Franchise Hockey Manager 2014 - General Impressions/Etc

[nino33]

With version FHM 1.0 only minutes away from release, Producer JeffR posted the following...


"A few words as we get ready to launch (there's been a small delay getting the 1.0 versions on the servers, which are getting hit pretty hard right now):

First, I'd like to thank everyone for their patience and investment in the future of our game. As we announced last week, we will be continuing to develop FHM, and there will be an FHM2015 next season (but not until we spend several more months improving this one.)

The game has taken considerable steps forward in the last two weeks, particularly in terms of stability. I've had the game stop once on me in the last two days, the product of a spectacularly unlikely combination of waiver claims and goalie injuries, and that's been fixed. The statistical fine-tuning has also gone very well; Crosby runs ahead of the pack now, defencemen get more realistic numbers, and I've had Bobby Orr win scoring races in historical play.

Which isn't to say there weren't things we couldn't fix. We'll be continuing with the late nights and early mornings for a few more days, and will post a patch with any high-priority fixes on Friday/Saturday. And the first larger content patch will be adding multiplayer, and a few other things.

Apologies to Blues' fans, but there's currently a bug in the 1.0 version making it impossible to start a game, historical or modern, as St. Louis. It was caught in testing and fixed, but seems to have snuck back in during yesterday's later builds. That will definitely be covered in the patch, but we're trying to find a workaround for you today.

I realize that we're not going to give everyone exactly what they wanted in a hockey management game, but before you get upset that we haven't done precisely what you were hoping for, consider where we are right now: three years ago, none of us had much hope of seeing another game like this from an established developer. Markus and Andreas stuck their necks out and funded it, Sebastian and Malte took the chance that it would pay off in the long run and got it off the ground, our research and testing volunteers put in long hours, and we've all worked a ridiculous schedule over the last several months to get to his point. When Sega killed off EHM, I thought that'd be the end of the road for my favourite sport in this genre, but here we are.

Now we've got a well-supported game again, and we can get on with building this into a truly great game. Thank you, again, to all of you for coming aboard in the early going; it's going to be a fun ride."


Here's the actual post http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/f ... 1-0-a.html

[philou21]

Apologies to Blues' fans, but there's currently a bug in the 1.0 version making it impossible to start a game, historical or modern, as St. Louis. It was caught in testing and fixed, but seems to have snuck back in during yesterday's later builds. That will definitely be covered in the patch, but we're trying to find a workaround for you today.

OMG! This! Anyone thought about MGSPORT while reading this?!?

[Alessandro]

Maybe Jeff did it on purpose

[archibalduk]

That was brilliant!

Has anybody tried today's release build? I probably won't have a chance until the weekend. I'm interested to hear how everyone else is finding it.

The OOTP Forums are a mighty negative place right now, aren't they?!

[philou21]

Well the first comments on Jeff's post that Nino shared were very positive IMHO. Maybe whiners came later.

[archibalduk]

I'm really impressed with the progress the devs have made over the past 2 or 3 weeks. The AI is much better, crashes/bugs fixed, salaries are much better, the simming is faster. Really great stuff! I think a lot of these recent improvements soften my previous issues with the UI. The UI is by no means perfect, but I think the recent improvements make up for it.

Btw, I really love the flaming puck which scrolls across the screen when simming!

[chessarmy]

Question - Why would you release a broken game? If it had all these problems, don't you think the smart thing would have been to delay release again? People want a finished product.

I'd rather have no game at all than a game where I can't play as a certain team, can't re-sign players, etc...

So for that reason I'm going to pass on this. Try to make sure this is actually finished next time.

[B. Stinson]

I'd rather have no game at all than a game where I can't play as a certain team, can't re-sign players, etc...

And many, many others would rather have 'a game', than wait through another delay.

It's a lose-lose.

[philou21]

Try to make sure this is actually finished next time.

They sure gonna read and listen to this.

[Hybrid_Theory_79]

My game keeps crashing three days into the season. What the Dickens. The Betas work fine and then the full release comes out to a crashing finish. Pun intended.

[dave1927p]

I still can't seem to resign my players...and seeing as how RFA isn't fixed yet it is leading to disappointment. Haven't played all that much yet so not sure if it is still crashing on people after a few seasons or not.

EDIT: To add in the final straw, the game crashed in the first season. I can see why people are complaining. The three big issues that I was hoping at least 2/3 would be taken care of is 0/3 for the official release. Anyone who has not done their research and purchased the game will be disappointed no doubt. Still I like these guys dedication so hopefully it gets corrected within the next week.

[chessarmy]

So apparently you can't re-sign players, trade negotiations don't work, the trade values are screwed up, and there are lots of crashes.

Again, you don't release half-finished games. What the hell were they thinking? What a scam.

[Animal31]

Hell mine crashed when I ran the program...

[jhart05]

I'm going to pass, but not because of the bugs that are still there.

I tried their OOTP13 game. Was never able to get my 1971 season set up my liking. Mostly due to rating issues. Never even played one season with it, then put it away.

They put so much junk into their game, that they seem to overlook the basic things. Like a 17-year old, Single A player, in his first year, should not already have maxed out fielding.

For hockey, EHM07 fits my needs very nicely. Plus I just downloaded it and there is no demo to try it out.

[Jykke]

I've been quite happy so far, game has worked as it should except sometimes there is some lag. Also, I'm pretty sure Mikkel Boedker wont ever in million years sign to finland for 600k$ yet still he did it in the game, very odd indeed. Also, why it is not possible to filter free-agents list? Or have I just missed it?

EDIT: When i downloaded team logos, player pics & league logos game kept the original pics, any ideas why this happened and how to fix it?

[CJ]

I tried the game. Started in the season 92/93 as the Penguins. Traded away R.Tocchet for P.Bure.

Here are the players stats after the first season:


Lemieux broke Gretzkys playoff points record.

Not gonna play it anymore until they make major changes to the game. Took me a few mintues to set up the "tactics", and that was it. There's nothing more to do in the game. I got to the Stanley Cup and was beaten by the Red Wings... (a game shouldn't be that easy just by testing it)

[Xalfen]

Can't make any deal. I'm trying for the 3rd time to give my 2014 1st round pick during negociations... 3rd time the game crashed.

[CeeBee]

Tried the game for the first time since the 3rd beta release and man, is it SLOW. Takes forever just to load the game and way to long to go from one screen to the next. I have an old computer but the early beta's were much faster. I'll actually try to get to the start of the season but I'm not holding out much hope. I really do like the player pictures though.

[B. Stinson]

EDIT: When i downloaded team logos, player pics & league logos game kept the original pics, any ideas why this happened and how to fix it?

Are you referring to a saved game? If so, you'll need to also copy the logos and player pictures to your saved game, located at: \Documents\Out of the Park Developments\Franchise Hockey Manager 2014\data\saved_games\<your league folder>\graphics

[Jykke]

EDIT: When i downloaded team logos, player pics & league logos game kept the original pics, any ideas why this happened and how to fix it?

Are you referring to a saved game? If so, you'll need to also copy the logos and player pictures to your saved game, located at: \Documents\Out of the Park Developments\Franchise Hockey Manager 2014\data\saved_games\<your league folder>\graphics

I cant hold all these folders! Now they are working, thanks.

Now i have those same pictures in THREE different folders, what is this dark magic? Why there aint 1 simple database like in EHM?

[archibalduk]

Tried the game for the first time since the 3rd beta release and man, is it SLOW. Takes forever just to load the game and way to long to go from one screen to the next. I have an old computer but the early beta's were much faster. I'll actually try to get to the start of the season but I'm not holding out much hope. I really do like the player pictures though.

The facepacks and the logopacks increase the game creation and loading speeds very significantly, IMO. I'm not going to bother with facepacks at all because that has a particularly significant impact. If you want to speed up your game creation, delete all of the face images and logos from your Historical and Majors sub-folders of your Quickstart folder. Then, once you have created your game, copy the faces and/or logos to your saved game .lg folders. This doesn't speed up loading, but it does speed up creation.

The game is really slow at copying the face and logo images when creating and loading. In a much earlier beta I compared the difference between starting a new game with the facepacks/logos installed and not installed. The time difference is pretty big - and much slower than copying the files manually afterwards.

I can see why they copy the logos for each new game because it gives a lot of flexibility; especially for custom leagues. However, it does make the saved games much larger.

[CJ]

If you're only playing NHL, then keep only the NHL logos. That shouldn't hurt the speed that much.

There has always been default logos in FHM, switching them to different logos shouldn't impact speed that much imo? They are a few KBs larger of course... Skipping the facepack I agree on.

[dave1927p]

Apologies to Blues' fans, but there's currently a bug in the 1.0 version making it impossible to start a game, historical or modern, as St. Louis. It was caught in testing and fixed, but seems to have snuck back in during yesterday's later builds. That will definitely be covered in the patch, but we're trying to find a workaround for you today.

OMG! This! Anyone thought about MGSPORT while reading this?!?

haha yeah, that definitely had me smiling. It was pretty funny. I wouldn't put it past Jeff, he probably did plan that one lol

[Rubbinio]

Well I was super excited when the email came but about 10 minutes later I am done playing this until an update is released.

This is not beta quality, not even alpha. When the game crashes with a runtime error every time i advance more than 4 days or I try to make 2 trades in the same day something is very very wrong. I just had the runtime crash 7 times in under 10 minutes of playing. This is absurd.

I am a developer and if we release anything that works like this we get in a ton of trouble and some people would lose their jobs. I did not have any of the problems I am seeing now through the beta.

Among other things:
- after a crash, i trade i just completed keeps giving me an update that it was accepted every single day. The player is already in my team.
- the player they got from me in exchange and commented they will accepted the trade because it is unfair due of how much it is in their favor it was is now on the trading block
- daily i get 3 emails that Anaheim rejected my trade of nothing for nothing ....

[philou21]

That trade bug is hilarious!