EHM The Blue Line

Entry number one in the Development Diary:

Development Diary: Historical Play

B. Stinson wrote:Entry number one in the Development Diary:

Development Diary: Historical Play

Thanks for this! A good/interesting read

I LOVE many of the ideas described in the link!

Many of them I’m essentially trying to do in EHM with the 1974 database.
FHM's Historical Play certainly sounds interesting to me...Being able to use players from 1947 onwards and playing in the “golden age of hockey” or starting with an expansion team in 1967…playing through the 1970s and 1980s and into the modern era of hockey sounds awesome to me! But I see a lot missing at this point

For me, I’m certainly interested and I’m 100% going to purchase FHM upon release, but I suspect I'll be doing so essentially to “support” the project so development continues - I’ll be looking long term as I think it’ll be the updated/future versions of FHM that I'll actually like and play…..for me making the effort these last two years to actually put into EHM07 every pro player in hockey IRL in 1974 (and Staff! and 20 years of prospects! and Europeans/Russians), and the fact that more than the NHL can be played/followed with EHM07, means I suspect my interest will stay with EHM well into 2013 (especially if we get an Updater for EHM05!); I don’t think I’ll be satisfied with what’s being described in the link…..


From the Historical Play post

Every year, the new rookies will be added, and depending on your preferences, you can have them either show up on their historical teams or be available for drafting and signing…

Time permitting, I'll also try to include significant players who never made it to the show…

…the minors will just be abstracted as a "reserve list" where teams can place a limited number of players not on their active roster. In a later version, maybe we can make this a little more realistic…

For me serious concerns include not being able to follow/coach the minor pro leagues too, and not being able to follow the major junior games, and having no existence of the European/Russian Leagues and no international competitions…players that just “show up” and a reserve list doesn’t describe what I’m wanting (seems that scouting/developing of players is missing...and only players that actually played in the NHL leaves out a lot); I’m looking for a more immersive experience, AND I like to be a lot more involved than just coaching my NHL team (and I’m not a “trade crazy GM” – the joy is in the scouting/development over the long term)



But I’ll support the project for sure! And I’ll hope for the best, while being a realist and expecting it to take some time to “get it right” (or at least add what’s missing…which seems like quite a lot IMO)

Hmmm.

I was hoping this would work like the Lahman DB, or like how Front Office Football handled it (individual sharable user-created draft classes you could import for every season). I don't know how I feel about everything just always residing in one huge DB. For one, that tells me the game is going to move along slower than it should (queries on a larger DB = longer processing times). I really strongly disgaree with this method and hope it's a band-aid until they figure out another way. We've already seen what the NHL EHM DB's size does to the task of editing and mods... a historical DB with everything contained therein is only going to be even bigger. And really, I hate anything that needlessly slows down the simming and processing. Surely there is a better way?

I'm also disappointed the minors won't be anything but abstracted. I like playing around in the AHL and ECHL levels, and even when I'm playing in the NHL on EHM I still try to win with the affiliates. To me this also raises serious questions about how your prospects are going to develop, for example. I'm not sure it's be as realistic as it could be. It's like returning to the "old days" of EA NHL games when you just used a vague Reserve List.

I do like the idea that every player is pre-programmed to have "stages" (start, development, prime, decline, end). If you've ever developed a guy into a beast at 21 when in reality he didn't hit it until 25 or 26, you know what I mean. This is an interesting idea for framework to make late bloomers actually be late bloomers (think Tim Thomas), etc.

Obviously the A-#1 issue for most is going to be league fluidity. We've put up with hard-coded structures for so long that if we can get away from that, we'll have made real progress. Honestly though, the abstracted non-NHL is going to possibly be a wet blanket even on that...

Considering this is coming from the historical leagues post, I'm assuming the minor league issue is specific to historical leagues? Will modern leagues at least be simulating the minors?

This sounds great! I'm definitely looking forward to this.

Now I know it says here that in Historic Mode, only the NHL will be playable. What about in the game's regular mode? Will we be able to play other leagues?

B. Stinson wrote:Will modern leagues at least be simulating the minors?

Yes, you can play the minors in the modern game.

bruins72 wrote:Now I know it says here that in Historic Mode, only the NHL will be playable. What about in the game's regular mode? Will we be able to play other leagues?

Yes, you'll be able to play other leagues. It is also possible to make an unplayable league playable and vice-versa. So if you want to add the Mexican league and make it playable then you can!

archibalduk wrote:

B. Stinson wrote:Will modern leagues at least be simulating the minors?

Yes, you can play the minors in the modern game.

Ahh. That wasn't entirely clear.

The gist I got was that for the first version/outing, they were ONLY making the "Historical Mode" and it was going to be wrapped in with the modern game. If that's not the case then I apologize.

Is it Late December-Early January yet? I can wait!

Primis wrote:

archibalduk wrote:

B. Stinson wrote:Will modern leagues at least be simulating the minors?

Yes, you can play the minors in the modern game.

Ahh. That wasn't entirely clear.

The gist I got was that for the first version/outing, they were ONLY making the "Historical Mode" and it was going to be wrapped in with the modern game. If that's not the case then I apologize.

There's no need to worry - the historic mode and modern game are completely separate (other than sharing the same DB).

drool drool drool....something to spend my Christmas money one (or ask for for my January birthday)

Buying Christmas presents to my family? Heck no, I'm going to buy this for myself.

A further update:

HISTORIC MODE

• Every player who has played at least one game in the NHL is included in the historic DB.
• When you start a game, the players are on the rosters of the teams that the started the season with.
• Every season, the real rookies will be imported into the game. There is a setting so that you can choose whether they are put on their real team or put into the draft pool
• All real life expansions will happen in game.