Mana Games

[Mario]

great game

[Mario]

can i save a game ?

[manutoo]

Hello Mario,

no, you can't save the game in the Alpha.
You could save game on with the full version, in a few months...

[Mario]

Hello Mario,

no, you can't save the game in the Alpha.
You could save game on with the full version, in a few months...

ok thx for the answer...just to say the game is great...

[NyGeL]

nice game, I'll buy it

[michaelwest777]

Hi,

I like the look of this a lot. I've been looking for some for tennis management sim. I just wondered if it's okay to ask questions in this forum, or would you prefer somewhere else?

[manutoo]

Hello michaelwest777,

yup, it's the good place for comments & questions, so go on !

[michaelwest777]

For a short while I ran a PBEM tennis management website. It was only for a few people, but there were some features we used that you may like to include into your version.

Age: I'm not sure whether you'd have a limit on a player's career, but age was always a factor in a player's development. For example we'd have younger players training progressing further, older players a bit slower.

Younger players would also have more volatile morale, both in a good and bad way.

Older players injuries would last longer.

Injuries: would you have this feature? [I have seen the Injury chance bar now!] The player's chances of injury would increase the more you'd play, as well as the frequency. This was one of the few ways of allowing new players to rise up the ranking and stopping one player from finding a magic formula allowing them to dominate. (though obviously this was a multiplayer game)

Time Zones: We found that a player should be limited to playing a circuit of games. i.e. a player has to pay some kind of penalty for constantly crossing the atlantic, playing in a US-tournament one week, then a European one the next.

Computer Player development: Would you have computer players developing alongside the human one. New challengers emerging evry few years would be great - don't know if this is possible.

If I have any other thoughts, I'll let you know.

[wwoeger]

hello manutoo!

the game is bought by me already at this alpha stage, really enjoyed the alpha season 1 today

some points:

- I agree with michaelwest777 in the points that INJURIES are very important to be implementet, TIME ZONES (in the way that your player is really really tired when travelling from Australia to Europe f.e.).

- I dont speak french, so some additional info that you gave at the french forum would be great to be translatet into english.

- will there be more players and tournaments in the FINAL ?

- will there be many difficulty levels so that you can play this game VERY challenging too?

- I really hope a lot for a big statistic page, as manager games LIVE ON THE LONG TERM from such statistic pages.
Like career statistic (with all hightlights - finals, wins - , how much money you got year by year, etc.)

- will AI players have ups and downs over the years? I mean, it would be great if Federer would also have a year where he is only Nr. 20 in the world (cause of injuries for example), and also that AI-players that start at ranking 300 have a chance to get Top 20.

thanks for ANY reply and Info!

Wolfgang Woeger
Austria

[manutoo]

Hello,

so 1st, what I said in the french to present the Alpha :
"
It's an alpha so it lacks a lot of things !
But the parts there will be the ones we'll spend 70 to 80% of our time when we'll play the game. So it's very important to know if it's already fun to play or not. And if not, to find what's wrong. If none of these both objectives is reached, then the project doesn't have a lot chance of success ! :-S

It's about this that I hope to have the most feedback at 1st.

So, here a few little things :
- almost no art nor design has been changed so it's normal it looks a lot like TE2006.
If you have any design idea, let me know !
[EDIT: actually, I decided to not change much things, if you want to see the only little changes I decided to do, you can have a look at the 2 screenshots there :
https://www.managames.com/Forum/ftopic431-0-0-asc-.php
/EDIT]

- tournament selection is same than TE2006 now, but after, you'll have to subscribe 2 or 3 weeks earlier

- Self-esteem doesn't have any special handling, it can be trained and lowers like other characteristic. It may change in the future, but right now, nothing is decided

- Motivation doesn't have any special handling right now, except that training makes it raise to 50%, but there more things are planned

- we can practise with another player when we're not in a tournament, coz we can't yet hire a sparring partner

- we can't raise very high in all characteristics at the same time, and we get tired a bit too fast, because we sleep only in a 1* hotel (conversely, I guess we're travelling in 1st class ), and we don't have yet a specialized trainer

- the difficulty is set on Pro ( =~ average)

- there's only 300 players & 125 tournaments, the ones from TE2006, but in the final version, it'll have 1000 players beside all the Challenger & Future tournaments

Ok, else I tried to adjust the form lowering and the training speed, but it'll probably change again (at least because of above quoted additions : special trainer, airplane, hotel, etc...)
"

[manutoo]

So 2nd, answers to your questions :

michaelwest777:

Age : probably 15 or 16 years of career (from 18 to 33 years old)
All physical skills will be hard to train when you get old (after 27), and injuries will be badder
Good idea for the morale..!

Yup, Injuries will be there, as the "Injury risk" skill could let you guess...
But it's not handled right now...

Time Zones : I thought about making the player loses more short term & long term form when doing a long trip by plane.

Computer Player development:
I'm thinking about it these days.
I'd like to begin the game in 1991, and have the rise and the fall of all the known players till 2006.
I think It'd be possible to start in 2006 and see new random players on the fly up to 2021.

In both case, I'll have to find a way to make the ranking of CPU evolve. I'm thinking to raise & lower all their skills depending of the year.

wwoeger:
Most of your questions are answered in my previous message, or in my answers to michaelwest777, and here we go for the other ones !

difficulty levels:
I think in the higher difficulty level, it'll take at least a couple of year of good coaching to reach your player from the 1000th to the top 10.
In the lowest difficulty level, it'll take 1 year, even with so so coaching..

statistic:
I'll see what is possible.
Very fast, big statistics for thousands of players make the need for a lot of memory, and huge save game files, and so can lead to a load of works to create a system to lower these memory needs... :-S
But I'll add some career stats for our own players, for sure !

[wwoeger]

hi manutoo

thanks for your quick answers! they are all pretty satisfying

I just have to tell it to my managing_friends who will be for sure as happy as I am that there finally will come an cool tennis manger *when its done* .
The game is definitely fun already now (even for a 41 year old pipeline-engineer like me LOL), and if you need some more thoughts on further alphas/betas please let me(us) know.

On the hardest level i would limit some features, for example the *show result* button shouldnt be there (its too tempting), the game should be *stretched* more, it shouldnt be possible to play 15 seasons on 1 evening.
Stretching it with a slider for the trainings that takes some time f.e.
World_maps/calendars where you have to plan your tournaments AT LEAST 1 MONTH before you want to play the tournament would add some more tactic to the game.

WW

[NyGeL]

Time Zones : I thought about making the player loses more short term & long term form when doing a long trip by plane.

about this, it would be great if players could choose "training camps", where they stay when they are not playing tournaments, or resting from injurys. So when they commit to a tournament after an injury or after being away from tournys some weeks, they'll have to flight from their training camp.

[michaelwest777]

Thanks for the answers: it's always nice to see how a game develops.

I think the most important thing with the computer players' development is to see whether it's possible for the engine to develop, on rare occasions, players like Nadal alongside much more 'average joes'

I like the feel of the game as it is instinctive and from what I can see would imagine it'd be setup to focus on balancing the player's training, schedule and progression, with setbacks, rather than a game of just build and conquer. (i.e. make the player better and better till no-one can beat him)

[jolamouche]

I see the game is in progress...
So Manu, can you give us a definitive date ...for the definitive game (i speak a very bad english, ha ha ha!!!)
see you soon