DISCLAIMER: All features discussed are in pre-alpha stage and may change during development. All UI should be considered placeholder and may change.
Hello again! I hope everyone has been enjoying the start of the football season. I have some really neat stuff to show off this time; it should feel a bit more dynamic with actually moving images...
Play animations
Yes, the rumors are true! Play animations are here in Pro Football Dynasty. Now, instead of just seeing the play result, with some more info like I showed off last time, you can actually watch the play happen, in real-time. This means you'll see the QB drop back, step up in the pocket to evade pressure, and throw the ball to the WR running a post for a touchdown. This adds so much anticipation and excitement to the playcalling experience, and I'm really happy to show it off.
What's nice about these animations is that I haven't had to change much in the sim engine; there aren't 2 engines to balance between the sim-through and watch-play versions. They both use the same core engine under the hood; the play animation logic just takes the play result, and knows what play was run on offense/defense so it knows how and where each player should be, and essentially reconstructs how that play must have looked. I'll still be tweaking this as I go, but I think it looks great so far.
On runs, you can see how much push your OL has (or how they were stuffed by the DL), and you can see which tackles were broken by your shifty HB. There are several views to watch a play from, with a more classic dot view, a headshot view, or a full portrait view as seen above.
That same view logic is also used when lining up for a play, so you can see the personnel on the play and audible if you think you should.
Now that there is so much visibility into how a play happened, there is more pressure on me to make a solid, realistic simulation engine. As part of this work I've made several improvements to the logic around tackling, YAC, pass target selection, and more, and will continue to improve it as I catch things that don't look quite right.
Locker room and team chemistry
Last devlog, I touched on new player 'meta attributes' like confidence, discipline, morale, wear & tear, and durability. I've also added another attribute, chemistry, which is basically how gelled with the team each player is. Players come in with low chemistry and build it up over the years; higher turnover means lower team chemistry.
Team chemistry has a few effects. The first is that low chemistry will incur more procedural penalties like false starts and illegal formations. The second is that chemistry can help dampen, or amplify, other meta attribute effects. A high chemistry team can brush off losses easier, keeping team morale high. A low chemistry team might let that loss fester and blame each other, lowering team morale. As with the other meta attributes, I'll continue working on these systems and add other events and effects to deepen how you manage the locker room.
Speaking of locker room, I've added a new page just for that, with a focused overview of each player on the team and how they are feeling, both mentally and physically. Here you can see averages of each meta attribute, see if any player is particularly low or needs action, and can view each position room to check in and make sure they're all buying in.
Eventually, this is where certain 'events' may occur that require your action as coach, making decisions that might help or hurt (or perhaps both, to different players) the team. So stay tuned!
Game modes and roles
I've finally got around to actually adding user roles and actions. At the start of the game, you can choose from 5 game modes: Franchise, GM, HC, OC, or DC. Franchise is the sort of 'School Dynasty' analog from FCCD, where you control everything and can't be fired. The other modes are more for roleplaying as a specific person in the league, rising through the ranks, making sure your boss likes you, and navigating a full 50 year career.
Each has a default set of actions that you can do, as DC you can call plays on defense and set the defensive depth chart, but can't make trades. As GM you can make trades but during gameday you just watch the game. These defaults can be overridden however for a full sandbox experience, allowing you to take as much control as you want. There are also options to automated actions that you don't care for, like as HC you don't care as much about hiring position coaches, so you can let that be taken care of for you. I'm hoping to make it as customizable as possible to allow for many different playstyles.
Hiring and firing staff
The coach and front office carousel got some love this past month, with staff turnover now modeled. There is still some work on the UI and logic side so I don't have great screenshots, but in general the hierarchy of each team is Owner -> GM -> Coach; the owner sets expectation arcs which may span several years (like make the playoffs within the next 2 seasons), and the GM is graded on checkpoints for that arc, who then sets yearly expectations for the HC.
The GM and HC are each given 'baseline' expectations, but they can choose to be more cautious or more aggressive in what they promise. Cautious means pushing back on an expectation that they think is unrealistic (like saying we can only win 7 games this year, not 9), at the cost of less XP and reputation gains at the end of the year. Aggressive means going big (we're winning a playoff game this year!), for increased gains but at the risk of missing that and overpromising.
Assuming they aren't fired at the end of the year, the GM and HC control their own staff. GM hires the Scouting Director and Medical Director, while HC hires his coordinators, position coaches, and strength and conditioning coach.
Portrait backgrounds
Speaking of all these different people you'll be hiring and interacting with during the course of your career, I'd like to show off the new portrait backgrounds that my artist has been hard at work on. Every role has a distinct background: the GM has his own office overlooking the field, the medical director has a white doctor's office, the S&C coach has a nice gym that he works from, even draft prospects have a dorm with a colored pennant of their college. You can see a nice collection of them below:
Each background was handcrafted and iterated upon by Greg Jacobs, who also created the player and staff portraits you see. Here's a video of his process in creating them:
Steam page v2
Finally, I do want to call out that I've completely redone the Steam page, with new screenshots, new GIFs and text in the description. Let me know what you think!
Thanks for reading!
Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/Bdsy9bwcqP
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Player portrait art and backgrounds by Greg Jacobs: https://lnk.bio/createabeast