idea. having this shown in the teams formation would be even better

s7. having the icons in the window would be good

s8. this would be good for your matches. sometimes i want to look back to see who scored my first goal of the season, how many hattricks were scored over the course of the season etc.

s9. this would be good so that you didnt have to keep on clicking arrows and scrolling down to see your results

s10. ive asked about this before. i still think its a good idea

s11. another good idea

s12. with this you would be able to look back and see what kind of form your opponent was in. good idea number 12

s13. yes, this would be great

[MarkC]

S3. Watching other games.
It will be nice if one can watch other games. As they are already simulated
properly, why not let user watch them? It will be nice to watch the match
when a team of your country meets Manchester United in Champions League
semifinal.

they are simulated, but no commentaries are generated because that would make result calculation even slower. so you can't really watch them.

If the user decides in advance which matches they want to watch, before clicking on next week, we could generate commentaries just for those matches, couldn't we?
Not sure how you'd go about allowing the user to select matches though.

[gyboth]

If the user decides in advance which matches they want to watch, before clicking on next week, we could generate commentaries just for those matches, couldn't we?
Not sure how you'd go about allowing the user to select matches though.

it'd be simpler to have a list of 'teams to watch' (just a list of integer team_ids, easy), so that the commentaries are generated depending on teams participating, not on the matches themselves.

anyhow, a feature for 1.9.2 or 3, rather.

gyözö

[gyboth]

alefzero, chess grandmaster (ok, slight exaggeration; only FM), wrote me an email with yet another bunch of suggestions (HEEEELP..... i only managed to tackle one of the problems of the first list ). i've renamed this topic 'alefzero's corner' and made it sticky, because usually his suggestions are good enough to be remembered.

anyway, here's the new list:

#######################
My main suggestion, as I already reported, is to make game harder. This will make game richer as well, as you will then experience various tasks: not only winning the league/promoting, but f. e. fighting against relegation or winning some games against stronger opponent in the cup.

So, here are some random suggestions:

1. Make players more stable, that is, significant changes can occur only in large span of time (let's say 5 years), unless player is very young. So, players such as Sk=30, Age=27, Tal=70 should be excluded. Some estimation would be to limit Talent to be Skill * 1.1 ^ (MaxPeekAge - Age). 20 years old player, can than achieve 2.6 x Skill in 10 years. On the other hand, he will not improve more than 10% of his skill in a year.

2. Make changes less radical. Let's advance player only by 1 point at once. If the player plays in some match, chance that he will advance should be determined by his current skill, talent, improvement in current season. I will also suggest to increase chance when a player is playing in important matches or against stronger opponents. I guess you will find better mathematical model than I can suggest.

3. Improve strategy for computer teams. Add some chance to increase/decrease attacking strength according to current result. That will probably make local match strategy more important, as one probably won't achieve good result without adjusting strategy. On the other hand, some simple strategies may be
programmed, similarly to livegame matches text.

For example:
_GOALDIFF_ < -1 => ATTACK
_GOALDIFF_ > 1 => DEFENCE
_GOALDIFF_ > 0 and _MINLEFT_ < 20 => DEFENCE

4. Real cup team strengths. Making team skills properly weigthed will make more difficulty levels: winning cup with English or Italian team is one thing, winning it by Scotland, Poland or Swedish team is something else.

5. Probably that should mean that more things should be decided by proper team strategy, so maybe some you should consider adding some more details to team strategy (but I won't insist, as the goal is to keep game simple). I will just suggest things like LONG BALL (less passes, but less precise ones) vs PASSES (many passes, but less chance to lose ball) or SAFE (less chances for retrieving ball) or RISKY (more chances to get the ball, but more chances for getting a yellow/red card as well).

6. As not every team plays well using all strategies/formations, maybe we should add some bonus for best-known strategy/formation? Perhaps teams would have experience for each of strategy/formation and this experience will change with time?

7. Of course, we can always use many-statistics-per-player approach, but that makes game complicated. Maybe making it two: skill and condition? Then, we will have players that are good but lose some of their skill during the match and recover slowly after the match, and players which are not so good, but can play whole match without losing much of the skill.
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i'm going to evaluate most of the ideas later; however, as you can see in the '1.9.2 stages' topic in the development stages forum, i've at least addressed his first point.

gyözö