Australian Football Coach 2023-24 News

[p]Version 1.29 is out now with some bug fixes and nice quality of life updates to help you better coach your team![/p][p][/p][p]This started from the premise of trying to add additional information to the statistics pages and while most statistical updates are going to have to wait for a completely new edition of the game, there are a couple more available filters for you to weed out players who haven't played much.[/p][p][/p][p]There are additional news items, additional navigation during certain points of the season, additional information when selecting your team including adding seasonal player ratings to the selection screen, and updates to starting custom leagues, especially with stadium capacity. You can also see player potential on the training screen, if they've been scouted properly![/p][p][/p][p]Major fixes include a big issue with the interchange screen not always being properly updated, the score worm not properly resetting between games (which was a major bug for awhile and was a simple if not easy fix) and fixing the fact players stopped telling you if they didn't like your contract offer during free agency.[/p][p][/p][p]There's also an ongoing move to make the match engine more "editable" for some of the power users - you can now change a scenario's overall tempo by editing some of the game's data files, which can help raise or lower the number of disposals generated by the game engine.[/p][p][/p][p]Hopefully there's going to be at least one more update before the end of the men's real life season so keep following and making suggestions and bug reports![/p][p][/p][p]+ added: can now filter player statistics by games played[/p][p]+ added: injury column back to team player screen[/p][p]+ added: stadiums now get generated with variable capacity, not just 10,000[/p][p]+ added: you can now control overall match engine tempo by setting the tempo_weight in Settings.csv (lower=faster)[/p][p]+ added: all players on a user's team now get a scouting report at the start of the year[/p][p]+ added: new news item if you qualified for/failed to make finals[/p][p]+ added: player log for team best and fairest runner up/3rd place[/p][p]+ added: updated menu for the offseason takes you directly to trade/zoning/free agency screens[/p][p]- fixed: full screen resolution issue (crosses fingers)[/p][p]- fixed: text issue if player signed an extension as a rookie[/p][p]- fixed: may have finally solved the score worm not disappearing bug[/p][p]- fixed: home team would always get credit for scoring runs in articles[/p][p]- fixed: regular season starting article would trigger on playoff start[/p][p]- fixed: interchange screen would not always display correct team[/p][p]- fixed: the news telling you a player didn't like your free agency offer wasn't working[/p][p]- improved: hopefully more variety in contract lengths[/p][p]- improved: fictional players on professional teams have a higher starting lower base, should make for better players when starting a custom game[/p][p]- improved: players don't always just sign or ask for two-year extensions anymore[/p][p]- improved: more information on training panel[/p][p]- improved: more information on selection panel[/p][p]- improved: you won't notice this but introduced "new technology" when clicking on players, making sure you'll never click on the wrong player on at least one statistics screen - sometimes the game can get mixed up and take you to a different player than the one you clicked, this bug will slowly be fixed[/p]

In a recent review, a reviewer gave the game a thumbs up but also produced a bit of constructive criticism which I really took to heart - basically that player attributes don't feel correlated with the stats that are being generated.

This particular criticism had a particular impact for two reasons. First, the game does not produce statistics randomly. There has been a lot of time, testing, and benchmarking work to ensure player attributes matter, that better teams win more consistently, and that tactical choices have an impact on gameplay. Second, because this is such a difficult sport to simulate, and because positioning is so important in the match engine, it's quite possible players with lower overall attributes may consistently outperform players with higher attributes.

Many player suggestions are straightforward, but this wasn't really a suggestion - in a desire to make the game "feel" less random, the entire match engine got another look to see which parts could be improved. Overall, a number of calculations have been tweaked and improved to make sure better players are better more consistently. It does not mean the best player can't be worst on ground in a game, but you should see the players with higher attributes top statistical leaderboards with more consistently, and better teams should win a little more consistently than they did in the past. This doesn't mean uniformity, though, and there are some (relatively advanced) areas which can still use some improvement.

As part of this update, the 2025 lists have been re-worked to produce better statistics. There's also a couple simpler suggestions and bug fixes as well, such as adding natural skill to the player editor (once a player reaches their "natural" skill level, which is not guaranteed, they will start to improve much more slowly.)

As always there's still things that can be improved, and if you have any ideas please post in the forum or get in touch on the Discord. Until then, I hope you enjoy this update - a lot of work went into it!

Australian Football Coach 2023-24 is now updated for 2025!

The 2025 update includes the new 2025 lists and is primed for expansion in a couple seasons. Every player has been re-rated and updated accordingly.

There's also some small changes to the game, including the ability to automatically re-sign assistant coaches, and a couple bug fixes especially with the score worm when watching the game.

Taller players will also now peak earlier as they do in real life.

Hope you enjoy the 2025 update and thank you for playing Australian Football Coach!

A couple small bugs have been patched. A couple were related to small glitches in the game's internal database, and one was related to offering a negative value contract to a player who wants to retire. You hopefully shouldn't notice much difference.

The general plan is to have a small 2025 update out in the next couple months, probably completely database-orientated but maybe with a couple small feature improvements. However there's another (non-footy) game currently being developed. If you have any ideas please post them in the forum or on the Discord!

There's been a small little patch pushed, which should only impact you in two ways: first, it should be slightly harder to trade for first round draft picks, and second, there's now the ability to export leagues and clubs to your Export folder in case you want to mod a custom scenario.

It may impact you in another way, if your game is crashing on load, this bug has been fixed.

That's it for now!