Bygfoot Football Manager 1.4.2
AUTHOR: Gyozo Both (gyboth@bygfoot.com)
http://www.bygfoot.com
Another interesting game:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/byghound

SHORT INTRODUCTION

Bygfoot is a small and simple football (a.k.a. soccer) manager game
featuring some international leagues and cups. You manage a
team from one such league: you form the team, buy and sell players,
get promoted or relegated and of course try to be successful.

The game is deliberately kept simple. Players have only one value
that reflects their playing ability, namely their skill value (they
have some other values, though, like age or position). The only thing
that you have to do besides managing your players is to look after
your stadium: keep / make it safe and see that you have enough
capacity.

Because of the simplicity of the game, and because most buttons have
tool-tips (i.e. if you place your mouse pointer above a button, a
small explanation of what the button will do appears), I won't write a
real help file, just collect some hints.

*********************
IMPORTANT:
*********************

If you like the game and would like to extend it to a new country
besides the ones you can already choose from at the beginning, or if
you'd like to edit a team so that it resembles a real team more,
please see the CUSTOMIZATION section at the end of this text.

If you have done some customization, I'd be glad if sent me the files
you've made (to the above address) so that I can include them in
subsequent versions of Bygfoot.

*********************

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

- You can specify a directory with the pixmaps and the text-files
  needed by adding '-d your_pixmap_dir' at the command line

- You can specify a custom country file by adding '-f
  your_country_file' at the command line

- You can load a saved game directly by giving Bygfoot its name
  on the command line

- if the country file is located in one of the default support_files
  paths (e.g. $HOME/.bygfoot/text_files or
  /usr/share/bygfoot/support_files/text_files); or if the savegame is
  located in $HOME/.bygfoot/saves, you only have to specify the file
  name without full path

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

These are always shown as tooltips, too.

Generally, when an 'OK' button can be clicked, 'Return' will do just
that; when a 'Cancel' or 'Close' button can be clicked or a popup window
can be closed, 'Escape' will do it.

L or Ctrl-O    	 Load game
S or Ctrl-S	 Save game
Ctrl-N		 New game
Q or Ctrl-Q	 Quit
H		 Show this help screen

Space		 Begin new week
O		 Options
Escape		 Back to main
T		 Show transferlist
F		 Show finances and stadium info
P or F1		 Show preview
F4		 Show fixtures
F5		 Show tables
1 and 2		 Previous / Next page (e.g. when looking at fixtures)

C		 Change team structure
R		 Rearrange team
Y or Ctrl-Z	 Undo last swap-action


PLAYERS

- Right clicking on a player will write extended information about him
  into the right window. BUT: right clicking in transfer mode
  (ie. when the transfer list is shown on the left) adds the player to
  the transfer list.

- Young players get gradually better (skill-wise); older players get
  worse; the age at which a player reaches his peak ability differs
  with each player.

- A player's peak ability is his talent value, which is only
  indirectly accessible for you through your scout. You only have your
  scout's estimation about a player's talent.

- Getting better or worse means also an update of the player's value
  and wage and sometimes his estimated talent.

- If a young player never plays, he improves slowlier; if he's
  injured, his development is retarded (so a player who seldom plays
  and always gets injured when he does may never reach his talent
  value). Conversely, if an older player gets injured, his 'decay'
  speeds up a bit.

- Skill is rather more important than fitness (if you have a 8.0 / 90%
  and a 7.5 / 95% player, i'd let the first one play -- at least in
  important games), BUT: the worse the fitness value of a player, the
  more likely the occurance of an injury.

- The accuracy of the estimated talent depends on your scout's ability.


TRANSFERS

- When in transfer mode (the transferlist displayed in the right
  window), you can put players from your team on the list by
  right-clicking on them in the left window and remove them by
  left- or right-clicking on them in the right window (or
  middle-clicking, if you want ;-))

- You can temporarily sort the list by clicking on one of the column
  headers, e.g. 'Skill'. If you go back to main menu, the sorting is
  undone. You can sort the list permanently by switching it on in the
  options menu.

- You can have Bygfoot warn you with a popup window whenever an
  interesting player appears on the transfer list by specifying some
  conditions in the options menu.

- You can buy players who are not on the transfer list by clicking on
  'Transfers' and on the button with the 'Search' symbol in the lower
  right part of the window.

- The scout is the most important factor when buying or selling
  players. A better scout will:

  * have more information about players in other teams (such as status
  or age)

  * be more precise when estimating the player's talent, value and
  wage

  * will find a buyer for your player faster

  * will get more money for the player you sell


STADIUM

- The safer your stadium is, the more people will come to watch your
  games.

- The attendance depends not only on the safety but also on the type
  of game: in a Nationwide Conference game there won't be more than a
  couple of thousand spectators no matter how safe your stadium is;
  whereas a cup final will guarantee a full stadium.

- In stadiums with bad safety fires can break out or riots can happen.

- Your home games are (except for transfers and prize money) your only
  source of money, so keep an eye on your stadium (safety decreases
  with time).


FINANCES

- There are three ways of getting money: first, by selling players;
  second, from ticket sale. The first one occurs seldomly (you won't
  want to disassemble your team, do you?), and the second one only
  when you have a game at home (so take care of your stadium). The
  third way is to finish a season as first, second or third; in this
  case you get some prize money (you also get some money for being the
  winner of the promotion games or 4th in league 1).

- If you desperately need money (e.g. to buy an outstanding player
  from the transferlist), you can get a loan from the bank. The amount
  of money you can be granted at most depends on the value of your
  players and your stadium. You'll have to pay back your loan within
  15 weeks, but if you pay it back partly before that, the time limit
  might be extended. There's an interest rate between 1% and 7.5% per
  week.

- If you fail to pay back your loan in time, you'll get fired.

- Your drawing credit depends just like the maximum loan on your
  stadium and your players.

FIGURES

- Parts of a season's fixtures are generated while playing (e.g. FA
  Cup from round 2 upwards) because they depend on previous
  results.

- At the end of each season a history page will be written. It
  contains your result at the end of the season (rank, team and
  league), all champions and cup winners and the best players of each
  league.

- Goalies only count in the 'Best players' statistic if they have
  participated in at least half of the league games.


PARTS OF A SEASON
(the cup and league names in this section refer to the English
version)

- You can browse the fixtures by clicking on 'Figures -> Fixtures'. Of
  course you won't see all fixtures, but only of those leagues you
  participate in and only of those rounds (in the cups) which have
  been played or for which lots have already been drawn.

- To browse the fixtures of a league/cup you don't participate in, use
  the 'Fixtures by league' option menu after clicking on 'Fixtures'.

- You can see your league results sorted by opponent if you click on
  'Fixtures' and on the colorful button on the left of the arrow
  buttons.

- Each season there are 

  * league games,
  * FA Cup games (featuring all English teams, though some teams from
  * the first two leagues have a wildcard for the first round),
  * League Cup games (Nationwide Conference teams aren't participating
    here)

  - on international level there are
  * Champions' League games (you'll participate if you win the
    Premiership),
  * Cup Winner's Cup games (you'll participate if you win the
    FA Cup and don't win the Premiership) and
  * UEFA Cup games (you'll participate if you finish 2nd to 4th in
    Premier Division and don't  win the FA Cup)

  - Additionally there's the 
  * Charity Shield between the Premiership champion (or runner-up if
    there's a double winner) and the FA Cup winner and the
  * UEFA Supercup between the CL winner and the UEFA Cup winner

- If you finish in a league apart from Nationwide Conference among the
  last 4 teams, you get relegated.

- If you finish in a league apart from the Premier Division among the
  first three, you get promoted.

- If you finish in a league apart from the Premier Division 4th to
  7th, you'll play promotion games: one round of home/away games, and
  if you win, another round against the other winner. If you win this
  one, you're promoted.


HIRE AND FIRE

- There is one reason for other teams to try and hire you: your team's
  success. So if you're first in a league for 20 consecutive weeks
  don't be surprised if they try to contract you. If it gets on your
  nerves, you can switch it off in the options window or via the quick
  options menu.

- If you get promoted, you'll count as quite successful.

- If you get relegated (or your team's last for 20 consecutive weeks
  or so), you'll count as rather unsuccessful and your team owners
  might consider firing you.

- There are two additional reasons why you could get fired. First, if
  you fail to pay back a loan. Second, if you're financial management
  is bad and you're bank account gets below your drawing credit three
  times in a season. Each time you'll get some weeks to get positive,
  but each time the limit will be shorter.


CUSTOMIZATION

NOTE: If you just have a question concerning the Bygfoot Team Editor,
try looking for the answer in the mini-FAQ at the end of this section.

NOTE: All Bygfoot text files are UTF-8-encoded. If you edit one, take
care that your editor doesn't mess up the encoding (like my emacs
does, for instance). As a workaround you can change the coding of the
file first with recode (e.g. 'recode UTF-8..ISO-8859-1 'country_eng'),
edit, and recode again.
The reason why I work with UTF-8 files only is that this way almost
any special character can be loaded and displayed correctly. You don't
have to write a custom file in ASCII, but can use any special
character your language contains.
A text editor that doesn't mix up the UTF-encoding is 'yudit'.


There are basically two possibilities for you to customize Bygfoot.

1. Make a new country file.

Country files contain team names, league names and cup names. Each
time you select another flag when you're asked to choose a team at the
beginning of the game, a new country file is loaded. 

The simplest way to make a new country file would be to copy one of
the existing ones and edit it.

The default country files contain a lot of comments, so you don't
really have to read the description below.

The structure of a country file is as follows (see also the comments
in 'country_eng'):
    - comment lines (beginning with '#') and blank lines are ignored
    - the first part consists of 114 newline-separated team names;
    these will take part in the 5 leagues in Bygfoot.
    - the second part consists of 16 blocks of team names, each preceded by a number
    (1 to 16) on a single line. From these blocks the teams
    participating in the international cups (Champions' League etc.)
    are loaded
    - the third part contains the league and cup names (e.g. 'Premier
    Division' for England, 'Primera Division' for Spain)
    - the second and third parts MUST be separated by a '1000' on a
    single line


2. Edit a team.

'Edit' means in this case that you can specify the players' names,
skill, talent and age values, and additionally the structure of the
team (e.g. 442, or 532 etc.). You can edit a team directly in the file
'teams' (which is called team definitions file) or, more comfortably
via the Bygfoot Team Editor.
You can start the Team Editor from the team selection window at startup
or by calling Bygfoot with one of the command line parameters '-e' or
'--editor'.

At startup, the game looks only for teams with names that are in the
list of the league teams (i.e. among the first 114 in the country
file, in other words those you can choose from at the beginning) in
the definitions file. Because of this it doesn't make sense to specify
a team with a name that's not in one of the country files.

If you'd like to edit the definitions file directly, see the comments
in the file. And take care that you don't mix up the encoding.

As the Team Editor interface is pretty self-explanatory (almost every
widget has a tooltip), I just give some clues in a mini-FAQ.

BYGFOOT TEAM EDITOR MINI-FAQ

Q: I'd like to edit a team from a Spanish league. How can I do that?
I only see English teams I can choose from.
A: You have to select a different country file, in this case 'country_es'.

Q: Why is the background of three substitute players grey?
A: The human player always starts with 17 players; mainly, because
this way he has room for transfered players from the beginning. So
each time you start a new game and your team is loaded from the
definitions file, players with numbers 13, 16 and 19 are omitted.
Practically this means: don't put important players on the positions
with grey background.

Q: I have edited a team and would like to play with it. But each
time I start the game and choose the edited team, some players don't
appear in the player list.
A: See previous Q.

Q: Why should I edit those grey-backgrounded players if they don't get
loaded anyway?
A: CPU-teams have 20 players, so if you choose a different team from the
one you edited, the CPU-team that goes with the edited team will contain
all 20 players, even the grey-backgrounded ones.

Q: No matter which team I choose, they always contain 20 'nobodies'.
A: I have specified only a few teams in the default definitions file
until now: Real Madrid (Spain), Bayern München, Werder Bremen, Borussia
Dortmund (Germany) and Arsenal (England). So all other teams are blank
(as yet). I hope that a lot of people add their favourite teams to the
definitions file and send it to me, so that I can extend the default file
somewhat in subsequent versions.

Q: I can't see how I can change the position of a player. I'd like
player number 14 to be a goalie, but he's always a defender.
A: The position of a player is determined by the two structure values
above the right upper corner of the player list. If the first is 442,
it means that players with numbers 2 to 5 are defenders, 6 to 9
midfielders and 10 and 11 forwards. Players 1 and 12 are always
goalies. The positions of the rest of the substitutes, players 13 to
20 are determined by the second structure value, e.g. 332. If you'd
like to change the position of a player, you either have to change the
structure accordingly or swap the player with another one.

Q: Can I enter special characters like è or æ and the like?
A: Definitely. They should even get displayed correctly in the game.
Special characters are the reason why I switched to UTF-8 encoding.

Q: Can I delete a player completely?
A: You can't in the sense that you don't see him in the list afterwards,
but if you specify a name with a '#' as first character, the player won't
be loaded at startup.

Q: I've got a player who'll turn 30 in two month. In the list, however, he's
30 already!
A: The ages are stored as floating-point numbers, and in the list they're
rounded to integer numbers. So a player between 29 years and 6 months and
30 years and 5 month is shown as a 30-year-old.

Q: What does this 'Average skill' part of the window mean?
A: It shows the average skill of the team you currently edit. Its purpose
is mainly to help you create a team that's not very out-of-place compared
to the other teams in the game. In your first season, teams in League 1
have average skills of around 8.0; very good teams perhaps 8.7 or 8.8, bad
teams 7.0 or 7.2. UEFA-Cup teams are on average as good as League 1 teams,
CWC and CL teams about 0.2 and 0.4 better, respectively.

Q: I appreciate the whole definitions stuff, but in my opinion it
makes the game more predictable and unbalanced. Can't I turn it off?
A: Of course. Simply check the 'Don't load team definitions'
checkbutton in the team selection window and loading definitions is
switched off completely. If you'd still like to have the names of the
players, but random skill values etc., check the 'Load only names'
checkbutton. If you'd like to load your team only, check the
'Load my team' and 'Don't load team definitions' buttons.

Q: I've edited a team. Where can I find the definitions file
the editor stored it in?
A: The first time you start the Bygfoot Team Editor, it tries to
create a directory called '.bygfoot' in your home directory and the
subdirectories 'text_files' and 'saves'. It then tries to copy
the customizable text files to the former subdirectory (the 'saves'
subdir is meant for your savegames). Your edited teams should be in
the file '~/.bygfoot/text_files/teams'.

Q: I have edited a team which isn't in one of the five leagues but
takes part in a European cup. The names get loaded correctly, but when I
look at the team in transfer browse mode, the skill and talent and age
values are all wrong!
A: For international cup teams only the names get loaded. This is because they
have to have a certain average skill level (otherwise it'd be too easy or too
hard to win a cup), and I don't want to have this level all messed up.

Q: I have written definitions of 2450320 teams from different
countries. Would you like to have them?
A: YES! Send them to 'gyboth@gmx.de' so that I can include them in
the default definitions file of the next Bygfoot version. But try to
be truthful, don't put only 9.9 players into your favourite team.

_end
