Hi everyone.
Today is the first day of 2018 and so I thought it would be a good time to give a quick update on the progress of the Canadian Football 2018 game development.
Before we get to that though, we're going to be making an announcement about the game and showing off all the details of the 2018 edition towards the beginning of March. So stay tuned for that.
Going into this year's edition, there were two major goals; 1. Publish to the PS4 platform - and we're well on our way to that. 2. Completely revamp the game's visuals.
As part of our visual refresh, we're introducing completely new player models, the game's User Interface has been redesigned, as well, all the stadiums are being rebuilt.
To illustrate this, you can see below the partially completed but fully revamped 'Vancouver Stadium'. The differences, when compared to the 2017 edition of the same stadium, are striking. Both images are captured from inside the 3D modeller used to build them (not the game engine). I've switched on the display of wire frame outlines to better show the geometry. And as this is not the game engine, there are no shadows, ambient occlusion, or any other rendering post processing going on.
2017 Edition. Last year's version of this stadium used flat, angled, planes for the seating sections and steps between them. The seats were a simple texture. The concourse area is just a textured wall. The press box has minimal details, and the stadium rafters and roof sections are made of basic textured sections. The lights are also just textures. The total number of polygons (triangles) used for this stadium was about 2,100.
2018 Edition. Now, every seating section, and stairs, are stepped with each row having its own level. There will be several thousand individual seats added once inside the game engine. The concourse area is now fully modelled, including the support pillars that were just textured previously. Spectator and player entry tunnels are full geometry that extend back into the building. The roof rafters and supports are now full geometry rather than textures. The same is true for the light racks. The simple textures are now fully modelled lights. The total number of polygons (triangles) used for this stadium is about 23,300 (so something around 11x the number of polygons). Once the seats are included, this stadium is over 700,000 polygons.
These comparison images are intended to be just a quick update as to the progress being made on this (new) year's edition of the game. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm quite happy with the progress that's being made.
thanks for checking in.
Hi Everyone.
Just a quick note to let you know that the December update of Canadian Football 17 is now live on the XBox One and will be going live on Steam on Sunday (the 10th).
In this update;
- [ALL PLATFORMS] Corrects an issue that could block a second controller from being recognized in 2 player games.
- [PC DESKTOP] Now reloads all plays each time the game enters into the stadium, this prevents the need to restart the game completely after creating new plays from scratch.
A complete breakdown of what the plan is for 2018 will be made public in the next few weeks.
thanks
Hi everyone.
Below is part II of the dev blog series.
PS4 Update
I'm happy to announce that as of late last night (November 27) we had the latest edition of our football title up and running on PS4 development hardware.
Beyond the obvious controller branding, there are numerous fundamental code differences between the various platforms - code that works on one platform may not work on all of them - and so it takes some time to make changes to the code base to accommodate new platforms.
While there is still a great deal of work to do to get all the features working on all platforms, there was indeed a Happy Dance in the office when the title launched on the console and we were able to get into a game on the field. There's still a lot of work to do but we're well on our way and on schedule.
Graphics Refresh
Beyond the PS4 deployment success, we're also closing in on our final player model artwork. The game will feature different player model styles for different positions each with a much higher detail level than was shown in 2017.
It should be pointed out that the uniform layout is completely different from 2017 as well, with each player type having its own variation of the uniform file. So unfortunately, existing custom uniforms will not carry forward to new editions of the game.
Stadiums will also be getting a make over with more detail in the buildings themselves, but we're also working on a process to provide 3D spectators in the stands.
Team & Roster Editor
Outside of the visuals, the team and player editing functionality is progressing on schedule. It is now possible to proceed into the edit mode of the game and rename teams and players, change player skill ratings, edit depth charts (on a formation by formation basis), and change a few other basics as well. For team and roster editing, it will certainly help if you have a keyboard attachment for your controller, but you can use the on-screen keyboard as well (it's just a bit slower to use).
Fan Fest
Via Twitter, it came to Canuck's attention that during last weeks championship game fan fest, the very first question asked of league executives was regarding our title and a professional license. While we've not spoken to anyone from any professional league office in well over a year, it's great to hear that fans of our game are raising the question. So to whomever it was that asked the question, thanks for your support.
thanks
Hi everyone.
'Progressing Towards 2018' will be a series of short blogs that basically document the development process from this point until the release of the game next year.
While Saskatchewan was rolling over Ottawa on this playoff Sunday, the game was going through it's first stages of updates.
- The game engine has been updated to Unity 2017.2 (the most recent stable release).
- The game's User Interface now automatically swaps controller icons depending on the platform the game is running on.
- Updated a couple of shaders to improve performance for DirectX 12.
- Begun the process of adding the team and player editing screens but updating the title screen's menu.
- Updated to the latest Steam SDK for the PC Desktop version.
Hi Everyone.
The XBox One Update that was planned for late October has passed Microsoft certification and should be going live and available for download later today (November 9th).
To say this is a substantial update is an understatement. It's just about a new title (hence the extra time for certification). The full list of updates and changes are below;
- The game engine has been updated to Unity 5.5.4p4.
- Added a full
Season Play Mode. This mode allows the player to play out a full
schedule of games, accumulate individual player and team statistics, as
well as progress through a full playoff tree. Note: Season Mode is a
single player experience available primarily to the active profile selected
from the title screen.
- Add a full Practice Mode that allows players to practice executing plays outside of normal game play.
- Practice Mode is primarily a single player mode available to the active profile.
- No achievements or stats are accumulated in this mode.
- Practice Mode's on-field settings (such as the line of scrimmage) are not retained from session to session.
- The game now allows for playing under 2 rule sets;
- A full set of professional Canadian Rules.
- A subset of American football rules.
- Introduction of a completely new main menu design.
- Corrected a game crash issue. If a field goal attempt hit the goal post assembly and then hit a kicking team player the title would lock up. This has been corrected as any kick that hits the goal post assembly should be automatically be a dead ball.
- Corrected an issue with the CPU calling back to back time outs in certain clock situations.
- Corrected a texture issue with the Toronto stadium.
- Corrected the problem of offensive linemen 'jittering' while dropping back from the line of scrimmage. Pass blocking movement is much smoother now.
- Corrected an issue of the Right Guard not picking up the correct defender when the defense was in a 5 down linemen formation.
- Improved backfield blocking assignment logic.
- Corrected the issue of kick returners 'warping' into position to recover the ball if it bounced before they could catch it in the air.
- Corrected the issue of Defensive Backs on human controlled teams occasionally breaking off task after the pass had been thrown causing them to be out of position when the ball arrived at the target.
We hope you enjoy these additions and improvements to the game.
thanks
Hi everyone
Last week Canuck released a pretty substantial update to Canadian Football 2017. Multiple new game modes and new features added along with numerous other small changes.
Today we'll be posting another update to Steam that will address a few smaller items that cropped up afterwards.
- We've corrected the issue of the Man 2 Man coverage dialog loading empty in the Play Designer.
- Corrected the problem of offensive linemen "jittering" while dropping back from the line of scrimage during pass blocking. The pass blocking movement is much smoother now.
- Corrected the issue of Right Guards not picking up the correct player when the defense is running a play with 5 down linemen.
- Improved the back field blocking assignment logic.
- Corrected an issue with kick returners 'warping into position should the ball bounce before they can field the kick.
- Corrected the issue of playoff games that are still tied at the end of Over Time not continuing until there's a winner.
- Corrected an issue of Defensive Backs on human controlled teams occasionally breaking off task after pass is thrown and ending up out of position.
The XBox One version of the game includes the majority of corrections noted above and is still going through the certification process. Our goal is to get the XBox update pushed live around the middle of November.
thanks
With the release of the most recent PC edition of Canadian Football 2017 we've included a couple of items to help you create leagues and adjust rosters.
League Templates
After you have downloaded the most recent version from Steam, you will find an additional folder in the game's installation directory - TeamTemplates.
This folder contains templates for league sizes of 10, 16, and 32 teams. Each contains default team uniforms for each team as well as a matching roster file.
To use these templates, simply go into the StreamingAssets folder and rename the existing 9 team league folder to Teams_9. Then copy the folder for the league size you want and rename it to Teams. At this point the game should start with the new teams and league size.
NOTE: You can only play with one league size at a time. This version of the game will completely reset the season play data file anytime you change the number of teams in the league. Each time the game loads, it checks to ensure the teams on disk match the teams in the season data file. If they're not the same, the season gets reset from scratch. Do not change your team sizes unless you want to reset your season.
Roster Maker Utility
The current edition of the game does not include in-game editing of roster data. However Canuck has provided a small utility that will allow you to edit the rosters outside the game. This utility also includes all the appropriate source code. You will need a knowledge of C# development and have access to Visual Studio 2017, but anyone with this knowledge could use the basics of the source to create a number of specialized tools.
The rosters created by this utility are purposefully designed to be very flat with little difference between teams. The purpose of this tool is to generate a working roster.xml file.
We hope that you will find these two addition helpful.
thanks
