Warrior General Games

First off, please let's keep this discussion on topic. If you disagree with someone, do so in a reasonable manner. I will be watching this thread closely and will have no issues handing out forum suspensions if people are out of line.

This is directly from Bort:

My general idea is to present common scenarios with a run/pass or package select option. Sort of a premade AI, but maybe more graphically presented (pictures of field position or formations, etc). Adding a D playbook would probably help too, as well as more premade defensive plays.

Some sort of sharing system would be cool too; being able to submit and import plays or ai's etc for the community.

One of the other things we're going to be overseeing/doing is the creation of premade playbooks and AI's (for both offense and defense) that a user could choose to use if they don't want to spend hours creating their own.

We're going to keep this thread open for a week and then spend time going over the various ideas and working on a plan to aggressively move forward with this project. If you have an idea/suggestion, here's your chance to present it. If it's a good one and it's "doable" I can assure you that we will evaluate it.

Thanks in advance for your time!

Catch

I have a few ideas...but i will need time to put them together. for now i just wanted to be the first to post

1) Have the ability to create your own offensive and defensive playbooks that are attached to your profile not your team. It would be easier if you wanted to use the same templates for each of your teams. Seriously the better OC/DCs are doing it for more than just one team.

I'm all for making me spend less time doing AI

PMed this to Catch a while ago. Let me flesh it out a bit. It's VERY simple and VERY effective.

Step 1: Playbook selection.
The playbook consists of a set list of plays.
You classify each play into a "type", or turn them on/off.
types:
Runs: inside / outside
Passes: short / medium / long

Step 2: AI selection
There are a few AI shells to choose from. These are NOT your run/pass strategy, etc., but more how conservative you want to be, late game AI, etc.

Step 3: Play call selection
Depending on the AI shell you chose, the output selection will walk you through each of the inputs and ask you to choose outputs.
For example, it will ask you to select outputs for 1st and 10, 2nd and long, 2nd and short, 3rd and short, etc.
For each input, the way you choose the outputs is a simple "H" slider:

on the left, you slide up and down to control runs (up for inside, down for outside)
on the horizonal, you slide left and right to control run/pass % (left for runs, right for passes)
on the right, you slide up and down for pass distance (up for long, down for short)

Under the "H" slider are a few % inputs.
1) Left / right %.
2) WR / TE / FB / HB pass %.
3) HB / FB run %

Like they currently exist in the basic AI structure

---

Those 3 steps are enough to come up with a very custom, very easy AI.

USER perspective:
The user manages a set playbook, but can customize based on how they want plays to be called, WHICH plays to call, etc.
The user manages the AI selection
The user manages a set AI shell, but can customize what play calls are in each situation by a simple set of sliders and inputs.

I personally think everything is very intuitive and very flexible. You can control what plays are called, when they are called, etc. The only thing you are missing is the custom depth chart options, which I think are a good thing to leave out. If GLB thinks these are a "must," I recommend they are implemented in the "playbook" stage, NOT in the AI stage.


GLB / ENGINEERING perspective:
This has basically all been engineered already. It is basically just a clever use of the package system already in place. If you don't see the connection, let me briefly explain:

When you classify a play in the playbook as a type, you are putting it in a package. There are predefined packages that plays can fall into, which are basically just the permutations of..
run vs pass
distance
left vs right
who the target is

Yes, it is a lot of packages, but remember these are all implicit user selections - the user isn't actually managing all of these packages.
The user cannot select the likelihood of each play within a package - they are all treated equally.

Now, when the user is using the H sliders and basic % options under it, they are selection the outputs. Using linear multiplication, you take their % on each of the sliders / each of the box inputs on the bottom as the % likelihood the matching package is called.

---

And voila, the AI is set. Simple for the user, intuitive, and not a lot of engineering effort.

Originally posted by Catch22
First off, please let's keep this discussion on topic. If you disagree with someone, do so in a reasonable manner. I will be watching this thread closely and will have no issues handing out forum suspensions if people are out of line.

This is directly from Bort:

My general idea is to present common scenarios with a run/pass or package select option. Sort of a premade AI, but maybe more graphically presented (pictures of field position or formations, etc). Adding a D playbook would probably help too, as well as more premade defensive plays.

Some sort of sharing system would be cool too; being able to submit and import plays or ai's etc for the community.

One of the other things we're going to be overseeing/doing is the creation of premade playbooks and AI's (for both offense and defense) that a user could choose to use if they don't want to spend hours creating their own.

We're going to keep this thread open for a week and then spend time going over the various ideas and working on a plan to aggressively move forward with this project. If you have an idea/suggestion, here's your chance to present it. If it's a good one and it's "doable" I can assure you that we will evaluate it.

Thanks in advance for your time!

Catch

On the offense part, does this mean a chance for more offensive plays that have been needed for a couple of seasons?

Also, is there a plan to fix screen passes yet? They have been useless for seasons now, and they are an important part to many offensive teams playbooks, the success rate of just catching the ball is ridiculous.

make it like madden and have us select a preset number of plays


if you want to be simpler for the masses

Playbook ownership would be a huge asset, more co-ordinators may help more teams without worry of being dropped after an ai is built or relying on stupid transfer scripts

Originally posted by The Avenger
Playbook ownership would be a huge asset, more co-ordinators may help more teams without worry of being dropped after an ai is built or relying on stupid transfer scripts

this is good and should be taken as high priority

Originally posted by Coach_Schaar
I have a few ideas...but i will need time to put them together. for now i just wanted to be the first to post

1) Have the ability to create your own offensive and defensive playbooks that are attached to your profile not your team. It would be easier if you wanted to use the same templates for each of your teams. Seriously the better OC/DCs are doing it for more than just one team.


+1 Thats been one of the things needed since the implementation of the advanced ai and ability to make own plays.

Complicated contridictions like QB "favor" receiver tactic, then "QB progression" then "go to guy" VA's are way over engineered simming in the passing aspect of GLB and are not favorable to anyone gameplanning..

Originally posted by Coach_Schaar
I have a few ideas...but i will need time to put them together. for now i just wanted to be the first to post

1) Have the ability to create your own offensive and defensive playbooks that are attached to your profile not your team. It would be easier if you wanted to use the same templates for each of your teams. Seriously the better OC/DCs are doing it for more than just one team.


+1

Originally posted by archer255
Originally posted by Coach_Schaar

I have a few ideas...but i will need time to put them together. for now i just wanted to be the first to post

1) Have the ability to create your own offensive and defensive playbooks that are attached to your profile not your team. It would be easier if you wanted to use the same templates for each of your teams. Seriously the better OC/DCs are doing it for more than just one team.


+1 Thats been one of the things needed since the implementation of the advanced ai and ability to make own plays.
+1

i just had to jump through some hoops to transfer my DAI and DPC plays to another team i'm dc'ing, and i never want to deal with all that ever again.

Yes, we'll likely be adding more offensive plays as part of this project since pre-designed AI's/playbooks etc would have to be updated if we added new plays at a later date.

No. It's what seperates the good from the bad.

Originally posted by The Avenger
Playbook ownership would be a huge asset, more co-ordinators may help more teams without worry of being dropped after an ai is built or relying on stupid transfer scripts

This, and more integration of these greasemonkey scripts into the actual product. The over-reliance on third-party greasemonkey scripts to do things like copy AIs -- things that should be standard in the product -- raises security concerns. I would rather be using something created and integrated by GLB itself.

I've had lots of ideas for how to make AIs and gameplanning simpler, and I've seen a few brilliant ideas over the past couple years in the Suggestions forum. My suggestion would be to go through there first and start putting those together -- because that's what the suggestions forum is supposed to be for, right?