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!