Bygfoot Football Manager

this is a neat and orderly feature request email i received from the author of the polish country file. gonna answer in a second post.

gyözö

Hello,

I am not sure you remember me, I made a lot of complaints and wishes around
1.4.x versions. I haven't played BygFoot since that and I tried it again a
few days ago.

I like most improvements very much! I am grateful to you for bringing soccer
manager to Linux world

Here are some quick remarks:

1. Bugs.
No crashes, only one bug
1.1 It seems I found a bug which concerns team; sometimes something got wrong
and last player is not available and right-clicking shows wrong player
information. I have a savefile with that bug, I can send it to you if you
like.

2. Simple wishes.
2.1 If you buy a player and still are able to get a credit from the bank, it
will be nice to show a question whether you want to take it, instead o fjust
displaying "Not enough money". This wa, you won't need to go to bank, get
full credit, buy a player and then pay what's left.
2.2 Optional auto-resume on startup will be nice (restarting from the last
savefile). File->New is always available, so why select your savefile all the
time?
2.3 Bookmakers tip is not clear. How to read "W 3:2"? Whose win is that? I
suggest replacing it with "<team name> wins"
2.4 In Main Menu, display the name of competition (League/Cup etc.)
2.5 In league table, display arrows (up/down) for teams that went up/down
after last match.

3. Usability/GUI
3.1 It looks a bit too complicated to me. Why use combos instead of
main-window menus? There could be menus Fixtures and Results (with all
leagues/cups as menu items) and Tables (with leagues as menu items).
Also, main toolbar's toolbuttons for your league/results/fixtures will be
nice.
3.2 As for tables/results, maybe it is possible to use rich text/HTML view (it
is possible in Gtk, isn't it) instead of list, which has too much unnecessary
spacing between items.
That will probably allow much nicer view (using HTML tables) and will allow to
fit both results or fixtures and current table in single window.
3.3 In some places, context menus will be nice (for example, for player, you
will have all the commands from Player button). This is IMHO more standard
way to do it.

4. Gameplay
4.1 Game is too easy. I easily (without much luck) advanced from English
National to 3 Division in 1st season. In second season, I easily won both FA
Cup and League Cup. This is a bit too much.
4.2 Too little difference between teams from various divisions. 3 Division
team winning against Premiership team shouldn't happen at all (or once, twice
a season). In 1/8 of one of the cups, all matches were won by lower division
teams!
4.3 Too big boost effect (looks like). I won some games with +1.5 cskill
opponent's advantage with 4:0 or 5:0 score.
4.4 Too many goals (probably). I won a division scoring 169 goals which is
3.67 per game - looks too much even if I played some games using 'Attack'
style. I also won some games (with less then -1 cskill advantage) with 9:1
and 8:0/7:0 score.

5. Wishes/dreams.
Assorted wishes which will probably never come true, but anyway...
5.1 Weather - this could affect team skills, f. e. making game more random on
the wet stadium or making it harder to score during the rain.
5.2 News - automatically generated newspaper summary from your/other
divisions. This could contain information about such things are leader
change, suprising results, hat-tricks, own goals etc.
If you are interested, I can probably try to write some autogenerator.
5.3 Events page. That will display all the future events (matches, time to pay
debts, transfer deadline etc.)
5.4 More detailed your match summary. This can contain score list goal after
goal, detailed goal description (action/corner/free kick, long-range shot
etc), detailed ban/injury description etc.

Best
--
Michal Rudolf

michal wrote:I am not sure you remember me, I made a lot of complaints and wishes around
1.4.x versions. I haven't played BygFoot since that and I tried it again a
few days ago.

i remember you fondly

1. Bugs.
No crashes, only one bug
1.1 It seems I found a bug which concerns team; sometimes something got wrong
and last player is not available and right-clicking shows wrong player
information. I have a savefile with that bug, I can send it to you if you
like.

yes, this sounds like this bug. it's hopefully fixed now.

2. Simple wishes.
2.1 If you buy a player and still are able to get a credit from the bank, it
will be nice to show a question whether you want to take it, instead o fjust
displaying "Not enough money". This wa, you won't need to go to bank, get
full credit, buy a player and then pay what's left.

nice idea, i like this. on the other hand some user-input will be required nevertheless because he'll have to specify how much to borrow. borrowing exactly the amount needed to have 0 money after buying the player isn't a good solution.

2.2 Optional auto-resume on startup will be nice (restarting from the last
savefile). File->New is always available, so why select your savefile all the
time?

todo list candidate. great idea.

2.3 Bookmakers tip is not clear. How to read "W 3:2"? Whose win is that? I
suggest replacing it with "<team name> wins"

of course it's always meant from the user's perspective. but i think bookmaker's tip won't get included in 1.9.

2.4 In Main Menu, display the name of competition (League/Cup etc.)

name of which competition? the following one? or the one your team participates in?

2.5 In league table, display arrows (up/down) for teams that went up/down
after last match.

great idea. vector, could i have those arrows and a black dot please? maybe a green arrow pointing upwards and a red one pointing down.

3. Usability/GUI
3.1 It looks a bit too complicated to me. Why use combos instead of
main-window menus? There could be menus Fixtures and Results (with all
leagues/cups as menu items) and Tables (with leagues as menu items).
Also, main toolbar's toolbuttons for your league/results/fixtures will be
nice.

yes yes yes. i also think the interface is too packed. in 1.9 there'll be a lot less buttons, no combos, and a lot more in the main menubar.

3.2 As for tables/results, maybe it is possible to use rich text/HTML view (it
is possible in Gtk, isn't it) instead of list, which has too much unnecessary
spacing between items.
That will probably allow much nicer view (using HTML tables) and will allow to
fit both results or fixtures and current table in single window.

i'm not sure. in fact, i don't think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. showing the tables in a treeview is very natural and well structured, whereas messing around with html formatting etc. isn't. and the html stuff would make it very hard to create actions when clicking on the list (eg. showing the player list of the team that's been clicked on).

3.3 In some places, context menus will be nice (for example, for player, you
will have all the commands from Player button). This is IMHO more standard
way to do it.

yes, i'm planning to make a context menu for players.

4. Gameplay
4.1 Game is too easy. I easily (without much luck) advanced from English
National to 3 Division in 1st season. In second season, I easily won both FA
Cup and League Cup. This is a bit too much.

you won the cups with a 3rd division team? btw, see this post. as for making the game harder: 1.9 will have a completely new engine, so we'll have to talk about game balance later when 1.9 works more or less.

4.2 Too little difference between teams from various divisions. 3 Division
team winning against Premiership team shouldn't happen at all (or once, twice
a season). In 1/8 of one of the cups, all matches were won by lower division
teams!

this too will be an issue of balancing 1.9. and because of the great constants system, you're all welcome to help me do it

4.3 Too big boost effect (looks like). I won some games with +1.5 cskill
opponent's advantage with 4:0 or 5:0 score.

same thing. will be easy to change even for non-programmers in 1.9.

4.4 Too many goals (probably). I won a division scoring 169 goals which is
3.67 per game - looks too much even if I played some games using 'Attack'
style. I also won some games (with less then -1 cskill advantage) with 9:1
and 8:0/7:0 score.

same thing.

5. Wishes/dreams.
Assorted wishes which will probably never come true, but anyway...
5.1 Weather - this could affect team skills, f. e. making game more random on
the wet stadium or making it harder to score during the rain.

i don't really like this. such minuscule effects (the user can mostly only guess what he should do if it rains) violate the Bygfoot philosophy.

5.2 News - automatically generated newspaper summary from your/other
divisions. This could contain information about such things are leader
change, suprising results, hat-tricks, own goals etc.
If you are interested, I can probably try to write some autogenerator.

this was on the old todo list, i've forgotten to move it to the forums. i like this idea. what kind of autogenerator do you have in mind? you mean for some pseudo-news? i'd rather say we generate the news from happenings within the game.

5.3 Events page. That will display all the future events (matches, time to pay
debts, transfer deadline etc.)

yes, maybe.

5.4 More detailed your match summary. This can contain score list goal after
goal, detailed goal description (action/corner/free kick, long-range shot
etc), detailed ban/injury description etc.

maybe in a later stadium of the live game. i think the stats in 1.9 are already a bit what you dream of, but there's definitely still room for improvements.

gyözö

wowzers lots to read .. good post with some meat to chew on

Quote:
2.3 Bookmakers tip is not clear. How to read "W 3:2"? Whose win is that? I
suggest replacing it with "<team name> wins"
of course it's always meant from the user's perspective. but i think bookmaker's tip won't get included in 1.9.

Ok I use this a fair bit in 1.8. b4 a match i cycle thru the playing style and watch the bookies outcome to get an idea of the match result..
Just doing it once is not much good. doing it several times you get a "feel" for what the outcome will really be and it help me decide the chances of winning with a particular style and thus helps me decide what style to use.

However in 1.9 we have much beter control during the game so it may be redundant.
No doubt Gyboth will now tell me that the above "system" i have been using is an illusion

Quote:
2.5 In league table, display arrows (up/down) for teams that went up/down
after last match.
great idea. vector, could i have those arrows and a black dot please? Wink maybe a green arrow pointing upwards and a red one pointing down.

will do

Quote:
4. Gameplay
4.1 Game is too easy. I easily (without much luck) advanced from English
National to 3 Division in 1st season. In second season, I easily won both FA
Cup and League Cup. This is a bit too much.
you won the cups with a 3rd division team? Shocked

wow
really?!!!
hmm erm whish i could.
Ive been meaning to add a bit more to this post and now promted by this quote I will

"weather"?? WARNING Violation of bygfoot philosophy!!

Quote:
5.2 News - automatically generated newspaper

agggh now this I too have been thinking about. But couldnt find a good reason or argument to suport it. Its abit like embelished commentry. Yeah it would look kewl but how long would it last.? I tend to make these up in my head as Im playing the game and Havent as yet figured out a way to get the game to think them up. After time I think it would start to become "Ive seen it all before" ho hum. unless we have a massive list of headlines and a clever way of creating them.. Keep thinking tho I havent dissmissed the idea just yet