Category Archives: soccer games

USM2 progresses and Fizzball

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USM2 programming is running at full speed. Yesterday I spent 10h on it! also I just finished a temporary website, you can check it here. The initial release will be in english only, but I put all the texts in an external file so will be (hopefully!) easy to localize it.

Also I’m already planning some updates… I mean I already wrote down some notes on possible new additions. For now main goal is to finish a release candidate 1.0. In games so complex like a soccer management one, you never run out of ideas! but is important to try to release a first version to gather users feedback (most important thing for a developer).

Meanwhile I found very fun the game Fizzball released by the friends developers Grubbygames. Is a very clever and well designed variant of the classic game “arkanoid” or if you prefet “breakout”. Cool comic-style art too. Was a fun diversive for a few hours, then I had to go back working on USM2…! 😉

USM2 match events

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Working like mad on USM2 again. I’m trying to met the deadline of a playable alpha by end of this month, but things are getting bad… I don’t know if I’ll be able to met it 🙁

That is bad, of course I don’t have any boss to respond to, but I have some people that are waiting to play this game since long time (2 years!) so I really want to try to release it soon. But of course, I don’t want either to release it without a proper beta testing…!

Today made the match event menu, soon I’ll post a screenshot. I think looks cool, you can choose what your player should do when there’s an important event in the game. If your great talent is on the edge of the area, what he should do? shoot a powerful shot, a precise shot, lift the ball on the area, or… ? you’ll have maximum 5 choices each one with a related skill involved and a possible percentage of success (depending on the skill value of your player).

I think that even if is just small interaction, should be a nice diversion from the usual automatic matches you see usually in the soccer management games…!

…and the Goalkeeper scores from the corner!

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No wait I didn’t went nutz programming USM2…! is that today I finished an important part of the game. When a new event occurs, the game must pick a reasonable player based on the ball position. If the ball is heading towards the center of opponent penalty box, it needs to pick an attacker, obviously.

But today made a cool change, instead of looking the role of the player, it actually looks at the position on the field (as it should be!) using the grid on the picture below. What it means? that if you want to put Buffon, Barthez, Kahn (or name whatever goalkeeper you want) in the position of Henry, Ronaldo, Toni – you can 🙂 of course don’t expect that they’ll be able to score sensational goals after dribbling two defenders… 😉

tactic grid

USM2 match screenshot

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usm_match_screen
Click to enlarge the thumbnail to see the USM2 match screen in all his splendor! seriously, I’m very pleased how it turned out. The players now have a particular color depending on their role (goalkeeper=green, defenders=blue, midfielders=yellow, attackers=red). I’m thinking also to let the player do the substitutions directly from this screen (instead of having to click “manage team” button on the left during the match).

I’m now making another screen with the general team tactics, like “Offside trap”, “counter-attack”, and so on…

sensational goal!

I remember that scream when I was playing the good old pro evolution soccer series some years ago with my friends (what memorable tournaments I made!). Now a friend developer just released a nice game – ok is not 3d, but what matters is playability…! Here is the description, directly from his website:
Sensational Soccer is a classically styled football game giving you control the whole team. Compete in league or cup competitions. Play against a friend in the 2 player mode. Create your own match winning tactics. Playable with either Keyboard or Joystick or Mouse. Full player database featuring all the squads from over a 40 leagues worldwide with realistic player stats.

Try it, you might be surprised.