Quote:
Originally Posted by Jdnidle
I don’t think an NFL game will be as in-depth as baseball for programmers so hopefully it leads to being a very good product.
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I think you have this completely backward. The main reason we don't see many American Football games is because it's incredibly difficult to program for.
In Baseball you have isolated moments. The pitch, the batter, the ball in play. They can all be calculated pretty much independent of each other at any given moment. The main catch with a baseball game it to emulate real world stats and you have a ton of very detailed stats to keep track of. Once you nail that, you're good. But the complexity of the sim is much more basic than in other sports as there are less moving pieces at any given moment.
In Football/Soccer and Hockey you have a slightly more complex and fluid game. Players all have individual ratings on speed, passing ability, shooting ability, defense, and so on. The players have assigned roles that stay moderately defined as play moves across the play field, but the way they interact is all the same: you kick the ball with your foot or you use a stick to hit the puck.
In American Football, however, you take the complexity of the above and make it so 22 players are all moving in different directions and can end up anywhere on the field at any moment. At all times their height and weight are at play, coupled with their speed and agility to go with their strength, ability to tackle, ability to catch a ball, etc. There are a ton of variables on every player on every play which can take place all over the field. Plays involve passing, which involves its own offensive and defensive bars and stats, but then you have the run game which also has its own bars and stats. Then factor in special teams and you have even more bars and stats that need to be factored in. It's a giant mess.
Once you nail down the basic functions on an American Football game, you have to make sure your stats are coming out as expected and no one can go Madden on the game and call Hail Mary's all game long. Gameplanning is basically a whole game on its own.
I could go on, but suffice to say I think American Football is the absolute toughest sport to code for, in large part because of the amount of moving pieces involved in every play.