At the start of the month, work continued on the generic crests. Progress was also made in negotiations. If you’re a good negotiator in terms of managerial skills, you can now receive several offers in a single day.
In Creative Mode, we started by implementing bonus points for big wins, amongst other things. Clubs can now also have points deducted in the Editor for their first season.
Then a long-missed programmer turned up out of the blue and got stuck in! The aim: to reduce the number of training sessions for the amateur and semi-professional leagues.
On Friday, there was more good news. In August, we’re looking forward to welcoming an intern to WAF28 who will be helping us with the editor and statistics. A first small step towards growth! At least as far as the initial editor tasks are concerned, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t include them in WAF27 as well. This means we’ll soon have two Schalke fans on the team.
By the end of the week, the German crests were finally finished; some final tweaks followed (toning down the ‘Gelsenkirchen’ text in light of recent events), after which the wallpapers were published on Discord.
The title screen and the front cover of the guide were also finalised.
On the visual front, Creative Mode was next on the agenda; we wanted to spruce up the numerous buttons a little, and tooltips with brief explanations were also a must (there was still some visual work to be done on this at the end of July).
As for the negotiations, we carried out an analysis of the entire process, after which we began optimising it.
We also created a design for descriptive city texts and entered some examples directly into the text database.
In the second week, progress was made primarily on the interface for the negotiations. As you can imagine, there’s now a lot more going on there during the week than before.
Creative Mode was completed and went into testing. Another major scene update was planned for the following week, this time again with a focus on new actions.
On the 7th, programming began on our third-to-last feature: honorary titles (formerly known as player titles, but those already existed). After that, the Player care manager was on the agenda (a new staff member, a relatively minor task), and then it was time for the first preparations of our improved tactics section as our big final stretch goal.
But first we programmed the system for notifying users about ‘failed’ negotiations. We have a huge number of newspaper reports, so we’ve tried to improve this aspect for now mainly in the interface.
We’ve also implemented a better solution for determining the salary demands of players signed for the reserve team of a top club.
For the transfer market, a complete table of neighbouring countries for all nations was created. This allows us to facilitate more realistic transfers, particularly for weaker players.
By the middle of the month, around 70% of the French translation had been completed. The table of neighbouring countries turned out to be relatively labour-intensive, but in return, the ‘honorary titles’ feature was finalised on the 13th and could then be tested. Negotiations once again focused on youth players and the reactions of agents.
On the 14th (Tuesday), work then began on the final area: tactics. The first step was to redesign the screens. Why so late? First, the scenes had to be populated with the relevant data; otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to test them properly at all.
By the middle of the month, the amateur/semi-professional training system was complete and ready for testing. Work was also carried out on player development. In this area, the ratings and downgrades have recently become much more influential. Adjustments were made here so that, for example, talent once again plays a greater role.
An additional screen for match preparation has been added for the new tactical settings, and adjustments have also been made to various other screens. Also feature has been added to the editor allowing you to set the colours of the shirt numbers there as well.
Finally, on the 16th, the French version was completed. It was then possible to check for errors in that version too. No further translations are planned for the time being.
Finally, this week the speed of the presentation of player ratings rising and falling was slowed down once again to add more excitement. We’ve also continued working on the international prestige system to ensure that Oceania doesn’t suddenly dominate world football through local title wins. But don’t worry – there’s still plenty of scope there too.
We carried on with bug fixes and, above all, with the implementation of the new tactics. The screens for this were finalised and integrated into the game. This also made the motivation screen much clearer. Naturally, the new features are also available for adjusting settings during matches.
From the 21st onwards, work began on the new “Player care manager” role. In the design department, improvements to the training camps were prepared for a possible WAF28. There will then be discounts depending on the staff member in charge; players can also earn discounts and other bonuses by making regular trips to the same location. The fans are going on holiday and the club is offering a great programme of activities.
By the middle of the week, all the planned tactical enhancements were fully implemented in the game. These include, for example, positional discipline, running behind on the left/right, chip shots and much more.
On the 24th, following the implementation of the final UI improvements to the training weeks and season planning, the next version of the match scenes was checked in and ready for testing.
Towards the end of the month, we tackled the awards ceremony and fixed the bug affecting the display of players. Otherwise, the focus was on negotiations and, more generally, on fixing further important bugs. An update to the city descriptions was also on the agenda. In addition to further European cities, we’ve also added the first African ones.
From 28 July onwards, the focus of development shifted entirely to bug fixing. In the museum, the WAF27 was neutralised; newspaper reports were corrected; the cross-table now also takes penalty shoot-outs into account; clubs are now displayed correctly in the ‘Club Info’ section during transfers; friendly matches now count as international matches, and so on. We are currently managing an average of around 15 fixes per day.
Changes have also been made to the text regarding form and satisfaction in the player info, so that these better match the stats. In addition, players with a yellow card are now highlighted in the line-up more clearly.
The selection of interested clubs in the Manager Career / Spectator Mode section has been improved to make the career more interesting and challenging. Furthermore, players now automatically lose a negative finishing skill as soon as they have scored enough goals.
In the meantime, Fabian has created a special scene data version that allows us to test the new tactical features more effectively. He is now hard at work adding the descriptions. For example, he has now finished work on almost all set-pieces. Among other things, this involves setting the type of defensive cover. With many attacking players involved in set-pieces, this should also lead to more counter-attacks.
The language selection has been narrowed down to the three final languages: German, English and French.
The aim for next week will now be to complete as many of the remaining tasks – both minor and major – as possible, and then draw up the final plan for the release. This includes, for example, selecting the music, compiling the credits, adding our supporters to the game database, and taking the next steps on Steam.
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