Creating A New Football Game

Should we make an arcady soccer game or a realistic one?

  • Arcady Game (Much quicker and easier to make, higher probability of a released game)

  • Realistic Game (Will take much longer and lower probability of being released)

Results are only viewable after voting.
Johnadom said:
You're the guys I'm looking for! I suggested the same idea a couple of days ago, I have a history in crowd funding and think we should give this a shot. Don't go with Kickstarter though, it's the wrong format. If you could email me at filhenley@hotmail.com that would be great. I'm also a former semi professional footballer and have been playing games since ISS Deluxe. To people saying it would cost too much money, I think that's way off the mark. Forget licenses, cover stars etc. the game would not be competing with Fifa or PES trying to beat them at what they're doing, that's impossible. Going in a clearly laid out independent direction is the key, and it's something I think we can excel at. Let's get this started. Thanks!
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You guys are getting me excited. Good luck with this!

The only input I have at this point is, the majority of pitches like this fail if there's no playable code, which takes a hell of a lot of (unpaid) work.

People have tried this in the past (and advertised it here on Evo-Web), but nobody wants to commit money to a proposition that's just promises and mock-ups. If there's nothing playable, you won't convince people to part with their cash. As desperate as we all are right now.

Best of luck and for all our sakes, don't give up...
 
Chris Davies said:
You guys are getting me excited. Good luck with this!

The only input I have at this point is, the majority of pitches like this fail if there's no playable code, which takes a hell of a lot of (unpaid) work.

People have tried this in the past (and advertised it here on Evo-Web), but nobody wants to commit money to a proposition that's just promises and mock-ups. If there's nothing playable, you won't convince people to part with their cash. As desperate as we all are right now.

Best of luck and for all our sakes, don't give up...
Click to expand...
I'm pretty confident funding for this won't be a problem if it's run the right way. As I have a background in crowdfunding the thing we MUST avoid is a Kickstarter style campaign. Generally this way money is raised... money runs out... projects stop... never to be resumed. I've messaged @JosePedroFan so hopefully we can get some wheels in motion asap!
 
Johnadom said:
I'm pretty confident funding for this won't be a problem if it's run the right way. As I have a background in crowdfunding the thing we MUST avoid is a Kickstarter style campaign. Generally this way money is raised... money runs out... projects stop... never to be resumed. I've messaged @JosePedroFan so hopefully we can get some wheels in motion asap!
Click to expand...
Hey yes thanks for your message. I would be happy to consult on some of the programming or game design if it's done with Unreal Engine. But I really unfortunately do not have the time to program it myself. I wish that I did, but I don't. But if we can find some people who are passionate about the project and can code well in Unreal Engine, or don't have experience, but do have a lot of time on their hands (it's very easy to learn to program in Unreal Engine using Blueprints) then we're well on our way to making this dream a reality. But unfortunately I do not know many people like that, but am trying to find some.
 
Hey guys! If you have Twitter then go and message this guy: https://mobile.twitter.com/DeveloperGameBR

He's very experienced with Unreal Engine and created the dribbling system that I showed off earlier. If we could get him on-board, I definitely think that we can create a great football game!

Let me know if you have any questions!
 
If there's an open source project, I am willing to help contribute in any way I can. I do have some prior experience in Unreal Engine but most of my experience is from working on C++ and working on architecturing large codebase. I have never seen a community driven open source football game but I have contributed on other open source C++ community driven game like OpenAge and Doom 2 ports.
 
Would making something similar to an arcady sensible soccer be good for this project? Or does it need to be more realistic?
 
JosePedroFan said:
Would making something similar to an arcady sensible soccer be good for this project? Or does it need to be more realistic?
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I think the scope should be smaller at first. And then gradually we can improve it. Which also means that the project architecture needs to be able to be grown and extended. I do believe working iteratively is the best way to develop anything.

For example the first scope would be just to have two capsules in a rectangular field and just get the basics of ball physics. Then add basic football rules to the game. And then add a very basic non textured player model with basic animation. I feel like with the new Unreal Engine 5, we can program very cool procedural animations. It will be easier knowing that it's a free game and we won't have 1000+ of animations. We can use a simple base dribbling animation and use some procedural parameters to develop distinct animation and use IK with the ball and for physicality.
 
FCDallas_Fan said:
A friend of mine, Sebastian Starke (who current works at EA doing research), released a paper at SIGGRAPH 2020 showing the direction animation should take going forward: https://www.starke-consult.de/portfolio/assets/content/work/14/page.html. Using a deep learning framework, he and his team were able to come up with some awesome looking animations.

EDIT: Here's a link to the full research paper - https://github.com/sebastianstarke/AI4Animation//blob/master/Media/SIGGRAPH_2020/Paper.pdf
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That will also be easier to accomplish with ControlRig in UE5. Since animation can be fully procedural, you can have a machine learning algorithm running for 100000+ generations and get the best animation for each individual situation and context. This paper is very important but sadly I have limited expertise in machine learning AI and don't have massive server PC to be able to run so many generations to get nice looking animations.
 
Topaz said:
I think the scope should be smaller at first. And then gradually we can improve it. Which also means that the project architecture needs to be able to be grown and extended. I do believe working iteratively is the best way to develop anything.

For example the first scope would be just to have two capsules in a rectangular field and just get the basics of ball physics. Then add basic football rules to the game. And then add a very basic non textured player model with basic animation. I feel like with the new Unreal Engine 5, we can program very cool procedural animations. It will be easier knowing that it's a free game and we won't have 1000+ of animations. We can use a simple base dribbling animation and use some procedural parameters to develop distinct animation and use IK with the ball and for physicality.
Click to expand...
I have tons of motion capture animations for the project! But I still think that we need to decide as a community whether we would be okay with making something arcady like sensible soccer (this would not be able to be converted later into a very realistic type of game). If we are okay with something similar to sensible soccer, someone already made a project in Unity that we can use!

 
Topaz said:
That will also be easier to accomplish with ControlRig in UE5. Since animation can be fully procedural, you can have a machine learning algorithm running for 100000+ generations and get the best animation for each individual situation and context. This paper is very important but sadly I have limited expertise in machine learning AI and don't have massive server PC to be able to run so many generations to get nice looking animations.
Click to expand...
I think that this may be out of our pay grade, having a few hundred animations and an animation tree seems far more reasonable
 
JosePedroFan said:
I have tons of motion capture animations for the project! But I still think that we need to decide as a community whether we would be okay with making something arcady like sensible soccer (this would not be able to be converted later into a very realistic type of game). If we are okay with something similar to sensible soccer, someone already made a project in Unity that we can use!

Click to expand...

I think we can put that for a vote if we should build an arcade game vs realistic game. The main pros making an arcade game is that it will be less time consuming and more plausible for a finished product. The main pros for a realistic game is the amount of possibility to make a real fun simulated football game in the future with enough iterations.

However the problem with getting a marketplace full fledged project and trying to mold that into what we want is that it will be very limiting and difficult to do that from a full project. Because first someone else created the project so you will need to understand the existing code base and how the project was developed. Secondly, the project was most likely build in a way that it cannot be easily extended with a lot of functionality in the future. I do believe that using marketplace asset is fine but only for modular tasks. But not for the entire game as that will create constraints in the future.
 
Topaz said:
I think we can put that for a vote if we should build an arcade game vs realistic game. The main pros making an arcade game is that it will be less time consuming and more plausible for a finished product. The main pros for a realistic game is the amount of possibility to make a real fun simulated football game in the future with enough iterations.

However the problem with getting a marketplace full fledged project and trying to mold that into what we want is that it will be very limiting and difficult to do that from a full project. Because first someone else created the project so you will need to understand the existing code base and how the project was developed. Secondly, the project was most likely build in a way that it cannot be easily extended with a lot of functionality in the future. I do believe that using marketplace asset is fine but only for modular tasks. But not for the entire game as that will create constraints in the future.
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From my experience actually market place assets provide unlimited flexibility and speed up the process dramatically. We can easily tailor them however we want. If we do end up going for an arcade game I highly recommend that we use this asset as a base to save A LOT of development time and frustrations.

If we're going for a realistic game then I would recommend that we use the dribbling asset that I showed earlier.
 
Apparently this game already has fake versions of all of the world's top leagues and players and it looks pretty fun for an arcade game!

How would the community feel about supporting this person and convincing him to make this game with a really fun player and manager career mode?

 
Chris Davies said:
People have tried this in the past (and advertised it here on Evo-Web), but nobody wants to commit money to a proposition that's just promises and mock-ups.
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Are you referring to the guy that was trying to push a PES 2017 classic patch on Kickstarter claiming it was a completely new football game?
The one that, when we pointed that out, said "well for the moment it's based on an old PES but we'll be moving to a new engine by version 2" (meaning that he'd port his classic patch to PES 2020)?

I remember that moment very well and you're right: that's not how you do it. Not a bit...
I think that you should be honest with your target audience.
I stand by what I said to that guy: https://evoweb.uk/threads/efootball-pes-2021-discussion-thread-consoles.83069/page-133#post-3645558
 
JosePedroFan said:
How would the community feel about supporting this person and convincing him to make this game with a really fun player and manager career mode?
Click to expand...
I have that game on Steam (not the 2021 version, I think the one that was for sale in 2019) and... Unless he did a miracle, I don't think this could be a base to start from. The game had just too many shortcomings like players suddenly (and almost randomly) stopping responding to inputs, goalkeepers forgetting about the ball and such.
Haven't played it in a year so I don't know if it got better over time or not, but surely it was really, really rough back then (to the point that I abandoned it a few minutes of play into it).
 
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I like all your suggestions very much and it sounds quite realistic and serious for me. Unfortunately, I can not programm things, but I have plenty of time in the moment und could help with everything, some minor tasks, and also I have some experience in modding, so please feel free to contact me.
Moreover, I have a proposition for the new game name: People Evolved Soccer = PES! What do you think of that?
I think we should contact the people of evo-web patch and also Smoke and pesgalaxy to get them involved in this project. Also we should concact Spoony, TrueBrit and the alike to get the crowdfunding started.
 
Don't want to sound annoying, but while of course you must start as basic as possible I think the final aim should be to have something realistic and with some good depth. Not a 100% simulator maybe- but a good mesh of lighter and more solid elements , a bit like Pes was in his best years, would be the deal to me.

I'd rather be blunt, personally I hate with a passion the 100% modern arcade games like the one above :P, I wouldn't be interested in something like that, even cause there already are a good number in the market. The thrill would be to see something completely new! At least in my very humble opinion.
 
Madmac79 said:
Don't want to sound annoying, but while of course you must start as basic as possible I think the final aim should be to have something realistic and with some good depth. Not a 100% simulator maybe- but a good mesh of lighter and more solid elements , a bit like Pes was in his best years, would be the deal to me.

I'd rather be blunt, personally I hate with a passion the 100% modern arcade games like the one above :P, I wouldn't be interested in something like that, even cause there already are a good number in the market. The thrill would be to see something completely new! At least in my very humble opinion.
Click to expand...

I think a similar base to achieve that is plausible without going to arcade football games(which there is a bunch of) in the market is to replicate a game like PES 5 or PES 6. With today's technology it should be very possible. The problem is when it comes to interactive football simulation, there are only two games. PES and FIFA. In comparison, arcade games have a lot more options. I personally am very keen and interested on making/working on a football simulation game rather than an arcade football game that I personally don't enjoy it as much.
 
Yeah, there have been quite a few arcade style football games but they haven't had enough depth to not feel repetitive and hollow after a few matches. I'm not sure what the long term appeal would be in creating another of those types of simplistic games but with some sort of career mode tacked onto it. Realistically, it's not going to be a replacement for PES, if that's what people are looking for here.

I think you need to be clear as to what you're trying to create. People already have all the versions of PES over the years, many of which are being kept up to date with patches, so aren't you going to need to create a game that betters all of them, otherwise why would people not just keep on playing the old PES titles instead? That's a massive undertaking.

You're going to need a good set of quality controls - repeating sensi-soccer style controls or having simplified arcade controls is ok, but is that really going to satisfy players in the long term when they can go and play an old PES with decent depth to the controls? PES has room for improvement in it controls but it's no easy task.

You could have simplified physics and animations to start with but people will ultimately be hoping for all the complex ball deflections and spins, player physicality, weight transfer, wrong-footing defender with a good dribbler, etc that PES already has.

Player stats would need to have noticeable effects on player abilities - this is an area where PES has probably regressed in recent years but think of the effort required to get something that betters even PES5/6 - you'd have to have all the coding for different and contextual first touches, good and bad passes, physical challenges, different types of contextual headers, shots, etc. You can start simple but when people already have old PESs to play, you'll need to produce something that at least equals them.

Perhaps hardest of all, particularly if the intention is to make an offline game - you need good AI - both teammate AI and opposition AI, including variation in opposition AI tactics from team to team in order to create distinction between teams, and variation from AI player to player, so AI players play to stats, both technically and tactically. EA and Konami have had 25 years, employing skilled and experienced developers, with huge investment, and both have struggled to succeeded at this. They're both arguably going backwards now but you still need to create something better than what they have already created in their earlier games, otherwise, why wouldn't people just play their old game instead of a new game that's worse.

I definitely think there's a market for a new football game but if the intention is to be an alternative to FIFA and PES, then it always going to be compared with them and for all their shortcoming, they're still hugely complex achievements. It becomes mind-boggling when you start to think through what would be required to achieve something like that.....and people still tear them to bits.
 
normazimuth said:
Yeah, there have been quite a few arcade style football games but they haven't had enough depth to not feel repetitive and hollow after a few matches. I'm not sure what the long term appeal would be in creating another of those types of simplistic games but with some sort of career mode tacked onto it. Realistically, it's not going to be a replacement for PES, if that's what people are looking for here.

I think you need to be clear as to what you're trying to create. People already have all the versions of PES over the years, many of which are being kept up to date with patches, so aren't you going to need to create a game that betters all of them, otherwise why would people not just keep on playing the old PES titles instead? That's a massive undertaking.

You're going to need a good set of quality controls - repeating sensi-soccer style controls or having simplified arcade controls is ok, but is that really going to satisfy players in the long term when they can go and play an old PES with decent depth to the controls? PES has room for improvement in it controls but it's no easy task.

You could have simplified physics and animations to start with but people will ultimately be hoping for all the complex ball deflections and spins, player physicality, weight transfer, wrong-footing defender with a good dribbler, etc that PES already has.

Player stats would need to have noticeable effects on player abilities - this is an area where PES has probably regressed in recent years but think of the effort required to get something that betters even PES5/6 - you'd have to have all the coding for different and contextual first touches, good and bad passes, physical challenges, different types of contextual headers, shots, etc. You can start simple but when people already have old PESs to play, you'll need to produce something that at least equals them.

Perhaps hardest of all, particularly if the intention is to make an offline game - you need good AI - both teammate AI and opposition AI, including variation in opposition AI tactics from team to team in order to create distinction between teams, and variation from AI player to player, so AI players play to stats, both technically and tactically. EA and Konami have had 25 years, employing skilled and experienced developers, with huge investment, and both have struggled to succeeded at this. They're both arguably going backwards now but you still need to create something better than what they have already created in their earlier games, otherwise, why wouldn't people just play their old game instead of a new game that's worse.

I definitely think there's a market for a new football game but if the intention is to be an alternative to FIFA and PES, then it always going to be compared with them and for all their shortcoming, they're still hugely complex achievements. It becomes mind-boggling when you start to think through what would be required to achieve something like that.....and people still tear them to bits.
Click to expand...

I think the best way to develop a game to satisfy all those needs is to make it iteratively. Incrementally improving mechanics goes a long way. It also makes it less overwhelming to get started with a basic prototype.
 
Just as an alternative approach/suggestion, I'll mention that I posted on here about a month ago about how I'd quite like to see a football game developed that focused on just physics and animations - initially no AI (or just a basic AI), so essentially just online 11v11 (or fewer) - ironically, Konami seem to have redirected their focus to an online only route, but 1v1 with AI teammates.

"Put all the effort into making a single virtual player move, and play with a ball, as close to a human as possible via you controller, develop some physics and animations for tackling and player collisions, put 20 clones on the pitch and chuck a ball in there with the necessary physics, add some goalposts and just have auto-goalies. Some basic player attributes could be added later, to make some differentiation between strikers and defenders for example but that would initially be less important."

Personally, I think that could be a reasonable and achievable starting point which could be built upon. The idea is that you wouldn't initially have to worry about developing AI, which I imagine could be the hardest and most time-consuming part of all to get right. But if you wanted to go down the realistic rather than arcade route, it could lead to a compelling game of football. I remember looking at the continued success of Rocket League (a bizarre concept of online 2v2 football in cars, set in fantasy locations) yet it still hugely outstripped FIFA and PES in terms of number of active players on Steam.

Aiming for a starting point of a cut-down prototype of online football (eg. 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, 10v10, initially no online leagues or anything, just fun one-off matches - you could even dynamically reduce pitch size for 2v2 compared with 10v10) but with impressive physics, animations and controls, is a possible route. A solid online-only football game could be very popular in its own right and could also be something to gradually build upon as a base. You could aim to add all sorts later, such as online leagues, offline play with AI and career modes, etc.

Just a thought.
 
normazimuth said:
Yeah, there have been quite a few arcade style football games but they haven't had enough depth to not feel repetitive and hollow after a few matches. I'm not sure what the long term appeal would be in creating another of those types of simplistic games but with some sort of career mode tacked onto it. Realistically, it's not going to be a replacement for PES, if that's what people are looking for here.

I think you need to be clear as to what you're trying to create. People already have all the versions of PES over the years, many of which are being kept up to date with patches, so aren't you going to need to create a game that betters all of them, otherwise why would people not just keep on playing the old PES titles instead? That's a massive undertaking.

You're going to need a good set of quality controls - repeating sensi-soccer style controls or having simplified arcade controls is ok, but is that really going to satisfy players in the long term when they can go and play an old PES with decent depth to the controls? PES has room for improvement in it controls but it's no easy task.

You could have simplified physics and animations to start with but people will ultimately be hoping for all the complex ball deflections and spins, player physicality, weight transfer, wrong-footing defender with a good dribbler, etc that PES already has.

Player stats would need to have noticeable effects on player abilities - this is an area where PES has probably regressed in recent years but think of the effort required to get something that betters even PES5/6 - you'd have to have all the coding for different and contextual first touches, good and bad passes, physical challenges, different types of contextual headers, shots, etc. You can start simple but when people already have old PESs to play, you'll need to produce something that at least equals them.

Perhaps hardest of all, particularly if the intention is to make an offline game - you need good AI - both teammate AI and opposition AI, including variation in opposition AI tactics from team to team in order to create distinction between teams, and variation from AI player to player, so AI players play to stats, both technically and tactically. EA and Konami have had 25 years, employing skilled and experienced developers, with huge investment, and both have struggled to succeeded at this. They're both arguably going backwards now but you still need to create something better than what they have already created in their earlier games, otherwise, why wouldn't people just play their old game instead of a new game that's worse.

I definitely think there's a market for a new football game but if the intention is to be an alternative to FIFA and PES, then it always going to be compared with them and for all their shortcoming, they're still hugely complex achievements. It becomes mind-boggling when you start to think through what would be required to achieve something like that.....and people still tear them to bits.
Click to expand...

normazimuth said:
Just as an alternative approach/suggestion, I'll mention that I posted on here about a month ago about how I'd quite like to see a football game developed that focused on just physics and animations - initially no AI (or just a basic AI), so essentially just online 11v11 (or fewer) - ironically, Konami seem to have redirected their focus to an online only route, but 1v1 with AI teammates.

"Put all the effort into making a single virtual player move, and play with a ball, as close to a human as possible via you controller, develop some physics and animations for tackling and player collisions, put 20 clones on the pitch and chuck a ball in there with the necessary physics, add some goalposts and just have auto-goalies. Some basic player attributes could be added later, to make some differentiation between strikers and defenders for example but that would initially be less important."

Personally, I think that could be a reasonable and achievable starting point which could be built upon. The idea is that you wouldn't initially have to worry about developing AI, which I imagine could be the hardest and most time-consuming part of all to get right. But if you wanted to go down the realistic rather than arcade route, it could lead to a compelling game of football. I remember looking at the continued success of Rocket League (a bizarre concept of online 2v2 football in cars, set in fantasy locations) yet it still hugely outstripped FIFA and PES in terms of number of active players on Steam.

Aiming for a starting point of a cut-down prototype of online football (eg. 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, 10v10, initially no online leagues or anything, just fun one-off matches - you could even dynamically reduce pitch size for 2v2 compared with 10v10) but with impressive physics, animations and controls, is a possible route. A solid online-only football game could be very popular in its own right and could also be something to gradually build upon as a base. You could aim to add all sorts later, such as online leagues, offline play with AI and career modes, etc.

Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Well I guess this project is over then :(
 
normazimuth said:
Just as an alternative approach/suggestion, I'll mention that I posted on here about a month ago about how I'd quite like to see a football game developed that focused on just physics and animations - initially no AI (or just a basic AI), so essentially just online 11v11 (or fewer) - ironically, Konami seem to have redirected their focus to an online only route, but 1v1 with AI teammates.

"Put all the effort into making a single virtual player move, and play with a ball, as close to a human as possible via you controller, develop some physics and animations for tackling and player collisions, put 20 clones on the pitch and chuck a ball in there with the necessary physics, add some goalposts and just have auto-goalies. Some basic player attributes could be added later, to make some differentiation between strikers and defenders for example but that would initially be less important."

Personally, I think that could be a reasonable and achievable starting point which could be built upon. The idea is that you wouldn't initially have to worry about developing AI, which I imagine could be the hardest and most time-consuming part of all to get right. But if you wanted to go down the realistic rather than arcade route, it could lead to a compelling game of football. I remember looking at the continued success of Rocket League (a bizarre concept of online 2v2 football in cars, set in fantasy locations) yet it still hugely outstripped FIFA and PES in terms of number of active players on Steam.

Aiming for a starting point of a cut-down prototype of online football (eg. 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, 10v10, initially no online leagues or anything, just fun one-off matches - you could even dynamically reduce pitch size for 2v2 compared with 10v10) but with impressive physics, animations and controls, is a possible route. A solid online-only football game could be very popular in its own right and could also be something to gradually build upon as a base. You could aim to add all sorts later, such as online leagues, offline play with AI and career modes, etc.

Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Sounds similar to IOSoccer which has been around for years, has a relatively small but dedicated community but it's not been my cup of tea whenever I tried it;

And Gridiron for American Football;
 
Why would anyone consider an arcadey game when the whole point of this is to fill the void left by PES? The fact that's even been asked makes me concerned about the vision.

I think we need to establish some core values about what we want to achieve.
 
rojofa said:
Sounds similar to IOSoccer which has been around for years, has a relatively small but dedicated community but it's not been my cup of tea whenever I tried it;
Click to expand...
Well, it is total shit not exactly what I had in mind :LOL: (ie. good physics and animations) but I bet even that took a big effort to achieve.
 
Mintal68 said:
I like all your suggestions very much and it sounds quite realistic and serious for me. Unfortunately, I can not programm things, but I have plenty of time in the moment und could help with everything, some minor tasks, and also I have some experience in modding, so please feel free to contact me.
Moreover, I have a proposition for the new game name: People Evolved Soccer = PES! What do you think of that?
I think we should contact the people of evo-web patch and also Smoke and pesgalaxy to get them involved in this project. Also we should concact Spoony, TrueBrit and the alike to get the crowdfunding started.
Click to expand...
Konami has copyrighted PES iirc
 
I want realistic, I think everyone does. As I said before even something that looks as basic as Sensible Soccer would be fine, the main target should be depth to the controls. the gameplay. So the ball and players move and act realistically. 1v1, 2v2, up to 11v11 online so no AI to worry about, it's a great starting point I think.
 
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