smssia0112
Chairman of Selectors
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2005
Hi guys, as I hinted earlier, I have been in contact with Chris Child (the creator of International Cricket Captain and founder of Childish things) in recent weeks, and he has revealed to us why he believes the newest version is going to be better than the last.
Exclusive screenshots are available here: http://www.planetcricket.org/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=46
A few of the questions that I sent in have been replied to:
1. Will there be a demo? If so, will it be like the previous game demos?
Yes there will be a demo you can then purchase - 2 day trial as with previous years - £17.99
2. What taking you so long to implement other countries domestic circuits? If rights are the problem then why dont you provide us an editor(not player editor) to create new domestic circuit and randomly distribute particular nations players in to the created teams using the editor so for eg if we wanted to create Aus domestic circuit we create 6 teams and then click on the RANDOM DISTRIBUTION button to distribute all the Aussies > nationality players in to those 6 teams (we should also have the option to > place the players one by one if we want to)
The game structure is only set up for each player to have one domestic team. There are also problems with team selection and match scheduling due to the original design. Australian Cricket Captain avoided this by having only Australian competitions. We made a second version of this in 2000, but due to problems with the Australian publisher, the game was canned as it was about to go into testing. This was very disappointing for the team, who had put an enormous amount of effort into creating the PC and PlayStation versions of the game. We are planning other domestic leagues for 2009 (commercial pressures allowing). It is likely to be a rolling process to create all domestic competitions.
3. I am really excited in Youth team ,so this mean you will get the same players after you End task the game and re run the player contract screen? IF yes than this will be th major selling point. One more thing did you change the minimum age of a youth player i-e 18 to 15/16?
All domestic youth players will be added to teams earlier in the year, so this will tackle the issue to some extent. Minimum age is still 18.
4. Will Australia still be pathetic once their stars retire, and Sri Lanka and India still amazing because of the poor standard of their domestic systems giving their players inflated averages?
There has been a major re-structuring of new youth player generation. There was a problem caused by Australia having a smaller number of players which mean they were less likely to generate good new players. There was a second problem with bowler generation which compounded this. I also added new factors to take account of the range of quality in first class cricket in different countries. Obviously there is still a strong random element, but in several of the tests I ran, Australia were still top of the test championship in 2200.
5. Will it be released on any other consoles?
We will not be releasing on consoles this year. Unfortunately the profit margins were not enough to justify development costs for further versions. The decision was therefore made to concentrate all efforts on making improvements to the PC game.
6. Will there be more sixes in the game, especially in Twenty20 and the last 10 overs or so of ODIs?
I've doubled the number of sixes in the game in general, this will mean about 4 times as many when players are very aggressive. Balancing the run rates is a very tricky part of the game as you can imagine. We have to make sure there is a balance between the correct number of sixes and players scoring at a good average rate when aggressive.
7. Will it be easier to scroll through overs by holding the spacebar or another key like in ICC 2006?
This was one of my big annoyances with the way Cricket Captain III worked. We've changed back to the old system of playing an over at a time, which means we don't have to delay for each ball bowled and still get some time to see the completed over while it's playing the next one. I've also optimised the match engine to make the game run faster, so it should feel just as fast as the old version on a good machine.
8. Will there be retirement screens of some sort for internationals so that we know they're gone, and also for domestic being fixed, sometimes players would disappear for some reason.
We haven't looked at that I'm afraid. I'll add it to the list for next year though. I do my best to include any request like this, so please keep a wish list of anything like this as they sometimes get missed.
9. Will it be possible to seperate default lineups in FC and OD/T20 in county games? This would avoid the annoyance of having to take out FC and OD specialists every time there's a game being played?
Again - this is a great idea and we'll try to include it in the next version.
Additionally, he has offered to answer any additional questions that you guys may have about the game, so if you have some please post them here in the next few days since the game is supposed to be released in a week. Maybe just ask about general areas you want to know more about, and if we get the chance of previewing the game we will look out for it as well.
Exclusive screenshots are available here: http://www.planetcricket.org/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=46
A few of the questions that I sent in have been replied to:
1. Will there be a demo? If so, will it be like the previous game demos?
Yes there will be a demo you can then purchase - 2 day trial as with previous years - £17.99
2. What taking you so long to implement other countries domestic circuits? If rights are the problem then why dont you provide us an editor(not player editor) to create new domestic circuit and randomly distribute particular nations players in to the created teams using the editor so for eg if we wanted to create Aus domestic circuit we create 6 teams and then click on the RANDOM DISTRIBUTION button to distribute all the Aussies > nationality players in to those 6 teams (we should also have the option to > place the players one by one if we want to)
The game structure is only set up for each player to have one domestic team. There are also problems with team selection and match scheduling due to the original design. Australian Cricket Captain avoided this by having only Australian competitions. We made a second version of this in 2000, but due to problems with the Australian publisher, the game was canned as it was about to go into testing. This was very disappointing for the team, who had put an enormous amount of effort into creating the PC and PlayStation versions of the game. We are planning other domestic leagues for 2009 (commercial pressures allowing). It is likely to be a rolling process to create all domestic competitions.
3. I am really excited in Youth team ,so this mean you will get the same players after you End task the game and re run the player contract screen? IF yes than this will be th major selling point. One more thing did you change the minimum age of a youth player i-e 18 to 15/16?
All domestic youth players will be added to teams earlier in the year, so this will tackle the issue to some extent. Minimum age is still 18.
4. Will Australia still be pathetic once their stars retire, and Sri Lanka and India still amazing because of the poor standard of their domestic systems giving their players inflated averages?
There has been a major re-structuring of new youth player generation. There was a problem caused by Australia having a smaller number of players which mean they were less likely to generate good new players. There was a second problem with bowler generation which compounded this. I also added new factors to take account of the range of quality in first class cricket in different countries. Obviously there is still a strong random element, but in several of the tests I ran, Australia were still top of the test championship in 2200.
5. Will it be released on any other consoles?
We will not be releasing on consoles this year. Unfortunately the profit margins were not enough to justify development costs for further versions. The decision was therefore made to concentrate all efforts on making improvements to the PC game.
6. Will there be more sixes in the game, especially in Twenty20 and the last 10 overs or so of ODIs?
I've doubled the number of sixes in the game in general, this will mean about 4 times as many when players are very aggressive. Balancing the run rates is a very tricky part of the game as you can imagine. We have to make sure there is a balance between the correct number of sixes and players scoring at a good average rate when aggressive.
7. Will it be easier to scroll through overs by holding the spacebar or another key like in ICC 2006?
This was one of my big annoyances with the way Cricket Captain III worked. We've changed back to the old system of playing an over at a time, which means we don't have to delay for each ball bowled and still get some time to see the completed over while it's playing the next one. I've also optimised the match engine to make the game run faster, so it should feel just as fast as the old version on a good machine.
8. Will there be retirement screens of some sort for internationals so that we know they're gone, and also for domestic being fixed, sometimes players would disappear for some reason.
We haven't looked at that I'm afraid. I'll add it to the list for next year though. I do my best to include any request like this, so please keep a wish list of anything like this as they sometimes get missed.
9. Will it be possible to seperate default lineups in FC and OD/T20 in county games? This would avoid the annoyance of having to take out FC and OD specialists every time there's a game being played?
Again - this is a great idea and we'll try to include it in the next version.
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