Designing Custom Plays for FPS FBPRO (prior to ‘99)

 

Play Design Basics

 

Introduction

 

This article is intended as the first in a series which will discuss the design of custom plays in Front Page Sports FBPro 95 thru 98. These articles will point out how to get the game to simulate what you want to accomplish with a play and also share some insight on general play design concepts. Every attempt will be made to stick to the subject at hand but you must excuse me if I strays into associated subjects such as gameplans, profiles and player ratings/rosters. These subjects are so integrally related that it is hard to discuss one without at least pointing out the effects on/by other aspects of the game.

The fact that you’re taking time to read this article probably means that you are either new to FBPro or at least new to playing in an on-line league. Even if you are experienced but new to the on-line arena and have joined a sim-league or coached home game league, you’re in for a new experience ! Also if you have been playing in arcade mode (as opposed to coaching mode) you’ve got a lot to learn including patience. Kind of like switching from player to coach in real life. The ball isn’t in your hands any more and now you’re responsible for how all 22 guys perform ! These articles will be geared towards simmed and coached games.

If you are an experienced FBProer, you may find some or all of this material redundant and/or at conflict with your own opinions. Hey...it’s a free country. If you read on you’re welcome to whatever insight it may bring. I make no claims to superior intellect nor can I claim multiple league championships due to brilliance on this subject. Simply having fun with this game and offering my personal experiences and opinions on the subject at hand. Also I’m a strong proponent of fair play and in maintaining realism in the simulation. If you’re a true football fan, I’m sure you want to test your football skills and strategy against other people and not your video game skills. If you don’t share those values you’re probably wasting your time reading any farther.

 

Getting Started

 

This may be pretty basic but it requires saying. If you haven’t read the FBPro manual on play design, stop here and do so. Even if you’ve been designing plays on your own already please go and read the book. The main reason for this is to make sure we’re on the same page with the terminology in the play editor etc.

OK. Now that you have read the manual, we can start to discuss getting a handle on the games artificial intelligence vs. reality. This simply means understanding how players in the game will react to commands compared to what the book says they do or what real people would do. Before you can hope for any success at play design, you have to get a general understanding of how the artificial intelligence reacts to situations. This doesn’t mean learning to trick the computer. Remember, we’re trying to simulate a real football game.

Practice Makes Perfect

 

The best way to understand how players act in FBPro is on the practice field. This part of the game is fun because practice is where you figure out your team’s abilities in real life too. You can go onto the practice field and watch how players react to commands, test different combinations of player ratings, etc. For example, let’s say you want to "try out" a couple of receivers. Here is what you do:

After you have done this you will start to see how the AI works compared to how it is described in the manual. For example, "acceleration" isn’t what it is in reality. In the real world acceleration means you start slow and pick up speed. In FBPro, the acceleration rating just determines how long the player stands still before he starts to move (at top speed) after the snap. Also the manual indicates that strength rating is different for different positions. Not true. If you line up a DB with ST=85 against an OL with ST=50 and have the DB blitz, guess what. The DB will run right over the OL. (Actually now that they are promoting the ‘99 version of the game, one of the things they’re advertising is that this has been fixed)

Obviously the things you can try here are endless. Line up a WR and DB one on one and see if the DB can cover. Run a pass rushing DE against a T etc. The point here is to study how the game executes the player commands. I recommend you practice enough to get a good understanding of all of the defensive player commands and how different ratings affect the players. Good defensive plays are harder to design than offense. One thing to study closely on offense is pass blocking. I’m sure everyone has noticed that there are more QB sacks in FBPro than in real life. Pass rushing is the one advantage defense has in this game. If you are in a league with a really good commissioner, the OL will be a little stronger than DL on average and the DL’s SP and AC will be limited to 75 or so. Unfortunately it’s a lot of work to do this and most leagues just let the computer assign the ratings when the players are created. So you have to figure out how to block some awesome DL !

I’ll say it one more time, the idea is to figure out how to make the game simulate real plays, not to figure out how to beat the computer. If you read enough league play rules you don’t have to figure out how to cheat. You can tell how to beat the computer by what the rules tell you not to do.