Looking to make an online football manager game

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6 comments, last by Alberth 1 month, 2 weeks ago

This is the opening post of hopefully a successful game, that will hopefully make it to the market.

It’s a football management simulation game that is played online.

It’s not an easy task, so i will take it seriously.

This game is at the moment in it's bare infancy, i only have an idea, a great passion for this sport, and some programming skills.

In my journey, learning software development i have met a couple , of 5-10 incredibly talented programmers and other specialties of people, which could eventually bring this to new heights, if i manage to bring at least one of them along.

So i will try to make a small team of at least 2-3 people, key people.

The project has an indefinitely time to market, i want to take it slow. So at this time i can make an estimation of a launch in a maximum of 3 years. I like to estimate largely, just to have a backup. In any case ,a MVP of this simulation game is very likely to be launched in this period. This period may be shorter or a lot shorter , depending on the escalation of events, and people willing to collaborate and help me.

My programming skills, at this moment, are as follows:

  • Python ( beginner++)
  • Java ( beginner+)
  • SQL Databases(beginner)
  • some other small bits and utilities

Background and plans:

I've learned programming in the last 3 years, and right now i am looking to get a job in this field, and have an income from programming. Even if i get a job at a company , in my country, i will continue working on this project, step by step, bit by bit.

List of problems to solve:

-

I WILL KEEP UPDATING THIS FIRST POST WITH THE GAME EVOLUTION

Update 1: 26.02.2024 00:17

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andrei100 said:
This is the opening post of hopefully a succesful game, that will make it to the market.

If this is your aim, then unfortunately: This is very, very unlikely to ever happen. You lack the proper experience required for that kind of project. Even then, the chances for one person to pull of such a project are very slim. Looking at the studio that makes Football Manager, Sports Interactive, they have 270 employees, and are developing that game since 2008. You are one person, with beginner-ish level experience. And you apparently also want to add online to the game, which will make it even more complex. You say that task is “not easy”, I'd say, it's nigh impossible.

If your aim is to try, and learn, get experience, and maybe have something small to show for it… then it be something else, but since you want it to be successful and go to a market, my answer to your guestion is: It's not feasable in those circumstances, no matter what you pick. If you are ok with the project failing after some time, then there can be some discussion about what you should pick. Someone else might give you a direct answer to your “Question 1” regardless, but I think it's more important to prepare you for the inevitable truth, instead of noticing after months of planning that what you try cannot be pulled off.

andrei100 said:
At first i will gather all kinds of data and information to make a great solid plan for the game.

I don't know what you consider to be a “solid plan”, but to me it means that it will be a plan that you can actually follow with the listed resources and allocated time (if you have that).

That mostly suggests that there is nothing in the plan that you haven't done before.

If you want to implement some feature X in the way you planned it, you can't have that while working on it you realize that the plan is missing some ingredient or it's way too optimistic. The only way to avoid getting such gaps in the plan is by knowing *beforehand* what exactly you are going to need.

This seems to be in contradiction with your question, where you don't seem to know which language to use for a feature.

Making a complete plan first may thus be not the optimal way to move forward.

I'd suggest you scale down and concentrate on the core of the game, which is the simulation of a match. Start with the most simple setup. My guess here is 2 teams of 1 person. Each person has a strength. No field, no ball, persons have no position. Compute a result of the match.

One implementation is

def play_match(person_a, person_b):
    if person_a.strength > person_b.strength:
        return "10-1"
    else:
        return "1-10"

Now clearly this plays a match. I give it 2 persons and it produces a result.

Is this a good simulation? If not, how would you improve it?

If you think it's good, find an extension, something that should play a role in the result. Something that you are confident in to be able to implement. Then try it. If it works, great! If it doesn't, go back to the best simulation that you have and try again with a different feature.

Once you can simulate playing a match, build some stuff around it. gamers can own persons, persons can get tired, wounded, go on vacation, transfered, etc etc

Always make small steps, don't worry to fail, just try again. Have fun!!

As for your question, choice of language is probably one of the smallest challenges.

Question 1: Is it feasible to build this game as a web application using Java for the backend ? Is Python a better alternative ?

Both are able to communicate, so yes they both work for a backend program.

As others pointed out, it is an odd question unless you are a raw beginner, and if you are a beginner, then you yourself are the biggest risk in the plan. Gain experience and make a bunch of simpler projects first, don't expect your learning project to be a commercial success.

Juliean said:

andrei100 said:
This is the opening post of hopefully a succesful game, that will make it to the market.

If this is your aim, then unfortunately: This is very, very unlikely to ever happen. You lack the proper experience required for that kind of project. Even then, the chances for one person to pull of such a project are very slim. Looking at the studio that makes Football Manager, Sports Interactive, they have 270 employees, and are developing that game since 2008. You are one person, with beginner-ish level experience. And you apparently also want to add online to the game, which will make it even more complex. You say that task is “not easy”, I'd say, it's nigh impossible.

If your aim is to try, and learn, get experience, and maybe have something small to show for it… then it be something else, but since you want it to be successful and go to a market, my answer to your guestion is: It's not feasable in those circumstances, no matter what you pick. If you are ok with the project failing after some time, then there can be some discussion about what you should pick. Someone else might give you a direct answer to your “Question 1” regardless, but I think it's more important to prepare you for the inevitable truth, instead of noticing after months of planning that what you try cannot be pulled off.

I like discussion, i will try to answer everyone who posts here.

Your post is interesting,and i was expecting this, considering the number of threads of people that tried this in here, with no completion.

Football Manager was started by 2 brothers Matt and Oliver Collier , i hope i'm not butchering their names, when they were 15-16 and they only worked on the game in their vacations. On the first version. Later came the millions and 270 employees.

You say it is nigh impossible, i like that. I want to make an excellent game that is also fun and challenging.

Yes, one of my aims is to learn, and put this on my portfolio, but when and if the time is right i would like to launch an initial, more minimalistic, feature-wise but stable version on the market.

I will advance slowly and carefully.

Alberth said:

andrei100 said:
At first i will gather all kinds of data and information to make a great solid plan for the game.

I don't know what you consider to be a “solid plan”, but to me it means that it will be a plan that you can actually follow with the listed resources and allocated time (if you have that).

That mostly suggests that there is nothing in the plan that you haven't done before.

If you want to implement some feature X in the way you planned it, you can't have that while working on it you realize that the plan is missing some ingredient or it's way too optimistic. The only way to avoid getting such gaps in the plan is by knowing *beforehand* what exactly you are going to need.

This seems to be in contradiction with your question, where you don't seem to know which language to use for a feature.

Making a complete plan first may thus be not the optimal way to move forward.

I'd suggest you scale down and concentrate on the core of the game, which is the simulation of a match. Start with the most simple setup. My guess here is 2 teams of 1 person. Each person has a strength. No field, no ball, persons have no position. Compute a result of the match.

One implementation is

def play_match(person_a, person_b):
    if person_a.strength > person_b.strength:
        return "10-1"
    else:
        return "1-10"

Now clearly this plays a match. I give it 2 persons and it produces a result.

Is this a good simulation? If not, how would you improve it?

If you think it's good, find an extension, something that should play a role in the result. Something that you are confident in to be able to implement. Then try it. If it works, great! If it doesn't, go back to the best simulation that you have and try again with a different feature.

Once you can simulate playing a match, build some stuff around it. gamers can own persons, persons can get tired, wounded, go on vacation, transfered, etc etc

Always make small steps, don't worry to fail, just try again. Have fun!!

As for your question, choice of language is probably one of the smallest challenges.

@Alberth

Wow i didn't expect this. Unusual thing to start with the match directly , might be brilliant. I was thinking of starting with the users registration, user flow, teams, players,attributes. But this might be something.

Small steps is the best !

Grahams said:

Does anyone else play it?

It is still in planning phase, the game doesn't exist yet.

frob said:

Question 1: Is it feasible to build this game as a web application using Java for the backend ? Is Python a better alternative ?

Both are able to communicate, so yes they both work for a backend program.

As others pointed out, it is an odd question unless you are a raw beginner, and if you are a beginner, then you yourself are the biggest risk in the plan. Gain experience and make a bunch of simpler projects first, don't expect your learning project to be a commercial success.

I see your point, but wouldn't it be possible to make simple scripts directly on the game ? Like small parts of the game, even if they work independently ? I will give this a thought. I have made simple projects , like a blackjack game, a webscraper, an API,etc … previously.

Please try answering the most important problem, that i post in the first post of this thread. Ty

Game name choice:

Which name do you think would fit better a football simulation game ?

a) Team Manager

b) Football Teams (this was the initial one)

Im looking at option a) more favorably right now.

“Team Manager” feels a bit generic, could fit for a game to climb the mount everest , or for a game to develop a game 🙂

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