Kevin Toms Blog » Software Development and Delivery

30 Years ago Football Manager- weaving the gameplay

Kevin Toms — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:56:24 +0000

Not easy to describe this. But it was important. Important to making it work, to making it succeed. I decided the setting, the football league, 4 divisions, plus a knockout cup, the FA Cup. I decided on what attributes your players would have. I decided what you could control. Then I pieced together the game balance. The balance between randomness and control, between complexity and ease of use. Various moving(mathematically) components interacting, finding the way to make it fun and easy but give the game plenty or range, so it did not repeat, was never predictable. And then it had to fit within the programming environment I had, and the small amount of memory.

It took a year to make.

30 years ago Football Manager – making stick men footballers!

Kevin Toms — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:22:45 +0000

30 years ago, the ZX81 game was doing well, the TRS80 Football Manager not so much. Then Sinclair came out with the Spectrum. So, I spent a busy couple of months enhancing the game. And one of the things I decided to do was add goal mouth action. So I got busy designing animated footballers on a 3D view of the football pitch. These footballers were stick men graphics, but they worked:

I built intelligence into their behaviour. It was simple but effective. Within the limitations, there was an infinite variety of things that could happen, so it kept the excitement, the uncertainty during the match.

Stick men graphics I created for Spectrum Football Manage

30 years ago – I wrote Football Manager

Kevin Toms — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:12:36 +0000

So I launched it on to the market in January 1982. But before that of course, I wrote it. I bought a Video Genie to write it on. The Video Genie was a Tandy TRS80 clone.

The computer Football Manager was written on.

It was cheaper, but still expensive for me at the time. But, I believed that I would be successful with the game. Overall it was about a year of writing the game.

The game had its roots in many board game versions I had written, but at this time I was a professional computer programmer by day, so I knew what I was doing on the Video Genie. I chose to use the built in Basic because it was much better suited to a strategy game than the limitations of Assembler.

Just before going to launch, the ZX81 came out, and I realised the potential market it was creating with its low price, so I converted the game to run on the ZX81 too.

Football Manager was converted by me to run on this

That, was a very worthwhile decision!! – The sales on the ZX81 proved to be 100 times what they were on the TRS80/Video Genie. If I had only launched on that, the whole thing would not have got off the ground as I would have lost money on every advert placed.

So the ZX81 was critical to the early success.

My iPhone/iPad Football Manager game 57 -Estimation

Kevin Toms — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:15:10 +0000

57.62% complete. – That is what I wrote earlier on Facebook. I have been involved in many projects, with many estimations. But they are mostly flawed with software development. They try to make developing software like building a bridge, something that is done with fixed materials, specifications etc.

But, often software is changed mid project, in fact so frequently that methods like extreme programming were invented to cope with that. The equivalent with building a bridge would be to change the materials half way across building the span from steel to a newly invented plastic.

So, I invented my own method to suit the way I am working on this game. And I am 57.62% complete.

iPhone iOS iPad – being a developer

Kevin Toms — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:36:20 +0000

I have worked in many programming languages on many computers large and small. Some good, some bad. So I have experienced plenty.

Well Apple are winning with great product design right now but they are doing a great job with another product- the tools they provide to create iOS software. They are excellent and helpful. Like a well designed car feels good to use do does XCode and the rest of the kit from Apple

People ask me about Football Manager animation..

Kevin Toms — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:05:53 +0000

You know, the little stick men running around in the original Football Manager on the Spectrum. Sometimes people ask if the animation was a fixed set, or even believe it was. Well no, it wasn’t, there was an infinite number of possibilities of what could happen and the individual players were making decisions moment by moment what to do next. I did that deliberately so you would be in suspense.

Some people believed you could predict what was going to happen but the program code did not do that. Of course animation was limited in those days, and it was an add on to a strategy game to spice it up more. So, in some ways it wasn’t sophisticated. But within the memory limitations it did plenty. So I am proud of the design and code especially for it’s impact on the fun of the game.

Indie Development

Kevin Toms — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:38:36 +0000

When I was in New Zealand I met developers who were writing for the iPhone. Some produced good games, yet despite that were disappointed when the game did not succeed. The impression some had was that putting the game on the App Store was putting the game on the market. It isn’t, it’s more like putting your game into one gigantic warehouse of hundreds of thousands of similar products, and hoping somebody walking in to the warehouse will see your game and buy it. That experience of a lot of work leading to nothing much can disappoint and demoralise people which is a shame.

The missing link is marketing. The old saying “If you build a better mousetrap the customers will come” has never been true. They won’t if they don’t know your mousetrap exists.

But there are many other advantages with the App Store business model. . .

My iPhone/iPad Football Manager Game 42 – De-lousing

Kevin Toms — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 06:30:12 +0000

Well the technical term is debugging, but the effect of this one was lousy. It was one of the bugs that doesn’t just happen. It happens as a side effect of other side effects! Painful to track. Spent the afternoon on it. And all I got for several hours of effort is a debugging dialogue box no longer appears.

In reality I was delighted to fix it, it’s all progress to completing the game.. each fix is another step down that road.

My iPhone/iPad Football Manager Game 39 – When’s the launch?

Kevin Toms — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:39:35 +0000

I got asked a really good question on my facebook page about when is this game going to be out? As a software developer of several decades, I loved this question. I even remember many years ago developing software for Windows getting together with other developers and brainstorming on why software is delayed, unlike projects like building a bridge. We were developing software for Windows at the time and the customers wanted all the latest gadgets built in as we went through the development. I pointed out an analogy:-

“When they build a bridge, they plan it, decide on the design, the specification, the engineering, then implement it exactly. Whereas in software, we get the equivalent of having the bridge half built and somebody coming along and saying that they have seen this great new plastic at a demo and they think it would be really good for the rest of the bridge, and that they want the second half of the bridge built with that”

- That is the equivalent of what happens with software projects, and they wonder why the overrun!

Just been training again

Kevin Toms — Thu, 06 May 2010 18:14:01 +0000

I have just completed a training course. One that interested me on Software Architecture. I’m an old dog now, but I can still, and often do, learn new tricks. Software Development as a career has one distinct characteristic that many professions do not have, especially to such a large degree. – The technology we use to develop software is always changing, and at a rapid pace. It means that even if you are already an expert with stacks of experience, you are still constantly learning and studying new things.

For some people, they would find it tiring and get sick of it. I am more positive, I think it keeps my mind young, and keeps me sharp. My only difficulty is working out what I need to know from the many new technologies that come along.

Experience still counts though, especially in avoiding mistakes!