Broken Bat - Suggestions: Broken Tee Football

Forum >> Suggestions >> Broken Tee Football

Post ID	Date & Time	Game Date	Function

#25567	10/21/2015 11:24:24 am
Rock777 Joined: 09/21/2014 Posts: 9592 Haverhill Halflings III.1	Yeah the sim engine is definitely the biggest weakness of RZA. But realtime sports are always difficult to do a good sim engine for. Baseball is a bit easier to do a sim engine for since its more of a turn based game then realtime. Very discrete actions. Still very hard to do well, and Steve has done an excellent job (even if we do whine about minor tweaks here and there). Look at any of the major futball(soccer) sims out there. Sim engines can almost always be tweaked to improve in some way, they are never done, but Steve has gotten this one working VERY well.

#25569	10/21/2015 12:11:20 pm
mark41974 Joined: 11/04/2014 Posts: 74 Inactive	agreed this is a amazing job steve has done. If you are looking for a good football sim I recomend Pigskin Empire, It also has a basketball counterpart Roundball Empire. I played the first for a few years but found that the time demand was quit excessive to stay trully compeditive. Great game, loved it but it a real commitment if you want to get to the top.

#25571	10/21/2015 1:28:44 pm
Crazy Li Joined: 01/25/2015 Posts: 879 Inactive	Yes, football is hard to do right. Baseball is easier to sim comparatively. The problem with games that run on a clock is the time management aspect. The more variance possible within these time confines, the harder it is to be realistic. Football is a sport where you eat up a lot of clock to sometimes accomplish absolutely nothing. Six minute drives that end in missed field goals. Even the best teams don't score every drive, so how do you balance? I think a game like basketball would be easier because you can take each shot and project an anticipated result much like with at-bats in baseball. It's a little different than trying to calculate the distance traveled on each play.

#25576	10/21/2015 2:41:06 pm
admin Joined: 01/27/2010 Posts: 4985 Administrator	Baseball is by far the easiest, because you have so much statistical data to compare against. If I want to know if my "whatever" percentages are realistic, I can just look up the statistic on fan graphs and compare. What's a bit harder is the edge conditions...what should a big league batter hit against a AA-quality pitcher? The RZA game engine isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than the one than the Grid Iron predecessor. The next step would be to start adding actual plays rather than run right/pass flanks. But that's a huge step and makes the game much more difficult for the causal player. On top of that, football is much harder to balance? How often should a D-Lineman break away from an O-Lineman's block? Aren't really statistics for that...so you end up kind of guessing and play testing. And then it may sim great when you have balanced opponents, but then with unbalance teams one aspect of the game breaks down and the stronger teams total exploits the weaker team and you end up with 94-0 games. Red Zone Action has a lot more polish than Broken Bat...in my opinion. Probably because Pete is a much more experienced web designer then me. I think the training model is half way between Hattrick/BuzzerBeater and Broken Bat -- so it's an improvement, but I obviously did things differently. Basketball is probably in between. Steve Updated Wednesday, October 21 2015 @ 2:44:04 pm PDT

#25577	10/21/2015 2:49:05 pm
Rock777 Joined: 09/21/2014 Posts: 9592 Haverhill Halflings III.1	I actually think you have a VERY good style going here. I love the 1987 tops theme, and having player portraits that actually look different is a huge plus for me for any sports sim. It gives character to the players. Other then some minor tweaks (like lineup errors and GUI) I wouldn't change a thing. Maybe more variety with player features, but I'm always greedy for more character; never enough

#25581	10/21/2015 4:17:00 pm
toddcates Joined: 08/02/2015 Posts: 81 Baytown Bombers VI.20	Broken Bat, Steve, is by far the best of any sim I have played or "tried" to play. Thanks. I appreciate all the discussion and suggestions regarding this topic. I am NOT a game designer in any way, so all the discussion was instructive. My suggestion of Broken Tee is, if nothing else, a compliment of the highest order to Steve and what he has built here.

#25586	10/21/2015 5:55:18 pm
Benchwarmer Joined: 01/06/2015 Posts: 445 Inactive	I've tried a couple other sports manager games (Buzzerbeater basketball, Red Zone Clash football (little brother of RZA), and a couple of racing management sims), but didn't stick with them, but Broken Bat has stuck for me. The reasons I like BB over anything else I've tried is 1) The simplicity vs. fun factor, it has fairly simple mechanics as far as this sort of game goes, but is also very fun. None of the other games I tried really made me feel connected to my team, but BB has. Admittedly, I might like a little more control over the team strategy, but I can't really complain about what there is now. 2) It's easy to get into and start doing fairly well. One thing I hated about those other games is they made you start with a crappy team that was useless, and it just wasn't fun watching your team get beat up on game after game and having really no option to do anything about it because of reason 3) BB has no way of gaining an advantage over anyone else via jumping over a pay wall. It bugged me in other games that they made you pay to get premium features like extra scouting reports, scrimmages to make your team get better, or even the ability to pick more players up from free agency or view more information on players before signing them. BB has none of that, so even if you do have a crappy team when you start, you can still somewhat easily build it into a winner or at least a competitive team in a couple of seasons if you do things right. I didn't get that sense in other games I've tried. If Steve ever started a donation collection, I'd happily give a few bucks to support this game for no benefit to myself except being able to continue enjoying the game, can't say that of other games (not that I'm trying to bash other games here, don't get me wrong). I didn't last more than a season in any of the other games I've tried, but I'm in my 4th here at BB. Keep doing what you're doing Steve! Edit: That post was a lot longer than I thought it was... Updated Wednesday, October 21 2015 @ 6:03:09 pm PDT

#25589	10/21/2015 6:53:41 pm
mark41974 Joined: 11/04/2014 Posts: 74 Inactive	+1

#25592	10/21/2015 10:35:30 pm
Crazy Li Joined: 01/25/2015 Posts: 879 Inactive	Broken Bat is certainly the best free sports sim I've played thus far. I'll have to give it more time before I can say more than that. Still, that basically means you would have to spend money to even have a shot at getting something better made... and even then you probably won't (which means waste of money on those other games :p )

#25611	10/22/2015 11:15:45 am
Seca Joined: 05/05/2014 Posts: 5198 Waterloo Dinosaurs Legends	Very nice post by Benchwarmer. The beauty of baseball is that it is a series of 1 vs. 1 showdowns. With football, the result of a play is the culmination of a dozen showdowns. So much more difficult to render in a satisfactory way, especially through text. I would say the best non-baseball one I've played was Sokker, entirely due to its viewable matches. You could see the effect of pace, technique, good positioning or a bad match up.