dev diary #42 End of 2021 Season/Beginning of 2022 Offseason

[Rocketcan]

Hello Coaches!

 

Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA!

 

This Dev Diary is a bit special. It is our first one to comment on how a completed season has gone! Well sort of (Good luck to Florida State (@Kirby) and Tulsa (@acewulf) this week in the National Championship!). We have a lot to cover in this one, so buckle up!

 

Thank You:

 

First off, I have to thank several people. I want to specifically thank Subsequent, Tuscan, Alex and Kirby for being the ones to really help develop things behind the scenes, administrate the website, and provide financially for the overhead of such an endeavor. I also want to thank people like Bellwood, Sarge, tsweezy, Wahoo, Darth, the Greene brothers and PoopyRhinoPickle for contributing to things like the Wiki, testing, icons, betting, graphics and overall site media engagement. Next on the list is the Selection Committee. You guys really did a great job in sifting through the top teams and producing a great bowl slate and playoff bracket. Lastly, I want to thank all of you that participated in the sim and hopefully had a good time. At the end of the day, we all do this so we can all have some fun, and having a great community is what makes that possible. There are so many people to thank it is impossible to name you all here. Please know that if you use this site, you are contributing to this community, and are greatly appreciated for it.

 

We still have things like All-conference teams and awards to handle, but that will be taken care of shortly.

 

Moving Forward:

 

Now that the first season is (almost) in the history books, what will happen now? Will this experiment die off? (SPOILER: It won't) How different will next season look? When will next season be? Hopefully the rest of this diary will answer those questions.

 

Things That Will Look Different:

 

Rosters/Progressions

The first thing that will look different are the rosters. Players will progress and advance a year and their attributes will be updated. While that system has not entirely been finished, it will be shortly. Also, recruits will be added to the rosters to give you an idea on how to field your team in 2022.

 

Interface

The next thing that will be different is how you interact with your teams. For college football, it will be entirely on the interface! That's right, all gameplans, depth charts, and recruiting will be handled on the interface as opposed to crazy, #REF-riddled Google Sheets! This should (hopefully) make interacting with the game a lot easier, efficient and enjoyable.

 

NewSim Engine

Hopefully, the days of strange penalties and negative yardlines will be a thing of the past. While I can't guarantee I will be able to fix everything (especially in one offseason), I can say that it will be much more stable and less buggy. I will also be looking to add in a couple of new features to make things interesting, but the priority will be fixing what is broken first. The list of new features to add has not been finalized. Expect Dev Diaries on how bug fixes and new features are going in the future. Also, there will be some structural improvements to the engine that make us nerds on the dev team very excited, like having the engine get it's data directly from the interface (EXICTING!!!).

 

NFL

That's right! The NFL is coming to SimFBA! There will be a beta season (just like the CFB beta season) that will probably mostly still run on Google Sheets (because we need to test this season to see how to integrate it into the interface). I would like if we could get all 32 teams filled with at least one user, and likely will not accept multiple people on a team until that condition is fulfilled. Most players will be generated randomly and we will then also have our first NFL draft and pre-draft process using the draft eligible seniors from this past college football offseason. Keep your eyes peeled for Dev Diaries on how the NFL will work.

 

When Will All Of This Happen?

 

Short Answer: TBD. Long Answer: Whenever all of the previously mentioned things are taken care of. The Dev Team has a to-do list full of stuff that we need to check off in order to be ready for the 2022 season, and it is involves getting quite a bit done. As a result, we estimate that sometime around the real-life Superbowl is a likely time to get in gear for the 2022 season.

 

Longer Answer: The more help we can get with ANY of these tasks, the faster things can go. We are always looking for anyone who is willing to spend some time and energy helping to build/code/test/brainstorm/whatever. Even if you don't think you have a particular skill, please reach out if you have time and are willing to assist. Every little bit helps us get closer to our goal.

 

I hope you all enjoy the National Championship Game, and let us know if you'd like to lend a hand this offseason!

 

Until next time,

 

Rocketcan

[BabaYaga]

Thanks again for putting all of this together. We all appreciate the group that has put all of the time and effort into it!

[joopear]

Thanks y’all for doing so much work. You guys are amazing.

[PoopyRhinoPickle]

Super excited for the future! Keep up the great work!

[Nittany Boiler]

Great job. Getting better every day.

[Sarge]

You and the teams work is equally appreciated!

 

Do we have an ETA on when team signup requests will be available for simNFL? Just curious. No rush intended.

[Rocketcan]

Likely soon. I would say this weekend.

[Ewade]

All the work from everyone is appreciated!!! It has been a great first year here!!! Keep it up and looking forward to all things in the future!!

[Pumph]

Alexa, play "Classic Battle" by Sam Spence

[SageBow]

Love you guys! To another awesome season!