Progress Update

[Cole]

Hi all,

Here's the latest updates on the game, courtesy of Jeff. I'll try to answer any questions that arise, but to get the big one out of the way, the answer to "when will the game be released?" is still "When it's ready." As you can see from below, it's mostly tweaking and fine tuning that is left to be done, so all I can say at this point is work continues daily and we continue to get closer to getting this game in your hands. Thanks.

Here's what's ongoing:

- Facegen is now functioning in the game, work is ongoing on it

- Work continues to clean up the play-by-play flow and activating the remaining parts of it

-Improving match interface

- Fine-tuning the player substitution and line selection elements of the match engine

- The reworked injury system is being tuned to work with new match engine

-Continue to tweak the tactics system and creating default tactics for all game situations

- Trying a new font to resolve some readability/display issues

- Improving feedback from new player roles system during contract negotiations

[Penfold75]

Thanks for the update but the list of ongoing tasks reads very different to the text in Sebastian's last update.

'We are on the finishing line for the FHM 2 release.

The game is basically feature finished except for two features:

1. FaceGen. Good thing is, Andreas and Jorin do this feature, bad thing, Andreas needed a well deserved vacation after his stressful months work on OOTP 16. While he is gone, Jorin works full time on it but it makes it hard to estimated when they are finished with it.

2. Tweaking the in-game screen. With so many new infos from the match engine it became clear, that we need to change the way we output the pbp text. The box from FHM 2014 does not work anymore, it makes following the game very hard. So we decided to exchange it with a single, long label that displays always a line of text (with nice, big font) much like Football Manager does it. This will not take long to change, mainly we need to rearrange the screen elements a bit to fit the label on the screen.

Other then the above all major and minor features are done and most of them in testing since a long time.'

Seems like a bit of a contradiction and the fact Sebastian's update was on the 31st May it sounds like things have gone backwards????

[Cole]

Originally Posted by Penfold75

Thanks for the update but the list of ongoing tasks reads very different to the text in Sebastian's last update.

'We are on the finishing line for the FHM 2 release.

The game is basically feature finished except for two features:

1. FaceGen. Good thing is, Andreas and Jorin do this feature, bad thing, Andreas needed a well deserved vacation after his stressful months work on OOTP 16. While he is gone, Jorin works full time on it but it makes it hard to estimated when they are finished with it.

2. Tweaking the in-game screen. With so many new infos from the match engine it became clear, that we need to change the way we output the pbp text. The box from FHM 2014 does not work anymore, it makes following the game very hard. So we decided to exchange it with a single, long label that displays always a line of text (with nice, big font) much like Football Manager does it. This will not take long to change, mainly we need to rearrange the screen elements a bit to fit the label on the screen.

Other then the above all major and minor features are done and most of them in testing since a long time.'

Seems like a bit of a contradiction and the fact Sebastian's update was on the 31st May it sounds like things have gone backwards????

Nothing has gone backwards... Sebastian's post was just a surface update and didn't include every last thing that was being worked on. Jeff's update is more of a micro-level one with more detail.

The game is still feature finished, but it's now a matter of tweaking those things and how they work together and dealing with things that always crop up in testing.

As you'll see he mentioned most of the features have been in testing for some time, but most of course is not all, and some of the things that have been newer implemented are still getting tested and tweaked, as I mentioned in the original post.

Thanks!

[Cole]

Basically, people wanted more information, so I pestered the developers about what is being worked on (as obviously I'm not privvy to the inner workings of the development team aside from my Beta testing involvement) and this is what came back ... As noted, when Sebastian made his post it was to provide a general overview, as opposed to all the minutia in terms of testing and tweaking that was still to come.

[Penfold75]

Sebastian's update said nothing about it being a 'surface update' or an 'overview'. Some people would have taken it as a clear update on where the progress of the game was. Saying we are on the finishing line apart from two things is a very clear statement about the game. When communication regarding FHM has been so poor in the past I think the updates need to be clearer on what they represent with regards to progress or type of update.

I have a meeting with my two developers before we issue any response or update to our users. I am the sole point of contact and this seems to work.

[BlackIce]

I've helt onto the original FHM believing we are going to have the game engine "patch" released to kinda "test drive" how the game will run but without all the glamor FHM2 will obviously have.

I have no problem waiting until FHM2 is released as the "patch" would be nothing more than a tease and mainly sugar coating a sub par version one of the game but I would certainly hope that the logic isn't to release the patch and the game at the same time here as it's just pointless....

If we were playing and testing the new game engine on our original FHM game perhaps we could point out "bugs" and "defects" as the testing crew is currently doing ... no ?? Whats the harm in that considering FHM2 sounds like its only mere days until release by the sounds of the comments ?

I am not trying to come across as a big turd here but it's just pointless at this stage to bother to release a "patch" or continuing to hold onto the "patch" for the original FHM for us to test if the new and improved FHM2 is virtually finished without all the final touchups

btw.. Thanks for the update and it's quite nice to know exactly where the series is in terms of development

[Cole]

Originally Posted by Penfold75

Sebastian's update said nothing about it being a 'surface update' or an 'overview'. Some people would have taken it as a clear update on where the progress of the game was. Saying we are on the finishing line apart from two things is a very clear statement about the game. When communication regarding FHM has been so poor in the past I think the updates need to be clearer on what they represent with regards to progress or type of update.

I have a meeting with my two developers before we issue any response or update to our users. I am the sole point of contact and this seems to work.

We will endeavour to make everything more clear communications wise in the future.

I am just telling you that while yes, Sebastian did mention two major things that still needed to be done in the game, obviously there's still testing and tweaking of all systems and how they work together that is constantly ongoing - that continues even after game release.

In this post, I have provided more detail on what those things are, to keep everyone up to date on what is going on and also some of the new systems they will enjoy in the game once completed.

[Orioles1966]

How will expansion work? Will it be available for each season(except for Historical) or will there be a max expansion and then it will stop?

[Penfold75]

Originally Posted by .Cole.

We will endeavour to make everything more clear communications wise in the future.

I am just telling you that while yes, Sebastian did mention two major things that still needed to be done in the game, obviously there's still testing and tweaking of all systems and how they work together that is constantly ongoing.

In this post, I have provided more detail on what those things are, to keep everyone up to date on what is going on and also some of the new systems they will enjoy in the game once completed.

Excellent thanks for your response and I totally understand that testing is ongoing up until release (we have been testing a new financial module for two months and it's one week overdue....pressure ).

Thanks for the clearer update as well. I think you guys are doing a great job but if you tightened up the communication you would get less negative feedback. Good luck

[tcblcommish]

As someone who has given up completely on the current state of fhm and any hope that there will be progress on it at this point, I'm sure something will come at some point. Probably will be met with negativity but I'm sure it'll come. Personally, I have no interest in fhm anymore and have removed it long ago.

I will be waiting to see what happens with the fhm2 game but I hold a small amount of optimism for it though the way things have gone, it's only minimal. I'm hoping that they put everything they have into the second version, make it everything it can be and blow everyone away.

That being said, people whine that there is no information at all about the game, that they don't update it at all and let people know yet when someone does, it is met with people complaining that the information is misleading. How about just be happy that there is any information at all?

It sounds good, hopefully things are going as planned

[AlpineSK]

According to everything that has been talked about for the past 6+ months, the patch for FHM14 is going to be released before FHM 2.

What is the status of the patch? What tweaks are being made to IT? There has been virtually no updates on its status other than to say that "we are working on both simultaneously."

The way I see it, there are a lot of us that are waiting for the patch. Its release indicates that we are closer to the eventual release of FHM 2 since the FHM14 patch is supposed to "give us something to play with" in the last stages of the FHM 2 patch.

So how bout it?

[Cole]

Originally Posted by Orioles1966

How will expansion work? Will it be available for each season(except for Historical) or will there be a max expansion and then it will stop?

It's 2 teams at a time, with a draft ... There is a max of teams that can be added, but at this point I'm not sure what this is.. I know the developers were mentioning it did have to be capped off at some point. I haven't honestly played with those extremes yet.. Maybe one of the beta testers can chime in? Otherwise, I will check with devs and get back to you.

[tward13]

Thanks for the update.

[Perceptor]

Appreciate the update. I only would suggest that a message be passed on to the devs that a video of some of the work in progress features would really help the hype for this game. I mentioned this in another post but it would be neat to see a stream where the match engine is explained for example. As with all work in progress games bugs are expected and people would understand if the scoring was still being tuned. I have no issue with waiting for the game to be 100% ready. I just want to see some of these new features and how it works, just like how OOTP does it.

[Cole]

Originally Posted by AlpineSK

According to everything that has been talked about for the past 6+ months, the patch for FHM14 is going to be released before FHM 2.

What is the status of the patch? What tweaks are being made to IT? There has been virtually no updates on its status other than to say that "we are working on both simultaneously."

The way I see it, there are a lot of us that are waiting for the patch. Its release indicates that we are closer to the eventual release of FHM 2 since the FHM14 patch is supposed to "give us something to play with" in the last stages of the FHM 2 patch.

So how bout it?

OK, after talking with Sebastian, I have the following update on that.

As you can imagine, priority number 1 is to release a rock solid FHM 2.

As is the case for FHM 2, the patch will be released once it's done. Once the match engine and all the things surrounding it in FHM 2 are complete, it will all be copied over to FHM 2014 and the patch will be finalized while final testing/tweaking is done for FHM 2.

The plan is still to release it before FHM 2. But as I said in my earlier post, these dates should be fairly close together and not the month or so I believe was estimated earlier by the development team.

[Cole]

Originally Posted by Perceptor

Appreciate the update. I only would suggest that a message be passed on to the devs that a video of some of the work in progress features would really help the hype for this game. I mentioned this in another post but it would be neat to see a stream where the match engine is explained for example. As with all work in progress games bugs are expected and people would understand if the scoring was still being tuned. I have no issue with waiting for the game to be 100% ready. I just want to see some of these new features and how it works, just like how OOTP does it.

Hi there,

Thanks for your suggestion. I can say though that doing videos and the like is something very time consuming and not something that is a big priority for the development team at this point. We are basically trying to get the game out to the masses as soon as we can.

I realize this is leading to a game release that isn't as "hyped" as normal or what you might expect from OOTP Developments, but it's just the way things will go during this release.

The majority of the "hype" will come in the days and weeks that follow the game's release, while at the same time we will try to provide whatever information we can in the meantime to get people excited.

Thanks.

[jh95]

Originally Posted by .Cole.

It's 2 teams at a time, with a draft ... There is a max of teams that can be added, but at this point I'm not sure what this is.. I know the developers were mentioning it did have to be capped off at some point. I haven't honestly played with those extremes yet.. Maybe one of the beta testers can chime in? Otherwise, I will check with devs and get back to you.

In the current beta state of FHM2 you can expand by 2 teams per season in the "Normal" and in the "Fictional" games.
Currently there is no limit to the Maximum number of expansions.
I personally expanded the league by 10 teams one time and it worked fine.
But according to the developers there will be a limit to the number of expansion teams when farm teams for those expansion teams will be added.

[Hank1974]

Originally Posted by .Cole.

Hi there,

Thanks for your suggestion. I can say though that doing videos and the like is something very time consuming and not something that is a big priority for the development team at this point. We are basically trying to get the game out to the masses as soon as we can.

I realize this is leading to a game release that isn't as "hyped" as normal or what you might expect from OOTP Developments, but it's just the way things will go during this release.

The majority of the "hype" will come in the days and weeks that follow the game's release, while at the same time we will try to provide whatever information we can in the meantime to get people excited.

Thanks.

Thanks for the update.

Personally, I never thought that text-sim games needed to be 'hyped'.
I've known about OOTP for years and I've yet to see one commercial about it. Or video, come to think of it.

Word of mouth will spread and I for one am extremely excited about it's release.

[Perceptor]

Originally Posted by Hank1974

Thanks for the update.



Personally, I never thought that text-sim games needed to be 'hyped'.

I've known about OOTP for years and I've yet to see one commercial about it. Or video, come to think of it.



Word of mouth will spread and I for one am extremely excited about it's release.

Well maybe hype wasn't the word but the honest truth is that FHM needs some positive vibes around the gaming community given how poorly received the first game was. I understand that any information we get is great and I hope my comments don't insinuate that I'm ungrateful. I am merely saying that I really want to see certain features in action. It is something OOTP has done very very well in the past with blogs and video.

I am glad to hear that lots of people are excited for this. I am just cautious in my excitement because I remember how happy I was for the first game only to be let down. I'm a fan of both SI and OOTP Developments so I really want to see FHM do well. I appreciate that Cole has been very responsive and honest with the progress update and this is a good sign for me. All I can say is that I look forward to seeing this game when it is complete and hope that the hard work that Sebastien and his crew put in are rewarded with a well received and fun game.

[TDotSummerSports]

Will there be updates released quickly fixing small problems for FHM2 if they are noticed once the game releases, similarly to when OOTP 16 came out? Also would next Friday be unrealistic to expect the release?