Footy is back and so too is Australian Football Coach with several new and improved features!
One of the biggest requests, manual interchanges, has been added back into the game, making the game more interesting for hands-on coaches. Simply click on two players on the interchange tab to switch them out - it couldn't be simpler! The code is relatively fresh so there are a couple other improvements planned for the display, but this should make the game more interesting to a few users.
Another piece of feedback has been that the match engine isn't quite realistic enough, especially in terms of rucks getting too many disposals. A whole season's worth of games was simulated to see how exactly the match engine was working and then all of the disposals were normalised for pitch height/width to create a heat map. It turned out the rucks weren't quite hitting the ball far enough, so frequently won the first loose ball after winning the ruck. This has been fixed - rucks should still get a decent number of disposals as they're midfielders, but it should be much less extreme. Centre bounce player positioning has also been updated.
Benchmarking the game also allowed several other quirks with the match engine to be fixed, especially one which showed a particular bias - it turns out the ball wasn't bouncing randomly enough on the pitch, and that was impacting game results!
These tweaks have really helped make the simulation more realistic and those of you who are stat-minded should see a definite difference. There's still more work to be done, especially in regards to player positioning, and any feedback is welcome.
There's also a new match preview screen complete with predictions and information about your upcoming match, which means you don't jump straight into a game unless you're ready.
More good news as well, version 0.7.1 should be coming out in the next couple days as a couple things didn't get added in by the 0.7.0 release deadline, so be on the lookout for some new information/displays and headlines and (possibly) a complete overhaul and update of the 2020 lists!
Hope you enjoy the newest version!