Try this Todd.


Give this a try. Goto to your cd rom folder on my computer and right click and click on explore to open it.

Then click on the setup exe file in there to install it.

Is anyone else having a problem with being able to cancel the instructions to the QB? This may somehow be related to my crazy computer.

I have had an injury -- they are hard to see and I just happened to notice Fred Thomas writhing on the ground. Then I saw a small drop down menu, in the same spot as the place you click to hike the ball. It listed Fred Thomas' name and then said he had a rib injury for 7P. I took that to mean 7 periods, but maybe it's 7 days probable or something because he was right back in the game.

7p means seven plays?

That would make sense, but I remember seeing #22 back on the field two plays later -- however, this was very late last night. I might have hit a zone and lost track of all time and space..

I know this is trivial in the big picture, but it is just bugging the hell out of me.
Couldn't they match the quote with the picture of the right coach?
GAH!

Woo Hoo!! After messing around for a bit, I went into task manager and then saw NFLHeadCoach was running like 5 times, killed all of them and retried. Worked like a charm. :)

Glad you got it working. :)

Vince Young didn't get hurt running. :) He got hurt trying to tackle a DB after he threw an interception. :D

I believe all of the pix are of current coaches while the quotes are from the "HOF" coaches. I truly dislike the Dennis Green pic of him in those shades.

Me too.

I know there are issues as many have said, but so far I'm addicted. I think I'll be up late tonight.

I was nervous when my owner interviewed me for the job. :) I really like it when you fire a coach, he gets up and leaves the room.. makes the room feel like there's a lot of tension.

I would love to see a sequel out of this game.

Back to the game....

It is problem when it happens every game. I'm averaging 7-8 interceptions a game. That is way high. One game can be a fluke, but this is a known problem.

I haven't had an in-game injury yet, either. It is possible that the sliders work, and this game just has the same problem Madden had in 2005 with too many interceptions and low completion rates whatever you do. I hope not because that really does kill the fun. 35-45% completion rates are boring.

You must be killing a lot of time to get those play numbers at 9 minutes. I've played two games at 8 minutes (170+ plays) and one at 7 (145+). I'm thinking 6, or even quite possibily the default *gasp*. I do wait until the linemen sets the blocking scheme before I snap the ball, but that still means snapping at 25 seconds on the play clock.

Ugh.

Just experienced the bug where I hit a key (unknown which one) and my User Interface, ability to call plays, etc went *poof* good bye.

Unable to figure out what I did wrong, I had to exit the game.....and during a tight contest with the Eagles where I had the lead.

That sucked. :( Oh well....heading to kick off the game for a second time.

Wow. I'm not killing that much time. I sometimes change my QB's progression or strategy at the line, but I'm generally snapping the ball between 20-25 seconds. I am running the ball quite a bit which of course keeps the clock running. I'm sticking with 8 minutes for now, but I might drop down to 7 minutes if I get quicker at setting the strategies.

Keep in mind I don't have the game yet... but...

Astro and Gary Gorski brought up some similar things as "problems" that I see as good things.. mainly the fact of how you can only do limited "actions" and have to do them in your office time... that you are limited to what you can do in practice, etc...

To me this is realistic, does no one else feel the same wya?

I just got the game tonight at Best Buy. Going to installed and give it a go.


People are saying in other forums, winning games is very easy.

I hope that not true and hopefully a slider can change the difficult on it too.

From what I've read, yes and no.

I don't have an issue with only being able to add a couple of plays. I don't think you recreate a playbook in an afternoon.

On the other hand, being able to set two spots in the depth chart up? Good lord.

Agreed with both of your points.

Also, I find that it's ridiculously easy to win games. There is no difficulty level, so I'm at a loss as to how to make the game harder other than house rules.

Wade,

I agreed with the theory untill I tried how they implemented it. You will see what I mean once you try the game yourself.

Also don't have the game, and agree with a lot of your points (and others), but the one part that I really can't understand is the whole only shifting 2 guys around the depth chart during one "session." I don't see how that makes sense at all.

Those sessions are blocked as 30 minutes of your day, so perhaps that's a part of it. Maybe to get the decisions worked out you have to call.. or whatever, it was a game balancing decision I guess.

I just did a 6 minute quarter game against the Falcons and it was just about perfect. 117 plays plus all the special teams plays puts it about the average range.

I did see five INTs, but they started Matt Schaub. And Leinart threw two of them (which I expect from a rookie).

I also discovered the "reset" button in the talk to QB menu, so my problem from before wasn't a bug. If anyone else has this problem, scroll all the way to the end and there is a reset, red so you can't miss it.. unless you never scrolled that far before.

I do, even though I was annoyed at times that I could only add 2 plays per office session.

That's really weird that it's easy to win games. I guess the playcalling AI is bad. Considering they talk about coaching so much in this game, you would think they would program each team after their respective coaches tendencies??

I haven't made it to a game yet though...

I have won all three games in the regular season, but I lost two in the preseason. The two I lost, I never had a chance. It had to do with not having had enough time to prepare the team.

Since preseason, my defense is always prepared (I chose former defensive coordinator) but my offense has some problems. If the INT problem is ironed out for the other side, I'd probably not have won one of my regular season games. I think all three opponents were weak, too. So I'm not sure it's totally easy yet. I'll give it 8 games and see. If my Saints are 8-0, or even 6-2, then maybe there is a problem here..

look for your pregame meeting, apparently you can add all plays that you want at that time

I know, but that doesn't help with the training camp which is before any games start.

I didn't find it too easy to win when the Ravens were pounding the rock down my throat..

Just like in Madden I find that if you blitz a lot, it nullifies the run as well as the pass. Try doing the base 4-3 defense (or under or over 4-3) using LB Dogs or Edge Sting. The Under Smoke play in Nickle or Quarter Defense works well against the run since most DBs are faster than LBs.

Yeah, I'll find out for myself.

I did get a trade offer from the Seahawks which I'm going to accept as soon as I can. It was one of their decent (not Trufant) CB's for my tackle Rex Tucker who was going to backup Barron this coming year for me anyway.

Some things are kind of tedious, but I'm still liking this game a lot. I really like how your coaches give input and you decide on what to do from there.

WOW - I have been away from my computer all weekend doing things with my family and I get on tonight and see this utility which fixes the biggest problem - woo hoo!!!

the game still has warts, but this is a nice fix for now.

New version posted!

Download it here.

The sliders in this version do update the "correct" spot in the data file. I also added options to enable windowed mode (may have to start and exit game before this takes effect), and exporting of game logs (saved in My Documents/NFL Head Coach/Stats/Career#/). There is also now a Defaults button in the bottom right to restore any wrong doings on your part :P.

If you enable the logs you can see that the sliders are indeed updating. Even with interceptions at 0, however, I just had a game with five of them using 5 minute quarters. I think part of this was a fluke, and there were at least 4 or 5 more that would have been pics before the slider change.

Here is the log from the game:

Also, it should be noted that for some reason, the extremes of the kicking sliders are only from 25-75. I'll have to look into this more tomorrow.

Anyway, as with before. Make sure you backup your stuff before even looking at this bad boy!

Let me know how it works for you!
Chris W.

Thanks for you work on this. As soon as I come home next week from my bsuiness trip, I will have to give it a go.

Holy moley! Thanks Chris! This is awesome! I'll check it out this morning.

Skill level: Pro


There's the problem. Can that be changed? If it can, will it through the balance the other way? Were did you get the log, btw?

I don't have the game, but I think cwill deserves a freaking award for that mod. :D Very impressive.

Just played my first game. It seemed as if the sliders worked. (Vince Young vs. Charlie Frye) There were only two interceptions in the whole game, one by each QB. Very very nice! Thanks!

has anyone developed any insight into how to use 'motivation'?

It seems a bit random to me. Choosing option 1 will sometimes cause a + and sometimes a - even on the same player.

I tried being agressive after a player screwed up and being nice when they played well but the outcome was still fairly random.

Shouldn't it be more like three interceptions..each, for these two inexperienced QBs ?
;)

This one guy posted at MaddenMania that if the player says something like "Yes sir" then you should go passive. The "sup?" response indicates that you should go aggressive. I have found this not to be true, but it works about 75% of the time.

wow

Great job on the utility.

I am disappointed there one skill level and its on Pro. No wonder the games played out is so easy. A lot of people in other forums are saying there winning a lot of games regardless what team they pick.

Did'nt Pro and Rookie level on Madden give the edge to the human team. I think the next level after pro gives both side even.

I sure hope there a way to change the difficult level too.

I'd think it would be possible to adjust the difficulty to some degree using the sliders and giving the computer AI an advantage (or the human a disadvantage). At some point you should be able to get to where the stats are somewhat reasonable and there's a balance between the human and computer controlled teams since you don't actually control the action on the field. Probably not going to be great, but I'd think you could get something reasonable with some work and experimenting.

I noticed the Skill Level just sitting in the config file next to everything else. I see no reason why it can't be changed. I'll look into this next.

Chris W.

Dumb question - I can't find what the indicators in the boxes to the upper right of a player profile mean, for example, in checking out players coming into the draft some will have a red "WS", some will have a PS, etc. I assume it has something to do with scouting, but I don't see any correlations. What really frustrates me is not being able to find anything about it in the manual.

Thanks

Replying to my own message - the light bulb just went off, I assume these mean Scouted, Poorly Scouted, Well Scouted.

I think its an interesting idea, one which SAAP has used in the past I believe with their player talks etc. (only so many allowed during one time slot).

Personally I'm against that sort of thing simply because its hard to justify the time taken for each of activities as 'right' for each person when if you give two people irl the same set of tasks each will spend different proportions of time on each of the sub-tasks.

As such I'm happy to leave such things 'open' and unrestricted - if people themselves want to set a house rule that they can only do 'x' transfers per day or whatever then thats fine with me, but it'll remain a house rule for the foreseeable in my games.

Yep, that was on the help menu in the demo. Not sure if it's there in the full version.

Definately a fair argument.

I guess my thing is it seems weird to call these "terrible decisions"... I think they are deicisions that make a lot of sense for many players to build up realism, and not for others...

*shrug*

I largely agree. The concept behind some of these things may not be realistic, but the end result is. I think it adds something that you can't overhaul your team overnight by trading your entire roster or changing your entire lineup without simming a day. Making radical changes on the depth chart just doesn't happen much in real life, nor does making over a roster in day. And the game actually gives you plenty of opportunities to make these changes, you just have to plan appropriately.

didn't check to see if anybody posted this.

I just went to Best Buy this morning and paid, with tax...31.64.

Not bad, not bad.

I'm not saying its not realistic - yeah in an hour or half hour block you can probably only sit down and call 3 GMs and talk about trades or call 3 agents about signing their players...and if coaching the virtual Detroit Lions was my real job that would be fine but I despise the fact that I had to play 9 real hours of game play to get to one preseason game.

My gripe is that they made things realistic that are tedious and then abandonded reality in the things that would have been fun. 30 seconds to make a trade during someone else's pick in the draft? Why not give me 5-15 minutes there to work the phones and make trades and why can I only try to make like three trades during the draft? Do real NFL GMs contact fewer than three other teams the entire draft day? To me the day to day stuff is just a tedious click fest - that's great that you can only add two plays to the playbook in a half hour - but doing it that way means hundreds of more clicks to get in and out of that screen over and over again.

Like I said earlier, the idea is great and the execution was terrible. I think the only reason people are not up in arms about this is because of the idea of a 3D football management sim is such a sexy one that some people are willing to overlook the design flaws because they want it so bad. You tell me though, if you played Total College Basketball and I made you only able to call 3 recruits per session in the day and took away the automatic weekly call list, made you click on every individual player to learn anything about him as opposed to giving you the ability to view stats and ratings for the entire team at a glance and subjected you to pointless meetings with the AD where he tells you for the third week in a row that you need to recruit a power forward or with your coaching staff flip flopping on the same two players every week would you find those things acceptable or would you be ripping it as a tedious click fest? I'm not ripping on anyone who likes it - if you're satisfied with Head Coach then good for you - I liked the idea and wanted it very much to be that perfect version of what some of us always hoped Front Page Sports would evolve into and to me it was just designed so poorly that its often times more frustrating than fun.