The Developer Webchat

As many of you will be aware last Thursday night hosted a live web chat in the Ultimate Football Live website chat. There was a good turn out of people with around 10-15 people online in total throughout the 2 and a bit hours of chat regarding the game. The official summary of what was said can be found here: http://uflive.com/blog/development-blog/61-ufl-faq-4

From chatting to the developers it is apparent that the game is making rapid progress towards the alpha stage of testing. It is important to stress that initially alpha testing will be undertaken by developers only as part of the closed testing phase as quoted upon the Ultimate Football Live homepage. As of yet we still do not know for sure when closed alpha is due to start or indeed when public alpha, which should feature around 50 or so of the finest forum members, will begin in earnest either. However, it was mentioned that the team name reservation facility should be coming online at some point during April should everything run to plan, although the potential for it to run into May remains a possibility, which is a promising development.

In fact April is set to be a big month for Ultimate Football Live. It marks the anniversary of when the project initially began last year. The web chat revealed several hints that the anniversary date may well be marked by some sort of event although what exactly it will be wasn't specified. Whether it will be something quite small such as the release of new screenshots or whether it could be the starting gun for closed testing is subject to speculation. But what we do know is that it will be definitely be worth keeping a close eye upon the Ultimate Football Live website to find out exactly what is being lined up. 

As always stay tuned to the Floodlights for the latest information and analysis from the world of Ultimate Football live...

The First Look!

After a long wait the UFL developers are proud to show us the first screen shot of Ultimate Football Live. This first teaser shows us a German striker called Thierry Henry and an overview of his abilities (not to be confused with the attributes page itself). In addition we also see a shot of the client, the tactics page and at the bottom what looks an overview of the squad page. It has to be said that the screen shots are very clean and crisp. They are a very promising start and insight into a game that should be going into alpha at some point over the next 6 weeks (according to sources upon the UFL forums)

Today has also marked the first UFL newsletter for quite a while. We now know that team name reservation will also begin shortly. This is rumoured to begin around March time. This marks an important step towards getting Alpha under way and getting towards a big kick off in the near future. I for one can't wait to get The Flooslights FC underway. 

The newletter also mentioned in passing the match engine: "Work is well underway on an inhouse ME which is already producing results, and talks are ongoing with other parties regarding graphic ME content. We hope to offer more concrete news on this in the near future. Stay tuned!" So it appears that they are going on the in house route for the underlying code, which is an interesting development. Hopefully it won't be too long before we hear more and perhaps even get a glimpse of what they've been up to!

Finally, the possibility of getting your own UFL shirt may become a possibility shortly with the developers looking to create some sort of shop where you can purchase your own UFL kit from. As always the developers are grateful for any donations which so far equal around £750. So if you have any spare change at the end of the month please think of UFL!

Hopefully the Floodlights will be able to bring you coverage from the very start of Alpha testing so please keep an eye out on the Floodlights because the night has only just started and we want to keep the UFL pitch illuminated right until the dawn!

UFL Affiliates goes LIVE!!!

As of today the UFL Affiliates page has gone live. It can be found at http://uflive.com/community/affiliates where you can keep tabs upon all of the websites and blogs focusing upon UFLive and it's development. However, as of yet only one site has gone live on the page, according to the UFL community guru Tommy, which is http://www.uflive-fan.com/ so a big congratulations to them from me here at the Floodlights. Hopefully, it won't be too long before the Floodlights will be shining out from the affiliates page too.

For those of you who may be considering creating a blog or website there are 2 different levels of affiliate fan site status, normal and gold. The normal fansites will be given alpha/beta places, mentions in community newsletter round ups, links from the main UFL website as well as assistance with graphics/website design. The gold status will give additional bonuses to the normal fansite status such as access to developers and more forum privileges as well 2 live accounts. However, this is in exchange for at least 6 months of content with weekly updates.

In other news, there is going to be another backstage blog around Valentines day, or the 14th February for those of you who are not mini Casanova's. Hopefully we will soon be hearing about when alpha will be starting in ernest.

Happy New Year!

Now the partying is over, the hangover gone and the year beginning in earnest it’s time to consider what 2012 may bring for UFL. Everything considered 2012 should be a big year for Ultimate Football Live.

As many of you will already know alpha testing did not begin, as was initially expected, towards the back end of last year, for a number of reasons that we don’t need to go back over. When alpha testing will commence will still don’t know for certain, but one would expect that it would be within the first two quarters of the year if not the first. The start of testing will be a major milestone in the production of this game and a real feather in the cap of the volunteers who are working to put this game together. As for the fans, like you and me, we’ll get to see how the hard work they’ve put in translates into a game as well as how close to the holy grail of sports management sims this game will truly be. That is if we are lucky enough to be honoured with the chance to get our grubby mitts on the earliest addition of the game of course! Regardless of who is doing the testing, it will mark the start of another phase, one of refinement. Tidying everything up making tweaks and changes will become the pipers tune. As this happens an increasing number off of the forum will no doubt get the opportunity to test (or play with a constructive critique of as much of the game as possible) and help sow the seed for the community aspect of the game.

The community aspect of UFL is also in for a big year. We know now that there is likely to be a new forum mod (or possibly two) with the safe money being on the omnipresent and all round nice guys of Jesus Reffori and Superowl. This is the ideal point to thank the graphic design team at UFL for the logo that they created for this site as well, which I hope everyone likes. Yet all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a year in which many blogs covering development can be expected, not just on this blog but upon the numerous other sites devoted to UFL. A list of some of these can be found upon the left hand side of this side and will soon be shown upon the official UFL also. Yet community is not just about blogs and forums. Hopefully once testing commences contacts of old will be called in, word of mouth will spread and the FML masses that once were spread throughout the land will return. If anything this is the thing that I am most looking forward to about this project.

Of course, many of you will want to know the answer to the really really big question. When will the game go gold and be fully available to everyone? Now this is a question that nobody knows the answer to. It may well be next year, but that is not a reason to fret. Getting everything up to as good a level as possible is essential.

All that is left to say is that I wish everyone the best and most happiness for this New Year. So here is to a successful year of big progress in UFL and I hope to meet some of you in a testing world in the not too distant future. In the mean time stay tuned to the Floodlights for the latest updates and news on all things UFL!

The Long and Winding Road

Following on from rampant speculation over the past few weeks it has been confirmed by the head honcho's at UFL that the Alpha test phase is yet to commence and that it is unlikely to begin at any point within the near future. This news will come as a big blow to the many fans who have been on tenterhooks with excitement over the past few months over the expectations that alpha would be beginning shortly.

The disappointing news was initially broken by Toffeejules, the main man behind UFL, whom said: "Alpha has not started yet. Again news will be forthcoming as soon as we can, but the main hold up on Alpha is the UI designs, the basic coding is there, but we need more UI's designed which is what we are currently working on, and which is why we are looking for a visual artist to join the team." In a later post nobular_bells highlights 3 main holds up. He states the "size of the current UFLive Dev Team..." as well as the voluntary nature of the work in addition to holding down regular jobs as key drivers behind what to many will be seen as a lack of progress.

Whilst this news will be seen as disappointing it is not unexpected. With Marc Duffy recently calling for patience in the development process from fans and developers alike it seems that UFL will be destined to get to the testing stage slightly later than initially thought.

e-Football-conomics

With the euro on the brink of collapse and the world economy in general not too far behind it economics has made a pretty bad name of itself over the past few months. As within the real world having a safe and secure economic system within UFL is absolutely essential if the game is going to be successful.

There are 6 main economic objectives that UFL is striving towards. These are:

1) More simplicity in the economy
2) More stability in the economy
3) More support to lower teams
4) Create more value for older players
5) Implement Economic Fail safes
6) Remove opportunities for exploitation and opportunism

Although at this stage and without any testing having taken place there is not a great deal that you can say about many of them. However, it is clear that UFL will attempt to have a greater micro control of the economy rather than a one size fits all approach. It has been confirmed that the ability to adjust the economy, through adding/removing cash, will be part of the economic model in a bid to curb excess inflation. Through greater statistical analysis of the economy the developers hope to be able to predict the change in the money supply over the course of a season. Given this information they will change the prize money accordingly. In addition monetary policy (the adjustment of the interest rate) is pencilled in to make an appearance although given a closed economy may not yield the expected results. In a closed economy raising interest rates is inflationary in the long run, although may encourage more saving. Whereas lower interest rates are deflationary but encourage more spending. Therefore there needs to be a lot of testing to see which wins out. The bank of UFL will also change tax rates to get the economy moving or to slow it down where necessary.

It will be interesting to see just how accurately they can measure the economy in testing and this is definitely something that this blog will be following in the future. A lot of care will need to be taken when making adjustments so as to not go over the top and cause wild swings in the economy. Having rolling adjustments may add stability but may make the economy more complex, a direct contradiction of objective 1 above.Whilst stability is important, confidence in the system and economic certainty must not be downplayed as they both affect the behaviour of the agents within the markets. Therefore if the bank of UFL starts getting it wrong then all of these changes could become self defeating. I for one can’t wait to see all of this in action in testing!

What we also know is where a team’s income will be derived from (alongside any profit made in the transfer market). There are 4 main areas that a team can earn money. These are prize money, stadium income, television money and commercial revenues. As you would expect being in higher divisions will mean you yield a higher value for all of these compared to a team lower down the pyramid. Therefore with all of these factors benefitting big teams it comes as no surprise that there a few elements of the game to help “bridge the gap” between top and bottom.

The main bridging feature in FML was higher wage demands from players at the teams with bigger reputations. This feature will be part of UFL as a way of capping the financial capability of the best teams. It is planned that prize money will fall away quite rapidly so bad seasons will impact on teams unlike in FML where many could just ride out a bad season on their revenues from the other areas. Given staff and of course the options for more infrastructure than just stadiums and youth academies there should be more areas for all teams to spend money, which may help smaller teams if the big teams are investing heavily to keep up with the Jones’. Most of these measures for “bridging the gap” appear to be anti top team rather than carrots for the smaller teams which come across in an unfortunate manner. The one carrot for new teams will be the introduction of a new manager payment scheme whereby managers who join after the 3^rd season will get an additional daily payment to help them be financially competitive. It would be nice to see the addition of interest free loans or partial discounting on basic stadium, youth academy and other infrastructure options as well to introduce a few more goodies into the mixer.

Overall there are a lot of financial aspects to be tested, especially if all of the 6 main objectives are to be reached. If objectives 2 (stability), 3 (helping new/lower teams) and 6 (reduce cheating/exploiting) can be achieved then there will be many happy users. If the rest can be achieved then anything is possible. Bring on the testing!

What we know so far... Part VI

As with many features in FML judging potential (JP) always tended to polarise opinion. On the one side you had people who worshipped it as a great tool to assist them in training up the next generation of stars. On the other you had people who believed that there is an art to talent spotting; that managers should have to decide themselves using their own skill (or luck) who was going to be a Messi and who wasn’t. Not to the chaos that judging potential ratings had on the transfer market.

Before jumping into judging player potential it is worth mentioning that UFL is adopting a system for player development that closely mimics that of Football Manager. The potential ability of 1 to 10 is present with 10 being players of world class status and those at 1 needing to retire as soon as possible. Player attributes are largely the same as in Football Manager and the full list can be found here.

In many ways it’s hardly surprising that judging potential as it used to be has gone. Previously this blog has discussed the use of staff instead of skills and scouting is just one part of this. In UFL four factors affect the ability of your staff to judge players. These are the number of players being scouted, the age of the players, time at the same club and how good your scouts are. As you would expect the more players you look at with the same scouts the more watered down the reports will become for each player. Age also plays an important role. Reports based on 14 to 16 year olds will have a greater degree of error than those based on a player in the 22 to 24 age range. Perhaps the most important variable will be the ability of your scout. Given the different specialisations the guide promises it should mean that to get the ideal report you’ll need to be using the right scout. So some scouts may be better at judging midfielders or players from a certain nation, meaning they would be better for some scenarios but unsuitable for others. This therefore ties nicely in with being able to hire staff from other teams simultaneously to build up a larger scouting network.

The guide hints at attribute masking (as it is known in the Football Manager series) for younger players that which is certainly an interesting thought. However, all attributes will be visible for senior players. In many ways I applaud the decision to introduce attribute masking as it will add depth to the transfer market as well as a far greater degree of realism. If, as the guide says, you can quickly build up a picture of the attributes of your own players then I think this can only be a good thing. Certainly the fog of war element will hopefully just muddle up the market sufficiently to make things slightly more fresh and interesting. That being said many managers will be used to seeing everything and may not get on this with feature.

So judging potential as it was in FML is gone and what has replaced it is a much more realistic interpretation. As with most features in UFL it seems to be well thought out and an entirely logical route to take. It should also give lesser certainty which in my opinion can only be a good thing.