I’m a software technology student and I’ve been trying to develop a championship manager type game for my thesis. I’m still undecided which major sport sport im gonna use but im leaning towards either basketball or baseball. I would just like to know if you guys could recommend any tools and software (API’s, database, etc) that is suitable for this type of project..

Since this is thesis work, which technologies have you reviewed so far? Which interfaces have you considered? Which would you prefer and why? What will the focus of your thesis be?

Ive been using visual basic and sql in the past, but i dont think it would suitable for a project like this. I want the interface to have a "franchise mode" feel, just like in consoles, and the programs i use wouldnt be able to establish that.

If you could just please please suggest some software i could use, and from there i could start my research. I just want actual feedback from professionals that know somthing about game design before i could start my project.

As for the objectives, the project will focus on:

1.realistic player and team statistics for the simulation engine (research on statistical theories included)
2.realistic trade scenarios for CPU controlled teams
3.realistic injury frequencies (simulation)
4.realistic player improvement
5.realistic draft simulation
6.realistic cap space management for CPU controlled teams
7.realistic player awards and all star selections

First a disclaimer: You wanted feedback from professionals, but I'm an amateur.

It would be better for you to share the circumstances of your project, such as time frame, team size, your experience with development of complex software, etc.

I'll go out on a limb here and claim that with your requested feature set, you might have trouble completing this game in any reasonable time unless you get support from a medium-sized team. While the project is unlikely to require advanced graphics, your simulation side will be very heavy.

The "realistic" aspects would require operationalization for them to be useful in your model. For each of those, you'd have to gather and analyze many years of game, player, and team data, data that might not even exist or that you do not have access to. So you might want to limit the "realism" aspect to game rules and things you can directly data-mine, such as overall game statistics maybe. For the rest, making it "believable" might be preferable. The difference being that those parts of your model are then based on "feels correct" rather than on cold facts.

The actual software choice is somewhat secondary apart from making the obviously wrong choices, such as programming it all in assembler on an old Palm handheld or writing it in basic on the TI-83. Here are a couple of ideas off the top of my head, keeping in mind the need for data-heavy simulation, "franchise-like interface", and rapid development. These might be somewhat on the exotic side.

• Design an interface in Flash, write the logic in a server-side language such as PHP or JSP or ASP, and interface that to the data stored in a relational database.



• Same as above, but with PHP and AJAX instead of Flash.



• Code it in Python, using either Pygame and some database or even wholly in the Zope framework.



• If a web deployment is out of the question, you could still do it in Python but you might have to look for a database that can be deployed without installation and that works with Python. I'm sure there are some, I just don't know of them.



• Harder yet, you could make it work with Java, LWJGL, and HSQLDB. You'd have to practically write the user interface from scratch, which depending on complexity could be a master thesis on its own.



• C++ with SQLite and either DirectX or OpenGL would take the longest to develop, although you could leverage existing game engines to accelerate development.

As for lightbringers comments, I am aware of the limitations i have due to the scpoe of this project and i forgot to state that i am part of a 5-man project team with a timeframe of 1-2 years to complete the project which is currently only at its proposal stage. You are right about the fact that my project team is gunning for a "believable" franchise experience, and we would really like to focus on CPU salary cap/team management logic instead of "realistic" stat simulations.

Thanks for the feedback. and my team would be looking into the technologies you have suggested...