Community Chest!!

One of the tasks that I have taken on recently is to rewrite our ‘About Us’ section for the new website. And it took me back a bit. April 2011 was where it all began. And as I was putting together the Netsports Software and UFLive ‘blurbs’ I was aware of how we have always had the community at the core of the game. As a bit of research I was looking back over early forum posts and found what can only be classed as the ultimate act of community. Back in the very early days the game was known by a different name….. and it was the people of the internet who first came up with the name Ultimate Football Live, and it was the people of the internet who then voted to choose it!!

And to take it even further – we then put the logos to the vote and the community voted to decide which one was the best!! So right from the get go – Our great online following helped us to decide how we should be known, and how we would be recognised!

Not a bad start – By The Community, For The Community!!!!

In my head, however, the UFL community of the future will stretch to more than just the game itself. I really want to see a whole raft of information, recommendations and discussions that will truly set UFLive aside from other online games. Book Clubs, Reviews, talk of musical preferences all have a place to play in UFLive. And to that end – I would love to share some recently discovered music – A fine young English artist called Keaton Henson. Any of you who have appreciated the talents of Jeff Buckley, Damien Rice and more recently James Vincent McMorrow, will really appreciate Hensons latest album ‘Birthdays‘. I would heavily recommend checking him out. For those of you more accustomed to Little Mix or One Direction – A) It might not be your cup of tea and B) Shame on you!!!!

Docking Fantastic!!

Well Well Well. Its been an interesting few weeks. I don’t know where to start. The Game!!! It has just undergone its first face lift. Its amazing how a lick of paint and a some sharper graphics can make a game feel brand new!! Its been just over a year since the client came into being. And so many features and screens have been added that the graphics boys decided to jump in and give it a bit of an overhaul – and boy has it made a difference. Do you remember loading up Windows XP for the first time after having used Windows 98 for years. Or then putting Windows 7 on a system after using Windows XP for years?? The change in the client is massive as you can see for the screenshots below. And its amazing how something so small has put a big smile on all our faces. And we’ve also put in the dock system (you’ll see it on the left hand side of the screen). Its a handy little customisable section that allow quick links to various parts of the game!

The functionality is changing on a daily basis. Jon is slaving away in coding hell and doing a fantastic job. We are still getting stuck into some of the finer points of the game now – The economy has been given a very high priority at the minute as we adjust interest rates, and reset finances to try out a few of Thoms whims, with a view to finding the best one for UFL. To give you an idea of the level of tweaking that has been going on – following the latest finance reset – the gameworlds interest rate was dropped 0.2% to 1.8%!!! The eagle eyed among you will notice that its still 1.3% about the current Bank Of England base rate – but we don’t care about that – cuz we have our own bank – The Bank Of UFL!!!!
We’ve begun to see the passion come back into the game as well. I know Jules and Jon won’t like to hear me saying things like this – but at times when I’ve been picking a new squad, or strengthening my current squad, or beating The Chang Collective (Jules’ team) 5-0 – It hasn’t felt like I’ve been testing UFLive – its felt like I’ve been playing it. Its still very far from a finished article – but we have nearly got it to a place where it can capture your imagination.
Now – Don’t let my enthusiasm get the better of you. Its not yet the game that you can sit in for hours on end. We have lots of features yet to be added that will take it to that next level. Some will be quick to implement – and others will take time and testing. And its a few of the latter category that Jon is keen to get in place next. The afore mentioned Economy is one. And the implementation and tweaking of the player progression is another.

Finally – For those who haven’t seen them yet – check out our Halloween Graphics. Following on from the Valentines ‘I UFLove You’ ideas, Mark came up with these beauties for the season of scariness!!

A Long Delayed Update – Apologies

The summer holidays is always a slow period in any business. However – At UFLive things have continued to progress at a steady pace.

As has been alluded to elsewhere – Jon has now fully implemented the season system and the Gameworld is now running in the normal loop that you would associate with the game. All the developers teams are in the one Football Association and we are competing in the official competitions for prize money. This is a big addition to the game – We are now waiting for our 4th season to start. As everyone would have predicted Jon won the first two seasons. Complete outsider Mark Rutland won the 3rd season and the mighty Nobular Bells FC came from rock bottom in the first season – to finish a mighty 3rd in the last season. The reason? Well – My team was bugged in the first season – and I know that you don’t believe me – but it’s true. I have a striker called Henry Adams, and during testing one day I somehow managed to get him selected in all 11 positions in my formation. So I logged it as a bug and let Jon work on it. Meanwhile – all my matches were played with Henry Adams in every position on the field!!!! Still don’t believe me?? Just see for yourself:

However – These types of problems are now few and far between. Some time ago we implemented a bug reporting and tracking system. All those testing the client are able to take screenshots and log a ticket for Jons attention. Some of them Jon is full aware of and are on his list of things to do. Others are new to him and become additions to the list. It’s great to see the system working as it should. As an early tester of FML and recent versions of FM – I always found the reporting of bugs on the forum a bit of a hectic and unorganised system. And while we have not finalised our own bug tracking system for when we let all our eager testers in, I am confident it will be more regimented and transparent.

We recently reached a milestone in our client releases. As I wrote about in the UFLive Blog, we are now currently on UFLive Client Version 100. That’s right – there are 100 incarnations of UFLive – each one more stable and more feature packed than the last one. Along with more stability and some UI enhancements, the 100th client also brought with it a kit designer, an information and updates vidiprinter and the Transfer History section of your Club Finances.

There has been more and more work done on the finance side of the game since the last update. While we are still some way from our final financial model, we are getting there. Jon kindly reset the GWs finances before the last update, and it is immediately apparent that the finance system is in better shape than it was 6 months ago. Some of us were over 100m in debt – but now all teams are showing a healthy balance with good profits being made.

The other area that has seen a lot of focus recently (and a lot of email chains) is that of Player Generation, Progression and Aging. This is not something that we want to rush – as it is tied in with so many other aspects of the game. To get it right is crucial. Will has been imperative in the ideas and calculations behind this – but our very own Coach has also been outstanding in the real life feedback and input he has been able to give. Who’d have thought there would be so many categories of full back player!! Along with the determination of player types – there has been much use of phrases like ‘weighted attributes’, ‘generational parameters’ and ‘positional algorithms’!! I have to admit – when it comes down to this level of detail I do find myself shying away – but its great to see Jon, Will, Jules and the Coach knee deep in configuration and discussion with all the enthusiasm of a Belgian Midfielder handing in a transfer notice on deadline day

Finally, work is still on-going, and will always continue to be on-going, on the cosmetic look and feel of the game. As new features are put in place we are realising how the navigation and the individual screens could be better laid out and configured. And given that we still only have 10 or 12 testers actively in the game, we have free rein to do this without upsetting the apple cart so to speak. And I think that this will continue for the next few months at least. It is getting more and more like a finished product – but we are not kidding ourselves – there is still work to be done! And it’s still not a project that’s going to  be finished overnight. Jon is still the catalyst behind the project – his influence, commitment, unerring confidence and dedication are huge to UFLive and once you all get in to have glimpse at the game you will see what I mean. For those of you from a computing background – or who may have some insight into the world of coding – you will appreciate the hours that Jon as put in – so remember that when you are all attempting to get to the top of the rankings in months and years to come!

UFLive – Real World Application

As some of you may know – I have a small daughter – Just over 18 months she is. And we have a number of friends who also have small children. So we all partake in what is classed as ‘Babyswaps’. The idea being that we will take someone else’s child overnight on a weekend, to allow the other couple to get out and let their hair down. In return they will take the Beloved Baby Bells and allow me and Mrs Bells to do the same. So over the weekend we had the pleasure of our friends 1 year old son. I know you are wondering where I am going with this – but bear with me…..

So Mrs Bells and I spent 36 hours with 2 toddlers – both of whom have recently learned how to walk and are extremely keen to show off and essentially evade capture! Bells Heights consists of a lovely large living room with a kitchen off it. And not far into our babyswap I realised that Mrs Bells and I were effectively zonal marking the children. Mrs Bells took up a position by the dinner table between the kitchen and the living room, while I took to the sofas in the living room. The idea being that whoever the child was nearest that needed catching, re-directing or scolding, that was their responsibility.

The frailties of this system became apparent very quickly, as they have done for many a football manager before me. The most notable problem was overload. If I am zonal baby marking and both toddlers make a bee line for me. Inevitably both will begin to teeter and topple. Which one do I go for???? How do I neutralise the threat of both of them? And also – Is this making the best use of Mrs Bells – who is currently over by the kitchen table looking on with what can only be described as a cross between a grin and a grimace? I fear our resources were being underused and flaws are appearing.

But what of the alternative? Man Baby Marking. Well – that will serve to limit the exposure to the above situation. But you’ve got to think about fitness and fatigue! Its no easy job to stick to a baby like glue. They can really move. Plus they can get into places that us big people can’t. Ninety Minutes of running after a baby, tracking their every move and making sure they don’t get into trouble is quite a work out. At least with the zonal effort they were coming into your space and you didn’t need to expend the extra energy of chasing them.

What is the answer?? After 36 tiring hours I honestly don’t know. Both have their benefits, yet both have big problems. And ultimately a balance needs to be struck. And we all know I am not talking about baby sitting any more! Thankfully – striking that balance is not something that we have to arrange for all our future players – all we need to do is to give you the tools to allow you find the balance – or struggle to. These tools are the remit of our dear old friend ‘The Coach’, and frankly – there’s no better man.

Little Niggles

Oops – Nearly forgot about you!! But then I remembered. UFLive saw a bit of an ‘outage’ over the past weekend. Due to the nature of the project that we set up we have had to do a lot ourselves. When we began we talked at get length on the topic of hosting! Naturally we needed somewhere to host UFLive itself, but we also needed somewhere to put the websites – both UFLive.com and Netsportssoftware.com. We looked at several options but given that we had no money behind us, this was something we needed to take care of ourselves. So over the weekend our web server went offline. Unfortunately – as it isn’t managed by a company – we had to manually restart the server – which couldn’t be done immediately. It is the little things like this which make it a challenge. But they all add to the fun and games. None of us have been involved in a project like this before so we are learning all the time, and everytime we come across a little niggle like this we can look to put steps in place so that the next time we can react quicker – and that’s just what we did!! Every day is a school day in at UFLive!

Rest assured that once the game is up and running (on its own managed servers), and making a few pounds, we will be able to put aside some money to ensure such niggles are a thing of the past.

Longing For UFLive

I’ve just returned home after spending 3 days at my first InfoSec exhibition in Earls Court, London. It was my first show of its type as an exhibiter – and quite frankly it gave me a bit of a taste for it. It’s a fantastic way to drum up interest in your business and also to meet current customers and put faces to names. It got me to a bit of forward thinking. Its going to be great to take UFLive into similar exhibitions in the future. I had visions of how big the UFLive stand would look, and how well the colour scheme we use will lend itself to a striking and stand out exhibit. Of course we will be encouraging all our local customers to pop in and say hello and take part in any UFL related challenges that we will have running!!

Of course the downside of being at Infosec all week is that I have not been in the UFLive client since the weekend. And i’ll admit it – I missed it. Not to the extent that I used to miss a certain previous online football management based mmo. But I know that once we have members of our forum in testing, I will have alot more to miss. I will be dreaming of transfer targets, worrying about auctions and mentally re-arranging my tactics!! At least I won’t have to worry about the age old problem of people playing my AI without giving me the chance to play live. The split in the season that’s planned, and the arrangement of fixtures into each half, will take away alot of problems where many fixtures are backed up to the end of the season. A good spread of important matches throughout the season will make the game alot more enjoyable and will hopefully encourage alot more managers to play their games live! Of course the full details of the AI enforcement and the offline rights system have yet to be released into the public domain – but given the entire dev team have so much experience, and that we also have all the feedback and suggestions from the community – we are happy that it will be one problem we can lay to rest!!!

à bientôt

Nobular

Keep An Eye On The Competitions!!!

The latest big addition to UFLive came in early 2013. After some quiet time on the development front, Jon outdid himself with the implementation of the competitions system. For those of you unfamiliar with Jon – he is the coding brains currently behind all things UFLive. It took five women, three years to give birth to Jon, and it is no coincedence that he was born May 6,1945 and The Nazis surrendered the following day!! But I digress…..
The arrival of a formal competition structure was a big step in UFLive. And since it arrived we have all been in to create, delete, alter, enter, leave, win and lose competitions. The more fickle among the development team point out that Jons knowledge of the backend of the game allows him an unfair advantage – and this is how they explain the fact that he is still the most successful manager since UFLive records began. His team, Dynamo Dragons top both the Gameworld Points list and the most competitions won list.

My most comical input so far was to raise one of the most pointless bugs. I was concerned when aone of my competitions auto resolved and I didn’t receive any email notification with the Match Reports. Then when I went to check on my fixtures list – I couldn’t see the competition games. Concerned was not the word!! ‘Back to the drawing board’ I mumbled…. only for Jon to conduct a thorough investigation and, of course, find the cause of the problem. I’d forgotten to enter the competition in the first place……… With testers like me poor old Jon has his work cut out.