Alright Boyz, Here we Go! The DDS: College Basketball First Impressions Thread
 

To update, this game has been confirmed (I believe the last thread was regarding a vote on this game v. pro wrestling). Personally, I really enjoyed TCB and am looking forward to DDS:CB.

There is an excellent developer's journal entry here that talks about the updates to the recruiting model this time around. Some of the stuff sounds excellent and is unprecedented in sports games.

As well, a list of the announced features can be found below:

Thanks for this info I am really looking forward to this one. I loved TCB except for the slightly obtuse recruiting and roster management stuff.

Looking forward for it too.

I love the whole coach interactions with the recruits and the abilities to bribe them with various things and the possibility of getting caught even years later after you have move dto a new school. That borders on Football Manager 07 ish.

If the interface is anything like DDS:PB, it's going to be a bit of a stretch for me.

How so NC? What was PB's problems that made you shy from it?

I would give that link above to the developer dairy a read. I too had aproblem witht eh clicking through 6 screens to do something simple as well. However, it sounds like Gary is trying to get most info one or two screens eliminating multiple clickin back and forth.

yes. Sounds like gary very much recognized that the UI could be improved

#1 - The Team/League schedule page's potential is wasted because it lacks functionality. You can be on that page, sim 5 days, and not have updated score. You have to click out of the page, and click back in to have it refreshed.

#2 - The Newspaper page is also buggy. You can sim a week or month in advance, and the < > arrows do not update. You have click out of the page, and click back in to refresh.

#3 - Bidding for coaches during the coach-hiring stage is flawed. There is no display to view how much a coach might want for his contract. The onyl way to see this is after the coach-hiring stage, which is pretty much pointless.

#4 - Standings Page is static. I would want to be able to arrange the views from total wins / total losses, Conference standings, league standings, playoff race view.

As of right now, it's just two drop-down boxes with League/Developmental and East/West. Takes too many clicks to get to where you want to go.

#5 - The game in itself is still quite buggy. I get RTE errors every two game sessions. Not what I want from a sim. Definitely one of the most disappointing purchases I've made. I know Gary and his staff are very active at replying to bug reports and such. But with no further patches on the horizon, I just wish the game was reasonably more stable than it is right now.

These both are going to be fixed in a DDSPB patch but for DDSCB we've done away with the ability to sim from the main toolbar - it will function like TCB where you have to go to the league daily schedule page to sim. Not only does it clean up this problem with it not refreshing but it fixes some other issues from being able to run the sim while doing other things. The newspaper will be sort of similar but again you won't have the refresh problem simply because the simming will be done from one particular page so you will just go back to see the news when you're done simming.


As for #3 that perhaps was a poor design issue - I will try to make sure the asst. coach hiring in DDSCB runs smoother and I will see what I can do with DDSCB regarding the standings but its already of course broken down into conferences so most of that stuff is pro applicable only as well.


Have you updated to the latest patch (1.4.2)? I'm going to release 1.4.3 in a couple of days which will address a couple of issues including draft pick valuation and screen refreshes (like in #1 and #2 above). It seems most of the bug reports we see are from user created roster sets but if you're getting RTEs just email me and I will make sure they get patched as soon as I can. I don't not patch the game because I'm waiting for a certain time to do so. There also will be an update to the pro game to make it work with DDS:CB (and work better than TCB does in terms of functionality)

Yeah, to be honest I fell in love with the idea of a large map on the recruiting screen for whatever reason. This time around the large map is there (even larger) but its a popup you access if you want the map. Otherwise you get a full screen of recruit data. I've also done alot to try and give you not only as much data in one place as possible but to streamline things like using hotkeys to do simple items like adding people to your call list so you don't even need to open up specific recruit cards to do that - now in one keystroke of the letter "c" on the main recruiting screen you can do what it took you 4 clicks of the mouse to do in TCB (open card, click actions tab, click add to call list button, close card).

There are screens on our site plus the ones in the diary there that give a good idea of what the new interface for recruiting will look like. Personally, I think it is a HUGE improvement in the useability of the screens and will save you thousands of mouse clicks that you probably hated having to make before in TCB.

gary - loved TCB, but like however many others was quite frustrated, particularly by all the clicking involved in recruiting. I think the addition of hotkeys was a great idea, should go a long way towards making the game more fun to play and less work!

kudos!

As long as there isn't a couple day wait period to fix the nasty bug that prevent you for going onto Season 2, DDSPB wasn't too shabby. Only thing I hated was that for the first 5 years or so, none of the new talent ever made an all star team

Will there be any sort of method for where the kids are coming from? Like an Oak Ridge school that has multiple prospects?

I assume you're talking about Oak Hill Academy? If someone or a group of people got together to provide data on who the real powerhouses in the nation are I could have the schools the recruits are coming from reflect that somewhat. Otherwise it will be random as it is now in TCB.

I do have update 1.4.2

I'm meatloafster over in the Wolverine forums.

Thanks for the reply Gary. The game is ambitious, and despite several pitfalls, it does actually deliver a solid game overall (except for the bugs. :) )

ok, I'll search your posts on our forums and see what you've had to say and see what bugs you're experiencing and then get to work on getting rid of them.

I actually haven't reported anything else other than the interface issues.

The RTEs I get, I haven't reported yet. I'm trying to replicate the errors, but most of the time, I cant.

Please Please Please, include scouting reports and a pre game positional match up and team ranking summary before each game ala CoachingADynasty. I like to macro manage and I do not like to manually scout each opponent.

ok - we planned to beef up the scouting reports you got in email in TCB a bit so I'll find a good way of including that kind of info

It would be cool if the accuracy of these reports could be correlated to your scouts rating

well they are already - you don't see ratings for players on teams in TCB until you scout them at which point the ratings you get are based on the coach assigned to scouting's ratings. Its just that this information is presented on their team roster as opposed to the actual scouting report email which just has a button that sends you to the roster. The info is there - its just a matter of presenting it differently.

--Oh ok, well my main concern was being presented how my team stacks up to the next opponent. I loved how CAD had an advantage arrow for each positional match up and other team factors. With this info I could easily make a few simple changes to the lineup and sim the game.

--Also for recruiting could you include the occurrence when your chances of recruiting a top recruit are somewhat increased by recruiting that players high school teammate (Greg Oden/Mike Conley situation).

Just a quick bump for those interested - I'm continuing the developer diary over at DEN and they've posted the second installment which deals with player interactions in the game. Here's the link

http://www.dignews.com/feature.php?story_id=26072

And if you missed the first one that talked about the new recruiting stuff it can be found at

http://www.dignews.com/feature.php?story_id=25620

sweet gary. Will check it out!

Gary, this being a recruiting-heavy game, how many clicks would it take to get from let's say the main screen to player screen, and what's the lag in between screens?

Awesome stuff Gary, i have been begging every text sim developer for players relationships (including you in WS forums) as I think it's one of the things that can really immerse you in the game, feeling like you are dealing with humans and not just with stats.

I'm really happy that you worked on it, improving the ones already present in TCB. I like a lot how you have set it up on the paper, let's see how well does it translate to the game. I'm really looking forward for this game!

Wow, this sounds really great with the player-player and coach-player interpersonal relationship stuff being modeled in the game. This could be, if it works as advertised, a big step forward in text sim games even past FM's model of immersion;)

Well the button to access the recruiting screen is always available in the top menu area so one for that. From the main recruiting screen you setup whatever filters you want to search for players and then you can actually perform some of the actions right from that screen simply by highlighting the player and pressing the corresponding key on your keyboard. For example if you highlight a player and press 'w' he's added to your watch list. If you double click on a player it opens his recruit card and that screen shows you EVERYTHING at once including all the rest of the actions you can take. From there you can close the card, go back to the recruit screen and repeat or just cycle through the recruit card screens which will be in the order of the list of players on the original screen. If you played TCB you will see that recruiting takes FAR, FAR fewer clicks now than it did then.

Looks really good Gary. Thanks for the updates. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out as college basketball (and college sports in general) is in need of a quality sim.

Id love to give this game a try but I am not so sure I will. This thread got me interested in playing DDS:PB again so I updated it with the latest patch, made 4 trades with the Knicks to cut cap, am sitting watching the draft not clicking a thing and RTE 91 pops up and I lost all the work I had done before even starting the season. Very frustrating game to say the least.

You say you're using the Knicks - I'm assuming that you're running a modded file then. Can you tell me what mod file it was and can you send me the league files so I can see what exactly caused the error?

Thanks for the response Gary.

I am not using any modded file. I am using the default data that was just updated. The only adjustments I made was changing the team names to their correct "real life" name. I dont think I can send you the league file as I wasnt even past the initial draft so I hadnt saved anything at that point.

For anyone interested in reading a dynasty being done during our testing another installment is available at http://www.totalsportsworld.net/ddscb.php

I don't know if i want to read it, the wait is killing me and reading about others playing the game doesn't help at all :)

I'm on the fence right now, i want to play a college basketball game, so i'm tempted to start a new TCB dynasty, but... with the amount of hours i put into a new team, planning ahead, recruiting, etc, i don't want to start to play TCB again is DDSCB is really closed to be released.

Ufff the tought decissions in this life... :D

Hey Icy, not to put any pressure on you, but what are the possibilities for a mod this time around? I believe it was your mod that made TCB so great.

Thanks for your comments.

I would like to work on something once the game is out and I can see what is editable etc.

We began the open beta testing tonight and I had to share this comment from one of the people who pre-ordered the game and is taking part in the open beta. This really showcases some of the new player interactions of the game.


He had a problem with Millard, was able to use some of the options available to him including suspending him for a week to straighten him out and the guy shapes up and is the star of an upset for his school. Hope you don't mind me sharing this post with you guys but this was exactly the kind of stuff I imagined while implementing the new coach/player relationships and I'm really excited that it paid off like it did.

Sounds great, Gary. Sounds like a game I could enjoy.

My interest level has risen dramatically after reading that dynasty and the recruiting.

Downloading the beta now, will give it some time today.

Just out of curiosity, were you able to improve the scouting reports at all? Or improve the ease of identifying team ratings nationally and conference wise in defense, points per game, etc...

We've left the old scouting ratings in at the present time but they're being removed. You will get email scouting reports which will let you see much more of a "matchup" type thing (eg your PG vs their PG).

As for the others maybe I missed that suggestion before. Can you be a little more clear on what you're looking for there. We only started with the public beta testing so there's time to work suggestions in still.

Probably a dumb question but if someone preorders now do they still get to try the beta?

Yes anyone who pre-orders can get in on the beta whenever they feel like it. We're going to shut the pre-orders down at some point but probably not for another week so you can pre-order now and wait a week or two to start with later betas if you don't have time right now but once you pre-order you get your license and as long as you have your license you can use the betas.

dola

One thing I did with the open beta was make all of the forums visible (for the time being at least). Since most of them are in relation to bugs or errors or suggestions I made one purposely for people to talk about what they liked in the game so far so anyone who is looking for additional views on how the game is shaping up is welcomed to take a look.

http://www.wolverinestudios.com/foru...splay.php?f=64

Cool thanks Gary.

If I remember correctly in the last version there was no simple way to sort the team ratings, to easily determine my opponent's number ranking and my team ranking within the conference and nationally. I want to easily identify things like my team is the number one ranked defense in the big ten and number 10 ranked defense nationally, or my opponent this week is the highest scoring team in the nation.


---also, do the improvements made to recruiting render it more time consuming, or just a deeper experience?

You could list the leading programs by PPG allowed etc. by entire association or by conference, so that kind of thing was easy to find in TCB. Finding out where a particular school ranked might have been a little more time-consuming ... if that's what you are talking about, how exactly would you suggest it should be done?

As to recruiting, there have been a lot of changes made to make it less time-consuming, and the initial reaction has been extremely positive so far. But that's something that really is up to each individual -- best way to find out is to try it for yourself.

I would suggest some type of team rankings screen. You can pull up any team and see where they are ranked nationally and conference wise in team statistics. Or find some way to add the number ratings to an existing screen.