Postmortem

Now that the 2021-22 NHL season has started, I am putting Pond Hockey Simulator '84 on hold for now.

The game has reached a point where I am proud of the general results! The gameplay is pretty tight and balanced, the AI is a pain to play against and 1-vs-1 versus play is in. Additionally, the game runs pretty smooth as I pushed a series of optimizations.

When I set out to make this game, I had a bunch of objectives which I think have been achieved:

• Create a retro hockey game that brings back to the old days of Blades of Steel, Ice Hockey and NHL Hockey
• Offer the possibility to play entire seasons and compile a bunch of player and team stats accurately
• Create an AI that's challenging and sometimes unpredictable
• Map two joysticks to play 1-vs-1
• Create or recreate your favorite teams, design your own player uniforms with its customizable logo and colors
• Create a tool for poolers and whoever is into fantasy hockey leagues

And of course, there are tons of things which I want to do, eventually, but this will be for later:

• Create 3D assets for the players themselves instead of using crappy placeholder animated sprites I made myself. This has been troublesome as I have explored multiple avenues with no avail; the cost of freelancing, the time it takes to learn 3D modeling, rigging and animating, and the assets currently available on asset stores being the three major hurdles currently
• Create original team logos instead of icons I stole from https://thenounproject.com/
• Tighter defensive AI! There are too many breakaways in the game right now. I didn't bother investing time in this issue because I thought it was fun and the games' final scores were adequate, but it can also be frustrating
• Add a Playoffs phase at the end of seasons
• Edit players' metrics and properties along with their names and jersey numbers
• GM mode: Add trades, contracts, hot and cold streaks, farm teams and draft picks to really push the simulation aspect of the game
• Proper game serialization - currently using Unity's PlayerPrefs to save everything: it's practical and simple, but it takes a while to create new leagues, to save game results and to wipe and restart a season. Additionally, whenever I push a new updated build on the itch.io site, the player's save files get destroyed. I need to learn how to save this info into physical files on the user's devices
• Mobile support and controls; currently limited to desktop keyboards and joysticks
• Add new mystery game modes (!?)

These will be for future versions of the game, or maybe even a sequel. In any case, thank you for enjoying the game, and please let me know of any feedbacks!

Cheers