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What if we had a modern-day Tecmo Bowl?

What if we had a modern-day Tecmo Bowl?

  • I'd play it

    Votes: 10 83.3%
  • I'd pass on it

    Votes: 2 16.7%
  • Meh

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    12

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
We can play the What if? all day, but I thought this would be worth getting into now that we're two years past release. It seems EA has no plans to return to the world of college football.

This conversation stems of a Reddit thread I came across today. So far, the responses other than my own all involve the presentation layer of the game rather than the fundamental aspects of football: schemes, blocking, tackling, etc.

The fans have Madden to whet their pallets of playing as their favorite pro players and teams in a virtual world. That's great for them, but I don't care if my QB is Drew Brees or Jay Cutler; I just want to play football. I think most of us here would agree presentation, licensing, etc. all take a backseat to true-to-life gameplay. Nutopia is more concerned with how effective a trap block is than if Oregon's neon pink socks are in the game.

I've dabbled with this idea for some time now and thought I would finally post it: We don't need another NCAA football game; we just need a football sim engine. If Turn 10 (makers of Forza Motorsport) & Polyphonal Digital (makers of Gran Turismo) can make a simulation game for their sport, why can't EA do the same for football? And no, Madden is still not a simulation due to being focused only on professional football where everyone runs basically the same offense.

What I'm suggesting is a modern version of Tecmo Bowl. What you would be really AI for CPU play-calling. This would need to start as a PC game, but you would be able to create mods to feature various gameday aspects: playbooks, stadiums, teams, leagues, schedules, etc.

For example, you load up the game for the first time and it asks what type of league you want to setup: high school, college, or pros. The game would then create the league with generic teams and the correct schedule/postseason format. You'd then go into the various aspects of coaching we see in NCAA 14. Games would be coach mode: choose a play, get a result, repeat.

Would anyone be interested in something like this? I'm sure we have enough nerds around here to code the game (myself included) and hardcore football heads to beta test it.
 

kella

Low IQ fat ass with depression and anxiety
Staff member
Administrator
Operations
What market impetus is there to create a sim game when you can sell a million copies of Madden to mongs who want to do nothing but rocket catch and QB scramble?
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
What market impetus is there to create a sim game when you can sell a million copies of Madden to mongs who want to do nothing but rocket catch and QB scramble?

Once @Travis7401 gets tired of lobby ball, he'll BTT enough to create a force so strong no one can deny the need for such a game.
 

Travis7401

Douglass Tagg
Community Liaison
I agree with ur general premise. The only way to have a real sim football game, is unfortunately, to take the user control element out of the game. User control and simulation are ultimately concepts that are completely at odds with each other, and this is something that user controlled sports games will always struggle with when it comes to ratings. Your user control completely overpowers the mental and technical aspects of the game (because you are controlling those aspects with your decision making and stick skills, respectively) so that the ratings that will always matter most in a user controlled game are physical ratings.

I do agree that there is a HUGE market for a simulation football game, but it would need to be more like a full featured sim game like OOTP baseball or Football Manager (Soccer) in nature in order for it to work... Essentially text based sims with modern menu graphics. If you are going to be playing a game for hundreds or thousands of hours, the menus need to look good/modern. You'd still want a graphical representation of gameplay, but could get a good looking version without having to resort to spending tons of money and development costs on a 3d Game engine. IF you watch the video below (gameplay example at 17:00), you can see the "Classic" football manager gameplay that would be fine for a starting point for a footbaw sim (3d viewing engine could be subsequently built in later versions).



Give me a FULL footbaw version sim game just like OOTP or Football Manager with loadable high school -> College -> Pro levels all playable (just like FM has different levels) and I'd honestly never play another game.
 
Last edited:

worst2first

Well-Known Member
@Travis7401 Your post is exactly why I liked to play Coach Mode on the NCAA games. It wasn't perfect but it was acceptable and the closest thing we had to a sim game for a console.

The lead programmer for the OOTP project had a severe stroke and that has seriously delayed the game. That's probably our best hope but it's going to be a while.
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
Sounds like there's some interest. I've been thinking through the idea for some time now, but I don't have the skillset to build something as fancy as Football Manager's animated game. My plan is to build something web-based that you can login to and play on any device.

For nerds, it's Bootstrap (JS/CSS/HTML5), PHP, MySQL, & Python. If anyone is skilled in those areas, feel free to join me. I'm prototyping the UI now and plan on building the database backend over the course of the week (slow week here). I could feasibly having something going in a few weeks if people are willing to test.
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
That's something I wanted to mention. If there's any specific you want included, let me know. Ideas are welcome.
 

worst2first

Well-Known Member
I really liked the coaching job security meter. I suggested that one year and I swear EA was lurking in our forums and stole it. When they first added the coaching carousel it seemed to be based only on wins and losses but it should include things like recruiting class ranking, wins over rivals, etc.

By the way, Bowl Bound College Football isn't bad but it's pretty dated. The Steam version seems to be the same version from 2005. I bought it years ago and played it on my work laptop but that was about 4 laptops ago and I don't have the documentation to download it again. If it goes on sale I might pick it up.
 
Zack, this is an excellent idea! Good luck! I would love to see Wing T and double wing stuff. Also, all plays should be available for every QB alignment (under center, pistol, shotgun). I would love to run a pistol wing t offense.
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
Right now, my plan is a rock, paper, scissors style of gameplay similar to Tecmo bowl. User calls an inside zone run, defense blitzes outside and gets gashed.
 

worst2first

Well-Known Member
Right now, my plan is a rock, paper, scissors style of gameplay similar to Tecmo bowl. User calls an inside zone run, defense blitzes outside and gets gashed.

You'll need some form of randomization though. In my mind (and I know nothing of programming) the result of a play should be a combination of player ability (ratings), the plays called, and some degree of randomness. In a lot of D20 based RPGs for example a natural 20 is always a success no matter how ridiculous the odds may be and a natural 1 is always a failure no matter how easy the action may be. Even if the defense calls the perfect play there should be a chance the QB darts out of the pocket past the grasp of the defenders, the RB slips through the blitz, or the WR makes an ODB style impossible catch. It will have to be subtle enough that the user never realizes the random factor though.

I'm willing to help with testing and any other way I can but as I said, I have no programming knowledge or skill.
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
You'll need some form of randomization though. In my mind (and I know nothing of programming) the result of a play should be a combination of player ability (ratings), the plays called, and some degree of randomness. In a lot of D20 based RPGs for example a natural 20 is always a success no matter how ridiculous the odds may be and a natural 1 is always a failure no matter how easy the action may be. Even if the defense calls the perfect play there should be a chance the QB darts out of the pocket past the grasp of the defenders, the RB slips through the blitz, or the WR makes an ODB style impossible catch. It will have to be subtle enough that the user never realizes the random factor though.

I'm willing to help with testing and any other way I can but as I said, I have no programming knowledge or skill.

That would actually be easier to code than a manual mapping of plays. Randomness is maybe 50 lines of code.
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
Early idea of player rankings

[xtable]
{tbody}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Attribute{/td}

{td=169x@}
Abbreviation{/td}

{td=790x@}
Description{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Speed{/td}

{td=169x@}
SP{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player speed & agility{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Strength{/td}

{td=169x@}
ST{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player ability to block, tackle, & break tackles{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Passing{/td}

{td=169x@}
PS{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player passing ability{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Receiving{/td}

{td=169x@}
RC{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player catching ability{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Coverage{/td}

{td=169x@}
CV{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player pass coverage ability{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Kicking{/td}

{td=169x@}
KP{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player kicking strength & accuracy{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Security{/td}

{td=169x@}
SC{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player ball security & ability to force fumbles{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Intelligence{/td}

{td=169x@}
IT{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player ability to learn plays in practice{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Endurance{/td}

{td=169x@}
EN{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player stamina; Maximum plays before other attributes reduced by 50%{/td}
{/tr}
{tr}
{td=166x@}
Health{/td}

{td=169x@}
HT{/td}

{td=790x@}
Player injury prevention{/td}
{/tr}
{/tbody}
[/xtable]
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
The source for some of the madness behind player rankings: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/madden/
I culled the rankings down to ten for the sake of database size & the math behind it. The rankings themselves are pretty basic, but the math required for each play to determine success gets exponentially harder with each new attribute.
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
The MMO aspect is... Interesting. I'm borrowing a lot of RPG concepts, but an MMO seems crazy difficult to manage.

The main issue I'm facing right now is hosting. I want this to be web based, but hosting an app server is $$$. At the moment, I'm getting the plans laid out, and I plan to offer an offline-only download first. I'll be able to move that code online if it picks up steam.

It looks like I'm not the only one craving something like this, which is a great sign. OS has a thread discussing NCAA "generic" where people suggest EA make something like I'm building.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

Akecheta

Well-Known Member
The MMO Aspect requires that you get other "players" to sign to your team, keep their players updated regularly and to keep building their player in to a build that fits your team.

You end up with a lot of dead players because people give up or just quit logging in.
 

purple112

Go Berzerk
Would you open source this? I don't have the time/knowledge to contribute much but I would love to see how it's done.
 

JSU Zack

How do I IT?
Quick update:
I've got ~300 lines of code so far. I spent a good chunk of last week designing how everything would work before I touched the keyboard (best practice IMO). Today, I'm writing the code for the play sim logic. With any luck, we'll have a 0.0001 version available to test soon.
 
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