Three improvements to game simulation realism
One of the fun things about Basketball GM is that you can view the entire source code to the game, which opens up a level of modding and customization that is matched by few other games. Furthermore, you can even get your improvements included in the game itself. As you can see, that has resulted in a nice trickle of improvements from the community, including a recent PR from icedjuro which added the annual ratings change to player pages:
Recent development, some small improvements (including AV for kickers and punters!), and future plans
Football GM has been in an interesting place in 2020. I haven't given it a lot of direct attention. I've been a lot more focused on Basketball GM. Despite that, Football GM has gotten a lot of improvements. This is because BBGM and FBGM are built from the same codebase. Except for very sport-specific things, any improvements are made in both games at the same time.
All of the recent improvements to FBGM (individual player import/export, challenge modes, the news feed, more frivolities, etc) were made this way. I was focused on improving BBGM, and FBGM just automatically benefited.
Logos for the new teams
Elliot Strauss has done it again! The 10 new teams recently added to BBGM now all have awesome logos.
Import/export individual players
New feature! You can export a subset of players from a league, and import them into another league. Access these features by going to Tools > Import/Export Players.
Both importing and exporting are quite flexible. For export, you can pick any player in your league's history - current players, players from past seasons, or draft prospects.
Then when importing, you have even more options:
A bunch of new options for league creation: challenge modes (no draft picks, no free agents, no trades, no visible ratings), player development realism, and more
Today I added a bunch of fun new features to Basketball GM and Football GM. They're all available when you create a new league, by clicking the "More options" link at the bottom.
Different types of leagues will have different options available. This is what you see when creating a new "real players" league in Basketball GM, which has almost all of the new options available:
Some of those options (challenge modes and real player development determinism) are also available in God Mode, where you can change them in any existing league.
What exactly do all of these new options do?
New feature: News Feed
Today I added a News Feed to Basketball GM and Football GM. You can see it by going to League > News Feed. It's similar to the old Event Log and Transaction pages, but with some significant improvements:
Each event has a "score" associated with it, which is used to filter stories. By default, it only shows you "important" news. The score formula is different for different types of events. For example, for injuries the score depends on injury severity, how good the player is, if it's the playoffs or not, and if he's on your team or not.
There are filters to show events based on season, team, importance, and category.
It's more comprehensive. The old event log was missing some events, such as league rule changes.
It looks better, including team logos and player photos.
Top headlines also appear on the Dashboard, replacing the old "Upcoming Games" and "Completed Games" sections which have been kind of redundant after I added the scrolling list of scores at the top of the screen.
Real rosters back to 1947, contraction, and more
Last month when I added real historical rosters, I didn't go all the way back to the beginning of the league in 1947, I stopped in 1956. Why 1956? Because that's the first year where all the teams remain active until today. Prior to 1956, it was common for new teams to join the league and existing teams to fold. I did not have a good way to support contraction of teams in Basketball GM, because many parts of the code assumed that all teams were active.
Today that has changed. Basketball GM now supports "inactive" teams, which means it can simulate contraction like occurred prior to 1956. I have extended real rosters back to 1947 and added pre-programmed contraction and expansion for those crazy early years.
12 new frivolities
After you've played several years in a league, it can be fun to go to Tools > Frivolities and ask questions like "which player has the most relatives?" and "who had the longest career without ever making the playoffs?"
If you enjoy the current frivolities, then I think you're going to love the 12 new ones I just added today! All available in the same place, Tools > Frivolities, in both Basketball GM and Football GM. The main frivolities page has also been redesigned, and individual frivolities now contain a menu linking to all other frivolities for easier navigation.
The new frivolities are:
"Legends" leagues
Now that Basketball GM has real rosters back to 1956, it's possible to make all kinds of fun fictional rosters using real players. Today I am releasing "Legends" mode, which lets you create a league where each team is filled with the best players from that franchise.
You can either start an "All Time" legends league using all players, or pick a decade to be restricted to teams and players from that decade. Give it a try or read on for more details about how the rosters are generated.
More draft lottery types
Part of the fun of using real rosters back to 1956 is watching league rules change over time. Historically, the draft lottery sure changed a lot. And today, Basketball GM just got much better support for historical draft lotteries.
You can switch your league to any of these new draft types in the God Mode settings, or if you're playing a historical league the draft type will automatically change over time.