Thank you very much in advance, @nidza07.

You are right, making your game translatable from the start is a must, and it makes a developer's life a lot easier in the long run.

In the case of this project, this is even more important, as the game UI, the commentary and to an extent the stadium announcer should be translatable. Later on, we'll have even more things, for example generic audio scenes for news reports, interviews, etc. It all comes down to how detailed we want this game to be. I'll try and do my best so that adding new languages will be as painless as possible.

Regarding the player and team editor, yes and no. Extending the game, especially by fans is always great, as long as the game does not become unbalanced. It is very likely that the game will eventually include an editor, however, custom players and teams will not be available for multiplayer matches.

Having said that, as long as the players and teams are well-designed, I am open to adding them in new versions, possibly off-season. Ideally, I would like to have an editor community, so that this is managed properly.

Thanks @vojvoda. I'm glad to hear that there is interest, knowing that headaches are worth it is definitely motivation that I need right now. Not to mention your generous offer.

Any info or technical help is useful. Knowing the probability of fouls for example is going to be useful when fine-tuning the AI when it is ready. Past Fifa or PES experience is also indispensable. While I definitely do not wish to clone existing games, there are standards and parts of the game that were never conveyed to me, having not been able to see in-game graphics.

I'm definitely going to add you. In case there are more people (hopefully there will be), would it be okay to add you to a group?

Hi.

I also want to congratulate you on that endeavour, these are the ideas and concepts we need in the audiogaming scene these days.
I guess I can't help you programing wise, I do want to leave the field to those who actually know what they are doing.
but I do want to offer my help in other parts of this project.
What I have is some extensive beta testing experience with audio gaming and general gaming projects. i also am able to help out with football rules and regulations, tips for the AI depending on who you are playing against, I can provide sounds, record lines for comentators, nterview personell or what ever is needed.
Also I can help in team creation and designing custom teams if they are needed.
Because my native language is German I can also translate the game for so it has a broader player base.
If that sonds good to you, i really would like to hop aboard the projects and see if I can help out.

Greetings Moritz.

@crashmaster Luckily, I am in a position where I have a very good sound designer and we're probably going to spend hours going through what we need and how things should sound like in the game mix. As long as you have legal rights to the sound libraries you use, there is no reason for me to refuse your help, thank you very much! We are unfortunately far away from the sound design stage for now, but it's going to be very important later on.

Regarding compensation, I'd love to compensate any substantial help. For now, I cannot promise much, as it's too early to do so, but if things go well, especially at the funding stage, it's very likely going to happen.

The commentator, just like in other football games, will be scripted. This means having player names recorded at least 9 times, three variants of intonations for three different distances from the goal line. Other lines include, position info, comments on various actions, e.g. "Good pass," "He attempts to pass it through,", "Team name is putting on the pressure here," etc. At best, we are looking at 6-7 hours of initial audio, which we can add to later on, when new players, game modes, etc, are added. Just like players, the commentator is going to have new added lines, even if not yearly, but at least every 2-3 years.

I hope that joining the project will not be a disappointment for you

@Moritz, Awesome! Any help is greatly appreciated. Knowing rules will definitely help when you are testing the game, however, I am planning to include a training mode and I am dreading writing documentation already

@Juliantheaudiogamer Thank you for your kind words. I am hoping that this will become something big as well. Don't feel bad about not being able to contribute, encouragement counts as contributing and I am definitely happy about it Besides, Austria will be included as a team, since I am planning to include national teams first, which means that you can actually contribute first and last names if you like.

Hi
Robjoy you sure can add me to the group, I will be ready to spend a lot of my time to help you as much as I can and of course give some tipps from my 8 years long video gaming experience.
Best regards
Vojvoda

Hi
@robjoy this sounds really great and great. so first of all, my congratulations on such an ambitious project
several things. Regarding the search for funding, I would suggest that football is probably the most popular sport in the world, if you can add the translation function to other languages, I think it is essential since the audience that would be interested in donating would be much broader.
Regarding the gameplay, something that was not clear to me, I imagine that the response of a player will depend on his ability. Example is not the same as the shot of a beginner that of a dedicated footballer.
I also ask if there will be climate variations that can influence the field, for example a clean lawn is not the same as one with water, mud or snow.
Another question is if the referee's artificial intelligence is also variable, this as a simple curiosity.
This has more to do with the game modes, but in addition to the way to control a player that you mentioned, I would like to know if you plan to add an automatic mode to put together the team's strategy and that it plays without us controlling it. I mean manager mode.
I ask this because perhaps in a very long season, one does not feel like playing all the complete matches.
Finally, I cannot contribute with any programming, although I was also able to play FIFA and PES when I still had vision, and I am a great football fan.
without a doubt that when you open your financing campaign I will support financially you and I will spread it throughout the Spanish-speaking community. I can assure you that in the Spanish-speaking community there is an enormous interest in a football game, that's why I mentioned the importance of the possibility of translating the game into other languages.
once again my congratulations on this great project, without a doubt that I will support you in any way I can.
Greetings and thanks.

@FabiG94 Thank you very much. The Spanish community was actually one of the reasons why I am going to put a lot of emphasis on making the game translatable.

Regarding player skills, you are absolutely right. Internally, this is going to be a percentage, which in later versions you will be able to upgrade.

The AI always calculates the best angle and power for a shot. This means that without opponent players to block the ball, and without a goal keeper, the AI shot would always go in. In a match, however, there are a lot of things that can influence a shot. The player's stamina, for example influences the power behind a shot, while the shooting skill influences the aim and how well the ball is controlled during a shot. Besides these, even if a shot is perfect, opponent players can still head the ball away, or run in to block, and of course the goal keeper will also try and follow, either catching it, punching it out for a corner, etc.

Yes, the climate will also influence gameplay. Rain, for example, will be able to make the ball harder to control, as well as making players slide in to tackle faster. Fog will make it more difficult to detect players.

The referee is making perfect decisions at the moment, but this is going to change. If players are obscuring a foul, the referee may not see it all the time. With offsides, there is a chance that the referee will not stop the game. This includes goals scored from off-side positions, etc. There is going to be a setting to control how perfect the referee is, by default, it will be balanced.

Manager mode is, similarly to multiplayer, something that will be definitely added, but it is very likely that it will happen a few versions later, since after the national teams, I'll have to implement seasons which is going to bring in a lot of new players and teams, whichever league I implement.

@cyco I agree. This will be very important for adding in league teams, or just making your own dream team. It's definitely going to be part of the editor.

Hi,

Unfortunately, since licensing official teams and players is something that is definitely out of the question for various reasons, such as high royalties that I would rather spend on game audio and updating the commentary, or compensate people who put in time and effort to make the game better in any way.

I am not sure how commentary would work for custom teams and players, I think our best option is to have a mix of dynamically generated speech and recorded speech, but we'll see.

To report some good news, I've just fully implemented the referee, including the rule that if the referee touches the ball in any way, the game will be stopped and a referee ball will be used to continue.

While this would increase costs, I really like the numbered approach, as it does not interrupt the game flow by switching to a different voice/screen reader.

Announcing player names is going to be a priority. It will probably take us some time to fine-tune what is more important in a given situation, player names or the actions, e.g. "A good chance here!" instead of announcing the player name, but this is why we'll have testers.

Feedback and comments are incredibly useful, thanks everyone! Let me know if anything is not clear or you are not sure about how we might go about implementing something and I'll try to explain the way I'm planning to implement it, so we can discuss bad and good. Keep them coming!

@12, I mean when you want to shot the ball you shouldn't be able to move.
also for commentary, I suggest to use Dectalk for the first versions or you can use a deep learning method which can learn and pronounce the names of the players (WaveNet or things like that might seem useful, but we need a lot of commentary data for training).

Just for giggles, I've contacted FIFPro, to inquire about player name licensing. Since we are not interested in player likeness, as the game will not contain graphics, I can obtain a license for current players in Europe for 250000 dollars for a year. So no, unfortunately real players will not make an appearance, at least officially. There are online sources and the editor will be available, so this can be done via custom teams.

@FabiG94 Any time.

Yes, you will be able to change strategies during a match. I am imagining a pause menu with a tactics option, where you will have team tactics (applied to all players), or individual tactics (applied to a single player). With team tactics, the game will be divided up into 4 regions, so you will be able to instruct everybody to have a tighter defense. This, of course, means that when you are attacking or coming back to defend, your midfielders and forwards will have a lot more running to do. As for individual player instructions, more regions will be available (not sure about the exact number right now), so you can easily change formation from a 4 4 2 to a 3 4 3 or even 4 3 2 1 if you like.

Regarding updates, there are multiple reasons why I would like to do it. The most important one is that not every planned game mode will be available in the initial release. Upcoming updates will address this. This allows me to release the game faster and tweak things that need tweaking. This ideally means that we will have new and improved sounds, the gameplay might change slightly, the AI can hopefully get smarter with each release as well.

The other thing is that the player database needs to be updated as well. Players age, their skills might get better or worse, we can introduce new players and teams, etc.

@visualstudio Thanks for explaining what you mean. Yes, this is going to be a factor when shooting as well.

Wavenet is a good idea, unfortunately it is quite costly, at least from my past experiences with Google. I think the best option is to use a TTS or a screen reader for the prototype, so that I can show something for what I am asking funding for I don't think it would be fair to anyone if I asked for financial support now.

@cyco I don't think there is any TTS voice at the moment that can convey the excitement of a football match in a way that I would be happy with. Even if recorded speech is repetitive, I would definitely love to have a real human commentating, if we can make it possible.

Regarding stadiums, I was just looking into dimensions and where certain markings are on the pitch. Because we cannot include real ones, I was thinking about having international minimum and maximum values and randomize for each stadium. What other features do you imagine editing, if we make creation and editing available?

And lastly, we have a candidate for the commentary. Here's a reel he has done. I personally think that it's incredibly good, but I'm interested about your opinion. https://soundcloud.com/voiceoverguy/set … ommentator