• forestman [del]
• 2007-11-06

We have simplified adding new languages. Now linguists can create a new language by translating the english version directly on site and publishing it when completed.

If you want prepare new language, please inform us by writing an email to admins@sokker.org or directly by sk-mail to Arnau or Papcio Daniels

Please note: Adding a new language is an ongoing responsibility also - you will also have to translate news items as well as new sentences for Sokker scripts updates (for example when new features are introduced). Therefore please bear this in mind before you apply.

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-10-24

We have introduced an affiliate system for new users. Now when you invite a friend to Sokker, if you encourage them to fill in your username during the registration process like the following:

www.sokker.org/?buddy=your_login

Once they buy plus for the first time, you yourself will receive a gift of 10 days of plus. If you already have plus, then 10 days will be added to your current subscription.

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-10-15

It is election time again! You have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach of any nation, and to give your vote to your preferred manager of 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 a maximum of one thread in the forums, prefixed with [NT] , e.g. [NT] forestman. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spammy activities will result in forum banning and/or financial fine. Also, if you are running for election do NOT post questions or arguments in other candidates' threads. Their threads are for them to present their candidacy (and for users from that nation to question them), not for you to debate them.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as 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.

The election deadline is 28th October so get preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-09-22

We are happy to announce that we are starting the testing of a new match engine. The new match engine will improve a few areas of the current engine and also includes some new features.

This new match engine will be used from now until the end of this season in NT friendly games and in regular friendly games starting October 10th (after all national cups are completed). It will then be used in all matches from the start of next season.

Improvements in the game engine:

- Wingers will now turn towards goal or cross the ball further away from the goal line in order to be more effective (previously they sometimes went out of bounds or into the corner where they couldn't be as effective). They will now try to avoid making poor passes backwards and instead may look to shoot at goal.
- The offside rule will be executed correctly for players that are off field. This will correct a small bug, for example - in this match.
- Half-time / End-of-game whistle will not be blown with a player extremely likely to score a goal – for example, with the attacker having dribbled past the last defender.
- 4 substitutions will not occur. There were rare occasions when this had occurred in the past - such as here
- Corrected the conditional substitution when a player is sold or fired,as you can see here.
- Sorted conditional orders, so in all instances, when two orders exist with different minutes to execute, the order with the lower minute will be executed first. (There were rare occasions previously when this did not occur)
- The use of tactics for defending players has been improved. In certain circumstances the previous game engine would think that the defending team had possession when they did not. It therefore would select a more attacking tactic, and would leave the keeper vulnerable. Examples of this problem include when there is a rebound from the goalkeeper or when the final defender loses possession. This problem has now been corrected.
- Match generation will not start before updates are finished. This is an important fix to the issue that happened a while ago where we had to re-run matches (the "ghost matches" problem).

New features:
- Changed technique/defender probability distribution during a tackle. This means that there is now a chance (although very small ) that an attacker with relatively low technique might be able to dribble past a MUCH better defender, or a relatively unskilled defender might be able to tackle a high technique opponent. (This will be closely monitored during testing).


There are no other changes made in this engine. If you notice anything different, please report it as a bug. All bugs should be reported on Bugs / Ideas (en) forum, one topic per one bug.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-09-19

As you may know, the new scripts were temporarily brought online on Tuesday September 18th for a short period of time. After some performance issues and two bugs were detected, they were quickly removed and the old scripts were brought back online.

Today, the developers feel that they are nearly done fixing the performance issues and the identified bugs.

Therefore, there is a TENTATIVELY planned testing in production for the new scripts for Thursday, September 20th. More information will be made available either as formal news and/or in the discussion thread on Sokker International.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-08-23

On August 22nd we went live with the new scripts using the current database for an extended tester population (the entire sokker staff) as the planned initial step in the release in order to make sure everything went smoothly. It was up for most of the day and the release was relatively smooth as expected.

However, as a part of our normal validation process, we noticed some minor bugs that we would like to resolve and a few things that we would like to add prior to the full release. Therefore, in order to minimize any negative effect on you, we're going to push back the new script release date. We will provide at least a day notice before going live, and we are confident that there will be minimal, if any, downtime when we do the changeover.

Thank you for your understanding,
- Sokker Development Staff

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-08-17

We're very pleased to announce that very shortly we will replace the current Sokker page scripts with new ones, which have been rebuilt entirely, one by one. In general you should not notice any differences to the site, except with the introduction of some new features (discussed on Sokker International), but this is a big and fundamental change which has been worked on extensively over the last few months. It will allow us to further the development of Sokker, including enabling the development of a new design.

Because the scripts have been totally rebuilt, it is possible there may still be errors on some of the pages. Please report to us all of the bugs you find in the Bugs / Ideas (en) forum. For each bug found there should be one topic.

The scripts were rewritten to use php SMARTY template engine by Marcin Nabiałek. After the initial development phase, we undertook a testing phase with the assistance of the Mods and Admins as testers, and corrected any discovered issues. We want to thank all that participated in that project. :]

In the future we plan to redesign Sokker. To maximise the quality and improvements of the new site we have a hired external professional Graphics Design firm to do that. The plan is to introduce a new Sokker logo and new look, which we hope to be finished in around 2 months time.

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-08-08

As many users are aware we suffered a software failure on Sunday morning. This failure caused a number of matches to be played incorrectly (“ghost matches”). We have subsequently corrected the error and all games have been successfully played.

There is no perfect solution to a failure like this, especially one which occurred with such bad timing (it could not have been worse). The developers worked as quickly as possible to restart the game with the minimum delay on matches. The key details of the impact of the failure and the corrections are detailed below:

We removed the impact of the “ghost matches” where it was possible.
- Player statistics, cards & injuries from the ghost matches were removed (as if they were never played).
- Ticket income from the ghost match was removed.

A small number of things will remain unchanged.
- The influence of the “ghost match” on supporters mood will remain
- Regrettably, some players who were carded or injured within the ghost match were not able to play in the subsequent "real match". This problem cannot be corrected on those matches.
- Players that played in both the ”ghost match” and the “real match” will get a little more from training (as if he has played 2 matches the same week).
- If a team played the “ghost game” with the wrong formation (6 MIDs or so), and the real match correctly, it will receive training as normal
- If a player played in one ghost game and 2 other games then training will be as if he played 3 normal matches.

Again, we apologise for the incident, which we repeat was a rare occurrence that happened at an extremely bad time for us.

Thank you for your patience.

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-08-05

This morning there was a software failure which led to the update process stopping. Unfortunately, we were unable to discover the problem whilst it was happening.

Due to this problem, some matches occurred at the wrong time and in the wrong order. Every match that was played during this time will have to be played again. Unfortunately we can not cancel injuries that may have happened as a result of these cancelled matches, at least, not today.

We apologise for the inconvenience of this.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-08-01

As previously announced (in the news posting on December 1, 2006) the only approved method of downloading of data from Sokker is via the XML provided by http://online.sokker.org/xmlinfo.php. This is a robust set of data that has been provided and is being allowed for tools to increase your enjoyment of Sokker.

With this in mind, we would like to remind or inform you of the following:
- The data available via the data.php site will be removed as of September 1, 2007.
- Screen scraping by any application is strongly forbidden.
- Applications may not do anything whatsoever (including store, manipulate, send, etc) with the match flash data (the approved match XML data is fine, this refers to the data used by the match engine). This match data is part of the Sokker copyright

If you have any questions about a tool you also use, please ask in the thread for that tool (most of the tools already have threads on Sokker International that may be used for this purpose).