Rocketcan

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! This Dev Diary continues to explain the transition to the new game engine. Last week, we talked about what attributes would make a player good at running the football. This week, we are transitioning to what will make a player good at catching the football. This is for any player that plays skill positions on offense. This means, that while a DB plays defense, these rules will not apply to them, but if they play offense, then these rules WILL apply to them. So what skills make a good receiver? The following do: Route Running Agility Speed Catching Football IQ Archetype/Position Ok, so how do each of these things affect how well a receiver will play? First, it is important to understand that there are three "levels" to the passing game: Quick, Short, and Long. Quick passes are passes near the line of scrimmage and screens. Short passes are passes that are just past the line of scrimmage to an intermediate depth like slants and hitches. Long passes are anything longer than an intermediate depth like posts and go routes. Route Running: This skill applies to all levels, but will affect a receivers ability to be open more for Quick and Short passes and to a lesser extent, Long Passes. The higher the value, the more likely it is they will have created enough separation from their coverage as to make for an easier completion. It won't give a bonus to yardage gained, but it will mean players with high Route Running are likelier to catch a pass than those will lower Route Running (all other things being even). Agility: Agility pulls a couple different loads. First, it determines the yardage gained on a complete pass for Quick and Short passes. This is to simulate their ability to get Yards After the Catch (YAC) before they get tackled. It also increases their ability to generate more open space for themselves for Quick passes, making for easier completions. If all other skills are equal, receivers with higher Agility will gain more yardage on Quick and Short passes they catch along with catching more Quick passes than those with lower agility. Speed: Speed is another attribute that pulls double duty. Firstly, it is the attribute that determines yards gained for Long passes, and this is where it is the most important, but it also gives a bonus to completions for Short and Long passes (Although Long is impacted much more than Short). This simulates receivers with high speed blowing past their defenders on go routes as well as receivers running away from their coverage on short crossing routes. So a receiver with higher speed than a receiver with lower speed and the same attributes otherwise will: gain more yardage on completed Long passes, and catch more Short and even more Long Passes. Catching: This skill applies across all levels equally. A receiver can be very fast, but if they cannot catch the ball, it doesn't do much good. A receiver with higher catching than another receiver with the same attributes otherwise will simply catch a higher percentage of balls thrown to them, no matter the depth of the route. Football IQ: This skill does not matter too terribly much, but with higher Football IQs, receivers will begin to gain a bit of an advantage over their coverage by studying their opponents. Receivers with higher IQs will likely find themselves open more often than those with lower IQs. Archetype/Position: Lastly, a smaller, but still important part of being a good receiver is size. Now outside of the redzone, that doesn't matter too much. But in the redzone where windows are compressed and press coverage is much more likely, the ability to body-out your opponent is crucial to making the catch. As such, certain positions and archetypes have an advantage here: Red Zone Threat (WRs) Any TEs Now you know what skills to look for in players, especially depending on what kind of offense you want to run. A West Coast offense will certainly prefer guys with high Agility and Route Running, while an Air Coryell offense will likely prefer receivers with high Speed and Catching. That is it for this dev diary. Comment with any questions you have and I'll be sure to answer them as best as I can! Until next time, Rocketcan

I don't want to get too far ahead, because this is likely going to be the topic of a future dev diary. However, I can say that things like strength will eventually be taken into account for defenders as well, but their most important traits will be things like Run Defense for reducing the number of yards gained and Tackling for causing fumbles (like blowing up a ball carrier with a crushing hit).

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! This Dev Diary continues to explain the transition to the new game engine. Last week, we talked about how throwing occurs and what can affect how good a QB is. This week, we are moving on to running the ball and what makes a player good at that skill. Remember, this is for ALL players, so if you wanted to have a player designated as a DT run the football, you could! It might be a bad idea, though, as I'll explain in a minute. So what skills make a good RB? The following do: Strength Agility Speed Football IQ Ok, so how do each of these things affect how well a runner will play? Strength: This skill is used to determine how well the runner can run between the tackles. High strength is necessary in order gain a decent amount of yards and avoid losses. Now, I can already see it: y'all will start putting your super-strong Nose Tackles at RB and run Dive every play. As much as I love a big guy running with the football, that just simply isn't realistic. As I explain later, there is a minimum speed threshold that probably won't be met by the big NTs. If the runner breaks into the second level, this is referenced again to see if the runner trucks another defender and actually breaks free into the open field for an even longer run. The higher the value, the more chance there is for this to occur. Agility: This skill is what is applied when evaluating outside run plays. Once again, there is a minimum speed threshold, but the vast majority of skill players will meet this. This means that strong, powerful RBs will likely be better running plays up the middle, while shiftier, agile backs will be better on tosses and sweeps that get them into open space. Just like strength, this is referenced to see if the runner jukes another defender and breaks into the open for a long run. Once again, the higher this skill, the more likely it is that this player breaks off the long run. Speed: Like with Throw Power for QBs, Speed is easily the most important attribute for a RB. If a player isn't above a certain base speed, they will only have access to the worst available running chart. Now, don't worry, only the absolute worst RBs don't meet this threshold. This is designed mainly to keep slow players like Nose Tackle DTs out of the tailback position (as fun as that might be). Of course, there is nothing stopping you from doing this, but I would advise against it! There is another half to the speed factor. While not used on every play, it matters anytime your runner has a run that breaks into the second level. These happen on about 8% of runs, and the higher the speed of the player, the more yards they will gain in this situation. So while most plays they will be using Agility and Strength for the normal runs, having high speed is important if you want your runner to rip off long gains when the opportunity presents itself. Football IQ: Smarts is important for an RB, but not the most. This provides a slight boost to the chances that the RB makes a better decision. The higher this value, the more likely it is that the RB might get a bump up to the random number that determines how many yards they gain. This can be anything from just a yard or two to potentially breaking into the secondary instead of not. To be clear there are three "levels" to running: Normal Runs (Affected by Agility OR Strength based on outside vs. inside) Second-Level (About 8% chance, although Football IQ can increase this slightly. High Speed makes gains here larger) Breakaway Runs (Higher Strength OR Agility ratings gives a higher the chance of a breakaway run after the second level. with even bigger gains. If a breakaway run occurs, speed determines how far it goes). Now we addressed briefly that you can have ANY position be put at RB to run, but what about other skill positions that you want to get the football? Looking at you Scrambling QBs. The bad news, not "option" specifically just yet, but you can specify that you want some other positions like QB and Slot WR to run the ball. To do this, we will have specific plays set aside to accomplish this. So now all of you with Scrambling QBs can actually use them! And remember, all of these rules apply to ANYONE carrying the football. That is it for this dev diary. Comment with any questions you have and I'll be sure to answer them as best as I can! Until next time, Rocketcan

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! As Dev Diary #25 pointed out, we are currently adapting our current system to marry up well with a new one. Our top priority was finding a way to make all the skills we created (and that you can currently see on your teams' roster pages) relevant. Quite a bit of effort has been put into finding how this should match up and what level of skill is "good" and so on. We are making some pretty good progress with that and can report on some of it now. We have more done, but we'll just focus on the throwing stuff for now. Basically, I want to answer the question: "What does the sim think makes a good QB?" Throw Power Throw Accuracy Football IQ Archetype Ok, so how do each of these things affect how well a QB will play? Throw Power: This is the most important of all of the attributes. The higher this value, the more likely the QB will be to complete a pass (barring other adjustments due to the other attributes, receiver ability, coverage, etc.). The likelihood of a QB to complete a pass decreases with downfield distance, but obviously, the higher this value is, the more likely they will be to complete deeper passes. In the end, this attribute determines the baseline ability of a QB to complete a pass that will be modified later based on the following skills. Throw Accuracy: This value either provides a bonus or malus to the ability of a QB to complete a pass. A highly accurate QB will be more likely to complete all depth of passes compared to a player with lesser accuracy but similar throw power. Thus, a QB with high throw power AND accuracy will likely be highly successful. Football IQ: The smarter your QB is, the more likely they are to make good decisions. This factors into a number of areas, but for throwing specifically it slightly affects the ability of the player to complete passes, but more importantly, a higher value will result in a lower likelihood of throwing a potential interception. Thus, a smarter QB, even with lower skill values for throw power and accuracy will still be able to make some completions and be a good "bus driver" for an offense. Archetype: Finally, the type of QB involved will affect their playstyle. Each of them have their own unique style and provide different options for gameplanning and how to utilize them. Balanced: The ultimate neutral QB. This player receives no maluses or bonuses. Scrambler: This QB is at home in an option offense, and likely won't want to throw unless they are a unique specimen. They suffer maluses to throws of all depths and are more likely to throw a potential interception due to them focusing more on their running mechanics as opposed to throwing ones. Don't let that fool you, however. A Scrambling QB with good throw power and accuracy can still torch a defense through the air and ones with excellent throwing attributes will still likely be some of the best passers in the country. Pocket: The gunslinger. This QB loves to chuck it up there and would be at home in most Air Raid schemes and offenses that utilize deep play-action passes. This player receives bonuses on long passes and despises the check down throw. It would be unadvisable to put them into a West Coast style offense as they will have a harder time with the shorter, quick passes. Also, this type of QB will likely be easier to contain in the pocket and thus will not perform well in most QB run situations. Field General: This guy doesn't play QB because he has a rocket arm. He does because he is the smartest guy on the field and likely has practiced accuracy drills to the point of insanity. Thus, he is much more likely to complete quick and short passes than someone with similar skills to him, but he suffers throwing the deep ball and will be more likely to chuck up a duck that gets picked off. Just to give you an idea of how much the modifiers can affect the baseline throw power ability, all of them can stack to increase or decrease the chance of a completion by almost 25%. Full Disclosure: In order to do this stuff, I needed to look at the real numbers behind all of our current players. As a result I do have a small idea of how good these guys *might* be. I don't want to give too much away, but at the same time I know that conveys a bit of a competitive advantage. So, if any of you want to know a bit of the insider baseball on some of the players I looked at, I will be willing to share that with you. I will only do that for players I looked at (top 10 at each position) and only through DMs. That is it for this dev diary. Work continues on and the recoding will begin soon. Again, thankfully a lot of work is already done so we are not at all starting from scratch. I am really excited for how this will turn out, and hopefully it produces a more realistic sim! Until next time, Rocketcan

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! So as you are probably aware, development once again stalled this past fall. Mainly that was due to me getting married, moving, and simply losing track of it all. I do want to apologize for the waiting. The great majority of you have been nothing but patient and I very much appreciate it. I am sorry I have failed to bring you NewSim in a playable state as of yet, but I am by no means giving up. That brings us to the topic for this dev diary: Transition. What I mean by that is transition in the underlying engine. One of the major problems that I could not reconcile and correct was the instability of the engine. This is especially apparent, for example, when TEs would catch 18 passes for 300+ yards on a consistent basis. I had made some errors that ended up getting lost in the development of the engine and it had become nearly impossible to untangle where the issues were coming from. To solve this problem I began to do some research. I eventually came across another tabletop football ruleset (similar to, but much more in depth than the one that DFL is based on) that used drawing cards as a way to progress the game. This ruleset did an excellent job of abstracting out complicated things like blocking schemes, coverages, and passing evaluations into a few, streamlined steps. The detail is still there, but the way to arrive at the result is much simpler. Thus, it is simpler to code. Therefore, after consulting with several other admins and devs, I have begun work to transition NewSim to this new system. This mainly involves studying a bunch of numbers and spreadsheets for now, but it will get to coding fairly quickly. For example, I am currently comparing how players are represented in this system vs. our system, and looking at how to reconcile the two. What does this mean for the user? How much will change on your end? Hopefully, not much. The player skills and attributes might have to be worked around a bit, but I think we can keep the vast majority of them the exact way they are. As for a timeline, I am hoping to begin the re-coding process soon. And then I hope that the re-coding process goes as smoothly as the coding process for DFL. Any other dates are likely TBD. As for the rest of the site, DFL continues on into its 8th season. I understand it is not the in-depth sim everyone wants, but I hope it is at least something fun until NewSim is finished. But there is even bigger news! Thanks to @Wahoo, basketball has come to SimFBA! He has created, on his own, an incredible simulation that will be our flagship basketball sim. It comes complete with coaching, recruiting, redshirting players, stats, and more! Depending on interest and some other logistical things, we may even be able to set up an NBA sim based on the same engine to begin once this inaugural NCAA season is over! Stay tuned for that. Until next time, Rocketcan

I also want to take some responsibility for the slow down. I have not had much time to code recently, and given the very technical nature of this stuff, I can't just sit down and work on it for 15 minutes at a time (I usually need to set aside at least a few hours to work properly). I hope this improves soon, and we are setting goals to mitigate this in the future. Also, Tuscan is doing a hell of a job with the tasks he has been working on so far! I am excited to see more of his work come to fruition.

I think, since we haven't started yet, we aren't forcing people to stick around to maintain their claims. So for now, unfortunately, you cannot request Alabama.

TUSCAN KICKING MAJOR ASS!

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! We are getting very close to being able to run a NewSim season! So close, in fact, that the last dev diary involved the active work involving in conference scheduling (you can check that post out here: Dev Diary #20). While some infrastructure work happens (schedule, interface, etc.), NewSim has a few more features to implement to be ready for the beta test season. The big ones are stamina and penalties while some smaller ones include just having more plays for 11 personnel and implementing nickel defenses. The first one of the big features has been implemented (FINALLY)! It was a big pain in the ass and caused me tons of headaches, but now players will have to take breaks based on how much stamina they have, and will have to be replaced sometimes with their backups. This has lead to many more receivers and defenders especially seeing the field and making plays. When I have some time to post another scrimmage, I will to show what that looks like. Also, along with stamina, blowouts should work a bit more now. Before we had teams playing their starters even if they were up 70-0 (sorry @TuscanSota). Now, there are blowout checks after halftime, and the third quarter that will see if we need to put in backups to get them some experience. That is pretty much it for this dev diary. The next big feature to tackle is penalties (likely another pain), and then some smaller stuff within the sim. The Interface guys are working on getting the interface up and running for a season and the schedule guys are hard at work! We are really close guys! I am sorry things have taken as long as they have, but we are all committed to bringing everyone a quality football simulation! Until next time, Rocketcan

HYPE

We are thinking that NFL will begin after the first NCAA season. The first season will have all teams genned with veterans on the roster, with the first draft having the graduating seniors from the first NCAA season. We will have a conference commissioner role, although for now, while we get started, we will only have a P5 and G5 commissioner. Then when we see how the conferences are stacking up in terms of participation, we can then work on assign the conferences their own commissioner.

We expect it to be about a month or two. Although we aren't sure. The good news is that croots can be generated very quickly (like in seconds). So you shouldn't really have to wait too long for those to be posted. I imagine the main thing slowing down an offseason would be updates to the game engine.

These are excellent questions. Some of us have talked over them, and this is what we have so far: So far the site is maintained out of @subsequent's pocket and with expertise by him, @Kirby and @TuscanSota. We have certainly kicked around the idea of donations, but have been wary of putting out stuff about donations without significant progress and a playable product for the users. Basically, we don't want to take anyone's money without already having something of value to offer in return. I hope I said that properly. That is sometimes a sensitive subject. As for the bowl game idea, I think we are on board with doing that as long as the names aren't too crazy and inappropriate. We currently are doing a weekly dev diary for updates on development progress. I think once we have gotten to the point where a weekly update is too frequent, then a monthly newsletter might not be a bad idea. We would need someone to volunteer to do that though. Can we assume this is you offering to do that? We are looking to do one game week per real life week. This gives people plenty of time to set gameplans, depthcharts, and recruit. The offseason will likely be a couple weeks to maybe a couple months. It will probably depend on how much work needs to be done on the sim in the offseason to improve it. This is a question that likely should be posed to @Pumph since he is the one designing the recruiting system. I think the big key is that the way we have developed the recruit generating software means that not all 4 and 5 star recruits are going to be studs and some 2 or 3 star guys might be diamonds in the rough. That's all I can speak to since that's all I've helped to develop. I think there should be some reward for good teams being good, but there will likely also be some diamonds in the rough that can help some smaller teams ascend. I hope that answered your questions well enough!

I was thinking that everyone who has contributed to the construction of NewSim should be able to help generate a croot. And I think we can also have a small handful of croots the first season that the community as a whole proposes. Like a David Ross.

USAFAir ForceAKRNAkronBAMAAlabamaUABUABAPSTAppalachian StateZONAArizonaAZSTArizona StateARKArkansasARSTArkansas StateARMYArmyAUBAuburnBALLBall StateBAYLBaylorBOISBoise StateBCBoston CollegeBGSUBowling GreenBUFFBuffaloBYUBYUCALCaliforniaUCLAUCLAUCFUCFCMUCentral MichiganCHARCharlotteCINCCincinnatiCLEMClemsonCCUCoastal CarolinaCOLOColoradoCSUColorado StateCONNConnecticutDUKEDukeEMUEastern MichiganECUEast CarolinaFIUFIUFLAFloridaFAUFlorida AtlanticFSUFlorida StateFRESFresno StateUGAGeorgiaGASOGeorgia SouthernGASTGeorgia StateGTGeorgia TechHAWIHawaiiUHOUHoustonILLIIllinoisINDIndianaIOWAIowaIASTIowa StateKANSKansasKSSTKansas StateKENTKent StateUKENKentuckyLULibertyULLLouisiana-LafayetteLTLouisiana TechULMLouisiana-MonroeLOULouisvilleLSULSUMRSHMarshallUMDMarylandMASSUMassMEMPMemphisMIAFMiamiMIAOMiami (OH)MICHMichiganMISTMichigan StateMTSUMiddle TennesseeMINNMinnesotaMISSOle MissMSSTMississippi StateMIZZMissouriNAVYNavyNEBNebraskaNEVNevadaUNLVUNLVUNMNew MexicoNMSUNew Mexico StateNIUNorthern IllinoisUNCNorth CarolinaNCSTNC StateUNTNorth TexasNWNorthwesternNDNotre DameOHIOOhioOHSTOhio StateOKLAOklahomaOKSTOklahoma StateODUOld DominionOREGOregonORSTOregon StatePNSTPenn StatePITTPittsburghPURDPurdueRICERiceRUTGRutgersSDSUSan Diego StateSJSUSan Jose StateUSASouth AlabamaSOCASouth CarolinaUSFUSFUSCUSCSMUSMUUSMSouthern MissSTANStanfordCUSESyracuseTCUTCUTEMPTempleTENNTennesseeTEXTexasTAMUTexas A&MTXSTTexas StateTTUTexas TechUTEPUTEPUTSAUTSATLDOToledoTROYTroyTLNETulaneTULSTulsaUTAHUtahUTSTUtah StateVANDVanderbiltUVAVirginiaVTVirginia TechWAKEWake ForestWASHWashingtonWASTWashington StateWVUWest VirginiaWKUWestern KentuckyWMUWestern MichiganWISCWisconsinWYOMWyoming

Exactly! Built for stats guys!

Great question. Part of getting a season up and going is ensuring that stats are tracked game to game. The ideal way to do this would be to simply take all the data and update a database with it. Then we could have a page on the interface that requests the information from the database so you could just browse stats there. Until that is set up, however, an individual and team stat spreadsheet can easily be made and posted each week if necessary. In fact, I could write a quick program that would combine all stats from the week into one file. Then someone can make a google sheet that can handle the parsing of the stats into categories like passing, rushing, etc once the main sheet is pasted into one of the tabs. If anyone has the excel/spreadsheet expertise to handle that, we could certainly use it.

Hello Coaches! Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA! The last time I wrote a dev diary, NewSim was just a bunch of code that I had to run individually based on what plays were called, situation, etc. Now, I come to you where NewSim is actually a full program! The last two scrimmages that were posted were run entirely by the computer. All I had to do was type in the abbreviation for the teams and it runs! Heck Northwestern @subsequent seems to be making a lot of tackles in these debug messages... That's it. The game has been run! And the best part: it only takes about a second to run (and most of that is just printing the messages to the screen!). The resulting output is four files: Play-By-Play is the every single play of the game printed to a .csv file. This is what is copy-pasted into the spoiler in the game post. Player Stats Posting is the file that is copy pasted into the game post. This contains the individual stats for passers, rushers, defense and kicking. Player Stats has an entry for every player that played at least one snap in the game (snaps are tracked as well). This file includes ALL stat categories for every player. If you want to play your QB at DE? Go ahead, he might just get a sack (probably not, but if he does, he'll get credit for it). Team Stats is the file that contains most of the team statistics like points, yards gained, yards allowed, etc. So what does this mean? This means that games are much easier to run. If depth charts, gameplans, etc. are correct, it only takes a second to run the game and a few minutes to post the results by hand. Once we get the interface up and the depth chart and gameplan pages implemented properly, it will be even faster. This seems great! How long until the season starts? Great question! The sim is not quite ready yet (looking at you FAU). So I will need to keep tweaking the code to try to get it to produce realistic results. Also, there are some things that still need to be added. The things I would like to be implemented before we start are: Add 11 personnel on offense. Add Nickel on defense Add rotation at positions like RB, WR, TE, DL, LB, DB. I would like this be based on stamina, but at minimum it can be forced. Penalties Hurry up gameplans (not something the user will set. It will just be an automatic gameplan) These things should produce more realistic stats (no more 300 yard games for each Tom, Dick and Harry at WR) as well as more realistic outcomes for games overall. Once these things are in, the sim will be pretty much ready for a season. At that point it would just be dependent upon the rest of the infrastructure (interface, game posting, recruiting, etc.) to determine when to start. Until next time, Rocketcan

Buffalo up

Nevada up.

You're approved for Nevada! @Kirby will give you your avatar and so on. Please continue to follow the instructions in the pinned comments on the discord server.

ADMINS ARE RIGGING THE SIM