Progress of the NSS game is steady at the moment but things are coming together very nicely. The core of the NSS4 database editor is up and running from a few weeks back and now work has begun on taking that data and doing something with it.
Here’s a picture of the Editor. Well the really exciting thing is the competition editor. With a few careful selections in the editor you should be able to create any competition in the world and plug it straight into the main game. All the competitions basically break down into two types, league based or knock-out based. Pretty obvious really, but some competitions like the World Cup use a combination of the two, with a group stage then a knock-out stage. So in the editor you simply create two competitions; World Cup Stage 1 and World Cup Stage 2. Then the really neat trick is the section where you set the promotion places. For the WC Stage 1 you set places 1 & 2 to get promotion to WC Stage 2. Then when stage 1 is over the program finds the top 2 teams in all the groups and “promotes” them to the knock-out stage. This same technique can be used in all types of league or cup competition, even for relegations. For instance, you simply set positions 18, 19 and 20 of the Premiership to get promoted to the Championship. I use the word “promote” here, but in effect the same thing is happening whether a team is promoted or relegated.
Ok, so that’s the theory behind the competition editor, but the tricky part is implementing it in the game. So far all the World Cup Qualifying stages ticking over is made so that national teams are assigned fixtures and the group winners qualify from one stage to the next.
This is the game in it’s embryonic stages. All it does is run through the fixtures creating random scorelines at the moment. Once this is all in place so that the game plays through from World Cup Qualifications to the World Cup final then it’s just a matter of adapting the code so that it does the same thing (in principle) for the club competitions. Having multiple leagues, cups and international competitions running smoothly without any fixture clashes will be the first real milestone, and the foundation upon which the entire game will be built. Progress is steady and that milestone will be reach within a couple of weeks. Soon the competition engine will be available for people to download and test, just to make sure everything is working correctly.
The programmer is using BlitzMax for the main game this time around, which means development can move pretty fast. It also means that Mac and Linux owners will finally be able to experience the joys of NSS. Don’t get too carried away though people, it’s still early days.
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