Off Topic: Front Office Football 7.0 Now available!

[Bison]

You'd think with how popular football is these days there'd be a half dozen text sims.

[Nefaro]

You'd think with how popular football is these days there'd be a half dozen text sims.

There are at least 3 that feature custom career modes, and a few more that only do historical seasons.   I'm only interested in the ones with a career mode and pretty much all of those are unfinished and/or have issues.  The last FOF version had a few big issues I hope to see alleviated in this one - it was certainly the closest to being a complete managerial game.

As for popularity, I don't think many gamers even know this kind of stuff exits.  Many of those who know about them just blow them off.  I blew them off for quite some time before giving them a try.  Being saddled with eLicense certainly doesn't do them any favors of wrangling in new customers, either.  ::)

[PanzersEast]

Arlie over at GreyDogSoftware has been working on one for a while and I believe should be getting close to beta.  They are the ones who developed Bowl Bound College Football.  It will have a career mode and in his post he did not say college or pro, however the title of the post was for Pro.

http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1934302#post1934302


PE

[Grim.Reaper]

Arlie over at GreyDogSoftware has been working on one for a while and I believe should be getting close to beta.  They are the ones who developed Bowl Bound College Football.  It will have a career mode and in his post he did not say college or pro, however the title of the post was for Pro.

http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1934302#post1934302


PE

I don't know if you remember but he is the one who built Total Pro Football back for .400 studios which was just about released 10 years ago around xmas.  At that time, I remember being extremely excited about that game and waited every minute for it to come out.  Sadly, never lived up to its expectations and disappeared.  Hopefully his latest effort will be worth it, but he has been working on it forever.  FOF is really the only career football game to stand the test of time.  Although Football Mogul has been around a long time, just can't get into that game and each year sees very minor improvements.

[PanzersEast]

I don't know if you remember but he is the one who built Total Pro Football back for .400 studios which was just about released 10 years ago around xmas.  At that time, I remember being extremely excited about that game and waited every minute for it to come out.  Sadly, never lived up to its expectations and disappeared.  Hopefully his latest effort will be worth it, but he has been working on it forever.  FOF is really the only career football game to stand the test of time.  Although Football Mogul has been around a long time, just can't get into that game and each year sees very minor improvements.

Yea I remember and bought the game.... unfortunately the company soon after it was released and then the game went into vaporware. Gary formed Wolverine Studios which has put out some good stuff, but still no football game.


PE

[Grim.Reaper]

I don't know if you remember but he is the one who built Total Pro Football back for .400 studios which was just about released 10 years ago around xmas.  At that time, I remember being extremely excited about that game and waited every minute for it to come out.  Sadly, never lived up to its expectations and disappeared.  Hopefully his latest effort will be worth it, but he has been working on it forever.  FOF is really the only career football game to stand the test of time.  Although Football Mogul has been around a long time, just can't get into that game and each year sees very minor improvements.

Yea I remember and bought the game.... unfortunately the company soon after it was released and then the game went into vaporware. Gary formed Wolverine Studios which has put out some good stuff, but still no football game.


PE

I am not a big fan of Gary and wolverine studios....his games have great promise but always seems like they release with issues and you walk on eggshells if being able to get through many seasons before some crash happens.  It also seems like after he releases a game, he disappears for long periods of time and is not very active in the forums.  Its a shame since the core seems pretty good.  For basketball text career sims, I am much prefer Fastbreak (sold at greydogsoftware) since they always seem to be pretty solid.  His latest pro version has been very good.

[PanzersEast]

I am not a big fan of Gary and wolverine studios....his games have great promise but always seems like they release with issues and you walk on eggshells if being able to get through many seasons before some crash happens.  It also seems like after he releases a game, he disappears for long periods of time and is not very active in the forums.  Its a shame since the core seems pretty good.  For basketball text career sims, I am much prefer Fastbreak (sold at greydogsoftware) since they always seem to be pretty solid.  His latest pro version has been very good.

I need to check them out then, I have not looked at the Fastbreak series since I have DDS.  Gary does a pretty good job, however it does take a while to eventually 'get there'.  And you are right, he will vanish for long periods of time and then reemerge for a time.  I have enjoyed his games once the bugs are worked out.... but will look at Fasbreak... have you played both?  How is the stats with Fastbreak and the recruiting with the College game?



PE

[Grim.Reaper]

I am not a big fan of Gary and wolverine studios....his games have great promise but always seems like they release with issues and you walk on eggshells if being able to get through many seasons before some crash happens.  It also seems like after he releases a game, he disappears for long periods of time and is not very active in the forums.  Its a shame since the core seems pretty good.  For basketball text career sims, I am much prefer Fastbreak (sold at greydogsoftware) since they always seem to be pretty solid.  His latest pro version has been very good.

I need to check them out then, I have not looked at the Fastbreak series since I have DDS.  Gary does a pretty good job, however it does take a while to eventually 'get there'.  And you are right, he will vanish for long periods of time and then reemerge for a time.  I have enjoyed his games once the bugs are worked out.... but will look at Fasbreak... have you played both?  How is the stats with Fastbreak and the recruiting with the College game?



PE

I have played them both and was actually a beta tester for awhile on the pro game.  I really liked them both.  Stats seemed very reasonable and seems most people agree.  I am not a basketball expert by any means, but nothing looked completely wrong.  With the pro game you can jump in and start from any year since 1940 something or other, which is pretty cool.  I haven't played either in awhile, more of a time thing then anything wrong with the games.  Pretty sure they both have demos you can try.

[Nefaro]

I checked out a demo of his older College Football game.  It seemed like it had a lot going for it but I didn't get far into it because I'm just not into college ball - it makes for a terrible career mode when your hottest players are gone so quickly. 

One of you also mentioned that he was creating an Pro ball one but didn't have a lot of faith in it getting finished anytime soon or relatively bug-free.  So I've not really been expecting it.  If the thing happens to pop out and be decent, then it'll be a nice surprise.

[Grim.Reaper]

Wondering if this will hit tomorrow, just in time for another football weekend....

The game's status was changed from release in "mid December" to "very soon"...speculation has been Friday is the day, but who knows.

http://www.solecismic.com/index.php

[Nefaro]

I'm sure I'll pick it up sometime if some of my pet issues have been addressed.

May not be until after Xmas, though.

[KyzBP]

It's here!!  Figures I have a long day at work today. 

The good news is that it allows for a 3 day demo period.

[Grim.Reaper]

Excellent...here is the purchase page and info for those interested, you can also download the demo and play 3 days before buying.

Not that I want to get into pricing, thought it would be a little more cheap than $37 since didn't appear to be earth shattering improvements, but maybe more to it than I know.

Info and Demo
http://www.solecismic.com/orders/index.php

Purchase
https://www.elicense.com/solecismic/

[BanzaiCat]

Was really hoping to try this for a little while before work...downloaded and installed the demo, but it won't run. It comes up in my Task Manager for about five seconds before it disappears from the list, and nothing happens.

Edit: N/M...typical 'Run as Admin' BS in Vista.

[Grim.Reaper]

Was really hoping to try this for a little while before work...downloaded and installed the demo, but it won't run. It comes up in my Task Manager for about five seconds before it disappears from the list, and nothing happens.

Edit: N/M...typical 'Run as Admin' BS in Vista.

Yep, had the same thing...have to run in admin.

Its kind of funny that I think the opening user interface might have gotten worse:)  The new schedule portion is very hard to read and my toolbar kind of look funny.  Might be just my monitor/settings.  Once you get past that area, pretty much everything else looks the same, which is ok for me.

I knew it wasn't going to be in the release, but I was really hoping for a streamlined way of game planning.  There is just a ton of screens and options you could setup.  I certainly let the computer do it all, but was hoping for a way to provide some input without completing all of that.  They did include an option to set all the game planning options to recommended at once, which is a tiny step up of having to go to every screen.

Now the hard call comes....buy this or the new wings over flanders game:(   decisions, decisions.