in all fairness, what were people expecting from

1. a one programmer company
2. a first edition game from the series

the game is going to be awful, that we all know, but i think people were expecting the next revolution of FOF (with graphics) when that's probably unfair. no one will argue that they've botched this. but i think we have to be forward-thinking here, and see how exactly this advances the genre. what we have here is a bad sim engine with poor graphical representation on the field. what happens in the next installment? or what happens when someone with better programming skills takes a crack at it. then we probably have an "ok" sim engine with moderately decent graphics. it's much easier to design something when you have a benchmark to work off of. you see how not to do things, you see what worked (in this case, not much) and how to make it better.

i think we're being short sighted here. i don't care at all for Maximum Football, i care about how someone who knows what they're doing can take the ball and run with it. do i love FOF? yes. would i love FOF with graphical representation - even low grade graphics like MF - you betcha.

Exactly, that's why the Baltimore Ravens still have their inaugural logo. :D

What on earth would possess him to blatantly copy logos like this? As a developer he should be hyper-sensitive to IP issues and let the user base create the mods that blatantly copy.

Remember, even Vanilla Ice had to pay Bowie even though Ice's song went, "dun dun dun dun-dun-dun da" and not "dun dun dun ... dun dun da."

Laziness.

Has anyone determined whether the QB calls are just lifted from FB Pro?

I don't think it's been verified, but it sure sounds like it has. I'm not sure how easy it would be to verify though.

(set to the tune of Ice Ice Baby)

Winter Valley Baby (x2)
All right stop code a little faster
Daivd is back with a brand new gold master
Whoops, the box art is unsightly
Releasing new final code base nightly
Will he ever stop yo I don't know
Matrix cheeks are starting to glow
He rips off logos just like a vandal
Stadiums names example: Sticks in a Candle
Wife go rush to the mic like a boom
Got sent back to her Media Relations room
Deadly is the laughter when a screen shot I see
They run like zombies that really have to pee
Love or leave it we all have to wait
Seems like this was started in 1968
If there is a problem yo Daivd will solve it
It'll be more fun to watch Lysol dissolve it

Well, I don't think we know if those logos will be released with the game. He might just be showing what is possible (assuming the user loads his/her own logos). If they do get released with the game though I totally agree with you.

Is it even legal for them to even show official screenshots with licensed logos though? I'm not a lawyer, but I'd think that alone is a violation.

Paging Antmeister, you have new lyrics to work with. :D

Well, I'm not sure they're profiting off the screenshots themselves, but i don't really know. Either way, it's certainly bad form.

Amazing. This is now the second-most viewed thread in current forum history and the 12th most replied to post -- and gaining quickly on both fronts.

I guess people really do like watching a train wreck.

IIRC, i remember a TPF screen shot that contained NFL logos and, of course, they didn't ship with the final product. Maybe they were in err too?

Nice

no release today...check back tomorrow.

Oh yeah baby, I'm taking tomorrow off work!

When I was a kid, there was a written joke people did that went something like:

How do you keep an idiot in suspense? (turn over)

then on the back side it said:

(turn over)

I feel like this game release is a modern day version of that joke.

:D

The ensuing discussion on this topic over there is priceless.

It's like they are bringing panhandlers off the street to show up on the forums and start explaining that how the game works is just fine. Guys off the streets of Germany, in this case, which adds a nice flavor of international incomprehensibility.

Maximum Football = Burning Clowns

Sad....but still funny.

Nice Painspotting! I love working in little gems like that when I can.

I had stopped reading stuff over there because it just got to be silly... but I've GOT to go back and read this.. I don't see how you can defend this piece.. the first few downs it seems like it could be rounding problems, but once you get to the 4th down, it's just out of control..

I thought Maximum Football = Tea-Bagging Wolverines.
but i guess that depends on if the wolverines are the tea-baggers or the tea-bagees

Here's my guess as to what's going on...

1&10 @ 20,
run play and lose 1.5 yards leads to:
2&11.5 (rounded down to 11) on the 18.5 (rounded down to 18).
run play and gain 2.0 yards leads to:
3&9 (11-2) on the 20 (18+2):
run play and gain 7.5 yards leads to:
4&1.5 (9-7.5 = 1.5 rounded down to 1) on the 27.5 (20+7.5 rounded down to 27)

My guess is rounding throughout the game is probably setup the same and will need to be fixed to round before being applied.

"On First-and-Ten we have off-setting penalties, holding on the offense and illegal use of the hands on defense, so we will replay the down. First and Eleven!"

I don't even know what to think when statments like this:

"First down markers should never move until they are crossed. "
Are apparently now subject to reasonable debate at the MF board.

For chrissakes, I'm a math major and that made my head hurt.

Maximum Football - Now includes a slide rule for first down calculations!
Maximum Football - You never know how far you need to go!
Maximum Football - Maximun Customization, Minimal Math Skills!
Maximum Football - Your guess is as good as ours!
Maximum Football - Where the first down marker moves more that the release date!

Sounds like a reasonable theory.

What is remarkable, is that they have supposedly had dozens of testers working on this game day and night (their words, not mine)... and that something like *this* made it into the little movie they release to the teeming fans. That is just ponderous, man. Ponderous.

LOL, ponderous.

This is awesome. You figured this out (in a few short minutes) from a simple example given. How did this make it through the last 5 years?

(brilliant deduction, BTW!)

**edit**
damn, quik was quicker and beat me to it.

Ponderous.

That's an all time great rant.

I suspect the testers were busy getting the beer tent correct and didn't have time for the less important aspects of the game.

Casey looks like the Ramses II mummy they always show on History Channel

My favorite thread over there is still "Maximum Football 2." There is nothing particularly funny in the thread itself - I just love that it exists.

...I want a goddamn concerted effort to come out of a record that isn't a fucking up-tempo record every time I gotta do a goddamn death dedication! It's the last goddamn time; I want somebody who uses his fucking brain to not come out of a goddamn record... that's up-tempo and I've got to talk about a fucking dog dying!

Wow - it's really scary that the same thing went through my head when that picture was posted. Weird.

My theory is that there are sooo many problems with the game, the testers have basically given up. Or ... they found a rounding error somewhere else in the program, and rather than fix it locally David updated it globally in the latest build introducing new problems throughout, and creating a 'chasing their own tail' scenario. Either way, it's not good.

My theory is that the testers are blind monkeys who throw their feces at their computers. But, like evolution, it's just a theory. ;)

RE: Faces in the game? - 2/27/2006 2:30:34 PM
Toddzilla Matrix Recruit Posts: 15 Joined: 2/22/2006 Status: online	Thanks for the screenshot, Daivd! (in reply to Lions)
Report | Post #: 8

That's just freakin' brilliant!

Si what happens when the users (trolls?) call out the testers for missing the random-first-down-makrer? Erik locks the thread. Classy.

It let me quote you and post just fine...

Dude, that is brilliant! And of the 1,000,000 scenarios you'd need to go through in order to get a working game, we've hit upon scenario 999,917 where we get a game that is *almost* ready but never quite makes it. Fark you, Shakespeare!

Well, if you look at their home page, it has a math problem right there out in the open, begging to be solved:

Maximum Flexibility = Maximum-Football

So going back to my high school Algebra, the two Maximum's cancel each other out, leaving us with this:

Flexibility=-Football

This presents us with a little bit of a quandry. Flexibility is equal to the negative of Football. Since I failed calculus horribly in college, I'm sure I'm missing something here that require use of differential equations. But to me, since Flexibility appears to be a positive integer, to have a positive value for Flexibility would require that football be a negative integer. This postulates that Flexibility and Football are mutually exclusive variables. You can have one be a positive integer, but not the other. So if you have high Flexibility, then you have low Football. And the inverse is true. If you have high Football, then you have low Flexibility.

So, at least they were accurate right there on their homepage.

Maximum Flexibility = Maximum-Football

Since Flexibility is Maximum, then -Football is the inverse Maximum value. I have just provided mathematical proof of the game.

Feel free to grade my work, QuikSand.

:D

*rim-shot*

Fan-fricking-tastic, cartman.

That's too funny...

One of my best jabs on this board was totally unintentional...

Holy crap. They have released 2 videos of the gameplay, a writeup by Eric of 2 games that he played, and a small handful of screenshots.

And what have we learned from this very small amount of data?

1) The first down calculations are broken.
2) The game engine will not produce anything close to authentic results out of the box.
3) MF likes to steal logos from colleges and USFL teams.
4) David apparently doesn't know how to spell his own name.

There's more, but at this point it just feels like piling on.

I see where I messed up...

I didn't see the testers thread, was looking at the movie thread...

Dude, I can't wait for that DEMO!

I'm sorry, but you actually fail, since you assume

Maximum Flexibilty is the same as Maximim + Flexibility.

The presence of 2 variables next to each other connotates multiplication, not addition. Just as xy means x multiplied by y, Maximum Flexibility means Maximum times Flexibility.

So we really have

Maximum Flexibility = Maximum-Football
(Maximum) x (Flexibility) = (Maximum) - (Football)

cartman = D+