Development of Cricket Captain 2014 and the future

[Alrounder80]

There is a massive reluctance in One Day matches for the Ai to use part time bowlers. In this match, there were 4 bowlers and 1 all-rounder in Derbyshire's team, so the AI proceeded to only use these as bowlers. Wes Durston (45 wkts at ave of 36), Chanderpaul (56 wkts at ave of 24), Chesney Hughes (22 at ave of 34) were not used, DESPITE 2 bowlers going for 100+ runs!?!

I went through the stats after a season of all English Domestic players, and it seems part timers are only used in FC matches. I'm guessing here that there's a system put in place here where the AI uses these part timers near the end of a session (as is sometimes done irl). But something needs to be done with regards to OD (and T20s). The AI should be more inclined to use part timers if one of their 5 bowlers is getting hammered.

EDIT: The images aren't clear at all. The scorecard shows the bottom two bowlers, Wainwright and Turner concede over 100 runs. The other image just highlights Wes Durston's bowling stats.

[stucbury]

Understood Chris. In that case will wait for the Android version to be released as would anticipate playing the game 90-95% of the time on that platform. Any idea of a release date for Android yet as I can't wait to try the new vesrion? I am sure other would appreciate a release date for Mac and iPhone if known. Many thanks.

[Chris Child]

Steam iOS and Android versions are all sold separately. We don't have any way of linking the stores. We also can't publish the Mac version on Steam as we're contracted to release it via the Mac app store.

[stucbury]

Chris,

Great news that CC14 will be available on Android and other devices. As would be far more likely to play the game via my tablet device. One thing though if I purchased the game for PC via steam would I required to make an additional purchase for the Andriod version? Thanks.

[DeadlyVenom]

Decent job Chris. Not fantastic but decent.

I thoroughly enjoy the game ( and all previous versions). Thanks for your efforts.

Yes the game isn't on the level of football manager but it costs 15 bloody quid! For 15 quid I can get a DVD to watch for 2 hours or a game that I can play for countless hours all year.

The choice is easy for me anyway.

[Anku31]

I'm loving reading the forum this year. Great suggestion for features. Lots of those make me think, 'that would be fantastic'. Massively helpful bug reports (we've fixed a lot of them), and the community spirit here is excellent.

Also enjoying the stories. Some very professional writing there.

Any more reviews on Steam would be greatly appreciated. And don't forget to give the thumbs up to other helpful ones on there.

You have been away more often and don't know this forum can generate some very useful suggestions.I wish,as fans,we could contribute to game.For example,if there are more leagues,fans could help in setting up near-perfect player databases.
But perhaps your commitments at the university have kept you away from interacting with the fans for the most part of the year (11 out of 12 months.Yes I'm a keen observer).But we wish you are helping some good minds to become efficient game developers at the City University.I would complete my bachelors in Information Technology next year and I'm considering applying for the course at City.

[Chris Child]

I'm loving reading the forum this year. Great suggestion for features. Lots of those make me think, 'that would be fantastic'. Massively helpful bug reports (we've fixed a lot of them), and the community spirit here is excellent.

Also enjoying the stories. Some very professional writing there.

Any more reviews on Steam would be greatly appreciated. And don't forget to give the thumbs up to other helpful ones on there.

[ri916]

Dear Chris Child
I wish there were more 'honest' posts like this in last few years.Sometimes it's difficult to understand why you are so reluctant to post any regular updates on the forum.It takes no more than a couple of minutes literally.The fans have been behind the game,whatever happens.But that doesn't mean we are kept in dark about what's going on inside.

Sums up my thoughts perfectly. Hope to see more posts like this from you in the future Chris

[Anku31]

Dear Chris Child
I wish there were more 'honest' posts like this in last few years.Sometimes it's difficult to understand why you are so reluctant to post any regular updates on the forum.It takes no more than a couple of minutes literally.The fans have been behind the game,whatever happens.But that doesn't mean we are kept in dark about what's going on inside.For more than a decade now,people have been literally crying for new features like new leagues (most important!),more stats,playable associate nations,editable fixtures,addable tournaments,etc.
As you just told us,ICC has reached a bit of stability now,it's time you implement these features than concentrating on anything else.ICC has near perfect AI,a very good UI now,good online play and it's a bug-free game.That's what every fan wants now.

[cafcjgreen]

Great new game. Fantastic new UI. Really enjoying it so far. Thanks!

[Chris Child]

Thanks guys. I see some great reviews up on Steam. Much appreciated.

[Chris Child]

Now that the dust has settled a bit on this year's release, it seems like a good time fill you in on what's been happening here for the last year or two. We've had a fantastic response to the new game and I know most of you are just happy to see the game back and enjoying your new season. A few people have raised comments about features they'd like to see that are missing though, and it's probably not obvious how much work has gone into the new version. There's also been some problems with graphics drivers, but we've been able to help the majority of users to update those, and we're working through the rest.

The main aims of this version were to build a basis that we could use to improve the game in the future, and to release on multiple platforms more easily. We were actually intending to get the "multi-platform" part done for June 2013, but the conversion turned out to be a lot more complicated than we'd anticipated. We've basically had to re-write every line of code in both the interface and the 3D engine to move over to the new system. The idea was to be back to "base level" last year and we had a range of new features to add this year. As you can tell by the release date, we've struggled to get the game back at-all this year, and we're all extremely happy that Cricket Captain is still alive and kicking after a tough time.

The reason we had to make this change was that we were stuck with a game engine built for the 2007 version written by Atomic Planet. They went into receivership and we were then unable to change as much in the engine as we'd like because we could not access low-level graphics code. We've re-written all of that (thanks to Tick Tock) and now have a unified code base we can run on PC/Mac/iPhone and Android. We can also add new interface code, new highlights and stadiums in the future. We should have the new stadiums pretty soon. All the art has been done, but we had some glitches that would have held us back from releasing on Friday.

New platform code means next year's release should be simultaneous (or nearly) across PC/Mac/mobile. This year we've still got a bit of work to do on these versions, but it's nearly there.

We've got a little way to go with updates this year to get some of the missing features back in. Most of these are minor, but things like changing player names, saving score-cards, and tool tips for batsman preferences are important. We've also got some text scaling issues at some resolutions to sort out, so only the 768 height screens are looking sharp at the moment.

OK. That turned into a bit of a ramble, but the good news is, we're we're set up for adding new features and keeping the game alive for the future now. All suggestions are welcome and we'd love to hear from you (there's a new thread on the forum for this).

As most of you know, this is a labour of love for us, and we make this because we love playing it as much as you do. Cricket management is a bit of a niche in a niche, but with your support we've managed to make games for 16 years now (gulp).

One last request - could some people write reviews on the community section of Steam? We always just get a couple of moaners on these things and it's about time people who like the game made themselves heard. Also worth starting some discussions on there so 'Mr Angry' isn't the only thing people see on that forum.

All the best,
Chris