Football Manager

English Invader · Post by **English Invader** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 1:10 pm

Am I the only one who thinks the VIC is in desperate need of a decent football management sim? At least, one that compares favourably with the Spectrum version of Football Manager and has Tottenham in it?

Although it would require the full 32k expansion (16k was a grave mistake on Addictive's part), the game could probably be programmed in BASIC because the graphics and animation wouldn't need to be that elaborate.

I think it would also be interesting to see how many modern features could be included; things like stadium development, training routines, player scouting, youth development, contract negotiations, job offers and boardroom pressure.

What do you think?

Ivanhoe76 · Post by **Ivanhoe76** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 3:30 pm

I think that vic really needs a good soccer management game, too... I suppose it could be possible to create a game using the new sprite routine and a full memory configuration (now that I own a magacart, everything is possible...

) trying to put in as many things as possible... but I'm a mere player and a "notsogood" basic programmer, nothing else... we need to know that from a real PROGRAMMER: only him can tell us what could eventually be done!!

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 2:22 am

Agree. Maybe, it's time to revive an old thread... With the very first post from Ivanhoe.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 1:02 am

However a football management game is not the same as a live football game. Pardon me for swearing in the church, but Kevin Toms' original FM game has aged very badly. Somebody on this forum a while ago begun porting The Boss (Soccer Boss) to the VIC-20. I always found it a better game, although having far less teams and player skills changing very randomly.

I believe a text based management game is clearly doable, whether in Basic or any other programming language. The ~22 column display may be a bit limiting, but perhaps a soft 40x25 display can be used.

I have some formulas and code in higher order languages that I can help convert to Basic if you want a reasonably fair game where match results to most part depend on team strength rather than plain random.

English Invader · Post by **English Invader** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 6:50 am

Thanks. That would be a great help.

Also, would there be any benefit to using machine language routines for the animation sequences? i.e. in terms of speed and RAM space.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 7:03 am

Animation?

Graphics in a management game are just syntactical sugar.

I'm unsure how tight string and other variable handling is in C, otherwise it might be a decent trade-off programming language between machine code and Basic when we mostly deal with text, numbers and formulas. However Ghislain has recently proved pure machine code is efficient to develop in too.

Actually I believe I might have something on my hard disk at home, a very rough beginning.

Ivanhoe76 · Post by **Ivanhoe76** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 9:15 am

I know I'm not a technician considering I'm still learning the basics of machine language (pratically I know very few of how the vic REALLY works) but I think It couldn't be very hard to make a footbal manager game that loads in ram every single animation - when needed - from disk (not surely from a tape...). What do you think about that, carlsson?

@orion70: Yes that was my very first post at all, the one that made me enter in VIC WORLD again, after 25 years!!! I think that now our beloved computer is really ready for a new life and a REAL GOOD FOOTBALL (SOCCER) GAME, isn't it?

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 1:23 pm

Yes Ivanhoe, hopefully someone more skilled (Denial programmers, where are you?) will be able to produce a good fm for VIC

.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sun Jun 28, 2009 9:18 am

I think it is too hot to think.

Seriously though, a manager game to me is about completely different values than nice graphics and animations. It is a number crunching game with a fair bit of random elements, but not too random.

A real time football game is something else. It could, but would not have to, involve league play and perhaps player skills but you would control players individually. You've seen my preliminary screenshots, and I've come to the part that would make players move around the screen with falling off.

Once I get that finished, I'll start on the player control and eventually computer play. Like all my other projects, those tend to be long-term ones these days.

English Invader · Post by **English Invader** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:12 am

I agree that graphics and animation aren't the priority with a football management sim, but it's nice if it can be done without affecting the overall gameplay. In retrospect, this is probably a big ask of the VIC given its memory limitations. As Carlsson has already pointed out, this RAM space would be better utilised in the actual processing.

DanSolo · Post by **DanSolo** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 6:09 pm

Is there any similar game written in BASIC for any other computer that wouldn't be too hard to port?

Gary_Leeds · Post by **Gary_Leeds** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 8:43 pm

Soccer Boss on the C64 is the prime candidate for a quick port, in basic and on a 40 col vic would probably run near enough straight away. All the Cult games on the 64 were in basic as well so plenty to choose from

DanSolo · Post by **DanSolo** » Sat Jul 04, 2009 5:25 am

Gary_Leeds wrote:Soccer Boss on the C64 is the prime candidate for a quick port, in basic and on a 40 col vic would probably run near enough straight away. All the Cult games on the 64 were in basic as well so plenty to choose from

Maybe some of the smaller ones could even be compiled a little to speed them up a bit, but I don't know how easy that is on a VIC. You'd probably need C source and CC65.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sun Jul 05, 2009 1:23 pm

Hey Gary!

You PM:ed me a while ago about porting Soccer Boss. Did you make any progress? As I wrote in a PM, the game itself is very large so you would need to cut down a bit on messages, player data and perhaps mechanics to even fit into a 27.5K VIC-20.

Gary_Leeds · Post by **Gary_Leeds** » Sun Jul 05, 2009 1:44 pm

took a look at it and it seems a definate possibility, just been stacked out with work at the moment and the last thing I want to do is come home and do more coding lol

When I get a bit more time I will take another look and hopefully get something running unless someone else wants to