• Morsey [del]
• 2013-02-09

Hello Sokker Community,

For some time, users have requested for us to hear your voices, and this has been heard by the developers. We would like to know what you would like implemented or changed within the game. In the poll above, are some ideas we heard the community would like.

- Make Sokker into Android and ios client
- Change website graphics design, especially home page
- Change faces to be more realistic and visible in 3D viewer
- Change Training to be more realistic, add team training camps
- More payment options
- Improved interactive ingame tutorial
- Introduce Team/Individual Playing Styles (e.g. long/short pass styles etc.)
- More statistics for players and teams
- Market Assistant / Autobid system
- Reduce bottom divisions into one big league similar to the junior leagues

These are only some of the ideas being discussed and accepted as possible by the developers. However they would like to hear your opinions, what would you like to see implemented or changed? Please vote on the poll as we would like to have your feedback!

You can access the poll in the links below;

Sokker Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/SokkerManager
Direct Link: http://www.facebook.com/questions/551078224911335/

Link to the discussion thread: http://online.sokker.org/forum_topic.php?ID_forum=1259&ID_topic=2915942&pg=0#new

Sincerely,

Your Sokker Development Team

• Morsey [del]
• 2012-12-31

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections will start on the 31st of December and end on the 13th of January at 22:23, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• Morsey [del]
• 2012-09-30

We have made several modifications to the 3D viewer, these modifications and improvements are listed below;

- Automatic antialiasing change if the frame rate is too low (below 10 fps)
- Normal camera modified to fit better so now there is less zoom and more distance
- Fullscreen button added
- Additional information added on keys to go fullscreen and change camera mode
- Performance increased when watching in window (fullscreen is the same)
- Background on start menu has been fixed

In other news;

Recently we have encountered issues with our servers, after our proxy server hang over and restarted; the graphics server went slow and had to be restarted too. Unfortunately, the graphics server wouldn't restart which is the reason why the graphics of logos, photos and the view graphics went slow. The transfers were moved forward and the graphic server issues were resolved shortly after.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

• MatzeG
• 2012-09-10

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections will start on the 10th of September and end on the 23rd of September at 22:23, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• Morsey [del]
• 2012-07-23

Currently the card payments are handled by Dotpay (with no extra charge). Dotpay offers many payment options, however most of these options are only available in Poland.

There is now however a new feature that is available to all users, which is the ability to pay Plus using Ukash vouchers (via Dotpay), which are available in many countries. For more information visit http://www.ukash.com.

Payments are still available through PayPal for both registered users of PayPal as well as for simple card payments.

Payments by PayU (Platnosci.pl) are currently unavailable.

• Morsey [del]
• 2012-06-21

Since today the national coaches can select any club stadium where the national team will play their home matches. The choice of stadium for the match after selected cannot be cancelled. We are also planning for the World Cup to be played in stadiums of one country, so it would be like one country organised the World Cup, such as in real life. There also might be a small reward for the team on which the stadium match was played. Currently, there are many national stadiums which have weak condition already, so we have decided to swap the scripts. National teams will now get stadiums which have a capacity of 60 000 and with Angel Grass, so the pitch conditions should be close to 100% most of the time.

With this script modification you can also now access and select different shirt types, both plus users for their own clubs and national coaches for national teams.

There has also been further engine tuning;
- Players are now, comparing to first tuned engine version, quicker
- Two bugs have been fixed related with launch and run existing in engine since it was implemented; the players thought they run on full speed even when they were standing, so they launched the ball too far and in situations they would be slower than opponent. It still may happen that they launch too far, but good players should launch more correctly
- Engine selects the stadium that the home National match was chosen to be played in by National Coach
- The supporters mood and expectations were adjusted to expect average goals that teams score with the current match engine

• Morsey [del]
• 2012-06-13

The introduction of the 3D viewer exposed how unrealistic the match engine could be; such as the players run was too fast, and the shots were too powerful. The reason of this is due to the height of players in the 2D viewer, while the run of bigger players looks natural in the 2D viewer, it doesn't look natural in the 3D viewer in comparison to field lines proportions.

Therefore, we have decided to fine tune the match engine further, especially for 3D viewer purposes. In normal circumstances we would not modify the match engine during the season, however we do not want to allow 4 months of unrealistic, atomic header goals out of penalty area and player speeds that exceeded reality.

Today, on Wednesday matches, you can expect modifications to the acceleration and speed of players, but also less powerful passes and shots, especially headers. In the next few days, you can also expect passing modifications to make the passing look more natural and less nervous. We will continue to tune the match engine over the coming weeks until we reach a more natural look in 3D proportions and realistic speed of ball and players.

• Morsey [del]
• 2012-06-07

The 2012 European Championship, hosted by Poland and Ukraine, begins on the 8th June. Therefore, we have decided to bring Euro 2012 to Sokker, through creating a special friendly league, Euro 2012 Simulation with teams for each country, to simulate every match, on the mornings just before the real match is played.

A forum, European Championship 2012, has been created where there will be threads for all the matches, created with polls, where you can predict who will win the whole championship. However, it will also be used to discuss the matches and the championship in general, it will not just be for squad discussion (see below).

On the same forum, there will be threads created for each team participating in the Euro Championship with squads and discussions on the skills, advantages and disadvantages of every player. We have implemented a system to convert real players to the Sokker database, every skill has a value between -3 and +3, then the player transfer values, taken from transfermarkt or similar sites, is acquired and converted to a Sokker transfer value, basing that value on the skill advantages and disadvantages of that player.

The National Teams for the European Championship 2012, will be controlled by Sokker. Sokker will set official squads and tactics as similar as possible as that of the real teams, to get a possible realistic result simulation and prediction for every match.

• Morsey [del]
• 2012-05-24

We are proud to announce that Sokker has implemented a new 3D match viewer. It has been developed in Adobe Flash and uses new 3D functionality implemented in Adobe Flash Player 11.

In the 3D match viewer, the match now has a new overall look but also, the new 3D match engine has enabled us to create possibilities for the match viewer, such as;

- New camera angles and heights
- Different shirt types (available for plus users in the 'kit' menu)
- Viewing player faces and hairstyles (future possibility)
- Addition of a stadium and showing the supporters that come to the match
- Different grass types and grass mows (style of grass cut)
- Ability to modify pitch size (available for all users in the arena menu)
and many more for the future that will be easier to implement.

The 3D aspect has appeared in Flash quite recently and therefore it may not work depending on hardware type, for example the 3D engine that we used to create the match viewer is still in its beta release. Also, the 3D engine may not work correctly on all browsers, for example Opera, however this is quite common that certain things do not work on Opera. If something does not look correct or it looks weird, please do not assume that is how it was planned and has to be, however should you encounter errors, please report the bug on the forum Bugs / Ideas (en) with your browser type, graphics card and a possible print screen of the problem.

The 2D version of the match viewer will still remain, and it may work better on slower computers or smartphones. However we have modified the 2D viewer to display the pitch lines dynamically, to support the different pitch sizes. In the 2D viewer, the stadium views, the supporters, the pitch types, or shirt types are not supported, and therefore shall not feature.

Arena and pitch

In the arena menu, there are now additional features that will allow you to customise your field but also a feature that will add a new aspect to how the field is used and maintained. These new features include;

- Grass Type - This new feature allows you to choose what type of grass you would like to have in your stadium. There are different qualities of grass, each will have a different optimum condition depending on the quality of the grass. (see below).
- Grass Mow - You can now customise what you would like your field to look like. There are many options for you to choose from, for example you could choose to have a field with no specific mow, or you might want the grass to be mowed diagonally to produce diagonal lines of different colour gradient. Plus users will also be able to place their team logos with selected position and size.
- Grass Condition - The condition of the grass will gradually get weaker each match and will need time to recover. The recovery rate of the grass will depend on the weather; it will grow best when it is not too hot and not too wet. There is though, a new feature that allows for a quicker recovery, through spending money on pitch maintenance. This will be available in the arena section. The other solution of pitch recovery is to lay new grass of the selected type. Also, different types of grass will have a different maximum condition. For example, garden grass will not reach much more than 50% of condition, so it will not be as good. On the pitch, in an area of weak condition, the ball may bounce in an unpredictable direction due to the unevenness of the grass, and also may jump in a direction a player didn't want when dribbling. The probability of injury will be higher on a pitch with poor condition and lower on a pitch with better condition (higher than 50% condition).
- Pitch Size - You will now have the ability to change the size of your pitch, to how big (or small), you desire. This new feature may benefit how you use your tactics. The pitch modification will cost depending on the type of grass you have, and which grass mow you have.

Match engine

The match engine has been modified to support 3D viewer features, such as shirt types, standings and supporter numbers, pitch sizes and grass types, logos, etc.

Other modifications in match engine include:

- Added keeper animations; standing and running with hands wide
- Ball bounces unpredictably on weak condition pitch, and while dribbling, depending on the condition of the pitch
- Players speed is decreased by 5%; in 3D this makes it look more natural
- Probability of injury is higher on pitches with weak condition and lower on good or better conditioned pitches (better than 50%)
- More short passes (this will probably need further adjustments)
- On free kicks and corner kicks the players will pass more adequately
- Modification of defending so now it is easier to dribble over a player from the front
- Players will change direction more during dribbling to minimize possibility of an opponent stealing the ball
- Fixed bug of players launching the ball forward to themselves, but an offside striker taking the ball instead. A scoring and assist bug related with launching has also been fixed.
- Height influences acceleration and fatigue
- Player weight added (see below)
- Tactics modification in match engine; The players will be able to spread over the pitch better. For example, defenders will be able to get closer to the goal-line, similarly, strikers will be able to go higher up the field. This is a modification in the match engine, there will be no changes to the tactics editor.
- Modification in algorithm of supporters attendance depending on stand type and ticket price, supporters will more often choose cheaper stands of same or better type
- Added possibility of injury while dribbling, but, in exchange, lowered probability of other injuries
- Fixed bug that changed to second tactic when it wasn't set
- Fixed bug of setting players on the same position on conditional orders
- Covering players introduced (DEF will be able to modify its position a little when see there is an attacker close to him uncovered), how defenders cover will be later explained in news and rules

Player weight

We have added player weight, which will be visible in the 3d match viewer along with height, with taller players appearing taller and heavier players being bigger than lighter ones.

If a player is too light, they will speed up slower, as they have a lower muscle mass. In addition a player with a high weight will speed up slower, as they are too heavy. Heavy players will tire more quickly, compared to lighter players. The weight of a player will change depending on training, matches played and injury, although this has not been implemented yet.

Weight is calculated using Body Mass Index (BMI), which takes weight and height into consideration, where;
BMI = weight / (height*height)

The ideal BMI for a Sokker player is set to 23.75.

New features announced in the news article that aren't available yet, will be activated soon.

• MatzeG
• 2012-05-21

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections will start on the 21st of May and end on the 3rd of June at 22:23, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!