WORK LOG by Matt Sephton

08.02.03
Posted combined tactics/replay demo. Watch this space for more!

12.07.02
Posted instant replay demo. Hopefully get this bolted onto the tactics demo "soon".

23.06.02
I've completed a seperate demo showing how I can do instant replay. No public release yet until I've bolted it on
to the tactics demo. Just posted this to show that I am still here and plugging away!

30.04.02
SWOS tactics file handling, in a seperate demo. Source included.

12.06.01
I've fixed an accuracy problem with the goal keeper, which was related to the way the ball height is tested. It made 
me notice how rubbish the way I did the ball bouncing back in the beginning. So I'm going to have a go a redoing it,
whether it'll be as good I don't know. If it's as good or better, the new way will stay.

Also changed is the pitch colouring (no more blue grass!) and some sound effects have been added. Feedback please!

03.06.01
My tweaking of the goal keeper over the past few days is now ready for release. He now jumps and dives, which looks
very nice indeed. I consider him trainee/reserve skill level, see what your best simple stat against him is! I need 
to add the rest of his animation frames, but the basic frames are OK for now.

The code for the goal keeper has also been updated, it's getting messy! Any suggestions or improvements welcome. Use
the [ and ] keys to change how close to the ball the keeper stays. Any feedback appreciated...

http://www.ewtoo.org/~matt/soccer/goalie.txt

25.05.01
I guess late March is as close to early April as I'm going to get at present. Work got really stressful as I said. So
bad, in fact, that it all ended late April. Everybody, all 60-odd people, made redundant. I fully expected it to sort
itself out, but it didn't. So now I'm unemployed and stressed rather than just stressed! ;) I must thank a guy called
Vojislav Simovic for kicking me into gear and getting some sort of update done. He wrote me the best email I have
received in a long while. Thank you.

Anyway, I've added a really simple goal keeper. He doesn't jump or dive but still does a half decent job of saving some
of the more straight forward attempts on goal. Let me know what you think!

15.02.01
Sorry for the lack of updates. Life is very stressful at the moment, so I'm taking a break from my computer for a while.
Well, from the things that involve me thinking and stressing when there's no need to. That means Simple Soccer!
I would say it'll be back on track early April. Again, thanks for the continued support and keep checking back.

13.12.00
Uploaded latest player AI test, same but better and less bugs in my opinion.
Sort of a mini project for me now, this player AI thing.
Uploaded latest earlybird demo, sorry no goal keeper but you can see that my attention is on the player AI!

12.12.00
Uploaded player AI test for people to check out. Things are a bit slow at the moment - I'm ill!

10.12.00
Done rough version of player AI.

05.12.00
Source code on Source Forge! http://sourceforge.net/projects/simplesoccer

04.12.00
Source code to go onto SourceForge! Open Source all the way, anybody and everybody can help the Simple Soccer cause.
Apologies in advance for the mess of the source code!

26.11.00
Now using better grass images, which are recoloured to suit pitch condition.
Also added shadow colouring to match.
Added speed limitation toggle.

24.11.00
Cleaned up some internal code. Now using custom types which will make adding more players easier.

22.11.00
New demo released. The last before the goal keeper!
Pitch types have associated bounce and roll values, game starts with random pitch.
Player throttle control added.

20.11.00
Enhanced the dynamic drawing of grass to include six types (normal, soft, wet, muddy, dry, icy).
Currently experimenting with ball bounce and roll variations for these grass types.
Now using recaptured SWOS pitch which is more accurately grabbed (thanks Paul!)

19.11.00
Added slight sticky ball ability to the player. Somebody commented that the player had the worst ball control they 
had ever seen! Grass type is now dynamically drawn, so we can have any type of grass image on the pitch. Nice.
Diagonal kicks have been tweaked as thy were more powerful than straight kicks. Doh!
Added pause mode (Pause/Insert key) and screen grab key (Print Screen key) - captures to "simple_???.bmp" files.
Sorted out the slight skipping issue on the frame speed limitation, better but not perfect - I don't think.
Added log file ability to gauge how long the different initialisation code segments are taking.

17.11.00
Paul went into screen capture overdrive and captured me most (if not all?) of the SWOS animation.
Of course, I had to respond with just as good a task, so I have redone player animation with kit colouring!
60 frames per second screen update limiting has also been added. POLL: Does this run smooth enough on your PC?
After touch has been tweaked further too. As always, feedback appreciated!

15.11.00
Player movement now limited to the stadium area. Fine tuned scenery collisions, try kicking the ball into the crowd!
Another demo uploaded. Check it out, I should imagine this will be it for a while on the demo front.
Using recoloured kit of an Arsenal player, thanks to Paul Turner.

14.11.00
Chatted on SWOS Witnesses (http://www.swos.co.yu) page at 21:00 CET. Good stuff!
Added increasing-height after touch. Not so sure about whether to include keeping-ball-low after touch. We'll see.

13.11.00
Uploaded first early bird quick peek, demo version. Download it now - feedback appreciated!
New demos will come when I am ready to release them, please be patient.

12.11.00
Not much happening lately, things have been... crazy. No to worry, tonight I got after touch working!
Also, tweaked animation of player and ball. Also slightly rejigged ball kicking and dribbling movement.
Really need good frame limiting code to make these any better.

NOTICE: it's now possible to dribble ball around pitch, kick it into the net, and hear the crowd go wild from their
normal noise

05.11.00
Knocked collision detection on the head for a while, to concentrate on some other things.
Got player moving around the pitch, only animated in terms of the direction he faces... but he kicks the ball!

04.11.00
Am now using some nice non-Sensi sound effects. Will make the final game a bit more special.

01.11.00
More work done on collision detection. I suppose all of this attention to such a simple(?) thing will pay off in
future. Heard from Mark Sibly, creator of the Blitz Basic programming language, who suggested a simple method of
player AI that yielded fairly realistic results with a simple concept of implementation. Nice!

31.10.00
Posted notice to BlitzPC eGroup.

30.10.00
Sussed/spotted some of my problems with the collision detection. I was comparing a value with < at one point
and <= at another. Crazy fool!
Set up web site. Onwards and upwards.

29.10.00
More ball/goal collision detection. For some reason I'm finding this really hard to get my head around!
I'm using this as an excuse to have a code tidy up.

27.10.00
A few hours playing around and I've got the ball movement sorted... Well, I'm happy with it for now!
The game is now running with higher resolution graphics at 640x480 and 800x600, which offers the balance between
screen area and speed that I was looking for.
A friend also explained the best way to do the goal collision detection, so I'm onto that next.

26.10.00
Played Atari Jaguar Sensible Soccer to death tonight, just to figure out the correct ball movement!
I think I've got it now, it gets skewed because of the strange drawing angle.
Vertical and horizontal ball movements are true, every other direction is a skewed combination of the two.

25.10.00
This is far more work than I thought! Messed around with different sized (hi res pitch) - all my values need changing!
ARGH! I need a proper plan. Or some help. Or both!

22.10.00
Messed around with some ball/net collision detection. Not bad, but not the brilliant.
Am thinking of starting from scratch with better planning(!)

20.10.00
Added charging up of a kick while a key press. This will have to do for now until the game play tweaks start.
Not sure how much of this will stay when ball/player interaction comes in.

17.10.00
Investigated some graphics possibilities. Fell in love with www.flipflopflyin.com, so we'll see what happens
with that one. Added player that stands on centre spot and stares at ball.

16.10.00
Pitch follows ball. Thought this would be a lot harder to do, only difficulty encountered was ImageRectCollide()
using integer variables. Added smoother scrolling of pitch, proportional to distance of ball from target screen area.

15.10.00
Ball bounces and rolls to a stop. Friction and restitution.

10.10.00
Ball bounces around screen with shadow, with trajectory, animated. Slight experimental difficulty finding limits
of these variables.

07.10.00
Ball bounces around screen with shadow.

04.10.00
Pitch scrolling enhanced.

29.09.00
Pitch scrolls to keyboard/joystick input.

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