It is October, the spooky time of year when some say the veil between the living and the dead becomes thinner. You thought Full Court Heroes was dead? To be honest, so did I at times. But I'm so happy to announce to you that the "I'm Not Dead Yet!" update is now available. And it is a MAJOR update. It turns out Full Court Heroes was only mostly dead. The short version is that the gameplay is much improved, and while Franchise Mode is not done yet, it would be fair to call it feature complete. We've added the playoffs, championships, power rankings, financial management, trades, scouting, the draft, the ability to save and continue franchise games later, the ability to rewatch franchise games including simulated games, and a lot more. Better support for Steam Input, added Mod sharing via Steam Workshop, and added achievements. The detailed release notes are below followed by some screenshots.

0.8.0 (Early Access) - "I'm Not Dead Yet"

Changes

Gameplay

• Added bounce pass, lob pass in addition to chest pass

• Implemented alley oops

• Implemented layups

• Improved dunks

• Added ability to switch to a zone defense or man-to-man defense

• Fixed intentional fouls

• Improved the play of CPU-controlled offensive and defensive play

• Restored closer to pacing from earlier demos of Full Court Heroes

• CPU-controlled teams now make substitutions based on fatigue, foul trouble, planned rotations, or emptying the bench when the game is out of hand late.

• CPU-controlled teams adjust their pace late in games to try to catch up or slow down to preserve a lead

• CPU-controlled teams will intentionally foul very late in games trying to catch up

• CPU-controlled teams will switch defensive systems in response to offense

• Improved screens and calling for screens

• Tuned player ratings and tendencies to mimic realistic professional-style rosters

Franchise Mode

• Redesigned franchise menu system to present more options to the player

• Simulated games use full deep simulation so that there is no difference between simulated games and games which were observed in CPU vs CPU mode.

• Simulated games can be watched after the fact to see how a box score was generated

• Added a league calendar view that lets you see the season calendar for the whole league

• Added a more robust stats and league leaders screen to view stats for the league, conference, or per team.

• Added the ability to stop a franchise game in progress and come back to finish it later

• Added power rankings that update weekly during the regular season

• You can now finish a season, playing through the playoffs through the championship series

• Added the ability to see playoff picture throughout the regular season (including magic numbers, etc)

• Added UI to view playoff bracket throughout playoffs.

• Added the ability to modify default coaching strategies and depth charts as the season goes on

• Added player progression (and an option to manually choose/apply skill progression)

• Added the ability to view the current roster of your team (and other teams).

• Added a championship trophy presentation/celebration scene

• Added Messages UI to view management-related messages like trade offers, etc.

• Added UI to view and manage team financials, offer contract extensions, and waive players

• Added the ability to make trades, and handle free agency

• Added draft classes

• Added a post-season/offseason flow that includes options, draft, re-signing players, free agency, and finalizing the roster.

• Added the ability for CPU teams to propose and accept trades

• Added season awards: MVP, 6th Man, Rookie OTY, Coach OTY, Scoring Title, Most Improved Player, Defensive Player of the Year

• Added the ability to do scouting with a limited number of scouting assignments to gain more detailed information about draft-class player's stats.

• Added the ability to generate next season and advance to the next year after finalizing the offseason

• Added the ability to save & come back later and continue a game in franchise mode

Modding

• Changed mod format so mods can be shared and built with a single file

• Implemented an importer to import mods from old version in previous Early Access release

• Added support for sharing and subscribing to mods via Steam Workshop

General/Technical

• Rebuilt game/engine from scratch using C++ and SDL 3

• Added full Steam Input support

• Added Steam Achievements

• Added support for Steam floating keyboard for text entry on Steam Deck or Steam Machine (Big Picture)

• Improved game's stability

• Redesigned some menus and GUIs

• Added 2 new music tracks

• Fixed application icons on Windows, Mac, and Linux

• Added full unit test coverage

• Added integration testing that runs on every build that simulates 50 random full games and verifies they complete successfully

• Added CI/CI to create Windows, Linux, and Mac builds and upload to Steam in a predictable, repeatable way

Upcoming Changes

My immediate focus is to continue to finish and improve franchise mode, especially adding custom draft classes, and then begin working on the remaining pieces needed for online multiplayer

Screenshots