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.
Real rosters back to 1956!
Update 2020-05-11: This is no longer in beta, you can play it on the main site.
A couple weeks ago I released real players in Basketball GM back to 2005. Why 2005? Because any time before that needs to deal with expansion teams, and I wanted to have a good way of handling that. Additionally, beyond the number of teams, there are many other things that have changed over time - team relocations, changes in style of play, various rule changes - I wanted to have decent ways of handling all those things.
Today I do. At least in a beta.
Start in any season back to 1956. Players, teams, rosters, and contracts are generated from real data. Draft classes are included up to today.
Watch your league evolve over time. There were only 8 teams in 1956, playing a very different brand of basketball than today. Live through expansion drafts, league rule changes, team relocations, economic growth, and changes in style of play.
Every league is different. Draft prospects always start the same, but they have different career arcs in every league. See busts meet their potentials, see injury-shortened careers play out in full, and see new combinations of players lead to dynasties.
Go try it out now and let me know what you think. Or read on if you want to know more details.
Real rosters back to 2005
Last week I released real players in Basketball GM, based on current rosters. Today I'm releasing real players for every season back to 2005. Select the season when creating a new league.
These rosters include players, teams, awards, relatives, contracts, and future draft classes.
It is not perfectly realistic. Some of that is simply because it's new. Please give me feedback and I will improve the rosters. But some of it is because Basketball GM is not a perfect simulation of reality, so it cannot 100% accurately represent the real world. I'm trying my best to strike a balance between simplicity and realism, but there is always room for improvement!
Real players in Basketball GM
Basketball GM has always been made up of randomly generated players on fake teams. Real teams and players were only available as unofficial third-party custom rosters. A lot of people have done great work there, especially alexnoob and nicidob. But it's still not the same as having real rosters integrated into the game itself.
Today, I'm releasing a new version of Basketball GM that, for the first time, includes real players built-in. Just pick whichever option you want when creating a new league:
"Acquired" column on the roster page
Basketball GM and Football GM can be played at whatever speed you want. Some people like to fly through decades as fast as possible. Others like to micromanage each season. For people who play fast, one annoying thing is when you forget who your players are. Like you're looking at your roster and you think... is that the guy I drafted last year, or the guy I traded for, or the free agent I signed?
Now, you can easily answer this question on the roster page by looking in the new "Acquired" column, which will tell you how each player was acquired. It looks like this:
Colleges
Players in Basketball GM and Football GM now may be assigned a college when they are generated. This doens't impact gameplay in any way, it's just for fun.