Sideline Strategy American Football Update!

Joe Bryan, the programmer for SSAF posted this on the forums about the latest news on his game.

So, what is Sideline Strategy: American Football (SSAF)?!?

It is a head coaching text simulation. The goal and main focus of the sim is coach your team to victory in each game by calling plays, managing your players playing time, and managing the game clock. The game will feature the ability to play as only the offensive or defensive coordinator, in which case you would only be allowed to make decisions for the offensive or defensive side of the ball. In addition to tracking statistics for your players, the simulation will also keep stats for your character.

Some of the "coach stats" will include wins / losses / ties, points scored (if applicable), points allowed (if applicable), playoff appearances, playoff wins / losses, and playcalling % (for instance, how often you call pass and run plays). There will most likely be additional stats as well.


While the focus of the simulation is in-game coaching, the user will have the opportunity to schedule meetings, practices, and training sessions; scout other teams and players, scout high-school and college players, and perform other functions in-between games and during the offseason. The simulation will be career-based meaning players and coaches will age and their skills will develop and deteriorate over time.

The changes could be drastic or very slow and will depend on a myriad of factors including ratings and randomness built into the aging engine.The user will be able to play in the following modes (including combinations of some of the modes): God/commissioner, General Manager, Head Coach, Offensive Coordinator, Defensive Coordinator.

You may play with the ability to be hired/fired enabled or disabled. If enabled, the maximum career length would be about 40 years (if you were a very good coach). If disabled, you could play as long as you wanted with one coaching profile. The only limitation is the user may not play as both a head coach and a coordinator. It has to be one or the other (or none).There will be an ability to play on-line. The specifics about that and whether head to head play will be available in the first version are still under development.

My goal is to provide an head to head experience with the first release of the game and I will do my best to meet that goal.There are several other features planned, but the simulation is still in the early development stage.

I welcome any input or suggestions anyone has. You may e-mail me at joe-at-sidelinestrategy.com ( replace -at- with @ ). You can also catch me on AIM from time to time, sttfrk01. I will most likely make another more substantive post/announcement regarding SSAF around the beginning of the NFL's preseason.


Screenshots most likely won't show up until sometime in 2007. There is no firm release date set. I do have a date in mind, but can not guarantee I'll make it and will not be posting it. SSAF will not be released in 2006.

Please note, medleygames.com is blocked at my place of employment and it will be difficult for me to access the site during normal working hours. Most of my posts will most likely come between 10:00pm and 1:00am CST.Alright, thanks for reading and I look forwarding to hearing from all of you.

If I was in charge of .... here is what I would do!

Some of our fans are posting on the forums about if they were in charge of their favorite sport, and what they would do to fix things or make things more interesting!

I thought about SI.com's sportswriters posting about it, (NASCAR isn't important enough I guess to make changes... but good enough to write about?) and I thought you know, I know there are a few fans out there that love their particular favorite sport and would jump at the chance to make things better.

I mean who knows more than the fan? Sportswriters bless 'em , think they know, but the fans are the ones that know what brings them to the games and what doesn't. (I know, I used to be a sportswriter..)

So if you were a fan, what would you change? How would you change it? Why? Why not?

So we opened up the forums to all sorts of categories, and posters are just now starting to make their ideas known!

Some of the categories are:

Futbol (also known as soccer in the US-with a subset for MLS/World down to local)
Baseball (subsets for Pro/Collegiate and Little League styles)
Hockey (subsets for Pro/Collegiate to HS)
Football (subsets for Pro/Collegiate and HS)
Basketball (subsets for Pro/Collegiate, Semi-Pro, HS)
Golf (subsets for Pro/Collegiate, Semi-Pro, Local/HS)
Wrestling (subsets for Pro, Collegiate[seperate], HS)
NASCAR (subsets for all levels thru Weekly Series/Regional Racing)
IRL/Champ Car (Consider them one for now..)
F1/ARCA Series (Consider them in one category for discussion)
Drag Racing (All series to local)
Tennis (Pro/Collegiate to local)
Bowling (Pro/Collegiate to local)

Yeah there is a lot of categories, but folks have a lot of interests, so we wanted to get opinions from all type of fans!

In the next few weeks, the MGDB is going to be discussing a lot of these and how they would be willing to make their favorite sport a better game! So be on the lookout as we get the discussion ready to go and make sure to post in the thread here: http://www.medleygames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=151

Enjoy the summer, get some sun and have some fun!