I began playing board games with my brother when I was a youth. We played war games like Third Reich and Firepower, but we spent most of our time playing football – Paydirt, Strat-o-matic, Bowlbound, anything we could get our hands on.
Years later, I was working on my Masters in Computer Science and decided that I wanted to write a football than Ken and I would enjoy. Neither of us enjoyed the twitchy, unrealistic games that flooded the market, so I began working on the initial ideas. The game was eventually published for the PC, Mac, and Amiga, but alas, real life compelled me to leave game development for “real” work.
Fast forward to 2010. My oldest son had a near-fatal car accident, and it woke me once again to the brevity of life, and I knew I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, but I wasn’t sure how. Well, my younger son had saved up and bought a used Mac, and he offered to let me use his to learn iOS development. I took to it immediately, and a few months later, I decided to buy my own Mac and push forward.
In 2012, I added many options, including multiplayer, and 2013 saw several improvements. Then I met up with Aurelio Barrios, who created the new scoreboard and panel buttons, showed me great options on Shutterstock, and showed me some nifty programming tricks for immensely more flexibility in creating buttons and panels.
Also for 2014, I completed redesigned the menu system, using ideas hashed out during my Philmont trek, and created my own popups to replace the drab default ones from before. The new version also has much improved help and is more flexible in allowing adding more formations and plays.
Finally, I’ve been working on Career Play, which is coming along great and should be offered later in the Fall.
I can relate. Lost my oldest son to suicide 6 years ago and, since then, I have tried to live by the motto of “Life is too short to worry about unnecessary crap”.
Your game looks awesome. I enjoy the same aspects of playing football games, i.e. the strategy and bluffing, not the twitch stuff.
Any chance you might convert it to Windows 8? I don’t own an ipad, but I would love to play this on my Windows 8 tablet. I know it would be a ton of work having to convert the Objective C to either JavaScript or C#, but one can dream!
Jamey, I am so sorry! I’ve seen that happen to a few friends, and there are simply no words. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare.
As for the game, thanks for your kind words! I’d love to look into moving to a more general platform like Coco2dx or Unity 2d, something that would let me distribute to Android and Windows devices. I’m going to see how the game does this year, since is the third iteration of the game, but I’m definitely going to research those two avenues (and others, if I can find them), because broadening the base is a smart idea moving forward in any case!
Thanks again, and my best to you, Jamey.
Hi. I am eagerly anticipating the release of PSF 2013 on the appstore. Two questions:
– Do team rosters have player names?
– Is it possible to player several seasons instead of just a single one?
Even if “no” is the answer to both, the game is still an ‘instabuy’ for me.
Thanks, regards.
João
Hi! Good questions. Right now, I’ve added jersey numbers, but not names, mainly because of no room on the screen (and I can’t use real names anyway). But I’m looking into ways to rearrange screens in the future so I could show names, and add a way for users to modify the players’ and teams’ names. I can’t use real names because of NFL licensing, but you’d be able to edit the names yourself.
By playing multiple seasons, I’m guessing you mean to take a team across multiple years of drafting, retiring, etc? I don’t have that yet. I’ve wanted to focus on the simulation part of the game, and this year I’m hoping to work on the marketing at some point, to broaden the sales. And then, I’m already thinking about a Franchise mode like you’re asking.
Great questions, and thanks again!
I would have purchased this regardless, but two things made the decision much easier.
First, like the earlier commenter, I also lost my son. He passed two years ago to a genetic disorder. He would have been 10 on September 7th. He would have loved this game. So, yeah, I too can relate.
Second, when I was in college (30 years ago!) I had a Timex Sinclair home ‘computer’ and created by own text-based football game in BASIC. Like your game, you chose the plays and the computer did the rest. There was no AI — all outcomes were random, and it had about ten offensive choices, five running and five passing. Pretty basic, no pun intended, but it actually worked and my friends (this was, of course, pre-console football games) were pretty impressed.
I still have the sourcecode buried away in a file cabinet. You typed in the code and saved it to a cassette, then loaded the game that way! So, anyway, this game is right up my alley, and makes me nostalgic for my old text-based football.
And on top of all that — I’m loving the game. Totally addictive. I hope it does well.
Mike, I am truly sorry to hear about your son. Through all the rehab, I’ve met many children with cerebral palsy and other conditions, and it breaks your heart! I wish children were off limits from such things. I have no words other than that I’m sorry.
As for your game, very cool!! I started waaaay back myself, and this game had been a long journey! I’m heading to a meeting but I’ll touch base later this week.
Thank you much for your encouragement!