24 July 2012 Update

[dabo]

Hello everyone,

I was planning on writing this update a long time ago but for some reason I didn't and then I went away on vacation. Anyway before I get into the main topic of this update, the match engine, I want to mention a few updates regarding the development team.

forza_ambri has joined the project as a programmer and will start working on how to load data from the database into the game as well as handling new games, loading and saving etc.

CircularTheory is now part of the team and will help us plan this project; this is something I should have done better from the start but having a person join the team that actually wants to do this will help a lot.

As I mentioned in the previous update my new focus is the match engine. This is a major part of a hockey simulator thus it is very important to get this right and it is going to require lots of work. I have looked into several levels of detail for the match engine, from instantly simulating a game by pressing a button to a 2d rink with coaching capabilities. Although I knew from the start that the latter would require lots and lots of work and was not planned for the first version I could not help but check out the possibility of realizing this in WPF. With my knowledge, WPF is not optimal for this but I know it can be done, I even did a test implementation where I am able to shoot the puck around in the rink and it bounces off the boards and slides along the corners smoothly. The tough part will be to add players and have them play realistically, realizing how time consuming this will be, based on the time it took to just implement the puck physics, I will stop here and continue when we feel we have time to put this much time into one single feature albeit an important one.

Instead for the first version I will focus on something simpler. My plan right now is to implement two versions:

• Basic - Quick sim the entire game, you leave control to the coaches and get a result instantly.
• Advance - Allows you to coach (or perhaps just watch) the team during a game, including making tactical- and line changes etc. The visual details of this version are not yet decided.

I want to be able to use the same engine for both versions and on top of that have either human or coach ai control depending on the version. This is going to require a good design to get right that is why I am going to let the design phase take its time and don't rush anything. I have already started this process and even made some small implementations to try and verify that I am on the right track. More about this in the next update.

Take care

[CM0304]

no news for ages,is it dead?

[batdad]

Wow...you ask that all the time. Why do you need to know so bad? if the game comes it comes..if it doesn't it does not.

[dabo]

No it is not dead, I work on it every once in a while I just have not gotten around to write an update. Unfortunately in the last year or so this project is back to being a one man project when it comes to writing code so it is not progressing as quickly as I would have liked, but not much to do about it I am afraid.

Luckily FHM is around so we are not without an up-to-date hockey manager game anymore.

[CM0304]

No it is not dead, I work on it every once in a while I just have not gotten around to write an update. Unfortunately in the last year or so this project is back to being a one man project when it comes to writing code so it is not progressing as quickly as I would have liked, but not much to do about it I am afraid.

Luckily FHM is around so we are not without an up-to-date hockey manager game anymore.

Really GOOD NEWS

[RomaGoth]

Curious if there is an update on this project. FHM has been a major disappointment so far, and while I am confident it will become much better, I am still interested in other hockey sims and there has not been an update from Dabo in quite a while.

[Satyr]

I'm sorry to ask, but... this game is dead ?

[philou21]

From what dabo said some time ago he is very busy outside the project and not much people are working with him so the progress is slooooow.

[CM0304]

the case is dead,I have sent persoanl email to Dabo weeks ago and didnot get any reply.

[dabo]

I am sorry I did not respond, I read your email but I did not have time to respond at that time then I forgot about it.

As you probably have figured out not much has happened over the last couple of years because I had some personal problems I had to deal with and on top of that I now have very little free time. At some point I would like to revive this project in some form. Since EHM is hopefully back for real I get my hockey manager fix now anyway but playing something you have been part of creating yourself is what keeps me wanting to complete this project.