Developer Diary 6

Another month of development has passed and again we have a lot to talk about!

Last month saw the big announcement of TCM 2004`s imminent arrival in the console gaming arena on both the PS2 and Xbox. This month, we continue going into further depth on recent TCM big announcements with big news by delving into Football Fusion, the new FIFA 2004 engine and the PC version of TCM 2004.

Brace yourselves – these diaries are filled with details… read on!

Programming

Football Fusion was an important feature for the programmers to work on and has been handled by Rolf and Thomas over the past few weeks. Football Fusion provides a link between TCM 2004 and FIFA 2004 that leads to a plethora of opportunities:

- TCM can switch to the FIFA Action Mode allowing the user to "play" their match. The result is exported back into TCM.
- FIFA can import and manage user teams from TCM e.g. in the FIFA Career Mode.
- FIFA has access to the TCM database via the TCM Editor. With full control over players and teams, data can be imported directly for use in FIFA.

To provide you with some insight into Football Fusion`s current stage of development, we can tell you that importing and exporting of data is already full functional, with the final touches now being added.

We have continued to add depth to TCM 2004 integrating "real" hidden player attributes including "Professionalism", "Resilience" and "Injury Proneness". You can discover more about your players from your own judgment or with a little help from your Scouts.

In terms of hidden player attributes we have taken a small step in this direction as we are aware that many of our players have mixed feelings towards the time taken to discover such attributes.

In addition to this, other great additions include new contractual options such as the ability to entice top players with a new house and car as well as the much-anticipated second nationalities which erase work permit problems for non-EU players. There is also a new Player Info screen providing detailed information and a 3D animation for fans that enjoy a "verbal" description of their players.

As mentioned in our last diary our AI Programmer Petr is still working in Canada, however, he`s no longer working on the FIFA 2003 engine but the FIFA 2004 engine instead! Petr has actually been getting familiar with FIFA 2004 for some months now and a new engine has arrived in our offices linked to TCM 2004 and is also being worked on by Michael.

This year TCM players will get an engine that`s a huge step forward from last year as the FIFA team has specifically focussed on features relevant for management including Player AI, consequences of player skills and the effects of tactical orders.

Of course, every TCM player will also benefit from all the other new FIFA features but more on that in the coming weeks.

Dirk has spent the last month concentrating on bug fixes on screens that do not appear regularly within the game. These include specific screens such as the opening of the European Championship, the opening of the World Cup and the Team of the Tournament. Also final Text Mode extensions were on the schedule.

Other fixes have included those hard-to-find bugs and having worked closely with our QA team, Dirk managed to resolve a rare issue that led to too many penalties being saved in Text Mode.

The Data Editor is almost finished and an old friend, Jörg Eschmann, has joined the team again. Jörg worked on the team last year as a Trainee programmer and was responsible for the Stadium Editor.

Jörg has recently implemented a feature that allows the simultaneous use of more than one database in the Editor and he integrates many new ideas and requests from our forums. Other additions include a new league multiplier in 0.1 steps and transfer option on the Search Results screen. To continue the Editor`s development we have set-up a dedicated forum thread that Jörg checks on a regular basis.

In general, Noam and Michael have been hard at work keeping the database updated. As each day passes further changes are made including Ronaldinho to Barcelona, Jens Lehmann to Arsenal, just about every major player to Chelsea (just kidding!) and many more. The team have paid just as much attention to the low profile transfers across the globe as well as the high ones.

On the other side Idris has completed his one-year apprenticeship with us meaning we`ve had a lot of cake to eat! On behalf of the team I`d like to thank him for his hard work and dedication over the year. He now jets off for a well-deserved holiday before resuming his studies in Computer Science and we wish him all the best.

Art

Andreas had varied tasks in the past month, completing our collection of cups which are used in several areas of the game and designing the new layout of our website.

Meanwhile we want to reveal some screenshots of club grounds for the very first time. The German players already know a first version of the club grounds from last year, but there has been a lot of progress since then.

The most important new features include the integration of club grounds into the city and that the user-created stadiums are now also a part of the club facilities (see screenshots). Armin has put a lot of effort in this with a good deal of support from Bernhard. The team have put a massive amount of effort into these areas to ensure that they run on low-end machines and both Bastian and Kostas have done a fantastic job with the technical side. For example, Kostas has used our Stadium Editor to design the look of the stadiums from within the city outside the stadium.

In parallel Bernhard has implemented a huge quantity of new team logos into the game.

After a short vacation Sylvia is working on pictures for the individual merchandise items. Before that, she fixed the last of the little problems in the normal menu screens. There is now a screen after the European Championship or World Cup that indicates the Team of the Tournament.

QA/Testing

The QA department have been busy testing various modules of the game and have pushed themselves very hard to find as many issues as possible. They work very closely with the team on specific issues relating to bugs or game balancing.

Our local test department is also supported by a further test team in Canada.