• 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).

• anaconda [del]
• 2007-07-28

We would like to invite every sokker user to support their country in the World Cup that starts this Saturday!

Hellsangel has written a guide to all 32 teams featuring in the World Cup in the forums - here. It remains to be seen whether Polska will retain the World Cup for a third consecutive time, or one of the other nations will finally take away their crown.

The World Cup kicks off today with Australia - Norge. Be sure to check on the progress of all the teams in the World Cup section!

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-07-23

We would like to take this time to remind everyone to use a password for their sokker account that would not be easy to guess for any potential hacker. The below are points worth bearing in mind for your password:

1) Change your password every now and again, and NEVER have the same username and password.

2) If possible, use a password that contains both numbers and letters - but make sure you are able to remember them.

3) First name, last name, birthday date, phone number and user names are not secure passwords, try and have something as your password that is not easy to directly link to yourself.

Finally, a reminder that no one from Sokker will EVER ask you for your account password. Never give your account password out via email or SK mail to anyone.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-07-09

This weekend, Sokker passed the 50,000 user mark, a significant milestone for any online game.

Thanks to all of our users for helping us reach this point. We will continue to work to improve the functionality and interface of the site to support future growth. Please continue to spread the word about this game to help us incresase our community size and level of competition!

-- Sokker Staff

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-06-26

It is election time again! You have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach of any nation, and vote for 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.

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 July 8th, so get preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• mr_gibbage [del]
• 2007-04-24

We are happy to announce that we have installed Sokker on a new, better, internet connection. Sokker servers are now hosted in professional server room, with redundant internet connection, power, conditioning, extinguishing systems, monitoring etc. etc. It's much more than we were able to supply in our previous 'home' server room.

The move was originally planned to take place in two weeks, but because our internet connection had some serious problems, we were forced to make the move ahead of schedule with little time to prepare.

With the changes already made to the servers in the past few weeks, Sokker is working on 6 servers in total (web servers, database, proxy, match generators etc.). In the next season or two, there are plans to increase capacity further, so that more users can be logged in during match days.

During the week we will be adjusting the configuration of the servers, so please be understanding if any problems happen. Major server works are planned for this friday (we hope that this will be unnoticable, with Sokker working as normal).

Because of all the server work, all plusses will be extended by 2 days.

• guacamole [del]
• 2007-04-09

On Wednesday April 11th, a new engine version will be released. This release contains only bug fixes, without any changes to game play. For this reason, we are not waiting until the end of season for the release.

Changes made in this version:
- After goal kicks, attackers will more likely allow midfielders to get the ball, instead of going back to get the ball themselves (putting them out of position).
- Decreased likelihood of immediate ("nervous") passes.
- Decreased likelihood of shooting from a bad angle angle when a player is not attacked by opponent. (This bug is fairly visible in the Estonia - Poland match, when Eesti played weird tactic without wing defense).
- On free kicks, players will sometimes attempt short passes instead of lobs, especially if partner is close and there isn't need for a high pass to them.
- Decreased likelihood that players with MID order in own defensive zone will either run out of bounds or into own goal.
- In league games, if both side gives walkover, score is 0:0 from now (1:0 in cup as it is in rules).

These are the only changes that have been made in this release.

Bugs reporting: please report all engine bugs in the Bugs / Ideas (en) forum. Please include only one topic for each type of bug. Please always include the match and minute of the bug – otherwise we will not be able to find or fix that bug.