dev diary #25 - Transition

[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

[subsequent]

Let me tell y'all, these changes we are transitioning to is so much easier to look at. Hopefully this means we have so much more realistic of a simulation without sacrificing things. I'm really excited to see this!