EHM The Blue Line

The name is up for debate

But im working in unity to make the best hockey game ever. Or at least one that's reasonably playable with continued support and development. Ill start simple, then continue to build and build. I know what to prioritize so I dont really worry about overscoping; im going to use the minecraft model. Early adopters get in free, then the price goes up for new purchases as I develop more, but I will be constantly developing with no real offical release, so I dont have to worry about milestones

anyway enough about that. My main goals are as follows-

Dynamic

• Stronger players come out of stronger countries
  • Canada will have strong players as long as they have strong leagues and a strong national team. Canada will therefore
    always have a chance of spawning a regened player. But...
  Countries shift as they build reputation
  • bring Latvia to Olympic gold, more and more players in Latvia want to make it big, and should Japan eventually win Olympic
    gold, more players will spawn out of Japan. If Canada somehow and unfortunately falls, expect Canadian players to eventually
    start to slow down
  Chance for higher or lower Potential players in close regions
  • When players spawn, there is a strong chance of them spawning in the same country, or a close country (Canada and US, or Sweden and Finland) as a retiring player, but there is also a strong chance of them spawning in a top 5 country, a lesser
    chance of spawning in a top 10, etc. Stronger the team, the stronger their influence
  Teams Relocate as owners lose money, or for the chance to make more money. League may even re order divisions
  • If your market is weak, move to a stronger one. If your arena sucks, build a new one. If you just want to play in Canada,
    do so. If your board allows it that is.
  Affiliates change as relationships tense
  • If the parent team decides to steal all their affiliates young players right before playoffs and doesn't play them, expect
    the child club to not want to renew their contract. Buy a new one if this happens, and move them to your market, own them so they don't have a choice(if the board lets you)

Editable

• Completely change the league structure including divisions and start dates
  • Start in 1975 if you want to, just specify the year in the database. Want to start the playoffs in January? do it. Finals in
    march? do it. Draft before playoffs? Another draft in summer? do both. Want a 15 team division go up against a 3 team
    division in playoffs? set divisional playoffs. Want wild cards? set division A teams to go into the B bracket, or reseed the
    entire league
  Randomness in player attributes if wanted
  • Setting the ability value of a player should have guaranteed results but a player may have a harder slapshot in one game.
    Specify an attribute influence to a stat so their slapshot will always be stronger than their wrist shot. Or specify a hard
    value
  Intuition built into the editor, know what everything does and how everything is effected
  • See how stats increase as the ability value goes up. expect the ability to be capped if you set all the attributes
    hardcoded. If all attributes are hard-coded to 20, expect the ability to reflect that
  Real-time previews on team page colours, or player attribute progression (margin for obvious error)
  • Want to see how good a player could be at 15 versus 29? specify the preview age, randomness will be taken to account, as well as variations in career progression like weaker coaches, but a range should be seen. Be able to make a late bloomer, or an early peaker, just look at the preview to see. Also works with team colours, change the skin to see if it works on all of
    them, no need to load the game 4 times and sim 8 years just to test
  Lots of stats and huge variation between them
  • Attributes go up from 1-50,maybe more, to show the absolute difference between a 14 year old kid who will peak at 16 and an all star that will score 80 goals a season

Deep

• Money matters.
  • Team may have to fold, or relocate, and the board wont let you pay for that player you cant afford. Make a new jersey to
    stimulate merch sales, or spend more money on marketing, or dont do anything and let your board figure it out and jump ship
    at the end of the season for a richer team.
  Realistic scouting
  • All attributes have a margin for error based on player. No need to heavily scout star goalie, but extremely hard to gauge a
    15 year olds potential
  Coach style and existing league has a huge affect on player style.
  • Stronger goalies out of Quebec because of the high calibre offence in the league, all dynamic if the league changes. Strong D players from Quebec could mean weaker goalies, or weaker players out of Florida because of the weak coaches
  Staff Structure
  • Play as a coach, or a scout, or a general manager, based on the market of team needs. Team needs a head coach but has a
    general manager, play just as the coach. Or let your head coach hire his own coaching staff, and let the head scout handle
    his team.
  Affiliations reflect real life or fantasy
  • Dependant affiliates allow you to manage both the Pros and the Minors, or assign a manager, all the way down to assistant coaches
  Build the game
  • If you can get money, play as the owner of a team and hire the general managers. Become the commissioner of a league and create your own teams. Want to manage the girls to be as good as the men? Do it

And no, I havnt really started, but I am constantly thinking of new ideas

Im going to develop it and support it as I go; meaning if I come up to something I want to edit into the database, ill make it so I can edit it into the database. Instead of dealing with static tools like what we have now, ill officially support any and all "I wish I could do this"'s. I may worry about overhyping, but this is something I want to do, but ill be as transparent and open as possible, including dealing with user feedback

Sounds good! Good luck!

I really, really like some of your ideas! I hope for you everything will go as you wish! Some of these features look like they could be alot of challenge to create. Good luck!

I should note; I have half a bachelors degree in games development, and I turned archies command line database editor into the database editor for a monster rasing RPG. Ive been editing Football Manager 13 pretty much since I got it, and ive been editing East Side Hockey Manager for about 3 years now I think. Ive also made 2 games in C#, the language unity is in, so this isnt my first rodeo

It looks very interesting and best of luck with the development of the game!

Best of luck! I couldn't agree more with what Brian said in the Off Topic Thread:

B. Stinson wrote:I'm with MWE, I say go for it.

My only advice is don't be discouraged if people don't respond and there seems to be a lack of interest. I can guarantee almost everyone here at TBL, being EHM fans, are interested in a new hockey game. It's just that with all the projects we've seen come up in the past, people are kind of drained of excitement. Just take all that with a grain of salt; get a thread going, keep everyone updated on the development, and as you get closer to something we can get our hands on, the more interested people will get.

How do you plan to simulate games? Will it be an elaborate series of "dice-rolls" or are you going for an EHM-style simulation where the players are individually simulated? I have always wanted to try writing my own simulation (using the dice rolling approach) but just can't get my head around how it would work. I appreciate you may not want to share your code, but I'd be very interested to hear how you plan to simulate games and any code snippets you'd be willing to share (again, I appreciate you may not want to share anything).

I plan to plan to plan (meaning my ideal situation in a perfect world) what would be the same as playing NHL 15 at tremendous speeds

At the start it will probably be a dice roll, yeah. Maybe more like a coin flip, with weight going towards the highest overall team, but eventually I would like to get it to a level where chaos theory kicks in and every bad bounce, every leftie vs righty, and every stick length matters. I may never get there, but im okay with never acheiving that, as long as I can get realistic results im fine with not diving that deeps. I am definitly leaning towards EHM and Football Manager Style

For an algorithm that Im coming up as I write this for dice rolling you could use your AI coaches to determine which line will be on the ice at any which 30 second period of play, and assign those lines offense and defence values, then throw a dungeons and dragons dice roll. For instance if the Victoria Neptunes have a defence heavy line on the ice against the Okanagan Serpants offensive Heavy line, they both have the same values offence to defence, so if they're in the Neptunes zone the Neptunes throw a weight of 15 to a D20 roll, adding in their goaltender, then Serpants throws a 15 to a D20 roll, times their roll by their current condition. And thats their "too shot" roll, then you can calculate their "damage value" or their "too score" roll

Something like

VIC: Roll 2 * 1 stamina + Base 15 + 15 goalie = 32 D
OKA: Roll 19 * 1 Stamina + Base 15 + 12 Playmaking = 46 O

OKA Succeeds with Shot

19-20 Critical: 24 difference VS 15 goalie = Goal by Puckett

or something simimlar

obviously this is a Adam Oates system for hockey, but it works for RPGs, so it can be tweaked to fit. But I wouldnt know what to do about stuff like bad changes or bad bounces or breakaways or shotblocks or any of that, so it would need to be developed further

Just going to post a few smaller ideas I want to do, just for documentation

1: A players history will show teams with the jersey they wore, and the jersey number they last wore will still be shown on the jersey select screen along side their preferred number and their most common number

2: A captain will be a big deal, and will also show in player history, and wont ever reset unless you name a new captain, and there will be a depth chart if all of your captains are injured, and you should eventually be able to set rotating captains based on home/away, or even on a per jersey basis; if theres anything small I miss dont be afraid to spam it at me, like if theres something you want to do tell me and ill let you do it

3: My background involves client server stuff, TCIP and data communications and all that, so ill be able to let the game integrate with this forum so you can select challenges from a list, kinda like football manager, and allow you to upload to TBL directly, if archi's willing to work it into the server side I can easily handle the client side, but thats not a priority obviously

Animal31 wrote:I plan to plan to plan (meaning my ideal situation in a perfect world) what would be the same as playing NHL 15 at tremendous speeds

plan the work, work the plan. Good luck.

dave1927p wrote:

Animal31 wrote:I plan to plan to plan (meaning my ideal situation in a perfect world) what would be the same as playing NHL 15 at tremendous speeds

plan the work, work the plan. Good luck.

plan the work, kinda work the plan, cry because of school, give up, plan the new work

Animal31 wrote:2: A captain will be a big deal, and will also show in player history, and wont ever reset unless you name a new captain, and there will be a depth chart if all of your captains are injured, and you should eventually be able to set rotating captains based on home/away, or even on a per jersey basis; if theres anything small I miss dont be afraid to spam it at me, like if theres something you want to do tell me and ill let you do it

That's a pretty darn good idea. It always bothered me when my captain was injured I had to go and replace him and his assistants each time. And then when he comes back....need to do it again.

For the first ever update: I have made a button that swaps between 1 of 3 textures depending on the mouse being over it, or clicking it

so thats a thing

philou21 wrote:

Animal31 wrote:2: A captain will be a big deal, and will also show in player history, and wont ever reset unless you name a new captain, and there will be a depth chart if all of your captains are injured, and you should eventually be able to set rotating captains based on home/away, or even on a per jersey basis; if theres anything small I miss dont be afraid to spam it at me, like if theres something you want to do tell me and ill let you do it

That's a pretty darn good idea. It always bothered me when my captain was injured I had to go and replace him and his assistants each time. And then when he comes back....need to do it again.

That's one of the things I was pushing for in FHM, better captaincy along with captain history for teams...very neat.

So for the databases, I was thinking of having 3 to start

All fictional of course.

One would be from 2006 and would be one to one my database im making for EHM, canadian bias included

Another would be from 2012 and would be more realistic

And another would be from 2018 and be completely unrealistically structured and have a world league with regional relegation and have fun with it

Of course im leaving it open to you guys to make whatever databases you want; I may also include a link between the game and the website like the challenges but for the databases. I want it to be incredibly intuitive and fun and easy to edit. EHM's editability is what keeps us going, so why not build a game that shares that from the ground up?

Making databases is always fun for me, it stimulates my creativity and drive for design without stressing out too much on the technical, which makes the technical easier in that I can take a break. it also works vice versa. The problem with my single database for EHM is that theres so much technical work thats just boring, like adding players, that Im either too technical or too creative for too long and it wears me out. So having 3 databases in addition to the engine should keep my hands busy without wearing me out. It might take a while, but as long as I dont kill myself ill be fine with that amount of work. I obviously wouldnt do this for a living if I didnt like it

To go off the above, I would like if people active in the involvment of this would post their cities, or their closest major city, IE Vancouver if you live in Surrey or Anaheim if you live in Long Beach, etc, so I can best serve the market. I have a list of teams right now that would be contenders for the final, but I dont want to leave anyone out

I'm between Montreal and Quebec but I'll choose Quebec first.

London! The English one; not the Ontario one!

Too bad, Im including the Ontario one too

The London Phoenixes I will call it

Maybe a Second Tier pro team

Im also looking for input for the World League

For instance how many teams whould the top league be? How many teams make the playoffs? How many get relegated straight up? How many teams enter a relegation playoff? How many regional leagues are there? Are their 2 world leagues, then 2 east/west leagues, then 2 per continent? How would teams from Austrialia climb the pyramid? Would there be a cut off at the 4th level so the worst team from austrialia wont get promoted in favour of the worst team in canada if the canadian was better? Etc


To be fair, im looking for input on everything... sooo

You lost me at relegation but depending how much teams you want......top league could be 20? 16? Maybe 8 could make the playoffs? I know that would make quick playoffs but that could be interesting. If not split in half with 10?

New Update

the 2012 database has cities planned out for 5 pro leagues, many share a team name and affiliation with the 2006 database, so let me know if you want them to be more different. 25 of the top level 2006 teams are in the 2012 database's top level league,15 have the exact same affiliation system. 20 for the second level, and a bunch of other numbers and variations. I think only 6 of the teams I made in 2006 are NOT in the 2012 in some way or another, but theres 150 teams now, 41 more, to better spread out cities, and every state and province still gets one but the priority is a bit better. all 160 of those teams will also be in the 2018 database, but I dont know about how the affiliations will work


also I figured out how to use the Camera in unity to control screens and views, I just need to make it more efficiant so anything in the "NewGame" tag doesnt run and update when the game starts for example

Good luck with the project !

Someone's going to have to explain college hockey to me eventually. I mean I "Get it"

but I really dont get it

I keep switching paradigms, ive spent the last little while looking into openGL again, its harder but it may allow me to get bigger so I think its worth the research time

Just a little tiny thing to add to the design for jersey stuff

but I was thinking of having a selection on a per league basis for home team jersey "none", "dark at home", "Light at home", "dark or special at home", "light or special at home", "home teams choice", "road teams choice"

Jerseys will just be divided into light and dark, not home and away, with a binary "special" flag for things like third jerseys, or retro jerseys. Then the "Display as skin" setting would pick which jersey to use as the UI colours so you can set it so a league uses their dark colour scheme as the UI while their wear white at home, which is something I wanted to do in my database. Then a "special jersey percentage" on a per league basis that allows a team to only wear a special jersey so and so many games

And for Jersey generation, ive been working on an algorithm... "working"... that will allow a user to "like" or "dislike" a jersey design, then determine why a user liked or disliked a certain thing about that jersey like "dark pants" or "changed colour scheme from previous jersey set", then randomly design a jersey based on those metrics and try to do what people like more often than what people dislike while still allowing a cushion for exploring designs