Long Time No See!

Well, I've decided to resurect this project, some 12 years after starting it.

I've bought the domain www.soccer-supremo.co.uk as the .com one is now taken - I've got the database back up and running but there will be loads of missing links etc for me to fix so give me time to get that working and hopefully I can attract some playtesters.

Lots to do

As you can tell I am not the most prolific blogger!  Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I know not many people read this but to the handful that do here is a bit of an update.

The game is now running in a fairly stable state and largely automated, which allows me to do work on it behind the scenes.  There are still bugs but these are now largely cosmetic and as the basic game is running OK I can work at fixing them as I become aware of them.  If you are playing the game it would be useful if you can email me any time you notice something wrong so I can then fix it.  The game is so complex now that I am not always aware of issues.

I am always keen to get feedback on the game so please do get in touch if you have suggestions, comments or bug reports.

Recently I have added a friendly game feature, so you can play friendlies to experiment with tactics and see how the game works.  This is also quite handy if you are in a league that has not yet started the season.

I am now looking at removing all the inactive teams as there are only about 20 or so teams that are being actively managed.  At the end of this season I will be promoting all active teams to the top 3 or so leagues, so look out for that.

Other ideas are to include injuries, substitutes, disciplinary and more stats in general.

I aim to update this blog more frequently in future too but no promises!

Long time no see!

I'd forgotten about this blog and the game to be honest.

But things are now back on track.  I've renewed the domain name so I am committed to getting the game finished and fully working.

At long last the end of season script is working with a few issues and leagues 1 - 15 are now onto season 2, once I am happy this is working all leagues will be updated.

Issues:

Player histories for season 1 are lost due to a bug, this is now fixed but I cannot get the deleted data back, sorry!

Some teams had a lot of retirements, this is now fixed going forward so it is more realistic.

Various cosmetic issues sorted out and am now working on new features.

Please sign up for season 2 of the beta if you've not already tried it and let me know your thoughts.

http://soccer-supremo.com/

Records

The game is now running with most features implemented and it seems to be fairly stable with no major bugs.

So I've started to add a few more little touches and records will be one of them.  The game now keeps a record of each teams record attendance and there is a records screen that shows the record attendance from each team in all the leagues.  As time goes by I will add more records, such as highest score, biggest defeat etc.

This has meant some changes to the main match calculator and a new script to display records and some tweaks to the teams pages to include them, at the moment there's not much to see as the data will be populated over time as each game is played, no data exists for the old games.

I've also been thinking about the end of season scripts - there will be a two week break between seasons while players are aged (they will lose some skill depending on their ages) and fixture lists generated etc.

I'll get promotion and demotion implemented after this season, probably promote the top two teams and demote the bottom two.

Schedule

Quite a bit of progress today!

I've fixed a number of minor bugs, including one on the finance screen that showed the wrong balance for the previous week and another cosmetic issue when logging out.

The main progress has been getting all the scripts fully automated.  These will now run on a certain day so the game can progress without any intervention from me.  I don't think there are any bugs that will surface due to this but I will be keeping a close eye on things.

The schedule is:


Daily:  Academy updates re new youth/reserve players
Daily:  Coach reports any new training opportunities
Sunday (15:00):  New auctions begin
Monday (07:30):  Financial updates
Tuesday (12:30):  Academy updates regarding investments
Daily:  Academy updates re new youth/reserve players
Friday (20:00):  Auctions close, players bought
Saturday (15:30): Matches played and results updated

Subject to change of course!

The game is now taking new players for League Three!

Whoops!

Today was a good day and a bad day - I processed the matches for league two for the first time, no major issues apart from goals for and against not being updated.  However, I made a mistake and the matches for league one were processed again.  I've corrected this in the league table but the matches (first week matches) for league one are now overwritten.

Please ignore this if it affects you, the table is correct and that is the main thing.  In future this issue won't occur as the matches will all be processed in one go for all leagues, on a Saturday at 3pm UMT, starting this Saturday.

There's also an issue with the "balance carried forward" total from the previous week on the finances screen, again it's not a major issue as the actual total is correct but for some reason it's adding on the balance carried forward twice, so easy to fix when I get time!

I'm still letting people sign up and register and if you do then you'll go into the pool for League Three, hopefully that can start in a week or two.

League Two

Today was quite a monumental day as we've now got enough users registered to start off the second league, imaginatively named "League Two"!

I've also run the match calculator script for the first league matches as well and it all went fairly smoothly, the only thing that's cropped up is the away teams data is a bit corrupt in the match report but I think that will be easy to fix.

I also ran the finances script and that seems OK too apart from the balance carried forward, although the balance brought forward for the current week is OK so this is only a cosmetic issue.

I'll get the cron scripts automated now and will post the schedule so everyone knows when things are going to happen, it will probably be something like:

Mondays - New auctions begin
Tuesdays - Academy investment results

Friday - Auctions finish
Saturday - League matches
Sunday - Finance updates

Daily - training and academy results.

That means there is something happening almost every day for those who login daily, will add cup matches next season and they'll be on a Wednesday, Sunday is a day of rest!

Cheerio!