It's a year since we were last in the position of getting a game ready for release, and I can definitely tell that I'm a year older.
Remembering back a few years ago when those of us who have been at SI for a long time were, err, a few years younger, we used to have competitions with each other of who could do the longest "shift" before falling asleep at our keyboards, with a couple of us managing 3 days in one session.
On Monday, I did a 21 hour shift. And now I feel like I've got jetlag. We were attempting to get to the next stage of the process after code lock, whereby we present a "gold master candidate" to Sega, at which point it goes into test at their end for 72 hours, and if it passes that, it can go into manufacture.
Now, I don't know of a single release candidate that has ever passed first time without any hiccups, and we knew that would be the same with us, but we got the game side of things "nailed" at 3.30am on Monday. Then found out there was a problem with installing and uninstalling the game, for which we rely on third parties, so have spent a bunch of time since waiting for them to fix the issue. We didn't know at the time on Monday that it would take days, rather than hours, so a bunch of us sat up playing the game, looking for other issues, and trying to stay awake before the next shift came in which, in my case, was at 6.30am. Going to bed when it's light is very odd.
Anyway, the time that the fix took to come in was quite useful, as we found another couple of issues and fixed them. And at some point in the couple of days we should deliver another release candidate which may, or may not, get approval from QA. In the meanwhile, we sit and wait, whilst getting on with other things, like working out the patch policies for 09, and, in my case, sorting out a lot of the marketing and PR things that are going to happen over the coming weeks. Today's task was making the final call on who was going to do the voiceover for the TV ad for Football Manager 2009.
Oh, and we have other exciting news too. Today's new features have a bit of a twist to them, in that they are for Football Manager Handheld 2009 for the PSP, rather than the PC game. And the reason for these coming out today is that we've just received confirmation from Sony that we've passed their submission process so it's now time to go into manufacture for that. Hurrah!
So I'm now going to pass you over to Glenn who is one of the dev team on the PSP game to tell you about some unannounced features for it. Tomorrow there'll be some more PC/Mac features, some more questions answered and some details about Friday's podcast. If you do have any non-feature specific questions you want answered, mail them to
blogs@sigames.com, and will answer the ones we find most interesting.
So, Glenn - what else is new in FMH2009?
"In addition to the headline features already announced for Football Manager Handheld 2009 (2D pitch view, multiple leagues and the two new skins), numerous smaller improvements have been made. This is intended as a quick overview of some of these changes:
- The match speed and highlights detail level are now independent. This means that you can now select to view full detail commentary at fast speed or low detail commentary at slow speed.
- Friendly matches can now be cancelled.
- There is an increased level of media interaction including transfer targets.
- It is now possible to see your league history screen at any point in your career (rather than just at the end as was previously the case).
- Short listing can now be performed mid-match - if an opposition player impresses you during a match, you can now view their full player profile and shortlist them whilst still in the match.
- Players can be offered out on loan to drum up interest in them.
- Transfers can now be delayed - which can prove extremely useful if you are waiting on another deal to go through to free up the funds needed to complete that star signing.
We've also put in a lot of effort to fix as many of the issues found by people who have played our previous games - these include reserve team players going out on loan and being able to play in league matches against their parent club and the EDT Editing system being expanded to allow players to be given their 'Brazilian style' common names."
Cheers
Miles and Glenn
