Game Dev


FIFA True Play

Brief History

My addiction to football (a.k.a. soccer) simulations is a manifestation of my passion for the sport and video games. For as long as I can remember owning an electronic gaming platform, football simulations have consistently been my favorite pastime. I started out with “Emilyn Hughes International Soccer” and “Microprose Soccer” on Commodore 64, and then moved on to “Kick Off 2” and “Sensible Soccer” on Commodore Amiga. In 1996, I switched to the FIFA franchise on the PC platform.

What Is A Mod?

Mod or modification is a term generally applied to PC games, especially first-person shooters, RPGs and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and require the user to have the original release in order to run. They can include new items, weapons, characters, enemies, models, textures, levels, story lines, music, and game modes.

Why Make This Mod?

Thus, when I play any football simulation, I tend to believe I get extremely competitive. Therefore, I mostly prefer to go online looking for the highest level of challenges around the globe. This has been a trend for me since the last few iterations of the FIFA franchise. Unfortunately, the online match-up aspect of the series has historically lacked crucial features that the players (including myself) needed.

After unfruitfully voicing my complaints and suggestions for the online component of FIFA 2007 on the official EA Sports forums, I finally took it upon myself to develop these improvements for FIFA 2008 as an add-on (a.k.a. mod). The mod, which I started out programming for my personal use, soon took off, and started growing along with the community that started to form around it. In a matter of months, “FIFA True Play” turned into a full blown add-on with a handful of indispensable features, support for 9 languages, and an intuitive user interface that made the experience look and feel like it was a natural extension of the actual online component of the game.

What Is This Mod?

FIFA True Play can be described as a mod that enhances the online matchup experience for FIFA 08 for Windows by empowering the user with a tighter control around who gets to join their games via rules, “barriers”, “shields”, and blacklists. True Play also automatically logs your opponents, their teams, and the time and date of the challenge. Please note that True Play is the first and only mod ever produced for the online feature of the FIFA franchise. You can read more about the features here.

The Development Phase

FIFA True Play, for the most part, has been produced following software development industry best-practices.

FIFA True Play, for the most part, has been produced following software development industry best-practices. There has been an implicit and natural requirements gathering phase during which I was truly a user of the main application –in this context, FIFA 08 for Windows. The requirements have been documented and published in the official EA Sports forums, and later on captured and stored locally by myself. This was followed by preliminary design diagrams (in the form of UML class and sequence diagrams), which were later on translated into actual code. Following the decision to incorporate a user interface, I created wire frame documents, which I shared with the online community, who were essentially the stakeholders, for feedback.

Features were broken down into multiple releases, and prioritized in cooperation with a small group of volunteers that helped under various roles. Before the end of each release cycle, a release candidate version of the mod was sent out to and tested by each translation-volunteer and the lead testers. This approach helped keep the bugs to a minimum. Once a new release was published, the bugs and other feedback was captured via public forums on the official web site, and prioritized for patching during upcoming releases.

The Numbers

As of today, True Play has more than 2000 registered users, and this number is still growing. The final version has more than 2700 lines of JavaScript code, 5 intrinsic GUI components created in HTC, 1 COM component for saving modified XML files within a web page, 31 rule definitions, and supports 9 languages. It comes with an automated windows installer, a test client, and a rollback feature. Once installed, the mod almost completely runs off the locally installed files, except for the “start” screen, which connects to an ASPX page hosted on the official web site for various intentions that include dynamic notifications.




EA Sports Football Research Community


As a natural progression of my interest in the FIFA series as a video gamer, I volunteered as a data reviewer for EA Sports’ football database team. I am responsible for periodically reviewing the data for a certain group of teams. This data has already found its way into the final release of FIFA 09, and is consistently being updated and pushed to the customers over the internet.

Here is EA Sports’ definition of the data reviewer position:

“A Data Reviewer is a dedicated club fan that has the knowledge required to review their team’s data and give useful feedback on any changes they believe should be made. The Data Reviewer is a voluntary position and doesn’t offer any financial compensation however it’s a great chance to fine tune the data for your team in the world’s best-selling football game.”