The Story of Beyond the Sideline Football
 

Hello everyone!

Yes, the time has come. We're doing a football game.

About 2 years ago we decided to expand our product line as Sebastian (our iOOTP programmer) introduced us to his buddy Malte and told us about their hockey game, which they had been developing in their spare time - Franchise Hockey Manager. Now, the game was released a few months ago, and apart from a few hiccups and lessens learned, FHM is a big success for our company.

Early in October 2013, Andreas and I discussed why we shouldn't try the same approach with the most popular sport in the US, football. I personally enjoy watching football games on TV, but my knowledge about the sport is far from good, so I wouldn't be able to develop a good football game. But, sometimes in life things just fall right into place, and a couple of days after Andreas and I had the conversation, we found out that a very nice and clever English chap named Francis Cole, who is a lifelong football fan who I've known from my days working for Sports Interactive in London, has been developing his own little football game for about a year. And after talking for a few days in October, Francis agreed to join Out of the Park Developments and develop a football game with us.

The game is called Beyond the Sideline Football. Trust me, it was quite a ride until the whole team managed to agree on a name. And this is it. We feel that it is a good match for our product lineup and "BTS" sounds like a pretty tasty sandwich (in Daniela's humble opinion), and what can possibly be wrong with tasty sandwiches?

BTS will be based on the complete OOTP code base, which means that the GUI of BTS will be very similar to OOTP and that it will have all the great technical functionality that we've developed for OOTP in the past (FaceGen, online leagues, HTML output, text engine, storylines, world database etc.) and which are tested & verified to work quite okay, I guess.

Obviously, football is a different game than baseball, so the game flow will be a different too. After all, the teams just play one game per week, so there has to be stuff to keep you busy on the 6 days that you are not playing. But we'll talk about all that once we reveal more info in the coming months.

There is no scheduled release date. We will release the game once we feel it is rock solid and has a good set of features. Francis already had an impressive football code foundation with an awesome 2D engine and saves plenty of time because he will use parts of the OOTP code, but still it's way too early to make a good estimate on how long this whole project will take.

I am really excited. We are now covering three major sports and have a tremendous foundation for many years to come. Out of the Park Developments has a bright future ahead and all its games and fans will benefit from that. So, tell all your friends about Beyond the Sideline Football, it'll be a fun ride!

I think I'll have a beer (or two) and a Bratwurst sandwich tonight :)

Cheers,
Markus

Awesome. Looking forward to it. Especially this:

Oh My God! I play OOTP and I'm not even baseball fan. I do however live and breathe football. I cannot wait and of course volunteer for any assistance with the project. (I have both Macs and Windows in my lab.)

-way

Markus and company ~

This is FANTASTIC news!! I am very excited about this, and just like OOTP Baseball, BTS Football will achieve the same success.

Have you thought about going public on the stock market, lol!! I'm an investor and I see, and have always seen, great potential in the products you have released.

All the best to you guys here at OOTP Developments... ;)

Yessssssssss

Awesome idea, Markus! A complete product suite for OOTP really legitimatizes you guys as a worldwide provider of sports games!!

I would wish you luck on this venture, but your history says that you won't need it.

I look forward to being able to hand you my US$39.99 for this game!

I'm curious, what specific job Francis Cole had in Sports Interactive and what he helped to add?

I've been looking forward to this for years! Absolutely fantastic!!! :)

Wait a minute .. What's going on here? We're doing another epic piece of sports sim awesomeness? Sweet! ;) *sharpening pencil*

I've been looking for a game like this for years. As far as I have found there just isn't one out there. Very excited to see that the best in the business is taking on the challenge of filling that void. This is going to be a gigantic franchise for you guys I think.

Super glad to hear the news. I have been hoping you would get into the American Football game market for several years and I hope it reaches the same success you currently enjoy with the OOTP series.

I better now start working on getting a portrait of myself to give to my family so they can remember what I look like because between playing OOTP and your new football game, they'll never see me! :rolleyes: :D

This is the best news I've ever seen!

I'm from the UK and a big fan of American sports, although I struggle with some of the minutiae of baseball management. Despite that, I've bought a few editions of OOTP just because it looks so damn nice!

American Football though...now there's a sport I adore (even if my Giants weren't great this year!). I fear I might need to invest in a new keyboard, as I'm going to be hitting refresh in this forum every few minutes for the next year!

Great news, and good luck. And if there's any testing going, count me in please :D

This is the best piece of news this month and believe me, I had a few...:flowers:

This is amazing! Just the other day I was thinking about playing Tom Landry Strategy Football and trying to find a way to install it on an old computer running xp. I think I still want to try, because I cannot wait until this is released, but this is wonderful news. I was desperately hoping that OOTP would do a game like this, but was honestly hoping it would happen by the next decade. I'm just elated at this news. Thank you so much for making this happen OOTP Developments!

On a side note, does anyone else still play Tom Landry like me?

I don't want to upset SI by going into specifics, but I was a programmer there and did a few things to do with regens/newgens and a host of other stuff :)

Thanks for the answer

I came across OOTP 13 when that sim came out and never really thought much of it. It was a baseball sim and I never cared for baseball. I had no idea who OOTP DDevelopmets was. Then I came across FHM and after reading into it and finding out what it was capable of I looked further in OOTP Developments and read into OOTP Baseball and got the demo...I bought the game and cant put it down...and now im preordering OOTP 15. I hated baseball...now my 2nd favorite game is a baseball game (FHM #1!).

My point is FHM was my gateway in the OOTP universe. After hearing the FHM announcement I became a customer of the other OOTP Development games. I know BTS will do the same for football fans. OOTP is going to take over the world and I hope that will drive you guys to continue expanding into more sims!

Markus, what the heck are you doing????

Taking more hours off my RL.... You better hide from my wife.


Awesome news!

Excellent news to wake up to this morning! I hope I'll soon be enjoying this game, doing facegens and uniform-making. But gameplay > features, of course. Sounds like some of the miscues of the FHM rollout have been learned from and corrected, which is a great sign.

I hope you add college eventually. It'll probably be the only way I'll ever get a chance to see Indiana have a winning team in my lifetime! :laugh:

That happened back around OOTP3 - the Universe was captured around OOTP8. The only thing stopping Markus now is the fact that Science hasn't discovered the end of outer space yet. :)