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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Aug 15, 2011 17:00:47 GMT
As it's called in the US. Details are leaking out of the next monument to human ingenuity in the shape of the two thousand and twelfth version of Microsoft Excel meets Brian Clough and my biggest favourite in the new features this year is : Manage Anywhere, Anytime – the ability to add or take away playable nations in your saved game as often as you want. Manage in that country at the start of the next season- meaning you don’t have to stay in the nations which are chosen by you to be playable at the start of your career. Finally, I can manage in the Singaporean Sweatshop Third Division fourteen years into my game, without having it switched on the whole time. That won't mess with regens at all. The ONE remaining feature they need to add to FM now is making future versions save game compatible. This would remove any roadblock at all between SpInG and my bank account. Right now when a new version comes out I feel terrible pangs at leaving a developed world behind and two hours into the new game I turn into that bloke from LOST shouting "WE HAVE TO GO BACK!" Except that I don't get to hang out with a dirty Evangeline Lilly. So, SpInG. For FM2013 onwards... please add Evangeline Lilly. And that thing I said about save games.
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Post by DC on Aug 15, 2011 21:54:49 GMT
Save game compatibility would indeed be awesome. I used to dream of plugging my old 1999/00 save game with my mate into the later engines. Right now my Leyton Orient CM9798 save is into 2013 - I'd kill to load it into FM2009 or something.
And yes, about bloody time they let you lock in and out of leagues. I loved nothing more than managing teams like Venezuela to the World Cup - but I've had to quite two International management jobs because of a lack of "real" players making it impossible to continue with a save. Turning on Venezuala just for the player pool at that point would have been tres awesome.
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Post by coffers on Aug 16, 2011 8:30:22 GMT
Switchable nations sounds great it almost makes me want to buy the new version, however backward compatability on savegames would be awesome. Why the fook have they not brought that in I'll never know. Or at least provided a tool to upgrade teh save game to newer version.
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Post by elth on Aug 16, 2011 11:24:42 GMT
I've never really got the impression that SpInG were *that* good at programming...maybe it's just a bit hard to get backwards compatible save games..
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Post by coffers on Aug 16, 2011 12:07:34 GMT
I've never really got the impression that SpInG were *that* good at programming...maybe it's just a bit hard to get backwards compatible save games.. In that case a tool to update the old save games should be bundled. It can't be that hard to read a save game's data in one format and then save it into the latest file format.
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Post by elth on Aug 17, 2011 12:20:15 GMT
I think it's probably a wee bit more complicated than that. I'm sure there's data in each new save file that isn't in the old one, that the new version of the game needs to run properly.
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Post by DC on Aug 17, 2011 18:18:54 GMT
There's not Elth. All the data is parsed into tables that are compressed into save game files. When a game opens it simply re-loads the existing data into those table formats. Unless they massively change the tables to change existing data criteria / flags then it's all really just a matter of matching existing tables to existing arguments and triggers.
For instance the big difference between CM3 and CM01/02 is absolutely sweet FA. The player DB barely changed other than to introduce new flags at player generation. Moving a save game doesn't require that sort of generation.
The issue you'd have moving CM9798 into an engine like FM11 is the missing data. The vast amount of attributes that didn't exist in the old game. But there are ways to automatically generate these without even using an RNG, and much of the core data remains identical (such as player positions, ability levels, nationality, names, DOB etc). You'd simply have to utilise some kind of forced patch after the import to rebuild the data with occasional prompts for the user to customise exactly where certain elements should land. For instance you would have to 'repair' the International Pool, and force change all your Player Histories (or lose them), and you'd probably have to choose between having an empty reserve / U17 squad, or having some randomly generated.
The easiest thing of all with the whole porting to the new games is the ability to maintain multiple databases. So for instance you could run a FM9.17 database, and craft a CM0102 patched database that you could switch back and forth between.
In the end the engine only utilises the databases that exist, and those databases are fairly consistent. It'd just be the ability to change all the flags automatically to fit the new engine that would be the challenge.
My job at the moment involves taking complex billing information, customer data etc and migrating it from one format to a completely new format for a billing system to rate it. I'm doing that for millions of records with about 55 interlinked tables.
If I had access to the table structures, I have no doubt I could migrate any CM/FM game into another with the use of integers to fix the blanks and rebuild criteria.
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Post by coffers on Aug 17, 2011 19:29:17 GMT
Being doing that sort of stuff for years, DC, once you fix the rules it's all easy stuff really.
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Post by DC on Aug 17, 2011 19:43:10 GMT
Yep. Mapping, and tracking to new databases is a pretty much core function of many businesses now. Stu and Moo have probably done a few in their time.
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Post by elth on Aug 18, 2011 10:33:21 GMT
There's not Elth. All the data is parsed into tables that are compressed into save game files. When a game opens it simply re-loads the existing data into those table formats. Unless they massively change the tables to change existing data criteria / flags then it's all really just a matter of matching existing tables to existing arguments and triggers. For instance the big difference between CM3 and CM01/02 is absolutely sweet FA. The player DB barely changed other than to introduce new flags at player generation. Moving a save game doesn't require that sort of generation. The issue you'd have moving CM9798 into an engine like FM11 is the missing data. The vast amount of attributes that didn't exist in the old game. But there are ways to automatically generate these without even using an RNG, and much of the core data remains identical (such as player positions, ability levels, nationality, names, DOB etc). You'd simply have to utilise some kind of forced patch after the import to rebuild the data with occasional prompts for the user to customise exactly where certain elements should land. For instance you would have to 'repair' the International Pool, and force change all your Player Histories (or lose them), and you'd probably have to choose between having an empty reserve / U17 squad, or having some randomly generated. The easiest thing of all with the whole porting to the new games is the ability to maintain multiple databases. So for instance you could run a FM9.17 database, and craft a CM0102 patched database that you could switch back and forth between. In the end the engine only utilises the databases that exist, and those databases are fairly consistent. It'd just be the ability to change all the flags automatically to fit the new engine that would be the challenge. My job at the moment involves taking complex billing information, customer data etc and migrating it from one format to a completely new format for a billing system to rate it. I'm doing that for millions of records with about 55 interlinked tables. If I had access to the table structures, I have no doubt I could migrate any CM/FM game into another with the use of integers to fix the blanks and rebuild criteria. If it was that simple, SpInG would have done it. It's not putting it in a new table that's the problem - it's accurately filling in the blanks that the new engine needs. It would probably be a massive, massive pain in the arse to support too.
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Post by DC on Aug 18, 2011 20:18:48 GMT
Why would they do it? FIFA doesn't do it. Madden doesn't do it. PES doesn't do it (although it tried with PES6 I think) - and we know how little changes between those games. Madden amusingly can be patched using fan made tools to import whole rosters from old games...but EA haven't made it yet.
We know that 32 attributes map to 32 attributes. We know the other abilities map 1 to 1 with other abilities. What new info has been introduced? Between CM01/02 and the player data in FM09 you're looking at the only significant change being competition structures, and a few additional attributes that in 90% of instances within the game are randomly generated at the start of each game anyway (most players in the DB have 0 for their attributes with only a few key ones picked out unless they're in the top 2 divisions).
They don't do it because the demand isn't great enough, and they can get away without it rather than the really very minimal technical requirements working out how to allow them to import a game from the previous year.
Mapping back to 01/02 I can accept would be more problematic, but even that is no more than a weeks work - most of that spent testing different integers on import.
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Post by elth on Aug 19, 2011 10:03:44 GMT
So why hasn't a fan done it?
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Post by DC on Aug 19, 2011 13:12:32 GMT
They have to some extent (particularly for the less intensive EA games) - but in FM so far they've been doing it the long way around and manually updating an existing databases using "editors" (or importing updates).
The original IceHockey game made by SI was built in CM0102 by a fan. So he did a lot of hard work. People have manually rebuilt CM9798 in CM0102 - and I've done plenty of editing but the data is easy to fuck-up in amateur hands and the flags and relationship between tables isn't always clear (until something is wrong after 6 months of a season and you realise those coefficients you inserted should have been in decimals rather than whole numbers). The save games themselves meanwhile tend to be compressed and likely use a lot of short hand references.
So you'd need a dedicated database expert to extract and correctly determine every criteria in those files. You'd then need to work out how to map, where to map, and what data you may retain or fudge. Then you'd need to find a way of pushing in an update to those tables updating each with your source info.
If it was SQL then that wouldn't be particularly difficult (if long-winded) but I don't know what table structures or formats SI use, so couldn't begin to tell you what the technical difficulty would be with their tables off-hand. The fact they're using xml means that it almost certainly is moving closer towards the database being manipulated in such a way.
Fans can't generally can't resolve things like: - hard coded engine dates - reconciling historical data - flags looking for dates and triggers. - mapping longform to shortform references (i.e. each player will be known by his ID, not his name, so if you migrated in a save game each newly generated player will have his own ID - you'd have to clear out any old references to ensure the two did not clash).
I can understand the difficulty for instance in mapping CM9798 > CM0102 > FM5 > FM09 but I can't believe (I know that they do fuck all to the player and team database between updates barring pushing in career stats) that FM09 and FM10 aren't portable with minimal changes.
If the same game could be un-compiled, then if I was given a similarly un-compiled save from the subsequent game I would certainly entertain rebuilding it.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Aug 19, 2011 13:44:54 GMT
Yep. Mapping, and tracking to new databases is a pretty much core function of many businesses now. Stu and Moo have probably done a few in their time. This is true. The job I applied for before doing this one was essentially that and I had to do it all the time at GM to consolidate parts databases across acquisitions and affiliates. In fact, if you know someone who can do this and has a green card I would like to give them monies.
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Post by DC on Aug 19, 2011 14:47:05 GMT
I can do it, and as the married person of a spousal person, I can get a green card - if the monies are worth getting up in the morning and risking certain death for. Poof.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Aug 19, 2011 15:09:04 GMT
The start is about $68,000 + 10 days holiday (woo America!) + 3 "personal days." Plus all the Slimfast bars you can eat.
It'd be writing SQL interfaces to sit between two data warehouses to act as a stop gap and allow "whole of business" reporting for parts of a business we just bought, but aren't allowed to keep.
Probably based out of the home of the New York Jets... New Jersey! BYOBPV.
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Post by elth on Aug 19, 2011 15:18:58 GMT
So it's obviously more than one guy writing a tool on a lazy August afternoon, then... If they have to devote, say, two guys to it for two weeks (because it's not just porting the database once - it's creating a tool to port a savegame) then having to test it, then having to support it post release, then having to deal with people whining because it broke their save game... I'm not saying it's not doable, I'm just saying it's not straightforward.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Aug 19, 2011 15:29:24 GMT
And I think that's where the distinction lies. I don't think anyone is suggesting it's trivial, but it's definitely doable, even more so if SpInG committed to it and built it in at the ground level.
If they announced that FM13 would be the first "Generational" FM game and from then on all save games from 13 onwards would export into future versions I'm sure it wouldn't tax them too much to make it so.
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Post by Moo on Oct 21, 2011 10:01:54 GMT
So WWSCCMMXII was released today, retailing on disc at around £25 and via Steam at £30. It appears that even if you buy it on disc, you still have to activate via Steam and therefore must have a Steam account. FM11 didn't require Steam activation, and I'm wondering why they went the Steam route. Piracy? I can understand it if that is the reason, but as I haven't been on the SpInG forum (or the LLM private forum) for yonks, I don't know.
I'll ask the questions and report back, even if nobody is bothered.
As for the game though, it appears that they have done a fair amount of work with player contracts and with scouting, which will hugely impact the lower leagues, especially regarding budgets. I think this is good news, of course.
I'm tempted to get the demo, but am still not sure about this Steam nonsense. Am I just being a tit and should get an account, or am I being rightly paranoid?
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Post by coffers on Oct 21, 2011 12:40:01 GMT
I think it's a disgrace, why should you have to activate via a 3rd party URL, it's stupid. I will not be buying future editions of FM if this is the future.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Oct 21, 2011 14:01:38 GMT
You're about three years too late with your indignation Coffs.
Nobody remembers the disastrous launch of... 08, was it? Where you had a sticker in the box with some co-ordinates on it... you tracked down the X marked spot somewhere in a field in Dorset and found a tree with a phone number carved in it and when you dialed that number someone from SPInG called you a cunt and hung up.
SpInG have been looking for a solid DRM for their product for a number of years and think they've found it with Steamworks. Steamworks has a double benefit for them because someone else built it and maintains it and it's roughly the only DRM out there that comes with any benefits - autopatching, friends lists, yadda yadda. Plus you can download the game on any computer with an internet connection any time you want without remembering where the fook the disk is.
You can download steam, download the game, switch to offline mode, start the game from the desktop icon and never really pay attention to steam ever again. Compared to some of the bullshit DRM schemes out there, (hello, UBIsoft), it's roughly the least painful option by a factor of a very large number.
I can understand not wanting an active steam account because it's a terrible gateway drug... you will end up accidentally buying games you previously had no interest in because they're on sale for some beans... and they do have some, (rare), poor customer service moments, (I'm looking at you, From Dust, (oh look, a UBI Soft game ruined by DRM)), but I struggle to see it as some nefarious monolith coming between people and a game.
This is where random people on the internet call me a fanboi who likes to hang out with gentlemen behind the communal bathrooms.
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Post by Moo on Oct 21, 2011 14:04:05 GMT
But you do.
I dunno, it just seems a bit, well, unnecessary. As I said though, if it's anti-eyepatch, I'm all for it, just uncomfortable with it.
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Post by coffers on Oct 21, 2011 14:10:31 GMT
I don't mind registering it with Steam as long as I don't have to open an account. I have FM2010, was that the same process? I can't recall, but I didn't open a STEAM account for that.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Oct 21, 2011 14:12:09 GMT
I understand it's a bit "what the hey?! I have to install two programs?" But any game that comes with securom, for example, is already installing two programs. Only they don't tell you about one of them, it has low level access to your pc and can randomly decide that you've done something bad and stop you playing. Or it can freak out and break your windows install.
The difference here is that the DRM is visible and you're told about it up front. And the program is a client, not a Kernal-altering install and it has millions of successful and happy users.
I understand that it's not for some people - I actively disliked Steam back in the Half Life II days - but these days it's possible to download it and almost forget you ever have it, but SpInG have had a clear interest in anti-piracy measures for a half decade now and in a world featuring some games requiring always-on internet connections, they've made a fairly low-impact choice.
Of course I would say that. etc.
Plus, if you're on my steam friend's list and an indy game I want to support comes out, (Atom Zombie Smasher... Dungeons of Dredmor... Frozen Synapse), I might accidentally buy the game for you.
The only thing that could be better is if Steam let you download doughnuts.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Oct 21, 2011 14:16:57 GMT
FM2010 and 11 were available on Steam, (I have 10 and 11 on Steam), but didn't require you to have an account. 12 requires you to download the Steam client and have an account.
However, signing up for Steam won't see you bombarded with mail - I'm not sure that they have a mailing option even if you wanted one, but even so almost everything on Steam is opt-in, not opt-out.
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