Table Football Pro is a detailed remake of a legendary desk football game we played way before computers were here.
It captures the fun, experience and detail of playing this game while adding online multiplayer (matchmaking), local coop with friends and play against AI.
It is best controlled on gamepads or with mouse.
We intend to release the game as Early Access title right affter Greenlight, offering playable version right from the start. (expect a week period for negotiation with Steam, build preparation, etc.)
We are serious about finishing this game and releasing it, so thanks for your support.
Current state of the game:
- ingame physics, controls and gameplay is working
- local coop / vs works, you can hook up up to 22 controllers if you have that many friends to play ... :-)
- AI is working (can handle the ball, pass, shoot, ...), but needs tweaking and difficulty levels scaling
- multiplayer is working along with matchmaking, but needs futher optimization before being presentable to public (multiplayer will probably be playable with the EA release or soon afterwards)
- support for team customization (logo, team colors)
What will happen in Early Access:
- game should be ready to full release several months after EA release, three months seems a realistic goal currently
- game features can and most probably will change based on what you, the players want, so the release date can change
- in EA expect regular weekly updates of game client
Desired state of the game:
Local coop / vs:
- the best experience (as with the original game) is in local coop with friends - this is already in the game
Online Play:
- this is where the main effort will go - to provide stable and competetive experience
- the alternative to that is online play - we want players to get easilly into online match (one click matchmaking is already implemented)
- currently, only a single match with no persistent results or ranking is done
- we want player score persistence (ranking, leaderboards) and some form of competetive scenarios (seasons, tournaments) - this is not decided yet
Single Player:
- we believe the best fun is in PvP, so the AI is already there for cases you don't have access to other players, but it is not the greatest priority for now
- so do not expect extensive single player campaing - unless of course many of you request it
Customization:
- we want players to be able to highly customize their team, team logo, and other features (you will be suprised)
- currently, there is support for customization in game code, but the way how playes will customize the teams themselves is not done yet
- do expect bonus content like new types of football pawns, new playable fields, ball skins, etc.
Localization:
- currently only English, but do expect localization file being published and you can help us with the localization
Audio:
- the in-game sounds are recorded directly from the original game, the core sounds are there
- more sounds will be added during EA
Game Rules:
- currently, only time-based single round game is implemented
- do expect other game types (best out of three goals, etc.) - tell us what you want
- do expect penalty shootout
- in case of high interest, we will add completely new (non-classical football) game modes, we have few fun ideas - but this is not high on the priority list
In the networking video I have shown that the clients connect to a Dedicated Server. But what is that?
Simply put, it is the almost the same thing as the client game, but contains slightly differect code for an Authored Server. The funny thing is that is probably the only Dedicated Server ment for two players only.
"Why did you not go with Peer to Peer networking?" you might ask.
Three reasons:
1) Fairness - in Peer to Peer, one client has the authority do decide the game's outcome and zero latency, while the other client gets lag. With a Dedicated Server, both clients have the same limitations.
2) Cheating prevention - while not all, but surely a lot of cheating can be prevented with a dedicated server. The game and the physics is all done on the server, so client can not directly set score or ball position via a cheat.
3) Tournament possibilites and reliable stats - a Dedicated Server might be connected to a tournament service or stats in a secure way - this enables us to build a backend layer behind the Dedicated Servers that can track stats and game results, etc. With Peer to Peer networking, this would not be reliable since the result sent by the hosting client might be altered on the way.
Disadvantages:
- hosting dedicated servers costs something
- having one dedicated server for evety two players playing is quite a lot of servers
- both clients have latency instead of one
Those are the reasons that perhaps the Peer to Peer networking may be implemented in the game further down the development, for friendly matches where you either know the other player or do not care about possible cheating that much.
But ranked games should be played on the Dedicated Servers.
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