Modifying Files.

Hi everyone.


Over the past several days we’ve had a few people reach out to us asking for help modifying game files. While we’re glad that people are having fun with the game, we cannot help you modify it.


While some files are open source, they are for your own personal use and you edit them at your own risks. Making changes to these files is unsupported by Canuck and we do not endorse or encourage anyone to use 3rd party trademarks. We certainly cannot help you make those changes. Not only would that put us in a bad position, but we also need to focus on improving the game and adding new features.

We would also ask that you not send us screen shots of the game that show non-shipping content.


Thanks for your understanding.

Canadian Football 2017 – 1.5.4.0

Canadian Football 2017 – 1.5.4.0

Content Update Summary

Issues Address

A number of items brought up post launch have been address in this content update. Some items are platform specific and are as noted.

The game's passing was generally considered to difficult and we've addressed that by;

• Simplifying the algorithm used to determine a catch. A receiver’s odds to catch a pass is now based purely on a user configurable slider. This slider can be found on the Game Settings screen.
  
  
• Reworking the passing button system.
   

1. (All Platforms) Improved on screen instruction. Although the game has always provided multiple help screens prior to entering the active game play, players required the ability to go back and look at those instructions. We’ve added these screens to the game’s updated pause screen.
    
2. (All Platforms) We’ve also added more on-screen instructions during game play to help guide the player through the process of kicking and passing.
   
3. (All Platforms) Pause Screen. Players were exploiting the pause screen. This has been addressed.
   
4. (All Platforms) Pause Screen. Added the ability to pause the game without needing to press the XBox Home button and bring up the HUD.
   
5. (All Platforms) Fixed an issue with not being able to cycle through defenders on kick returns.
   
6. (All Platforms) Fixed a crash bug if the player pressed a button on the controller during a pass that was not assigned to a receiver.
   
7. (All Platforms) Fixed an issue where, given specific ball placement on the field prior to the start of a play, certain players could get ‘stuck’ while moving past the goal post.
   
8. (All Platforms) On-field players no longer to continue to process the previous play’s animations coming out of their huddle.
   
9. (All Platforms) Fixed an issue that saw, under very specific conditions, the wrong team kicking off to start the second half of the game.
   
10. (XBox One) Fixed an issue with the engagement screen that would sometimes cause the controller used to engage to not be the controller with control.
    
11. (XBox One) Fixed an issue with the Play Selection screen not picking up on a change in controller if the user paused the game while on that screen, then changed controllers via disconnection of one, and reconnection of another. The controller would change for the player, but the screen was still listening to the old controller.
    
12. (All Platforms) Fixed an issue with the Play Selection screen when pausing the game while selecting a kickoff play. While on the Kickoff Play Select screen it was possible to pause the game, exit pause, hit the (B) button and be allowed to select a standard offensive play.
    
13. (XBox One) Fixed an occasional crash bug progressing from the engagement screen / main menu to the team select screen.
    
14. (All Platforms) Player Settings are now bound to a specific title update. This will require a player to re-choose their novice player settings (by simply picking yes or no) after the update is applied, but it prevents the game from loading out of date data for that particular version of the title.
    
15.  (All Platforms) Fixed an issue that would incorrectly start the quarter clock after a time out was called.

The Past - The Present - The Future

It’s been a bit over a week now since the launch of Canuck Play’s first title, Canadian football 2017 for the XBox and PC Desktop. Like any other game, or movie, or TV show, there have been both positive and negative reviews. We get daily tweets, emails, and Facebook posts telling us, not only how much fun people are having with the game, but also how they’d like to see it improved going forward. We listen to all of it so please keep that feedback coming. We evaluate everything and try to address the suggestions that we can.

The Past

During its development and especially this past month, Canuck Play, and this project in particular, has had a great deal of media exposure. Radio and TV interviews from coast to coast and from outside the country, as well as local and national newspapers, have given us a shout out. Thanks again to all those that took the time to speak with us, and everyone that listened in or read the stories.

The 2 most common questions asked have been;

1. What was the impetus for doing a project like this? This is probably a story for another day.
2. Why is there no professional license attached? This is something I’d like to speak about here.

Let’s jump inside a blue Police box and go back in time to April of 2016. That’s when, after several weeks of trying, we had an opportunity to sit down and try to present our plan and ideas for bringing a licensed Canadian football title to market. Part (but not all) of our proposal included;

1. Microsoft as a publishing partner covering costs of most hardware and software. This included XBox development kits (which are themselves worth a few thousand dollars) and the same publishing agreement as large game studios.
2. We had the Peterborough Innovation Cluster providing us office space and administrative services – free of charge. They are also specialist in funding services.
3. We had a proposed development budget that comprised of $500,000 private funding which was to be combined with various dollar matching* digital start up grants such as the Bell Digital Media Fund, OMDC, and other job creation grants. There were also tax incentives such as SHRED available. Tax incentives come later in the project but are still accounted for on the budget. This meant the total proposed development budget was pushing up towards the $1 million mark.
4. We also had a playable prototype – the same prototype that was used as part of the pitch to Microsoft. So we were more than just people with an idea, we had something to show.
5. People extremely passionate and knowledgeable about sport.

*A dollar matching grant means that, for every $1 you wish to receive, you need to already have that $1 in the bank. Some of these grants are stackable - you can use money from one grant to dollar match towards a second. But all have minimum amounts you can apply for.

In summary, our proposal was backed by two solid partners covering major portions of expense and a budget that was in-line with expected returns for a Canadian football video game. It’s important to keep in mind that a Canadian football video game, licensed or not, is not going to generate a million in sales. It’s just not. It’s a smaller sport only played inside a small market country. Even a fully licensed title, at best, is a break even opportunity – at best. A small budget and a small team building it for the passion rather than the dollars, along with supportive partners, is really the only viable way to bring something of this kind to market.

What we discovered during our one brief face-to-face meeting was that our definition of what a Partnership could be did not line up with what other’s wanted a Partnership to be.

With that the project suffered a rather large set back. As an unlicense title the project lost about 95% of its private funding (only our own money was left in the pot). Without private funding, we no longer had access to the dollar matching grants. Compounding the loss of up front funding we were no longer able attract any additional sponsors. “Half time brought to you by XYZ!” was no longer something we could do.

Beyond monetary setbacks, the lack of a license also meant we ran into challenges attracting the attention of others in the Canadian football community such as the Player’s Union, Football Canada, Canadian Football Hall of Fame, or even the national broadcast partner. For whatever reasons, many never returned our calls or emails.

The end result of all this being the whole project fell to two people. The funding to create upwards of 6 new full time positions in the city simply went away. Here is where most sane people would have said “$&#@ it!” and walked away from the project. But my partner Sheryl and I are a bit crazy and thankfully, we were not quite on our own.

We still had the support of Microsoft and the Peterborough Innovation Cluster, and an opportunity that was never going to come again. No established game development studio in the country has ever shown, even the slightest, interest in a Canadian football game project. So if there were ever the chance, this was it, we could not waste the opportunity of having those two partners on side.

Sheryl and I went back to the drawing board and reworked what we thought we could do with just our own private money and 18 months to deliver. It meant facing a hard truth; it meant that this was no longer going to be a game with bleeding edge AAA visuals and 50 play modes playable on every game platform known to man. It became, at that point, the very definition of “An Indie Game Project”. It would be a game with what we termed ‘functional visuals’, one play mode, and a goal to lay ground work. If an aspect of the project couldn’t be done in-house by us, it had to be set aside for later. If adding a feature meant time away from the core, that feature would be set aside for later. Start small, start basic, and start to grow.

The majority of our personal funding went towards a motion capture system to allow us to bring animation into the title - the game currently has around 200 unique animations. The rest was used to cover basic expenses through development.

The Present

Scoot forward in time 18 months and Canadian football 2017 releases on two platforms. Everyone, especially us here at Canuck Play, acknowledges the game had some bumps coming out of the box. It’s the sort of thing that happens when you have a small team missing critical partners. I am however happy to say that the vast majority of those bumps have been ironed out. Since the game’s release we’ve already reworked the passing mechanics based on player feedback as well as addressed other items that were discovered post release. With these updates the player feedback on our Facebook page has been overwhelmingly positive. When a commenter writes “Everything they’re doing is perfect.” we try not to argue that point.

Updating and improving the title will continue to be an ongoing process. The plan for this title, at least since April 2016, has been to release a foundation and iterate. And iterate. And iterate. While large studios work on a yearly cycle, we’re currently planning on a monthly iteration cycle.

The Future

There is good news. With the revenue generated from just the first week of sales, we have been able to reinvest funds back into the title and I’m happy to say we have hired a very talented 3D modelling agency to work with us - something we had lost the ablity to do earlier. Our first task is to bring the game’s various on-field player models from 1st generation visuals to Next Generation visuals. We will be replacing the existing 2 variations of player model with between 6 and 8 variations, each unique to their position, with the aim to be 1st in class and compare directly to any player model visual produced by any studio – any – studio. This contract has just been signed and work just started, so we’re a few months away from them making their debut, but it’s important that you to know what is coming down the pipe because it’s your support that is allowing us to do it.

Along with new visuals, we will be investigating new features. We have been approached by an eSports company with the idea of adding an eSports tournament mode to the game. And given the great fun everyone had during the title’s Launch Event tournament, this is something we’re looking into. We’re also looking at adding a basic season mode.

And there’s more good news. I’m also happy to announce today that Microsoft has approved our proposal for Canadian Football 2018 – tentatively scheduled for the June/July 2018 period. 

The Razor for 2018 is ‘Full Customization on All Platforms’. While this is technically a fairly trivial thing to do, there are legal questions around what can and cannot be done. Canuck is subject to Canadian laws for ‘User Generated Content’ (UGC) which differ greatly from American law. Just because company XYZ in the US can do something, doesn’t mean we can. We’re currently working with a legal firm in Canada that specializes in video game law to determine what’s possible. Obviously we’ll keep you posted about that along the way.

Thank you again for your continue support of this project. 

David Winter 

President and Co-founder

XBox Controllers and Steam

Hi everyone.

We've had a couple mentions of players of the PC edition not being able to get their XBox controllers to work with the title.

Please make sure to disable the configuration for XBox and PS4 in Steam's big picture. The issue comes from Steam trying to make these act like a Steam controller and interfering with the game's native support for Xbox controllers.

How To: Open Steam Big Picture->Settings->Controller Settings and remove the check boxes for [PS4 Configuration Support] & [Xbox Configuration support]. Unplug and re-plug your controller and restart the title. This should correct the problem.

The Long Game: Mastering the pass in Canadian football 2017

When Canadian Football 2017 was released on July 26th, the immediate feedback was that the passing was too difficult. We got it. We heard you.

Why was it too difficult? Well because we over complicated things. In this post I hope to address those concerns.

Throwing the ball.

On release, the game had two passing styles; Touch Pass and a Bullet Pass. A quick touch of a button gave you a nice touch pass and holding the button down put more power on the ball. While this worked once you got used to it, many people just felt it seemed to ‘lag’ because the QB would wait for the button to be released before starting his throw.

How we addressed it. 
Going forward the game has a new passing system. We flushed the old one and built one that should work for everyone (well, most people anyway). And there’s a bonus!

Starting with the first XBox One update (which should be live around August 2nd) passing in the game will now have 3 styles;

Passing Actions in Canadian Football 2017

The primary way to pass the ball is just tap the button for the receiver you want to throw to. Tap meaning a quick press and release. The QB will not start his throwing motion until you release the button. If you tap and release in less than ½ second the QB will throw a nice touch pass.

If you tap the button to start the throw, then tap it a second time -- before the ball is released --, the pass will be thrown as a lob ball with lots of air under it.

If you hold the button down for more than ½ second, the QB will throw a bullet pass. Bullet passes to a receiver that are within 10 yards are very hard to catch.

This should accommodate most people that want instant throwing but also help those that want to be able to add a little finesse to their passing game.

Receiving.

The initial design for passing in this version of the game was designed around short throws of 15 yards or less. Moving methodically down the field in chunks. You could make longer throws of course, but those became high-risk, high-reward. There was less than a 60% chance of making a pass longer than 30 yards – which is still higher than real life. This ‘chance of catching’ was calculated based on the distance of the pass, the Hands rating of the receiver, the weather, the angle of the throw, and a few other things.

The results, while statistically not too far off from real life, resulted in a lot of frustrated throws. 

How we addressed it.

Game Settings screen starting in next update of the XBox One edition.

We’ve reduced the complexity of the reception formula down to a simple slider on the Game Settings screen. This is the pass catch modifier and does work in conjunction with the receivers Hands rating. We also still have the consideration of short passes being more likely to be caught that really long ones, but even that has been changed to allow for more completed long passes.

The results are a greatly increased number of catches.

But just catching the ball doesn’t mean your receiver will hang on to it. If you throw the ball to a receiver that is going to be crushed as soon as he touches the ball, he’s very likely going to drop it. The chance of this receiver hanging on to the ball after a ‘bang bang’ play is based on his hands rating as well as weather. Rainy games make the ball harder to hold on to.

Okay, so yes the passing was frustrating out of the box. We hope that these changes address the majority of concerns and allow for both types of players; those that like ball control, and those that like to chuck it down field.

Thanks for your support of the project.

Canadian Football 17 & “The Waggle”

Fans of Canadian football know it well... ‘The Waggle’. It’s a rather generically used term to describe backfield motion towards the line of scrimmage before the snap of the ball. If all the offensive players are on the same page, the Quarterback snaps the ball just as receivers are hitting the line of scrimmage at full running stride.

Athletes arriving in Canada and playing the sport for the first time often claim this is one of the most difficult aspects to get used to. It’s unique to Canada’s game and takes a lot of practice to get right.

So how does this work in Canadian Football 2017? 

We’ve addressed this by having the additional step of requiring the player to put the offense in motion via a button press, and then having a second button press to snap the ball.

Once the offense has lined up in their initial formation positions, you would press the (B) button on the controller and start the players motion. As receivers get up towards the line of scrimmage, you then need to snap the ball with the (A) button. If you time it right, receivers are in full stride crossing the line of scrimmage. If you mistime it, one of the receivers will be over the neutral zone and off side.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! --- That’s way too complicated! I keep getting called for going offside!

Yes, we understand. Novice players and those simply not used to the rule have given us feedback about this and we’ve added an option to enable ‘Snap On Waggle’.

While you the player still start the motion, enabling the ‘Snap On Waggle’ will put the snap of the ball into the hands of the computer. You can still manually snap the ball before that if you wish, but it’s not something you would have to do.

When you start your very first game of Canadian football 2017, you will be asked if you would like to play as a novice player, if you say yes, then the Snap On Waggle option is switched on, and the 20 second play clock is switched off. This allows you to play the game with slightly adjusted rules until you’re comfortable with 3 down football. These and other settings can be changed at any time prior to kick-off via the game settings screen.

The Waggle is a unique and challenging part of Canadian football and we think it will provide gamers with an new challenge. But we also understand there are new players out there that would rather not deal with that right from the start. Hopefully this solution will accommodate both sides.

thanks

Canadian Football 2017 and the PS4

Arguably the 2nd most common question Canuck Play is asked about the forthcoming Canadian football title, besides ‘Is there a license?’ is – ‘where’s the PS4 version?’ – or at least, some variation of that question. The answer to that is not all that complicated but given that it’s asked so often I thought it best to create a formal explanation of how we arrived where we are, and what we’re going to try for in the future.

This game project’s kickoff occurred in December of 2015 when a former co-worker suggested I contact Microsoft regarding a new program they established to help independent development studios get on the XBox One console. Sheryl Loucks, my partner in all things, and I put together and submitted a business plan shortly after. This plan included a pitch as to why a Canadian football game would be unique in the market, what our proposed budget would be (one that included a pro license and one without), and a prototype. The prototype was something I’d had kicking around for a while and wasn’t really doing anything with, but it existed and it was enough to pique Microsoft’s interest. Within about 30 days we’d signed a publishing agreement as well as a developer agreement which meant Microsoft covered the cost of development kits and software licensing (so they didn’t give us cash, but we didn’t have to spend any on those items either, so it worked out to be the same thing). 

It was also around this time that we became clients of the Peterborough Innovation cluster and they have been extremely helpful in covering additional costs such as a small amount of office space, and giving us access to various services.

When April 2016 rolled around and it was obvious there was no movement on the pro license we went back to Microsoft and explained that our budget had essentially been cut by about 99%. They seemed un-phased and agreed that Canuck would just have to take the long way and they were happy to continue to support the project.

So we were covered on the XBox One and we knew the PC was not going to be a problem, so that left only Sony and the PS4. We had reached out to Sony at roughly the same time as we started discussions with Microsoft, but it took until well into June 2016 before we had any replies to any of our enquiries. When we did get a reply their biggest concern was lack of budget and no license. After some back and forth we did eventually sign a publishing agreement in October of 2016. So yes, a really big step, but we’re not quite there yet.

Unfortunately Sony does not have an equivalent to the Independent Developer program. While there are many independent game studios creating content for the PS4, there was at the time (or even now as far as we know) no supportive program. So costs of development kits and any associated software licenses come out of our pocket. PS4 development hardware is very, very expensive. So we have an agreement in place, but it’s up to us to do everything else.

We also ran into a problem of time. There’s just never enough of it.

Every console game must conform to specific platform requirements. This is normally things like making sure the game has achievements and unlockables, any user profile management is dealt with properly and consistently, naming conventions are met (no PS4 button icons showing up on an XBox for example), and various other needs are taken care of. And because each platform uses a completely different way of doing these same things, you have to create a completely different code stream to deal with each platform. Unfortunately, given the late date we got the ball rolling with the Sony agreement, we just simply did not have enough physical time to build for both platforms. Not with the resources we were left with when our license dependent funding wasn’t there any longer.

So where does that leave things. Well, right now the plan is to get the XBox One and PC platforms out the door. They’re the priority. Once that’s done, and there’s some revenue coming in, we can go back and look at the PS4. At the absolute earliest we are looking at some time in the late fall for a PS4 edition, but even that is something that shouldn’t be taken as written in stone.

So the short form of this long answer is Yes, we absolutely agree that the game needs to be on as many platforms as possible. And we’re going to try and do that, it’s just going to take some work from us and support from you.

Thanks 

David