Attributes
One of the most important aspects in a sports game is the attributes of the players involved. Whether it be speed, strength or how well they can catch the ball, the attributes will give a clear indication to the user how good the player is, and are crucial to the Fixture Engine.
The realism of the Attributes are also vitally important to the user. When you start the game you want the attributes of real life pro bowl players to reflect that fact; If when you started the game Peyton Manning’s attributes were no better than an average 3rd string QB, all realism would be lost and most likely you’ve probably lost the attention of the user before you have even begun.
The Problem
Football GM currently contains around 4500 real life, active players when you start the game (8000 players if you include those retired), so researching all these players and inputting their attributes manually would be too much work (not to mention the inherent bias and errors of manually inputting attributes). Some kind of automated system had to be developed to create realistic attributes for every single player, from MVPs, to players who spend every year in training camp but never make a final roster.
Automated Attributes
The solution was to created some extensive algorithms with takes extensive amounts of real life publically available data to generate attributes.
The algorithms will continually undergo improvements, however the results so far looking very good.
Attributes sorted by Rushing Power
One important thing to remember with Football GM is that there is no single “magic” attribute which player’s of a certain position use. It is certainly (extremely) useful that a good RB have a good Running Power attribute, but if he has little speed, agility, awareness etc then he will not be productive as you may expect.
The user also needs to take into account the current injury status of a player. A running back may have great running power, but if his knees are wrecked it would extremely risky using him extensively
Attributes sorted by Throwing Power
Attributes sorted by Speed
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The attributes range in Football GM is 1-100, where 1 would indicate a pre-college level of ability at that attribute (for example an Offensive Guard might be rated at 1 for the “Running Routes” attribute), while a 100 range will indicate perfection. There are currently no players in the database with a 100 rating, and even a rating above 90 would be extremely rare.
The attributes above are not final, and some may change if/when errors are found in the generator.
As always feel free to leave your questions and comments!
Football GM 