Sunday League Manager: Horse and Spoon news & patch notes

Released today, small fix to the 3dME which tracks facilities better, has fans linked to the club popularity rather than facility level in the bg, wear and tear on the pitch as well as kit improvements for all clubs.

Short of bug reports in the subreddit, this will be the last update until late August I expect, so please do let me know any bugs or requests for the upcoming August update in either reddit or the discussion boards of Steam.

New features dropped here are two new Cup Competitions. One played at the very end of the season (County Cup) that sees the winner of the various regional cups take up the reigns of a County XI and one that occurs on weekdays throughout the season for the Counties Regional Cup winners and Top Division winners, the Inter County Club Cup.

Small QOL updates involve the cup brackets being at the top of all cup competition screens now, access to the top scorers and best performers in every cup competition (poach the best if they're interested). Finally there were a few visual bugs in the 3D match engine I managed to iron out, there are still more to catch but these were biggies (pitch alignment not right, wrong facilities for the club appearing).

New update which adds the 3D Match Engine.

Work ongoing to make it more realistic as we go, but for now - very playable in testing and a one to one representation of what's happening in the 2D match Engine.

• Goal counting issue resolved
• Match Engine Fixes (more shots, less shots from distance, less fouls)
• Offsides made fuzzier, some small mistakes, some big mistakes, but mostly consistent.
• Press updated a fair bit.
• Player churn/leaving changed to be far more visible.

• As ever, ME has been refined and this should allow for more flowing matches, better moves and more realistic behaviour - still not perfect and I imagine I'll continue to find stuff about that forever - but what I do find I'll fix!

• Players Messages (on the overview screen) will be far more interactive an useful. Instead of simple morale implications in the replies, when players come asking about specific training you will be able to propose a 2hr session there and then (presuming your partner is in a happy place!) training that attribute and two others. This won't advance time, so does not interfere with your team training or hitting the pub prior to a big match.

• Local press will now reach out to you, and Terry will let you know if they make anything useful or useless out of the responses you give them.

• When players leave (churn out of the team or are poached) you will get an message from the club secretary about it and you will be able to add them to your shortlist (of they remain active in the game) to track them in the future.

• Player histories are now stored correctly for player and NPC teams. These might take a match or two to appear, but they will appear.

• NPC teams have had their squad building improved, they have areas they want to strengthen every few weeks and will seek to bring players in - you will start to see a decent bit of movement, maybe even some teams struggling to field 11 players if they've been hit badly.

Bugs Addressed

• More ME fun - should see less (again) goals from the wrong side of the pitch, more passing moves, more dribbling and less goalkeeper insanity.

• Saves in Cloud not retaining partner or other lifestyle stuff resolved

New to this release

At the bottom of the home screen there are three slots for Custom tactics. I've spent a bit of time testing out the wacky and weird to see if there's any obvious gotchas in there, I haven't found any - but I am one person and there's hundreds of you playing now, so there's a good chance you find an exploit I haven't!

Further Updates

New artist is doing some great work with the player headshots, I've seen progress for 5 of the initial 40 I've asked for, looking forward to seeing the new style implemented myself.

Alongside that thanks to a long time player and my impending 40th, I received this today, so I'll be representing the Spoons next time I make it along to 5-a-side. #UpTheSpoons

Releasing a few fixes & an expansion of the game's lifestyle section.

First off the player ages should always appear consistent now as there was a conflict in the Player data screen that fell back on the date IRL rather than the date in game at one point.

Display bugs in individual and positional training resolved.

Secondly there's been more tweaks on the ME to make the midfield less clunky, players tackle & intercept radius's have been reduced to be more game realistic.

Partner save issues - should have been rare but still not cool - have been resolved as well.

When you train a player for a position you will be able to switch back and forth between their primaries by clicking on the button in "Also plays:"

Lifestyle section has been enhance with the ability to hire your own players to "tie them down" a little more reliably. Leaning heavily in to the HFL way of player retention for any Scottish Football fans that are ITK there.

Future plans:

Continue to revise ME - I'm playing the game more than most of you, so finding what needs fixed in there almost daily.

New artist contracted for the headshots - had been disappointed with the sped of delivery elsewhere so have instead opted to find a new artist for the headshots, hopefully have them all replaced soon asn expand the available faces for players beyond that.

Getting straight in to the nitty gritty, here's the feature drops:

• New lifestyle section

  • Create a partner, keep them happy or find yourself stopped from attending games or running long sessions.

  • Improve your work life, take home more moolah so you can keep your partner happy and maybe invest in a Nag...

  • Buy a horse, a chance to increase your income again, and see your horse when you check out the nags on the Stevie Reid bookie app.

• Badges for every team

  • From the Furrows Plough to the Bannock Waste Disposal, every team has their own badge now, the display of the league tables, fixtures & opposing team screens have made use of these.

• Home tops for every team

  • As above, so below - there's a lot of room here for away and third kits going forwards.

• New Match Preview before kick off, see the ground you're playing at - whether it's your pitch side with nowt but dugouts or the Otters big team and their huge stand and food vans.

• Progress on some of the achievements - I have verified that cup win is firing, I have suspicions about some of the ones that have fired in a lot of cases but aren't firing now and I'll verify that with a stealthy release midweek in the dev branch and test it properly.

• Tweaks of the ME for penalty outcomes.

Changes to 0.9.7:

• More refinement on the match engine to ensure more realistic outcomes

• Introduction of hidden gem players in Youth, Scouting and Free Agents

• Age bug resolved

• Match Engine Bugs stopping FT resolved

• Scoreline bug not replicated by myself but more checks in place to avoid it

• Achievements refined further, should be all firing now

Next update will be later this week (Friday or Saturday) and will be Version 1 and the plan is:

• Achievements to be fully functional

• Lifestyle Section activated:

  • You have the ability to upgrade your house

  • You can buy a stake in (and name) a horse which will appear in the Races

  • Depending on the occupation you chose there will be issues to handle there

  • (Optional) Manage your relationships at home

• Strip designs & badges for the other teams & the Spoons (some of these might be delayed, but they will get defaults until I have them ready!).

Release notes for this minor Patch:

• ET Issue resolved in cup games

• Subs available through to FT in ET

• Offside decisions cause less delay

• Achievement fixes

• Steamcloud fixes*

Please note with the steamcloud fixes you may have to load the 'matchengine' beta branch to download your previous cloudsaves and load them in to the new version. I'm not sure why the cloudsave fixes caused this issue for myself but I've left the 'matchengine' branch as the old method so you are able to retrieve them.

Release notes:

- Fixture Logic refactor (cup was failing at times in old form)

v0.9.6

Match Engine

• Goalkeeper positions have been improved, logic reworked to make them a lot less aggressive in pushing up the pitch, give them a little more sense and make them more realistic.

• Momentum calculations tweaked - the matches work on a momentum trend that is worked out on the fly, between 5-15 minute spells of 'dominance' that can be interrupted tactically or by subs - to be more reactive and increase the flow of the match in these spells.

• New interplay moves added to the player logic (1-2s, playing for fouls, cut backs and rounding the keeper all added to the logic).

• Colour issues have guards against them - a few times people have mentioned playing against a team in the exact same colour as the spoons - this shouldn't ever happen as the colour pool the opposition have to chose from is deliberately made to contrast against the Spoons - but I have added a guard against this in the ME to ensure that where that is failing, there will not be a bad experience.

• Positioning at Penalties are now more realistic.

• Captain buffs have been improved (their presence on the pitch will influence your chance at wrestling momentum in the game).

• Clearer feedback in tactical screens throughout the Matches, tooltips for players who are out of position.

• Match ratings are more dynamic with substitutions - a subbed player will not receive FT bonuses (or penalties).

Bibs off, Super Sub on

Suspensions Carry Over

Messages

Player Notes & Shortlist

Youth Players Improved

Captain Effects

Achievements Sorted

More varied fixture creation in the early season

NPC's shouldn't play twice in the same day

Facilities completely re-worked

Came to my attention that somewhere between initially testing them and releasing the branch, achievements and cloud saves had stopped working. These are back in and tested tonight. Alongside the ability to leave a match to your assistant if you're feeling brave!

What's New?

Another patch release, another tranche of nice to haves delivered for you all. Starting with a revamped Team Overview screen. Your injuries, suspensions and absences are visible in the new overview, as well as an Action section for any team actions required, your competition status will be here too and finally the new Message system where Terry - the landlord - and your players will reach out to ask about training they like the look of, players they can't stand and a bit more.

Next up e have a revamp of the training section. I've changed the way this displays to ensure you can see everything without scrolling endlessly in both the individual and the team training sessions.

Beyond that we have a new Goal announcement in the ME, we have more balanced games and there's been the introduction of shifting momentum in the background. Additionally you have a new Tactical Instruction feature that allows you to alter the way your team is playing from the sidelines beyond shouting for them to Push Up or Get Stuck In.

Patch Release

Morning all, as I let on in the discussions, today's release deals with some realism issues encountered (not all yet) in the Match Engine, it also introduces cards & wider discipline, a new shout from the side-lines and better logic for goalkeepers & players in general. I'll continue tweaking the ME as I play-test it deeper to find more improvements, as always any feedback is helpful on this front as I do want to catch the absolute majority of the odd behaviour before we call this finished and move on to cloudsaves.

The Tweaks

In among some ME Tweaks, there's been a touch of re-styling around the games start screen & general feel. This is art work I had sitting about that I wanted to use as a splash loading screen initially but thought it would be better used (and also not do the annoying seconds wait to load behaviour) in the main game itself to change up the look a tad.

For the match engine; intelligence and strength have been slightly nerfed, whilst the thresholds for some decisions have also been lowered (a lot of good play was locked behind an int stat that was not achievable early on). This will get better with higher stats but will start to appear in lower INT players as well.

Striker behaviour has been altered. Unless you are instructing the team to push up, the strikers shouldn't be taking anywhere near as many shots from distance, and should be scoring even fewer of them. One issue was with clearances that were on target; the keeper behaviour was essentially "I'm good if it's not a shot" and would watch it fly in. This should not be the case anymore.

The New

MacOS Support has started. I prematurely had this up in the storefront from 094, so apologies if you bought it during that build, but it is now tested and working in 095.

Achievements have been loaded and should not only let you know they are happening in game, they should be working on Steam too.

Groundwork for Steam Cloudsaves was done in this release which should come good in the next few.

New Match Engine Live

Version 0.9.4 is now out on Steam, including the small matter of an all new match engine, injury & absence system and a host of other nice Quality of Life changes.

You can report any issues you have on the Discussions Forums here on steam, or you can head over to r/SundayLeagueManager on reddit and chare your thoughts, concerns, delights and feelings there.

The New Match Engine

I'm delighted to have the new PixiJS ME working in the game now, providing an actual 11 vs 11 on screen game for us to witness. It's still being tweaked & is not what I'd call "ready" for the big release yet, but I have got it in a place where I'm confident it will add value to players.

To try this out right click on the game in your library and you'll see this screen:

Head down to "Betas" and select from the drop down the matchengine branch:

Version 0.9.3 will release today after a final round of dev branch testing. It will bring with it a number of quality of life improvements as well as upgrades & planned parts of the roadmap to V1. First of all:

Appearance Data

Players appearance data will be available to you when selecting your starting XI, allowing you to ward off any potential unhappiness from lack of playing time.

Appearances of the players

Finally we have ageing avatars working. We're still looking forward to custom artwork for these avatars - but for now we have additional faces to work from and these will age with the players themselves as the seasons continue.

Seasonal Awards

We've already got seasonal awards, but we didn't have anywhere to see them. Historical awards will now be kept in an Awards/Hall of Fame section where retired players & players who have left to play in pro leagues will also be presented.

Absence Refined

Absence for players in games in the past was very unintuitive. All you knew was that some players weren't there on match day. Now you'll see why, how long it'll last & the flimsy excuses these part-timers can provide you with when their personalities prioritise pints over points.

Scouting Reworked

Scout reports will persist beyond the missions that you send them on, allowing you to view the players you've scouted for as long as they remain free agents. Age parameters are a little more obedient, with more stricter obedience depending on the level of scout you can afford to hire.

Youth Players

Need a hole in the squad filled, or planning on winning it all with your own Golden Generation? Take a trip to local Youth teams and speak to the coaches about the prospects they have available. You'll get their opinion on their potential and the squad position they hold for that coach's team.

Retirement

Players over 35 will start to feel the strain in the game more than ever now, and as they approach the ripe old age of 40 they will look to retire. Every retiring player will have an automatic prospect promoted in their place - but this isn't Premier Manager 98, so you're not getting a fully fledged Alan Shearer Regen at 16 years old here.

Training Impact

Training is now more important than ever for younger players. Rather than a static potential, we have a dynamic potential working in the background of the game that will increase if your training stats are up to scratch and you are properly investing the time in this player. You can feasibly turn a potential Squad player in to your dream striker, but in the same breath if you're ignoring the next big thing - they might not make the grade!

New Overview

Much more useful & functional components on the overview now> You get a glimpse of your upcoming game, captain selection options and your team and manager stats are much smaller at the base of the view now.

Sliding In To That Wingers DMs like Never Before

From the League tables you can click through to any team and view their squad - like your own players, they want to play and will be unhappy if they aren't playing regularly, giving you a chance to nick better players from under the nose of those weirdos at Morley Telecom or Wicklowby Town.

Awards

Some pomp and ceremony at the end of the season as the best players across all leagues are recognised, along with three golden boot races.

Sorted the Cup fixture issues & promotion is working as intended again!

Release is here!

We're at V0.9 now, the cup has been tweaked to try and avoid common scheduling issues to introduce a preliminary round system. This will see you play in the early rounds in the lower league, but qualify for the main rounds once you are in the top two divisions. Scheduling has been completely reworked as well.

As mentioned before, this does mean your old save will not be compatible for this release - apologies for that!

Here's the notes from the preview of the build:

League Statistics & Player Poaching

You will not be able to view the top 20 players for goals, assists and average ratings and more excitingly, if there's interest on the side of the player, poach these players for your team. You will be presented with 4 options of how to win a player over when interest is mutual and your choices & actions in these scenarios will decide whether you are able to nick the leagues top scorer or not. Once successful, the player will seek release from their club and join you 1 week later.

Sponsorship

You will now be ale to choose a player to take with you to sponsorship meetings. The choice you make can increase the chance of success and increase the total money the sponsors are willing to part with - so choose wisely. There's also a fruit-machine mechanic at the end of negotiations which will give you a chance to increase the total once more; allowing you to have a bit more control of sponsorship success and drive facility improvements in the club itself.

Personalities

Traits have been explicit up to now, but in the future rather than seeing a 1-10 rating for a players attitude, Loyalty, Ambition and so on, you will instead see an "at a glance" descriptor of their personality.

Squad View

Order your team by position, appearances, goals, assists or average rating to assess their performance at a glance and get an quick idea of who needs game time and who might be surplus to requirements.

Training

You can control how your players train now, selecting from a light 90 minute session, to a heavy 3 hour session, you will choose between 2 and 4 drills from the selection available to put the lads through their paces. This allows you to focus on specific attributes rather than the previous "hope they improve correctly" mechanic I had in place.

Quick Update re v0.9

After the brief break from work on SLM:H&S I got back to it earlier in the week. At the moment 0.9 is testing well in my local environment and I'll start testing on the dev branch in Steam on Monday to make sure there's nothing untoward happening there.

The new version will come with changes that will invalidate your saved game, which I understand is a pain. This is something I had hoped to avoid but when solving some of the issues in 0.8 I found myself having to change the way I was doing things and ultimately this is reality in the beta version.

Save compatibility will be stable from Version 1 onwards saving any unforeseeable catastrophes and I'll be doing my best to retain the compatibility between 0.9 and 1.0 too.

That said, here's some things you can look forward to in V0.9.

League Statistics & Player Poaching

You will not be able to view the top 20 players for goals, assists and average ratings and more excitingly, if there's interest on the side of the player, poach these players for your team. You will be presented with 4 options of how to win a player over when interest is mutual and your choices & actions in these scenarios will decide whether you are able to nick the leagues top scorer or not. Once successful, the player will seek release from their club and join you 1 week later.

Sponsorship

You will now be ale to choose a player to take with you to sponsorship meetings. The choice you make can increase the chance of success and increase the total money the sponsors are willing to part with - so choose wisely. There's also a fruit-machine mechanic at the end of negotiations which will give you a chance to increase the total once more; allowing you to have a bit more control of sponsorship success and drive facility improvements in the club itself.

Personalities

Traits have been explicit up to now, but in the future rather than seeing a 1-10 rating for a players attitude, Loyalty, Ambition and so on, you will instead see an "at a glance" descriptor of their personality.

Squad View

Order your team by position, appearances, goals, assists or average rating to assess their performance at a glance and get an quick idea of who needs game time and who might be surplus to requirements.

Training

You can control how your players train now, selecting from a light 90 minute session, to a heavy 3 hour session, you will choose between 2 and 4 drills from the selection available to put the lads through their paces. This allows you to focus on specific attributes rather than the previous "hope they improve correctly" mechanic I had in place.

V0.8.3 Release

Some bugs that have been resolved include:

• Wages not being credited to the player & Display of Wage Crediting.

• Game Changing Subs are now restricted to relevant players for the position.

• Coach age unknown on loading a game.

• Bug in Horse Racing minigame where placing the last of your money would auto-escape you from the mini game rather than let you ride your last £.

• Another attempt at a long term fix for 'Unknown Player' bug. Hoping this will resolve it but keen to hear if people do see "Unknown Player" instead of player names in goals/match sims as I do want that fixed.

• Buffs in Game Changing subs are more significant lasting for a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 20 minutes in the game.

• Buffs are related to the player coming on. Attackers will provide a buff to the threat your team poses, defenders can seriously nullify the opposition, Midfielders will go either way depending on whether they have higher tackling or shooting and keepers will - when winning the clash - provide a significant saved shot buff.