Australian Football Coach News

As promised, a full February update of AFC!

There are now two versions - the "current" version and the "new" version. The "current" version is the one you're playing now, and is no longer being developed except for bug fixes – if you run across any, please post in the boards and those will be added to the patch notes.

Most of the work on the "new" version of late – let's assume it'll be released this year and call it AFC 2019 – hasn't been all that interesting. Probably the majority of the work goes into making sure information displays properly and that buttons work when clicked.

That being said, one of the most important parts of the game is up and running - personalities! The "current" version uses an awkward 100-point system for tracking homesickness, leadership, egos, et cetera, and doesn't get presented to the user in any sort of meaningful way. Plus, what's the difference between 86 homesickness and 87 homesickness?

AFC 2019 has redefined the system to be almost completely categorical. Players' homesickness is now a categorical range from will play anywhere, any time to will only sign contracts in their home state and suffers a slight decline in performance in out-of-state games! Greed is slightly more scalar, but is now a nine-point scale from "money is not a motivator" to "money is everything." There's a couple other categories that are still being finalised such as leadership

Player roles and player morale are the other new feature. Players will fall into one of nine different categories from superstar to colt, and will have different expectations about playing time, development, and even whether they'll retire. Fail to meet those expectations and their morale will go down. It's not in the game yet, but things are being set up so an aging superstar on a rebuilding team who has never won a grand final may try to get traded or sign a one-year contract somewhere that will give them one final shot at glory.

A rework of the coaching and list management module is next. The AI in the current version could be improved, in part because it doesn't really know an average player offered the exact same contract by Collingwood or Gold Coast will likely pick Collingwood. Giving coaches and AI list managers better preferences and personalities should make the simulation more interesting generally.

The development goal at the moment is to create a fully functioning simulator without any human interactivity and then "drop in" human managers to interact with the previously existing the game world. This is still on track. The hope is the March development blog will be able to walk you through a player's career in screenshots.

Something not planned at the moment: conferences. In the game, the women's league currently plays a full round robin with a four-team final.

Things we need
If you're a photographer or graphic designer, the "new" version needs a professional, footy-related, high resolution background image much better than the one currently being used. If this interests you, please reach out to discuss options and pricing.

A small patch has just been pushed, fixing a crash which occurred when you were unemployed, fixing a GUI issue involving how you interact with the teams offering you a job, and making accessing the job screen a one-click process when you're unemployed.

There should be an update on the newest version of the game hopefully in February. Most of the recent work on the new version has been on the GUI, which isn't that exciting of an update. The new GUI's a lot more robust than the current game and should make navigation and general gameplay much easier.

The 2019 lists have just been added to the game! Special thanks for everyone who helped work to create them. Simply update your game to start simulating!

Also, a small patch has been pushed with the following tweaks:
- fixed crash when offering trades to AI managers
- players are less likely to dispose the ball to the ruckman
- slight tweak to the match engine which should cause it to run a few milliseconds faster (was hoping for a more noticeable performance increase but will take it)

Some players have recently mentioned the game being too difficult (human player teams not scoring highly enough) and of teams being too fatigued. No tweaks have been made to address either of these, though if you notice this in your own game please get in touch.

If your team is too fatigued, make sure your players are match fit, you are not training them too hard, and that you work in a rest day or two in training if needed.

Work also continues on the next version of AFC, specifically at the moment on player motivation and contract demands.

As 2019 nears we have some exciting news to report about the future of AFC!

The current version of AFC will be updated for 2019 before the start of the new season, and possibly before the start of the new year. This will be a relatively small update, with new lists and an updated injury model to reduce the number of long-term injuries and increase the number of short-term injuries.

What's even more exciting is that the new AFC version is well on its way. This is a ground-up rewrite of the original Australian Football Coach, with an entirely new GUI, a rewritten match engine, and a completely different style of simulation.

The original AFC - the game up on the site now - was written to be very player-centric. The new version of the game has been designed to create a full and accurate simulation of the world of footy which you as a player will then drop into. Except for the fact the GUI's completely up to date, you probably won't notice much difference in terms of gameplay, but redesigning the game in this way has a number of added benefits:

- human players can coach multiple teams simultaneously. This feature may not ultimately be added, but the option exists to develop it, whereas it's impossible in the current version
- a full 365-day calendar
- player/coach skills/aging occurs dynamically during the season
- players have proper birthdays
- leagues now have a degree of autonomy from each other, making it easier to add/change/edit team compositions in game, or even run multiple national competitions alongside each other
- a women's league runs during the correct time of the calendar, and female names have been added to the game
- salary calculation has been updated and more accurately reflects reality

As a result, the new version's currently a simulation without any human input, and work on how the human player interacts with the game will start once the simulation's entirely finished, as opposed to the old version, which developed all of the human coaching elements first.

The game engine has also been updated and now runs faster, even though it now plays out in 1/10th of a second intervals instead of every second. The rewrite also allows things like disposal efficiency to be tracked easily, which the current disposal module incredibly isn't able to do.

While the new game's technically a ground-up rewrite, a lot of the old good code has been recycled, including the dynamic weather module, the stadiums module, the percentage module, and the finals module which allows for some extremely customisable end of season combinations.

A number of features have been planned, as well. A few examples, some of which are already complete:
- Players will have different expectations of playing time and will refuse to resign if their demands are not satisfied
- An overhauled injury module which will expand upon the hidden injury proneness statistic which may cause players to retire early if they continually take a beating
- Different clubs will have more clearly different characteristics: while the old game uses memberships as a proxy, a team will have both a short term and a long term prestige ranking which will affect whether players want to sign with the club. This will allow you to define your own challenge - take over a strong team with a proud background, a struggling team with a proud background, or a struggling team with no background whatsoever and you'll experience more a clearly defined challenge with each club
- Teams will also have presidents/board members, who will change over time, with different levels of patience for the head coach
- Traveling interstate will now have a greater impact on player fatigue - something to watch out for if managing a club on the west coast!
- An improved narrative structure
- A sandbox mode, which will allow you to match up two teams of your choice.

There's also a few things that are needed: if you have any knowledge on the salary structure for state leagues or have knowledge of different positioning strategies in dead-ball situations, especially kicking into the forward 50 from a marked position, please get in touch! This will help make the game more realistic.

Thank you for your support of Australian Football Coach!

You can now replay the 2018 season with the new 2018 season scenario! Whether you aim to win the flag or avoid the wooden spoon, the 2018 season is now up to date.

No bugs were fixed in this update, though a small bug fix release is planned for the near future. Work continues, however, on a rewrite from scratch which will hopefully be available sometime in 2019.