Today is Wednesday. And I've got to go back to the dentist. Again. One crown to fit, and a possible extraction, which sounds less painful than it actually is. So no Arsenal v Tottenham for me tonight, as I'm expecting to be in large amounts of pain once the anaesthetic wears off.
Have spent most of this morning doing press interviews, sorting out demo plans with Grant (FM's producer), sorting out a special treat for later this afternoon (check out our forums at community.sigames.c
om at about 6pm to be able to see the 70 second version of our forthcoming FM2009 TV ad), and trying to forget about the dentist, or else I start feeling sorry for myself.
Today's indepth blog is in 2 parts, from Craig (aka Ter) and Martin, and is about the user interface and changes therein this year.
USER INTERFACE CHANGES
Hello. My name is Craig Hunter and I am part of the graphics team at Sports Interactive. We are responsible for the graphical content in the game from the buttons you click on to the player pictures you look at.There is more to the job than simply creating graphics though. We're also a bit more involved in the development of the game than you might think, from working with the AI coders designing new gameplay features to in depth discussions about User Interface design.
So on to a few of the new User Interface related things you will find in Football Manager 2009.
Wizard Steps
When using any of the wizards throughout the game you will now be able to see exactly where you are in the process as there is now a steps panel on the left showing which step you are currently on, which steps have been completed and which steps are still to come.
Menu Groupings
The "Manager" menu has been grouped a bit better to keep related things together. The groupings for this are Manager, Team, Competition, Search and Options.
Quicklink Groupings
Similarly to the manager menu, we've also done the same with the quicklink icons at the top to keep related things together and the same structure as above is followed.
Competition News Indicator
A lot of people found the new Competition News panel in FM 2008 resulted in important news being missed. Now we have an indicator on the Quicklink for this section to indicate that there is new stuff there to go and see without being too intrusive by spamming your Inbox like before.
Buttons Clearer
The buttons in the game have now been made a bit easier to see. In the last version they were maybe a little too transparent so it should be easier to see those useful buttons that come as part of some news items. We've also added some more of these so that you can be linked directly
to various sections related to that news.
Background less busy
The background was maybe a bit too "busy" in the last version so we've toned this down a bit to make things look crisper and cleaner. Don't worry though if you are a fan of background pictures. It is still possible to modify this to bring out more of the background detail if you like adding your custom pictures.
Skins
The game will ship with two skins. A green one similar to last year and a blue version of the same skin.
Colour Consistency
We've also aimed for a bit more consistency with colours of menus and that sort of thing. Popping up a menu from a grey panel should open up a grey menu. Hopefully that should avoid the situation where green menus popup from blue dialogs which would happen from time to time previously.
Licenses
The licensed content included in the game is more or less the same as before. Now licensed for the first time are Brondby in Denmark and Juventus in Italy. If you are unaware, we also have licenses for American Major League Soccer, Australian A-League, English Football League (Championship, League One, League Two), English Conference (Premier, North, South), French Ligue 1 and 2, South Korean K-League, Dutch Eredivisie and Eerste Divisie, Portuguese Liga Sagres and Liga Vitalis, Scottish Premier League, Spanish Liga BBVA and Liga Adelante. There are also licenses for various Italian teams and the Dutch national team.
This year sees around 5277 player pictures in the game, 364 team badges and 846 kits. Oh, and the kits are 3D textures which include shorts and socks and will be used in the 3D match view and on the team information screen. Don't worry if you are a fan of 2D kits though as the support for those is still there so those of you who have already started work on kit packs for FM 2009 can breathe a sigh of relief."
Thanks Craig - anything to add, Martin?
As we do every year, we've made some changes to the user interface (UI) - some quite big and obvious, others are more subtle. But, hopefully they all make FM2009 more enjoyable, and ultimately help you to play to game in the way you want without getting in the way.
One of the big UI changes you'll see while you're playing matches is the TV view mode. With the introduction of the 3D match engine, there was a general feeling that a more immersive presentation was needed to compliment it, and we quickly came to realise that a TV presentation style, with a small clock and scoreboard in the top corner and small informational widgets floating above the action, was the natural solution, and one that would be familiar to football fans all over the world. Another new feature we added to the FM2009 match screen is the highlight slider, which gives you even more control over how you view a match. Unlike real-life managers, you have the ability to go back and view any highlight from the match any time you want. The idea for this originated from FML, and proved so useful and popular there that we just had to have it in FM2009.
One of the cool things about working at SI is the way that everyone's opinion is valued and if you have a valid comment on the way something works, you can have an influence on any part of the game that you're interested in. So, although it was Jesper Andersson (one of the artists here some of you may know from the skinning community) and I that designed and implemented the new look match screen, we were never working in isolation, and were never short of feedback on the work in progress.
A controversial change for FM2009 has been the amalgamation of the two speed sliders (Match Speed and Highlight Speed), into a single "Match Speed" slider. We felt that this needed improving, as it really wasn't clear what effect they would have on the viewing speed of a match, and new users in particular, would get quite confused about how to just "speed up the match". The simplest and most intuitive solution to this was to unify the two controls into a single slider that "does what it says on the tin": If you move the slider to the right the whole match (Highlights, commentary, the bits between highlights) will play back faster, and to the left, slower. You always get a bit of an initial backlash to any changes to the interface like this, as people do get comfortable with what has been there for a few years, but sometimes change is good, and we are certain that this will make things a lot easier, especially for new users. Our approach to the UI design has changed over the last year or so, with us undertaking usability studies and allocating a small group of us from different departments to lead the UI design, which will help to make sure the UI is consistent and intuitive - our belief is that you should be spending all your time playing FM, not working out how interface elements work.
I'll be back tomorrow with another indepth look at an area of the game, and also some more of your questions answered - if you do have any questions that you want to ask us that are not feature related, then please mail
blogs@sigames.comCheers
Miles, Craig & Martin.
