Outage for player update

RubySoccer will be down for a few minutes so we can introduce the natural star rating to all existing players. For most players this will just slightly affect their likelihood of becoming stars, but for a few it could mean they will never become one or that they could be a star with less effort.

Star Players

It's been a while since we last used this blog for real development update, but I think it's still a good channel to give some technical details of new features that are not yet in the game. Up next: star players.

As you may have seen from our latest announcements and screenshots the star player feature is well under way. Today I have completed the code to make sure the parameters involved in the star players calculations are configurable without code changes so that they can be easily modified in the future. I have also implemented the logic to assign stars to players during the season tick. Yes, that's when the magic is going to happen.

Next steps: parametrize and code the effects of star players. These will include increased estimated value, increased wage demands, match performance bonus, player hire influence and increased marketing income to start with. Each star player will provide one and only one benefit that will not be revealed...unless maybe with scouting, but that's not been fully agreed yet.

Stay tuned for more updates here or elsewhere in the days to come!

Server maintenance

RubySoccer may become inaccessible during the next 2 hours or so due to server maintenance being performed in our server. Everything should be back to normal afterwards.

Anonymous comments disabled

We were forced to disable any comments from anonymous sources, because stupid bots found our blog and were making our life miserable. Sorry for the inconvenience.

New Server

While the DNS is not working, please access it here: rubysoccer. Our usual address (www.rubysoccer.com) should work again soon.

Reseting our dimensions

We should be back real soon.

cheers!

Diamond formation

I see a lot of people wanting to use a 4-4-2 diamond formation. Due to our mentality feature, it is not possible to put the defensive and offensive midfielders in the central midfield zone. That's why I'm posting this screenshot as an alternate diamond formation, putting the defensive midfielder as an offensive central defender.



Another option would be put the offensive midfielder as a defensive attacker. I think you got it. Let me know if this works for you guys ;-)

It is alive!!!!!

Breath. Now click here and enjoy. Don´t forget to send us your feedback, by email or forum. You can also post here :).

Today RS story begins. Let us have a lot of fun and make a lot of friends! Our first tick will be today, 2:00 PM (GMT -3). We decided to implement 6 ticks per day for our first dimension. Thank you for your vote on our poll!

ps: please note that we decided to go online despite the few icons that are missing :). We will update those asap.

Screen Help

Our Wiki has been updated with some screen help. It doesn't have screenshots yet but once the game goes online it will be easy to identify in the screens the elements described in the Wiki help. We've already started the final revision before the beta and some adjustments are being taken care of.

[DANILO] ps: wiki logo added too!

Players Evolution

Players evolution is done, which means we only have to add a few icons and review the whole thing before unleashing Ruby Soccer. As I told you, the end of August target is still possible, unless we hold it until monday due to our potential unavailability on weekends to take care of unexpected issues.

Ruby Soccer Wiki

The weekend wasn't completely lost, I was able to write some basic game concepts explanations and put it on our Wiki.

http://www.rubysoccer.com/mediawiki/index.php/Ruby_Soccer

I have also written some screen specific explanations, they will be available later today or tomorrow. Danilo hasn't read the whole text, so he may have something to add to what I wrote.

The purpose of the Wiki is to work as a game help. Check it out when you have some time and let us know what your impressions are.

Cheers.

Ruby Soccer and ManagerSim

While answering to Patrick's comment on this post about having ManagerSim's star system on Ruby Soccer, I realized that my answer deserved a new post.

ManagerSim was our start point, as it was the best free online soccer management game we've ever played. That's why our first version will be similar to MS in many aspects, and of course the best ones will be kept or improved over time, but we'll also add new features and change or remove some others.

That said, the answer to your question, Patrick, is no, we don't have plans for that, but it doesn't mean we'll never have the star system in the game. Keep in mind that we'll consider all user suggestions we receive and implement the more popular ones and those we think will make our game better. The game won't be that great if we don't have a great community!

As you guys can imagine we already have a long future tasks list and this list is likely to grow faster when we have our game up and running along with its forum. We only need to finish the players evolution system and do some cleaning tasks. Stay tuned, the big announcement will happen someday in the next week!

Cheers.

More on Players evolution

Today we had more coding on players evolution. That is the reason why there will be no screenshot.

We already have an evolution criteria system working and I hope we can finish everything around this subject asap.

After we put this behind, an online BETA will be REALLY close! After UI adjustments and a couple minor stuff, the game will be on.

Friendlies

It is now possible to invite other teams to friendly matches.





The turn you select must be at least the current turn + 1 and at most the last season turn. You can't schedule friendlies for the next season, at least on our first version. You can have more than one invitation for the same turn, but when the first invitation is accepted, the others are automatically cancelled/rejected. Invitations not answered until the turn when the match was supposed to happen are automatically cancelled. National cup matches cause friendlies and invitations scheduled to the same turn to be cancelled. AI teams can be invited to friendlies, but may reject the invitation.

Manager Settings Screen / Donator Flag

The post title is really straightforward. On the manager settings screen, for now, you can only choose if you want to receive dimension messages as emails.

The donator flag is a way to say thanks for those who are helping us to maintain the server. Just like managersim did :).

Match Attendance Improvements

Now we have the final version of the attendance calculation for the first Ruby Soccer version. The team division is now taken into consideration, along with team players quality and match importance, and also the way each element influences the final attendance changed. Results are now more realistic, as teams in the bottom of the table don't get full stadiums all the time.

Players evolution on the way

Already coloring the screen. Of course that this means that we have a whole database structure ready.

Match Attendance

Match Attendance is no more randomly generated, it is now based on team players quality (excluding youths) and match importance. The home team weight on the total attendance is much greater than the visitor team's.

Match importance is different from competition to competition. The importance of a league match is related to the team performance in the league, while the importance of a national cup match is related to the round being played (final, semi finals, quarter finals and so on).

p.s.: the server is ready to receive the game, including tick logic, we just need a little more coding before making Ruby Soccer available!

Players Unavailability

I guess that you guys, based on our history, were not expecting new features on the weekend. But hey, we wanted to surprise our readers! And also say: gee, we are really hard working on this game, you can count on us ;) !

RubySoccer is now able to show/deal-with the "suspensions status" of your team players. One can think: but how is that? Elementary, my dear Watson.

Here are the rules that we have decided to apply:

1. Cards have single competition effects. Which means that if your player receives a card in one competition, that will only affect that particular competition;
2. Two yellow cards received in the same or in different matches will suspend your player for that competition next fixture. The yellow card icon is just a warning: "hey, if this guy receives another card, he will be out of next game!";
3. A single red card will also have the above effect;
4. Injured players can´t play any matches at all (DUH!);
5. You can still drag and drop players in any status into any formation. A warning message will be displayed if any of your next fixture selected formation players are not going to make it for the game;
6. Formation field players that have no game conditions (suspensions/injuries) will be automatically replaced by the best fit (for his position) team mate, before a match starts.



ps: the screenshot shows another interesting aspect of rubysoccer. note one of the formation names.

Opera Browser

Ruby Soccer was finally tested on Opera and unfortunately the elements alignment looks the same as on IE. The drag and drop in the formations screen works slowly, not smooth as it does on Firefox, but still better than IE. Therefore, our recommendations is still the same, use Firefox.