Monday, May 13, 2013

Gridiron Solitaire #55: Personally

Last week, a beta tester (Tosh, who is one of the greatest beta testers in history, surely--he's played through both betas, has found countless issues, and is still going strong) mentioned that he didn't feel a personal connection to his team.

Then, he suggested a solution: use player names from the offseason cards in the text events.

At some point, I had considered that and decided against it, although I can't remember why. When he mentioned it, though, it seemed like a fantastic idea, and since I had forgotten why I had rejected it earlier, I had forgotten why it wouldn't work.

And because I forgot why it wouldn't work, I set about finding a way that it would work.

It did work, and it's in the game now.

The first season, the text events are player-generic. When there's a description including the quarterback, for example, the messages will be "The quarterback scans the field..." or something in that vein.

In the offseason, though, if you buy a quarterback to improve your passing offense, the game will start using that name. Let's say the quarterback's last name is "Benson". During your next season, that same event will now read "Benson scans the field", and I know that sounds like a little thing, but it's very neat to see.

Plus, since I needed receivers, and the Passing Offense cards were only quarterbacks, it's now a 50/50 mix of Quarterback and Receiver cards. They affect the same rating, but the position matters for text event purposes.

The implementation is very simple. the last card for a particular rating (and for Pass Offense, for QB or WR as well) becomes the name base for that type of text event.

It took a while to rewrite the text events to use a specific name if one was available, but in all, it only took a little more than five hours to put in, which was far less time than I expected. And I couldn't be happier with how it works.

Other news: the fifth stadium is finished. Here's a look:


The stadiums with a domed element (there will be one more) are going to focus less on nature and more on geometry, which is why you have the diamond shapes on the path instead of more rounded elements.

This is a big week for working on lots of boring crap that I've been putting off. If I can just get through this list, though, it will be a big step forward.

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