The Future Is UFL

Wow it's been a long time since my last post and a lot has happened since! Sadly we witnessed the demise of FML and I wasn't sure how to write a goodbye post, a shame as I really enjoyed FML and writing on this blog.

Anyway, I'm glad to say that we have something bright on the horizon in terms of an MMO Football Management game! Something I am very proud to be working on as well.

Founded out of the ashes of FML, a group of ex-FMLers came together to work towards a new game, titled Ultimate Football Live (UFL). At first many people were skeptical, but recent developments have shown that we are very serious about the project.

We are not aiming to make a copy of FML, of course we will look at FMLs finer points but we are designing the game in a way which will maximise its chance of success.

I also want to note that a company is formed, Netsports Software Ltd and we hope to have a website for it soon.

I just want to list some links of interest:

UFL Website

UFL Forums

UFL Development Blog 

UFL Facebook Group 1 & Group 2

UFL Twitter Page

UFL Chat Room

It's been great to see lots of discussions and feedback on the forums and game development is coming along well. At the moment we are in pre-Alpha stage and the target for the commencement of Alpha Testing is Q3 2011, with Beta following a few months after that hopefully.

For the Alpha testing stage it will mostly consist of the development team, but also those who contribute greatly on the forums may be invited. For Beta, we will certainly be needing many testers and closer to the beginning of Beta testing there will be a Beta signup page on the website.

One thing that I want to mention is that there is still space on the development team. In particular we are after another Java developer, a C++ developer and a Financial Manager. If you feel you could offer anything to the project for any of these roles, or in any other way please contact us here or here.

Lastly I want to show you some screenshots of the Pre-alpha User Interface Layout. 

Would be great to hear more feedback about them in that thread.

Thanks for reading and please come visit us on the forums and help us spread the word about UFL!

World Cup Roundup

Another great night! Thanks to everyone who participated - from the 50 competing managers to everyone who loaned out players or even watched and enjoyed some of the World Cup matches. Congratulations to Dew who led Turkey to winning the World Cup and Jussi who took Austria to the final!

In the end it was an epic 4-2 win for Turkey with Sercan Yildrim scoring a magnificent hat-trick to win it for Turkey!

Prizes below:

Winner - Dew receives 450k
Runner up - Jussi receives 200k
Highest Goalscorer - Pato. Martin and James receive 75k
Highest Assists - Miralem Pjanic. Daevid and Edward receive 75k
Highest Avg Rating - Sergio Aguero. Mark and Alex receive 75k

Best Asian Team Peformance - Israel . John recieves 75k
Best Americas Team Peformance - Argentina. Alex recieves 75k
Best European Team Peformance - France. Stephen. recieves 75k
Best African Team Peformance - Nigeria. Dan recieves 75k

Lucky member from the crowd - Lee Jackson receives 100k

Those who reached expectations:

Turkey - Dew
Austria - Jussi
Russia - Doyun
Nigeria - Dan
Norway - Mark
Slovakia - Jonny
Ireland - Neil
Belarus - Dean
Ukraine - Roy
Seychelles - Danny
Israel - John
Australia - Rob
Switzerland - Olof
Ecuador - Scott
Romania - Ian
Mali -Chris
Liberia - Noel
Central African Republic - Nick
Senegal - Vince
Saudi Arabia - Stu
Jamaica - Malc


Well done guys for reaching your expectations!


That's all for now. Hope you guys enjoyed the WC as I certainly did! Looking forward to the next one in two seasons time... :)

Remaining Teams for the World Cup!

Currently we have 44 managers building their team for the World Cup.

Me along with Louis King decided to check out what teams were remaining as it was often asked. Louis tried to find the best remaining teams available, and I checked how many decent players were available from the country.

Using all players search (checking trial-able free agents and loan-able contracted players) I came up with this list. It only includes players with Signing on Fee greater than 50k. Keep in mind it is not 100% accurate but should be quite close.

For the contracted players I discounted any players who had Early Sale Tax and were either > 25yo or >10k wage.

Paraguay ~ 90
Montenegro ~ 40
South Korea ~ 40
Egypt ~ 50
Hungary ~ 30
Belarus ~ 30
Honduras ~ 75
Cameroon ~ 75
Iran ~ 35
Guinea ~ 23
Tunisia ~ 27
South Africa ~ 46
Peru ~ 129
New Zealand ~ 7
Morocco ~ 47
Senegal ~ 58
Finland ~ 30

Let me know if you want to control a team! :)

Information about Nunez World Cup!

This is mainly for those who are in Nunez and keen to participate in the World Cup on Sunday night!

Bidding For a Country:

Up until 8PM tonight (8th April) you may bid for any nation you choose.

Between 7PM and 8PM tonight (8th April) live auctions will be held for 6 nations:

        - 7.00PM Germany.

        - 7.10PM Spain.

        - 7.20PM France.

        - 7.30PM Argentina.

        - 7.40PM Brazil.

        - 7.50PM England.

Keep in mind that if you can't be online for the live auction you can still mail me a pre-bid for these countries :)

You can bid in this format:


1st. England - 900k RP
2nd. Australia - 300k RP
3rd. Senegal - 30k RP

If you are the only team bidding for a certain country, you sign them for 50k RP!

If there are multiple teams, you pay what you bid!

After the teams have been announced, any manager-less nation may be automatically signed for 50k RP!

Teams will be announced at around 8.15PM tonight, 8th April.

Making Your Team


Once all the teams have been announced you can begin making your team which can consist of your own players, trialists or loans.


Anyone who is loaned for the World Cup will have their loan cancelled promptly after the WC finishes so they can rejoin their club team.


I recommend you make loan bids at 0% wage. Also, it may be wise to talk to the manager you are trying to loan from. If they know that it's only for the WC they are more likely to loan out their players :)


Unfortunately due to loan restrictions (28 days, over 10k wage etc) their is a chance some of the top players from your country may not be able to participate. A real shame I know but don't worry as everyone will be in the same position!

Preparing for the World Cup


As soon have you made a squad of at least 14 players from your country, please mail me so I can send you an invite to the competition.

PLEASE make sure you have set up a separate squad for the WC and set the correct squad when you enter the competition. We will check every team however it makes life so much easier if you set it up correctly :)

If your team is not ready by Sunday afternoon there is a chance you may be removed from the competition!

World Cup Kick-Off


The World Cup will kick-off at 8PM on Sunday night.

There will be a significant CASH prize fund, depending on how many teams enter the competition!

For every team that enters, 30k will be added to the prize fund. Last WC the prize fund was 1.3m.

The breakdown of money from last WC:


Winner recieves 400k
Runner up recieves 200k
Highest Goalscorer (player) receives 100k
Highest Assists (player) receives 100k
Highest Avg Rating (player) recieves 100k
Best Asian Team Peformance recieves 75k
Best Americas Team Peformance recieves 75k
Best European Team Peformance recieves 75k
Best African Team Peformance recieves 75k

One lucky member of the crowd won 100k!

Also, for every player of your team who plays in the World Cup final, you will earn 1 IFA point... Up to a max of 5. However potentially your FA could win 32 IFA points through this!

Lastly, I will send out a mail of FA expectation for your country. If you reach them, you will be refunded the RP you bid to get them :)

All in all, the originial Nunez World Cup was a great success and an awesome night. Please take part and see how well you can do! Anymore questions, please mail me!

Season 10 Review

What a disappointing season!

After being relegated the season before I was quite sure I could bounce straight back up to the Premier League :(

After a very promising start I managed 10th position in the Championship with a 17-10-13 W-D-L ratio. The star of my season was my favourite Iranian Striker, Vahid Amraei:

Sadly I think we're nearing the end of an era, for Keisuke Honda, and soon, Takayuki Morimoto. They are 34yo and 32yo respectively and both of them had poor seasons compared to previous ones. It was actually a tough decision to decide whether or not I should re-sign Honda! However after considering his attributes are still very good, his wage is only 8k yet has World Famous reputation and that he's one of my two favourite players in South Pacific Striker's history, I decided to keep him!

After realising how old these guys were getting, I decided to check the rest of my team only to find it even more worrying!

If I kept my starting 11 from last season, this is what I was looking at:

1 x 34yo
2 x 33yo
1 x 32yo
1 x 31yo
1 x 30yo
2 x 29yo
1 x 24yo
1 x 26yo
1 x 22yo

With two 29yo on the bench. 

After seeing this, I realised it was time for some major team overhauling!

Not long after, I received a great bid for one of my best youth prospects, Vladimir Akbarov. It was a very tough choice to accept but I'm hoping that my games record holder Jin-Woo Jang can have a great season as keeper :)

Apart from Arkabov I do have some nice kids coming through to the first team.

22yo D/M L - Ian Smith

22yo ST -  Danny Fleming

20yo DC - Yushi Endo

 21yo ST - Tatsuya Takenaka

These four will hopefully play a lot this season - how odd that they all are left footers! 

I've also got quite a few good younger kids coming through, will be interesting to see if any of them can break into the first team. 

Season 11 Expectations:

- Gain promotion to the Premier League, I don't care if I finish 1st or 5th.

- Reach the final of the U17 Champions Cup.

- Ensure qualification of U21/U19/U17 teams to the Champions Cup of each age level for the following season.

- Continue to develop and bring as many kids through the first team.

 

New FML Blog!

Just found out Abdul, one of my good friends from the beta GW Miller has begun writing an FML Blog: http://thesundayfootballerstimes.blogspot.com.

He certainly knows a lot about FML so I am looking forward to seeing what he has to say about the game... :)

10 useful yet often unknown features of FML

Overall Progression View Tab

This view tab is very useful when you want to find out how your players are developing. It's especially cool as it can give you a hint that your player is close to reaching his potential - for example if his overall progression shows as dark green for a long time, and then drops down to yellow, you know that he's near his peak. You can find this view under customise view - attributes - overall progression. Keep in mind that as soon as you have signed him he will start on 'okay' - this will hopefully change after 10-15 days.

Email Alert

If there is a certain type of mail you want to receive however you can't sign on, then this is perfect for that. It allows you to filter what type of mail you would like to receive to your email, so it doesn't overload your inbox. For example, I get the news item about any youth academy graduates I get. I can then read them on my phone at work :)

Include Other Players

This is useful if you want to see all of your players on one page. Maybe you want to see a list of all u18s in your team, or would like to compare players from different squads. Of course you can do this by using All Player search, but I find this quicker. My main use for this is when checking another managers team, I can click include other players and then filter for Asian nationality.

Role Filter and Show Filter Columns

One of my favourites. Great if you need to quickly work out who the best player on your team is for a certain position. You can even then save views for each position - eg. ST, GK, DC etc.

Archived Mail


Because of time difference, I used to lose track of a lot of mail when I signed in after midnight. Then I noticed there was an archived mail tab which stored all the previous weeks mail which I now check every day.

Leaving Managers


I very very rarely bid on players in wage auction who are from managers who are not deactivated. So an easy way to see who has recently deactivated is to check the mail item you get about the manager leaving UFFA. For me, it shows in the ignored folder but I am not sure if it set to ignored by default.  Either way, you can filter for it easily - as seen in the screenshot below.

Minimise To Tray


I always wondered what this setting meant until I found out that when you minimse the game, it hides it from the taskbar. Very useful if you want to play FML at work/school and not get caught :)

Transfer Alerts


Transfer Alerts are really useful if you don't want to check Transfer Auctions/Transfer List/Loan List all the time yet you want to see the good players who appear on these lists. You can filter the players however you like.

Contract Renewal and Projected Income


As you know, in FML it's not your current cash that matters, it's your projected income. During the season you may be eying a great signing, however not have enough projected cash to make a bid. What you can do is turn off the contract renewal on some high waged players for a few days so you have enough projected money to make the bid. It's important to turn the contracts back on as soon as you can however because you don't want to spend too much and then not have enough money to renew contracts when they expire... :)

Orging Competitions


The last one of the list is primarily for FA organisers. One really time consuming thing can be checking squads for official competitions. The first screenshot shows how you can very quickly check to make sure each team has enough players specifically for the competition. The second screenshots shows you how to make sure that   the manager has picked the correct squad for entering into a specific competition - this is particularly useful when hosting a World Cup or other community event.