You keep on posting a lot of very helpful and constructive feedback about my game - thank you so much! - I greatly appreciate it!

I took the most frequently mentioned criticism to heart and improved Natural Soccer in the following ways, which, in my humble opinion, greatly further improve the overall gameplay:



From now on, players no longer just pass through each other, enabling you to shield the ball with a player's body and perform some impressive dribbling.

It makes the game more realistic and adds quite a bit of depth to the gameplay. Hope you'll like it too!



While automatic short passes are still available unaltered by tapping the pass button, you can now perform manual straight passes by holding down the pass button instead. The longer you hold it, the more powerful the pass will be.

Those manual passes deliberately are not affected by Aftertouch, as applying that would also let the newly controlled pass receiver run around in unintentional ways.



I carefully improved the keyboard controls so that they're no longer only strictly 8-way and allow for more freedom.

But still, I highly recommend playing Natural Soccer with an analogue controller!



Actually, the most criticism I got about the game's AI is that it's too strong/perfect ;-)
So I toned it down a bit by making it perform less perfect passing and disabled the code which made the AI block its goal in a close to impeccable way.

Hope you like the new features! Please let me know in the forums!

Enjoy Natural Soccer!

~
Thorsten

Hi all,

today, I am very happy to announce the first available BETA version of ONLINE MULTIPLAYER !

Please note though, that adding online multiplayer to a high paced arcade game such as Natural Soccer is a very tough task - and it actually is the first time for me to ever try to do so ;-)

So this is a very first test if online multiplayer in Natural Soccer is even feasible and doable by me :-) - worst case, it may very well show that that's not the case, so I would love to get your feedback on this VERY EARLY version of online multiplayer to see if it makes any sense to pursue the idea or not.

Please note that online multiplayer in Natural Soccer is highly dependend on a stable connection with a decent ping. So your experience may vary greatly depending on who you play against. So try to match up with your friends close to you geographically, if possible (listed close to the top of the player list).



Adding online multiplayer requires a lot of code changes and additions. That means, even existing modes might now suffer from new bugs!

In worst case, you may even loose your settings/savegames when switching to the online branch! So please only take part in the test if it's okay for you to probably loose your league progess or having to re-install the game altogether if things go wrong.

And also be prepared to restart the game quite a lot (use ALT+F4 to quit) as there is no PAUSE or in-game menu in online mode yet (see below).



The online beta still is very rough around the edges. Match making is very rudimentary, there is no PAUSE in online matches, no radar and more...

When running an online match, the game is preset with default settings - that is, most of your options (match duration,...) are being ignored and set to some presets for both you and your online opponent.

That is, you are always playing the same teams (set to all players having the very same skills for maximum fairness), fixed duration, no radar, preset camera settings and so on and so forth.

Online matches are always one on one for now - and you have to use a controller to play (no keyboard support!).

Of course, if online multiplayer proves solid & fun enough to become part of the official release, those things will be added in the future so that you may choose your own teams and settings for your online matches etc.



Having said this, you can try it now by switching to the branch "online" in your STEAM client.

That is, you go to Natural Soccer's properties in the STEAM client, then choose the "BETAS" tab and switch to the "online" channel.

Please note that, for optimum performance, the usual rules for online play apply:

• Prefer a cable over wifi
  
• Choose opponents geographically close to you
  
• Avoid other traffic (downloads, streaming) while playing
  
• Enable the game to "pinch" your firewall, falling back to relay servers seriously impacts performance

As mentioned before, match making still is very rudimentary. So, for the time being, please use other means such as phone, whatsapp, teamspeak, chat or mail to arrange an online match with your friend.

Once you select PLAY => ONLINE in Natural Soccer, the match making screen is shown.

On the left hand side, you will see all available players (or "Waiting for players..." if there are no other players yet.)

Wait for your friend to come online (by choosing PLAY => ONLINE like you just did) and appear in the list.

Click on his/her name once it shows up in the list to challenge him/her.

Your friend will be notified of this as your name appears in his/her "Challengers" list on the right hand side. He/she can then accept the challenge to immediately start the match.

If, on the other hand, you get challenged by your friend, you will see him/her on the right hand side.

Click on him/her in the right hand "Challengers" list to start a match.

Note: the one accepting the challenge will be hosting the game, the other will be the client. So it's best for the player with the weaker hardware to challenge the one with the more powerful computer.



Please share your online experience in the forums so that I can see if it makes any sense for me to keep on working on online multiplayer or if it's just not (yet) good enough.


Thanks for your support!

Enjoy Natural Soccer!

~ Thorsten

Hi,

due to popular demand I added a (rudimentary) keyboard mapping to the current BETA version.

It allows you to specify which keys you want to use when playing with a keyboard instead of a game controller.

Side note: Natural Soccer plays way better with an (analogue) controller, so do yourself a favor and use a game controller instead of the keyboard controls. If you happen to have problems using your controller, please post to the forums what the problem is and what controller you use.

But now on with the keyboard mapping:

For now there is no user interface to change the keyboard keys. Instead you create a text file containing the mappings you want to use.

To create a custom mapping, please create a file called "keyboard.txt" in the data folder of Natural Soccer in your user profile.

The full path to that file would be:


A popular request is to switch the D and S keys. To do so please copy and paste the following to the newly created "keyboard.txt" file:


I hope the file itself is self-explanatory. Please note that everything in there is case sensitive!

The available keys to map are:


If you have any more questions, problems or feedback please reply to this post.

Enjoy Natural Soccer!

~ Thorsten

I am very happy to announce that the "goalies vanishing" bug, that boggled a few a you, seems to be finally fixed with this release!

Thanks A LOT to those who helped me hunting it down!

I'm very pleased to announce 1.4.6, containing the following features developed over the last few BETA versions:



You can now optionally turn off the game's auto-switching of the player you control and manually switch players by pushing the left shoulder button (you might have to re-run your controller setup to assign the new left button properly).



Besides slowing down the game a bit, you can now also speed it up with the new 105% - 125% game speed options.

125% game speed combined with the HARD dribbling mode make for a nice "Kick Off"ish feeling ;-)



Due to popular request, I greatly enhanced the audience sound by adding new chants and cheers.

• You play against up to 10, increasingly stronger, teams.
  
  
• For each match won, your score increases by the level's multiplier times the match's goal difference - the higher the level the more points per goal.
  
  
• For a draw, you gain no points and the challenge continues with the next level.
  
  
• If you loose a match, the challenge is over.
  
  
• Reaching the final level and winning the match, gains you another 300 points win bonus.
  
  
• You compete against other Steam players all around the world and can check your ranking on the leaderboards.

Further improved AI for a more realistic, bit toned-down passing and more clever actions in general.


Really hope you like the new version :-) !

~ Thorsten

Hi,

it's update time again :-)

This new BETA version features:

* (Hopefully) fixed the freezing problem described in the beta forum
* Further improved, more realistic AI for passing and play-by-play
* Updated underlying frameworks and libs to most recent versions

Please note that this release features quite a lot of new code and as such might contain (even ;-) ) more bugs than usual - if anything does not work for you, please post it to the BETA forum, thank you!

I want to thank some AWESOME guys who helped me out (hopefully) tracking that nasty bug down and are of invaluable help constantly - you know who I'm talking to ;-) THANK YOU!

Hi,

it's time for another BETA release:

* fixed newly introduced crash when starting new leagues.

* toned down passing succession of AI for more realistic and "less mad" passing of the CPU players

As always, please tell me what you think at the BETA forum - and if there is a crash, please let the game send in the crash report.

THANK YOU!

~ Thorsten

Hi,

today, I am very excited to announce the availability of 1.4.3 on the BETA branch.

This release introduces an exciting new feature: challenge mode with online leaderboards!

In challenge mode:

• You play against up to 10, increasingly stronger, teams.
  
  
• For each match won, your score increases by the level's multiplier times the match's goal difference - the higher the level the more points per goal.
  
  
• For a draw, you gain no points and the challenge continues with the next level.
  
  
• If you loose a match, the challenge is over.
  
  
• Reaching the final level and winning the match, gains you another 300 points win bonus.
  
  
• You compete against other Steam players all around the world and can check your ranking on the leaderboards.

Please give it a try and send me any feedback about it. I am especially interested in bugs and about your opinion about its balance.

Thank you - let's compete! ːsteamhappyː

I'm happy to announce a new BETA release of Natural Soccer.

If you are new to the BETA programme, please refer to this post about the BETA build.

This BETA offers the following new features:



You can now optionally turn off the game's auto-switching of the player you control and manually switch players by pushing the left shoulder button (you might have to re-run your controller setup to assign the new left button properly).



Besides slowing down the game a bit, you can now also speed it up with the new 105% - 125% game speed options.

125% game speed combined with the HARD dribbling mode make for a nice "Kick Off"ish feeling ;-)



Due to popular request, I greatly enhanced the audience sound by adding new chants and cheers.

I really hope you like the new features and am eagerly looking forward to your feedback :-) !

~ Thorsten