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[12/07/04 11:37]
The world exclusive showing of the latest Champ Man left us rather giddy... it's all in the speed
For the first time anywhere in the world, Eidos unveiled Championship Manager 5 to the gaming press and, frankly, we were stunned. However, Champ Man isn't a game that is ever going to visually wow an expectant audience, so excitement levels weren't exactly in overdrive when the game booted into life. Until, that is, the mouse-monkey clicked to update the Saturday fixtures - you could've heard a pin drop...
What was it exactly that dropped jaws with that simple click? A little background would help here for those not up to speed with the best football management sim ever. Champ Man's incredibly addictive properties have been wreaking havoc on domestic lives
for years and so it was to a stunned fan base at the beginning of the year that publishers Eidos announced that they had parted company with developers of the series, Sports Interactive. The weighty responsibility of developing the next in the series fell squarely on the shoulders of new Eidos in-house code shop Beautiful Game Studios.
Which means CM 5 has been built from the ground up and as such calculates the game in a different way to the previous four games. We were watching the latest build (pre-alpha) that was running 25 leagues and if this had been a previous CM game you could expect to wait around 30 minutes plus for the game to process the results of the Saturday fixture list. CM 5 took all of two or three seconds. Yes, hello, wake up, we said two or three seconds.
Such was the shock at this revelation, our initial reaction, to be totally candid here, was that we didn't believe it. A chant from the terraces of "No way, no way," at this juncture wouldn't have surprised us in the least. The developers assured us that yes, indeed, all the calculations you've come to expect are in the game and had been processed in full (which means every single match is statistically 'played' by the game and a result thrown up - and we're talking 25 leagues worth of matches in the blink of an eye in this case). You see our problem - we're used to waiting so blooming long that the mercurial number crunching of CM 5 caught us off kilter.
Apart from the difference in builds in general between this CM and others, the main reason the game can calculate at such a rate is that it's actually going through its paces continually in the background, the developers informed us. For example, the Saturday fixtures are being processed from Wednesday (game day), so when Saturday comes it only has to search out those fixtures that may have new events that need to be factored in (such as an injury to a player on Thursday, so that particular match gets recalculated) when you hit update button after your Saturday game.
Cynics may say that this explanation for CM 5's incredible speed sounds like developer tosh but Beautiful Game Studios would only be kidding themselves if this were the case, because hardcore CM fans would soon discern any brand-demeaning shortcuts if they existed. So we've no reason to doubt their word on the game's speed, it's just a shock to the system when you see it happen. In short, if this pans out to be the actual game speed when it's released, it's an absolute godsend. Of course, it does mean there'll be a lot less tea-making...
We've pretty much covered the main changes and tweaks to gameplay with our CM 5 special, but it's worth picking out a couple of tactical points that we're particularly looking forward to utilising. Increased pitch divisions provide for a greater range of tactics and we particularly like the addition of feeds. While you could always send your players on runs, the ability to now have your players knocking balls into particular areas (hopefully, space) and linking that to players directly or to their designated runs has potential for some nifty managerial tweaking, especially in response to noted holes being left by the opposition. Which brings us to the action zones - a dynamic bar-chart that displays each team's possession in a given area - which now number nine (was previously three). Overall, the CM match/tactical experience has been refined to provide more information and a greater range of options to respond to that information.
Beautiful Game Studios noted Training as an area that has been little used in recent CM editions due to its complexity. They have introduced a simple one-click front-end to entice gamers back to the coaching side of things. Choosing between light, medium and intensive training will fill the week's training menu accordingly. You can still do it manually (an arduous and, let's face it, dull task), plus you can also make individual changes to players and slots once the one-click approach has set the week's work - which seems the way to go to get the best out of club training and may well prove popular.
Visually the game utilises a Windows-styled interface looking very clean and easy to navigate, with clearly defined tabs at the bottom and top of the screen. Speed around the game, as exemplified by the fixture day update highlighted above, is impressive as every area of the game is accessible with no discernible waiting times as you click here, there and everywhere.
A number of other areas, such as scouting, have received neat, helpful tweaks but Beautiful Game Studios aren't trying to do anything radically different with CM 5 - they want it to be recognisably CM but improve upon performance, visual clarity and polish up a few other aspects of the game. As they stated at the outset, they have three objectives: Speed, user friendliness and accuracy/realism. The first two of those objectives would appear to be well in hand. When we've locked ourselves away for a couple of weeks with the game, we'll let you know if the all-important last one has been achieved.
Championship Manager 5 is scheduled to be released in the autumn
The world exclusive showing of the latest Champ Man left us rather giddy... it's all in the speed
For the first time anywhere in the world, Eidos unveiled Championship Manager 5 to the gaming press and, frankly, we were stunned. However, Champ Man isn't a game that is ever going to visually wow an expectant audience, so excitement levels weren't exactly in overdrive when the game booted into life. Until, that is, the mouse-monkey clicked to update the Saturday fixtures - you could've heard a pin drop...
What was it exactly that dropped jaws with that simple click? A little background would help here for those not up to speed with the best football management sim ever. Champ Man's incredibly addictive properties have been wreaking havoc on domestic lives
for years and so it was to a stunned fan base at the beginning of the year that publishers Eidos announced that they had parted company with developers of the series, Sports Interactive. The weighty responsibility of developing the next in the series fell squarely on the shoulders of new Eidos in-house code shop Beautiful Game Studios.
Which means CM 5 has been built from the ground up and as such calculates the game in a different way to the previous four games. We were watching the latest build (pre-alpha) that was running 25 leagues and if this had been a previous CM game you could expect to wait around 30 minutes plus for the game to process the results of the Saturday fixture list. CM 5 took all of two or three seconds. Yes, hello, wake up, we said two or three seconds.
Such was the shock at this revelation, our initial reaction, to be totally candid here, was that we didn't believe it. A chant from the terraces of "No way, no way," at this juncture wouldn't have surprised us in the least. The developers assured us that yes, indeed, all the calculations you've come to expect are in the game and had been processed in full (which means every single match is statistically 'played' by the game and a result thrown up - and we're talking 25 leagues worth of matches in the blink of an eye in this case). You see our problem - we're used to waiting so blooming long that the mercurial number crunching of CM 5 caught us off kilter.
Apart from the difference in builds in general between this CM and others, the main reason the game can calculate at such a rate is that it's actually going through its paces continually in the background, the developers informed us. For example, the Saturday fixtures are being processed from Wednesday (game day), so when Saturday comes it only has to search out those fixtures that may have new events that need to be factored in (such as an injury to a player on Thursday, so that particular match gets recalculated) when you hit update button after your Saturday game.
Cynics may say that this explanation for CM 5's incredible speed sounds like developer tosh but Beautiful Game Studios would only be kidding themselves if this were the case, because hardcore CM fans would soon discern any brand-demeaning shortcuts if they existed. So we've no reason to doubt their word on the game's speed, it's just a shock to the system when you see it happen. In short, if this pans out to be the actual game speed when it's released, it's an absolute godsend. Of course, it does mean there'll be a lot less tea-making...
We've pretty much covered the main changes and tweaks to gameplay with our CM 5 special, but it's worth picking out a couple of tactical points that we're particularly looking forward to utilising. Increased pitch divisions provide for a greater range of tactics and we particularly like the addition of feeds. While you could always send your players on runs, the ability to now have your players knocking balls into particular areas (hopefully, space) and linking that to players directly or to their designated runs has potential for some nifty managerial tweaking, especially in response to noted holes being left by the opposition. Which brings us to the action zones - a dynamic bar-chart that displays each team's possession in a given area - which now number nine (was previously three). Overall, the CM match/tactical experience has been refined to provide more information and a greater range of options to respond to that information.
Beautiful Game Studios noted Training as an area that has been little used in recent CM editions due to its complexity. They have introduced a simple one-click front-end to entice gamers back to the coaching side of things. Choosing between light, medium and intensive training will fill the week's training menu accordingly. You can still do it manually (an arduous and, let's face it, dull task), plus you can also make individual changes to players and slots once the one-click approach has set the week's work - which seems the way to go to get the best out of club training and may well prove popular.
Visually the game utilises a Windows-styled interface looking very clean and easy to navigate, with clearly defined tabs at the bottom and top of the screen. Speed around the game, as exemplified by the fixture day update highlighted above, is impressive as every area of the game is accessible with no discernible waiting times as you click here, there and everywhere.
A number of other areas, such as scouting, have received neat, helpful tweaks but Beautiful Game Studios aren't trying to do anything radically different with CM 5 - they want it to be recognisably CM but improve upon performance, visual clarity and polish up a few other aspects of the game. As they stated at the outset, they have three objectives: Speed, user friendliness and accuracy/realism. The first two of those objectives would appear to be well in hand. When we've locked ourselves away for a couple of weeks with the game, we'll let you know if the all-important last one has been achieved.
Championship Manager 5 is scheduled to be released in the autumn
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