The new month got off to a flying start. First of all, there were a number of major game updates, particularly regarding music and new city descriptions, this time focusing on France and England. There were also updates for Denmark, Italy and Poland, amongst others, but that was about it.
Otherwise, this week was almost entirely devoted to bugs. These included text issues, adjustments to the assessment of playing philosophy in the lower leagues, and transfer market problems. We managed to reduce the bug number by around 15 per day, but of course new ones were still being found.
By Tuesday, the new credits were ready for everyone except our Steady supporters. As for set-piece scenes, the standard set-pieces had been finalised; work was still ongoing on specific counter-attacks when you push lots of players forward during set-pieces. In QA, our ‘Most Important Current Fixes’ channel was slowly gaining momentum.
The music was now all sorted. Licensing, downloading, renaming and conversion had been completed. There are now 98 tracks – that’s five more than after the last WAF24 update (a few old favourites were kept for nostalgic reasons).
For the patrons, the battle for the top spots in the database was now underway. Right from the start, Ronny couldn’t contain himself; he skipped sending a private message and posted directly in the supporters’ channel. With that, the presidency in Chemnitz was his for the taking. The post of Frankfurt manager was also filled in under a minute (through the usual channels), followed by the president of Bremen and a top referee who intends to crack down hard. The pensioner at the Annual General Meeting is now also named.
The ‘mole’ feature and the board’s tasks have been made optional, and you can now disable them. We’ve also implemented a change so that auto-saves are no longer synchronised.
On the graphics front, we continued working on Creative Mode. In addition, a welcome screen has been created.
Furthermore, at the end of the first week of August, the next major scene update was completed, centring on the topic of standards, with a particular focus on tactical settings. Fabian (one of the true heroes of this project) had once again given it his all. Although he couldn’t bear to look at any more scene descriptions afterwards, he was looking forward to getting on with new counter-scenes soon…
At last, we began with preparations to make it possible for our supporters to receive a pre-version.
After a long search with AI assistance, we found a better new solution for our graphics compression. This eliminated annoying artefacts – for example, on the buttons – and gave us more memory space for the future.
We carried on with the screenshots and the guide. In the end, the four Creative Mode screens were now completely in the game and ready to be tested.
A new rocket button had also been added to the match, which clearly visualises the possibility of maximum acceleration.
Dylan then resolved the issue with the background graphics in the weekly schedule. By default, your own stadium is now displayed there – a really nice touch. Otherwise, more bugs were fixed. For example, the second team’s default formation is now retained during simulation. You can now click through the tips at the start of the week; entering shirt numbers can now be done by holding down the mouse button; work has been done on Light Mode; and corners are now displayed at the top of the screen during the match (important for ‘3 corners, 1 penalty’), a crash relating to the national team manager’s contract was fixed, etc.
At the end of the second week the release date of WAF27 was finally set as 16 September 2026 and also listed on Steam.
By the middle of the month, a new version of the guide for supporters was available. All reported bugs had been fixed.
In terms of programming, the transfer market remained the main focus. Among other things, the three new bonuses were introduced. In addition, the new ‘Affinity’ criterion was added to the player’s assessment of an offer. Finally, work began on the buy-back of the release clause. A nice little finishing touch for the transfer market, in our opinion. Not too complex, but useful.
On the 20th, the missing achievement texts were added to Steam. In total, there were 600 of them across 3 languages. The next day, it was the turn of the graphics. 100 achievements, meaning selecting the file 200 times (completed, not completed) and saving it. Having prepared the guide beforehand, the credits were a breeze to add. After a good half an hour, everything was done.
The option to buy out the release clause was now also in the game. Work was carried out on the settings for the assistant manager and the AI regarding the new tactics. The aim: the stronger your own team or the opposition, the more varied the new attacks become. This was now working.
We’ve also worked out why it isn’t currently snowing in the game in England and Germany, for example, and have gone ahead and fixed that. In theory, you can do this yourselves in the editor for WAF24 – simply set the temperatures so that they can reach 3 degrees or less…
We’ve started translating the English version of the guide. With 300 pages to go through, that didn’t exactly fill us with joy…
The 21st was then the day of the next scene update. 500 new scenes, with a focus on counter-attacks!
We then worked on the flow of player negotiations; here, we’d explicitly integrated a screen with the player’s commitment to make the step clearer. Another issue was the termination of negotiations when negotiating with several candidates for the same position and an agreement had been reached with one of the players.
In the meantime we made good progress with our latest scene update. It looks as though we’ll hit the magic 10,000-scene mark (plus thousands of variations). That’s a 50 per cent increase compared to WAF24, and thanks to your Steady support, it’s almost double what was originally planned.
In the HR department, we’ve also added some handy features for general pay rises and contract extensions.
On the 25th, we had a visit from WDR (the local tv station), and the following day we appeared on *Aktuelle Stunde*. Apart from that, we fixed some more bugs and made the final preparations for the external beta. The aim was for at least one new tester to receive the version every day from the 26th onwards.
The following Saturday was Gamescom day. We made our way through the crowds unrecognised. If only they knew. There was certainly plenty to discover, but there weren’t particularly many managers about. That was both a good and a bad thing. Otherwise: great booths and plenty to try out. Later that evening, the text for the English guide was finalised.
On Sunday, it was official. The supporters beta started and Stuttgart can now become champions by marching all the way from last place to first.
On the last day of August, the English guide was finally finished and published on Discord as Release Candidate 1. The German guide was also updated and made available to everyone there as Release Candidate 2.
Unfortunately, at the end of the month, the assistant manager of the second team interfered with the line-up again, even though he wasn’t supposed to. We have a save game that allows us to reproduce the issue. Is the end of an extremely persistent problem finally in sight?
