Beginner's Guide

• Running Bygfoot
• The Start-Up Window
  • Team Selection
  • League Selection
  • Country Selection
  • Team Options
  • File Options
• Game Interface
  • Menu Bar
  • Tool Bar
  • Status Bar
  • Message Bar
  • Left Panel
  • Right Panel
  • Management Bar
• Keyboard Shortcuts
  • File Operations
  • Game Operations
  • Management Operations
• Saving and Loading Files
• The Game Behaviour (Basic)

Running Bygfoot

There are two possible ways to run Bygfoot.

If you have installed it system-wide, the executable will be in the $PATH environment so you only need to type bygfoot at a command line to run it.

If you are using locally the compiled binary you will need to use a terminal window to enter the directory where the executable is and type ./bygfoot.

TIP: Add an alias `alias bygfoot='path_to_the_executable/bygfoot -d path_to_the_support_dir' to your $HOME/.alias` file and you'll be able to run Bygfoot from anywhere. Example: `alias bygfoot='/home/john/games/bygfoot/bygfoot -d /home/john/games/bygfoot/support_files'`.

The Start-Up Window

Upon starting, Bygfoot will show you a window containing the following sections (downwards):

• Team Selection
• League Selection
• Country Selection
• Team Options
• File Options

Team Selection

This is a list of 114 teams you can choose from. By default, this list contains English teams (because England is Bygfoot's default country). To select a team you can either click or scroll down with the arrow keys. You can also use the scrollbar to navigate through the list.

League Selection

The second row asks you which League you want to play in. By default the "Current League" option will be selected. This means that if you choose a team from 5th division it will play 5th but if you choose a team from Premier League it will play Premier League.

The other options are:

• Top League: You will start in 1st league, regardless of the team you choose.
• Bottom League (the hard way): You will start in 5th league, even if you choose a 1st league team.
• CL: Champions' League only.
• CWC/Conm.: You will only play the Cup Winners' Cup.
• UEFA/Sul-Americana: You will only play the UEFA Cup.

Country Selection

The third row allows you to select which country to play with. The current Bygfoot version is shipped with 8 country files: England (default), Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Romania, Brazil and Poland.

If none of them pleases you (or if you wish to play a different one) you can select a custom country file by clicking the "Select a country file" button.

Team Options

Here are some options affecting the team definitions:

• Don't load team definitions will cause Bygfoot to generate all teams from scratch. All teams will be composed by randomly generated players.
• Load only names from team definition file will cause Bygfoot to attribute random skills to players.
• Load my team from definitions file will cause only your team to be read from definitions. The others will be full of "nobodies".

File Options

• You can start playing with the selected (or pre-selected) options by clicking "OK".
• You can leave Bygfoot by clicking "Cancel".
• Or you can load a saved game by clicking "Load game".

Game Interface

After the Start-Up Window, Bygfoot will generate the game and the playing window will appear, containing the following elements:

• Menu Bar
• Toolbar
• Status Bar (directly below the toolbar)
• Message Bar (between the panels and the status bar)
• Left Panel
• Right Panel
• Management Bar

Menu Bar

Contains only two menus:

• File
  • New
  • Open
  • Save
  • Save As...
  • Preferences
  • Start Bygfoot Team Editor
  • Quit
• Help
  • Information
  • Team Editor Help

Tool Bar

From left to right, the toolbar contains the following icons:

Load Game

Reads a saved game.

Save Game to file

Saves current game to a file.

Quit (without saving)

Quits game, without saving.

Preferences

Lets you edit game prefs.

Quick Options

You can turn some features on/off, like:

• Transfer List Notification. Do you want to be notified when players according to your preferences are available for hiring?
• Job Offers. Do you want to receive invitations to work elsewhere if you are succeeding with your current team?
• Live Game. Do you want to watch the games of your team in accelerated time in an extra window?
• Overwrite. Do you want Bygfoot to automatically overwrite your saved game when you tell it to save?

Back to Main Menu

Shows again the main info window.

Show Transferlist

Shows a list of the players available.

Finances and Stadium

Shows you info aboutn your finances and stadium.

Weekly Info

Shows you a summary of the previous week and your fixtures for the next.

Extended Information Selector

You can view special info windows containing:

• Fixtures. Matches played last week. You can browse weeks by clicking on the arrows below the right pane.
• Tables. Leagues tables.
• Best Players. Best field players (more goals scored) and goalies (less goals suffered).
• History. Which teams won each championship the previous year(s).

Begin a New Week

Starts a new week.

Help

Lets you read the help file.

Player action button

This button isn't really part of the tool bar, it's placed on the left side of the message bar. You can use this button (which is in fact an option menu) to fire players, put them on the transfer list or remove them from the list, or see extended information on the selected player.

Status Bar

Right below the tool bar there is the status bar, where you can find static info on the present state of the game you are playing:

• Season #. How many "years" (in the game) you have been playing.
• Week #. How many "weeks" (in the game) have elapsed in the current season.
• Team name. The name of the team you are currently hired by.
• League name. The name of the league the team is currently in.
• Rank #. Your situation in the league tables.
• Money $$$. How much money you have in your bank account.
• Average Skills. The first figure is the average current skill of the first 11 players (which means, the players that would play in the next match). The second one is the average (normal) skill of all players.

Message Bar

This is used sometimes when the program wants to tell you something, e.g. "You can't do this or that".

Left Panel

The left panel shows a lot of information about your players:

• Name
• Current skill. This is computed from the Skill value and the Fitness value. The position of a player also plays an important role. Example: a forward plays a lot better on a
• Skill. How good a player is.
• Fitness. They should be always above 90% to prevent bad things from happening. Cycle them as they get tired so that they can rest.
• Games played.
• Goals scored (or suffered, in the case of goalies).
• Status. Usually "OK". Possible other values are "Injured (# of weeks)" or "Banned (# of weeks)".
• Age
• Estimated talent. How good he can come to be someday (or was someday), in your scout's opinion.

Right Panel

The right panel shows information about your next match:

• "Home" or "Away" indicating whether you'll play home or away (duh! ;-)
• Opponent Name.
• Opponent's rank (and league).
• Average skills and the difference to your average skills ('-' means you're better).
• Playing style.
• Team structure.
• Latest results.
• Goals (for : against)
• Your results this season against the same team.
• Bookmaker's tip.

Management Bar

The lower tool bar contains icons that allow you to effectively manage your team:

• Playing Style. Currently Bygfoot supports five playing styles: "All Out Defend", "Defend", "Balanced", "Attack" and "All Out Attack".
• Team Structure. You can either enter directly your desired structure, cycle the available options, re-order players or undo a swap action.
• Scout. You can choose whether you want a good scout or not. There are four skill levels for scouts: "Bad", "Average", "Good" and "Best".
• Physio. The quality of your physio.

If you have chosen the Finances/Stadium view, some other icons will appear:

• Capacity (CAP). Allows you to increase your stadium capacity by 500 - 2000 seats (depending on how much you'd like to spend and how soon you want the seats to be available).
• Safety (SAF). Allows you increase the security level in your stadium.
• Loan Money.
• Pay Loan.

• Fixtures. Shows you the full list of matches that have been played last week. You can browse fixtures too, checking past and future weeks.
• Tables. Shows you the current table of classification. You can browse tables, checking other leagues as well.
• Fixtures by League. You can browse the fixtures of other leagues as well.
• Show my league results. Shows your results against league opponents.

Keyboard Shortcuts

These are always shown as tooltips, too.

Generally, when an "OK" button can be clicked, "Return" will do just that; when a "Cancel" or "Close" button can be clicked or a popup window can be closed, "Escape" will do it.

File Operations

Game Operations

These last two have been adopted in place of "1" and "2" since versions 1.4-2 (stable) and 1.5-1 (development).

Management Operations

Saving and Loading Files

Bygfoot uses the following types of files to store information it will use:

1. Country File -- country_XYZ -- where team and league names are stored. This is a UTF-8 plain text file.
2. Player Names -- player_names -- where the names that will be randomly attributed to "nobodies" are stored.
3. Teams -- teams -- where team definitions are stored.
4. Savegames -- encoded files in which information about a game you're currently playing is stored.

You can edit the player_names file and add or remove any names you wish to appear in the game. But please keep it big so that players with repeated names don't appear quite often. This file is always loaded by Bygfoot during startup.

The teams file stores the team definitions you have written or imported. It is also automatically loaded during startup (unless you forbid Bygfoot from doing so), but it contains definitions of only a couple of teams yet.

Savegames are stored under $HOME/.bygfoot/saves and can be loaded in 4 ways:

• As a short command-line switch: bygfoot savegame where "savegame" is the name of a file located in $HOME/.bygfoot/saves.
• As a long command-line switch: bygfoot [full path]/savegame where "full path" is the full address of the file "savegame" in your system. This option is mandatory if your savegames are saved in another directory but $HOME/.bygfoot/saves (why would you do that?).
• From the startup window by selecting "Load Game"
• From the game interface by selecting "Load Game".

The Game Behaviour (Basic)

At startup Bygfoot will read team definitions and generate all teams that are not defined. After the process is complete (may take some time on slow systems) you will see the game interface. If you want to continue a previously saved game, you can let Bygfoot skip the team generation by calling it with the savegame file as an argument: bygfoot my_save_game. See also command line options.

To play, you must make some choices:

• Select the players you want to be playing by clicking on their names with the left mouse button. If you click on a player name and then on another, they'll swap positions.
• Select the desired team structure and playing strategy.
• Click on the "Begin a new week" button. Bygfoot will hang for a short while an then the "Live Game" window will pop up.
• After the game "ends", click the "Close" button to go back to the main window.

TIP 2 - Pay attention to the size and the security of your stadium. The stadium is your main source of money.