Franchise Hockey Manager Beta v0.9.12 Discussion Thread

[archibalduk]

The latest beta version (also incorporating a DB update) is available to download here: http://files.ootpdevelopments.com/fhm/v ... 4setup.exe

To install, just run the setup programme. There is no need to uninstall the previous version first (in fact, you should avoid doing so). Before I mention the changelist, I want to bring this message from Jeff to everybody's attention regarding game crashes and uploading the affected saved games to OOTP:

We're now at the point where we've fixed most of the crashes with easy-to-find causes, so we're going to need some additional help to find the trickier ones. Particularly since we suspect that most of those are going to be related to bugs in user-initiated transactions (both regular ones and in commissioner mode) - it's easy to find things that break when the AI does them, because there are dozens of AI's in any single game; things that are exclusively human-caused are a lot tougher to find with a small group of testers.

So, we now have a directory on the OOTP ftp support server where we can start collecting savegames from users.

If you get a crash, please zip up your most recent savegame (ideally, using weekly autosaves) and upload it to the ftp site at ootpsupport.com. The full directions are here (obviously, substitute FHM for OOTP where applicable.) The FHM directory is /incoming/FHM/saved_games.

You'll probably need an ftp program (FileZilla's good and free if you don't have one) to upload - your browser may not work unless you've already got an ftp addon/extension for it.

Once you've done that, post a message in this thread to let us know you've uploaded something, along with anything you can tell us about what you were doing and had done recently when the crash happened (particularly if the crash doesn't necessarily re-occur when you reload the save.)

CHANGELIST

Crash Fixes:

Crash when lapsing player rights in historical game.
Crash after moving goalie to skater position.
Uncloseable dialogue box after making offer for player using action button.
Crash when clicking on certain players in historical game.

Other Bug Fixes:

AI no longer hugely overvaluing certain low-round draft picks.
Cap hits no longer calculated incorrectly in later years of multi-year contracts.
Editing league rules in a league that doesn't use a shootout no longer adds a 1-shot shootout to the league.
Number of shots in a shootout can now be edited down to 0 (i.e., no shootout.)
Should be more inter-league movement of free agents.
KHL trades now occur more frequently.
KHL salary values now set more appropriately.
Cancel button on preferences screen now works.
Starting goalies no longer becoming unhappy about playing time.
No longer possible to assign a goalie to a skater position.
Star ratings for potential abilities in historical games no longer getting set to half a star after the first season update.
Setup Organization should now recall U-21 players for KHL games if needed to meet lineup quota.
Contract refusal message from players now allow responses.
Players no longer contract mononucleosis during games.
Players no longer retain "angry" status after moving to a new team.
Occasional never-ending injuries fixed.
Autoplay no longer exits after reserve list players are injured in historical games.
Correct roster should now appear when changing trading partners from trade screen.
Redundant injury-related dialogue boxes no longer appear after player has been moved to lineup or disabled list.
No longer impossible to trade some farm team players.
Enough players now being generated for major junior drafts.
Sorting now works properly on all columns of personnel screen.
Sorting by attribute now works properly on free agents page.
Contract field in trade block page now displays correct team abbreviations.
When negotiating, players no longer occasionally refer to a higher offer as a lower one.
When adding years to a qualifying offer, the additional years now autofill with the salary of the last year of the offered contract, not the minimum QO value.
Historical draft versions no longer shown as scouting modern games (note that this makes it impossible to scout by draft in historical games for now.)
Submit button no longer occasionally unclickable after a player accepts an offer.
AI Setup Organization now removes recovered players from the injury list.
NHL standings screen while simulating now displays correct playoff standings during ties for divisional leads.
Back button should no longer become unresponsive.
Correct name of "View (other team's) players" dropdown selector now displayed when returning to trade screen after viewing your own team.
Won-loss records now displayed correctly in simulation screen.
Some players no longer receive $0 salary after moving from KHL to NHL.
Correct player name appears when right-clicking on players in historical drafts.
Bottom lines no longer cut off response to rejected job applications.

Changes:

Czech Extraliga and Swedish Allsvenskan are now playable.

Data Changes (not a complete list):

Players who debuted in 1985-86 and 1986-87 added to historical database
NHL transactions up-to-date as of Wednesday, April 3, including all trade deadline deals (some small exceptions: Carolina reportedly retained some of Jussi Jokinen's salary in the trade with Pittsburgh, but I haven't heard any concrete details, so that part of the deal won't be reflected in the game yet, and the Patrick Killeen and Jeff Deslauriers trades didn't make it in because they were announced so late.)
Leagues/countries with changes this update: NHL, AHL, ECHL, NCAA, OHL, QMJHL, KHL, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, UK. Note that not all of these leagues are currently playable.

[y2jericho]

Was just reading the build 9 thread here, and if they aren't considering major smoothing of the UI, that is a huge blow to my interest in the game. WAY, WAY, WAY too many clicks needed. While the ai seems pretty good as far as scoring and shots are concerned, we are in build 12 and player ratings seem to not have been changed. Not sure who is rating players, as there are many players rated way too low and others way too high. Still can't play the game by going to play by play version without it crashing. If I sim, I'm fine, but not by entering play by play.

Trading almost seems to have taken a hit, as now it seems none of the picks are worth anything. Tried trades I didn't necessarily want, but just to test, like Ryan Miller for Petr Mrazek and a 2nd rnd pick, and it won't make the trade, which completely rips me as the Sabres off. 1st rnders in particular net you nothing worth noting. I know the game is still early, but still it doesn't seem to be improving, in UI, trading and other facets of the game.

[philou21]

Well as you can see they took alot of times on bugs only for that update. The UI everyone keeps talking about will probably be improved much later IMO. They need to fix bugs before making the interface better. Well that's what I would do. At least the game could be more playable.

[y2jericho]

I agree, there is lots to do, just seems like it going slow, and I guess you get a little impatient at times.

[archibalduk]

I also hope that the UI gets a significant overhaul. However I think the main aim right now is to get rid of all of the bugs. Many of them have been fixed; it's mostly the harder to diagnose bugs that remain. The build numbers don't really mean all that much in terms of gauging progress.

Not sure who is rating players, as there are many players rated way too low and others way too high.

The ratings are being rated by a team of volunteer researchers.

The DB is still a work in progress. Many of the ratings are auto-generated by the game at start-up. For all playable leagues, we have given all (or virtually all) players the overall Technical Ability ratings (there are five of these - Physical, Mental, Defensive, Offensive and Goaltending) as well as potentials, bio data and positional data (including a template - such as physical/balanced/technical two-way, offensive playmaker, etc - there are a lot of templates for each position) - these are more-or-less the minimum requirements to make a league playable (along with other data and a commitment/intention to subsequently rate all of the individual attributes IIRC). The game creates the player attributes based upon the TAs and templates. Hence you'll see players with inaccurate ratings - but this will change over time as we manually rate the individual attributes. We have done a small number of attributes (things like Ageing, Aggression, Temperament and Faceoffs) and the remainder will come with time (as the game is still in a beta stage).

[Daz_Blade]

Apologies for the stupid question, but...

As I downloaded the game last night, would this have automatically downloaded as the latest version or will I have to download this seperately?

[archibalduk]

You can just download the latest version (i.e. 0.9.12). You don't have to apply them cumulatively/separately.

[Daz_Blade]

Cheers mate

[CJ]

For me it bothers that all the logos are being overwritten when updating. But that's not a big problem when I have a backup of them all so it's easy to overwrite them again.

[CanucksFan1993]

Are the facepacks not compatible with the latest version?

[Saapas]

Few quick questions, I am still playing with build 9 and I have noticed:

1: Just saw 2 players in the same game get 2 assists on the same goal, fixed?
2: On team view screen it shows different salary on some players than it shows on the contract view on players profile, fixed?
3: Have they fixed the scouting of some countries/leagues?

Addition to point 1 I switched the shot view so that it wouldn't show shots from 1st period and then changed it back again and now all the goals have same player on both assists

[philou21]

Since that update less people seem to report crashes. How does the game feel? If it got less crashes I might try it...

[CanucksFan1993]

Since that update less people seem to report crashes. How does the game feel? If it got less crashes I might try it...

I haven't experienced any crashes since the update, however I've noticed that draft picks have literally NO value... for me anyways.

For example, I tried acquiring Kris Versteeg from the Florida Panthers at the trade deadline for Alexandre Burrows and I got this.

"This is an interesting offer but you have to increase your offer a little."

So I throw in some draft picks and still NOTHING... I have no idea what this game's definition of "little" is.

[philou21]

Well that's maybe just something that hasn't been worked on so far.

[Danny]

Since that update less people seem to report crashes. How does the game feel? If it got less crashes I might try it...

I haven't experienced any crashes since the update, however I've noticed that draft picks have literally NO value... for me anyways.

For example, I tried acquiring Kris Versteeg from the Florida Panthers at the trade deadline for Alexandre Burrows and I got this.

"This is an interesting offer but you have to increase your offer a little."

So I throw in some draft picks and still NOTHING... I have no idea what this game's definition of "little" is.

They probably meant you need to add Brian Little

sorry

[philou21]

Oh my god Danny that's just so bad.

[archibalduk]

Well that's maybe just something that hasn't been worked on so far.

Yeah the value of draft picks is a known issue. I believe it'll be fixed for the next version.

[azymin]

Here are some things that I have noticed while playing the beta:
-No line matching. Will that get changed? Also would like to have the ability to match defensive pairs vs. particular offensive lines of the opponent.
-I'd like to see additional tactical options, such as break out tactics, neutral zone deffense/offense etc.
-Being able to filter various screens, such as free agents, trading block, league team list etc. based on attributes, personality, team cap space, funds etc.
-Trades taking 2 days or more to get a response from an AI team. That's just too long imo. Being able to gauge AI's interest in a trade or aspects of a trade (players, rights, draft picks) better. Some sort of colour indicator or better evaluation by assistant managers. If a trade gets declined, getting an explanation of why would be very helpfull (i.e. over salary cap, value too low, overfilled roster at this position).
-Better tools to track players' performance. Being able to sort players' stats for a number of games (i.e. last 5 games or 10 games, customizable). I think who's hot who's not feature is not working. Also, being able to track a players' performance in a particular line/def. pair combination, under particular tactic etc.
-Scouting. Needs to be improved all around. Players' evaluations to be based on what you have on your team right now (i.e. would be a 1st liner or 1st line potential). Getting "1st line potential" for 1-star potential players way too often. Also evaluate what kind of salary/contract a player would demand. I can't seem to be able to find the shortlist . Scouting Nations: is it a temp. or a perm. assignment? If it's temp. then it's taking way too long (over a year long scouting one nation). If it's a perm. assignment then there have to be reports in mailbox(and even if it's temp, still need reports).
-Not sure if teams now value draft picks too much. Seem to be unable to even get a 7th round pick for Chris Kelly of Boston. A little odd imo. Also kind of goes back to not being able to judge a team's interest in a trade.
All around UI improvements.

[jbsnadb]

I agree with a few things in the last post:

Having the ability to track performance game-by-game is key, without having to go the cumbersome route of Team Menu/Scores & Schedules/scrolling down to last game and reviewing the box score is an efficient way to do it.

Speaking of the box, I love the way it looks, but there is a ton of information missing. Namely, what penalties are being assessed? Power play and short handed goals are not notated.

Also, has anyone ever seen the AI switch goalies mid-game? I have not, and there have been some 7-8 goal affairs where one or both netminders should have been replaced.

[archibalduk]

A new beta and DB update will be released apparently within the next 12 - 24 hours. The game now has selectable leagues and is noticeably much faster to load/sim/etc than before.

[Primis]

I won't lie: I have not touched FHM in weeks now. It'd been too time-intensive and clunky even once I got the UI down and wasn't having to hunt for things. Is it making actual progress from say a month ago then?

[archibalduk]

I won't lie: I have not touched FHM in weeks now. It'd been too time-intensive and clunky even once I got the UI down and wasn't having to hunt for things. Is it making actual progress from say a month ago then?

In terms of gameplay, not really IMO. The sim speed is a lot faster now (as of the most recent public release, it has been very slow indeed) and it's a lot more stable. I think most of the work between the first public release and the upcoming public release has been optimising things and fixing bugs.

With the exception of testing out my research, I don't tend to touch FHM either.

[Primis]

I won't lie: I have not touched FHM in weeks now. It'd been too time-intensive and clunky even once I got the UI down and wasn't having to hunt for things. Is it making actual progress from say a month ago then?

In terms of gameplay, not really IMO. The sim speed is a lot faster now (as of the most recent public release, it has been very slow indeed) and it's a lot more stable. I think most of the work between the first public release and the upcoming public release has been optimising things and fixing bugs.

With the exception of testing out my research, I don't tend to touch FHM either.

My biggest thing is that you'll get going, and then it'll crash. Not even the gameplay or UI at this point, I just want it to be stable enough I can make some progress and really test it. I don't feel like reloading 5 times to make any progress. If they've got a good chunk of those crashes fixed, it'd be a big start for me putting more time into it.