This month I released only one one version with some minor fixes. Then I started to work on yellow/red cards and injuries and I'm still working on this today. I highly underestimated the effort to implement the red card logic system.
Here the full changelog and some more information of the only version released this month.
Red card rules in Futsal
The red card rules for Futsal are a bit more complex than for Football. Instead of playing the whole match with one player less, there is only a 2 minutes penalty. Once the penalty is over, the team can substitute the suspended player with another one. The substitute can enter the field earlier, if the opponent team scores a goal. Except the scoring team is also playing with less players due to red cards. In that case nothing special happens and the 2 minutes penalty timer keeps running.
While this might not sound too complicated to implement, it was in my case. The main problem was that the match engine expected that a team has an list filled with 5 players. Now with a red card, that is no longer the case and I had to refactor quite some code. I also had to adapt the whole player changing system and logic. The cool thing: substitutes wait now in the change zone, for the other player to leave the field. This also means that not all substitute will enter the same time. Changes can now also be done while the clock is running.
Additionally there was the "match buffer" issue that I also had to solve. The match engine currently uses a buffer, where all player positions and match events are saved. The match UI only shows the "oldest" buffer entry, while the match engine is already "in the future". This way when a key action or goal happens in the future, the action can be shown. But with red cards or injuries, the user needs to react immediately. Therefore I had to the buffer to jump to the latest entry in such case. This cuts out the buffered seconds, but was the only and easiest way I found to implement this.
Additionally the UI also needed changes, like showing the penalty timers for teams and players. Now it is also possible to bring less than 14 players to a match. Therefore the formation view was updated a works differently now.
The next version
I really hope that the version v0.8.6 will be released very soon. I won't give a time estimate, because I did that already many times and I was always wrong. But at least at the time of writing, the red card system works. Therefore I just need to polish the UI and make some more tests, to be sure everything works.
Two new languages (coming soon)
This month 2 new languages have been added to the game: Persian and Khmer. I also had to add a new font, to support Khmer script. Thanks a lot to all translation contributors, for making this game accessible to so many users!
Sadly I was not yet able to release the new languages, because I'm blocked with the red cards. Only good thing: I learned now that adding a new features can block others from being released. Therefore from the next version, I will start to work on feature branches. That way the main branch only contains tested and verified code. If new languages are added or critical bugs are found, I can release update much faster easier.
Currently known bugs
There are 2 bugs that currently haunt the game
Unable to open game on Motorola g20
Editor crash when generating players on newly created data pack
Bug 1. happens due to Godot 4.7.1 bug about the platform entropy polling for some Android devices. More details on this can be found on Github at the related issue. This will be fixed with v0.8.6, that will ship Godot 4.7.2 with the bug resolved.
Bug 2. will also be fixed with v0.8.6. Anyways if someone happens to face this bug, simply save the data pack and reload it. With this workaround there will be no crash.
Again, now I will use feature branches, so that such critical bugs can be fixed immediately.
Road to v1.0
Everything is still in time and v1.0 is planned for November. Even with the big delay I had this month, there should still be enough time.
v0.8.6 will add 2 out of the 5 still missing features
Player injuries
Yellow and red cards
Player training
Club board, that defines season goals and can hire and fire managers
National teams
Next feature will be player training and probably the club boards. Once done, I will evaluate if national teams will be part of v1.0 or not. I need time to test and play the game intensively before the full release. Therefore it highly depends on how much time is left to test and polish. The last new features will be added at start of October. After that there will be a feature freeze, to have time for testing and polishing.
More news will follow in the upcoming devlog next month.