Front Office Football 7 Mods
Yes, the exe, or the Front Office Football Seven.exe A couple of the Bitmaps are under a different number. The 323 bitmap is still there, but the one I found I had to change in order for it to take affect in game was 339, so I changed both, just in case. FOF7 - Graphic/Interface Mods. I have not done mods to games for some years, but it's. This is the place to talk about Front Office Football 9. 3: 20: FOF Update from Jim by ezlee2 Oct 9, 2018 22:40:42 GMT -5: FOF 8. This is the place to talk about Front Office Football 8. 2: 17: FOF 8.2 by rush27 Oct 28, 2018 2:23:14 GMT -5: FOF 7. This is the place to talk about Front Office Football 7. 1: 15: How much love? By nemesis Sept 23.
Front Office Football 8 Mods
Sports management games have never been given much of a chance in North America. Despite the European success story written by the beloved series of Championship Manager soccer simulations, publishers on this side of the pond won't give the genre the time of day. And while this prejudice might make some sense in light of soccer's continual failure to gain mainstream popularity in the States, it completely ignores a wave of recent games focusing on sports that Americans care about. Football, baseball, basketball, and hockey are all represented by an ever-improving crop of self-published titles that do a remarkable job of depicting the trials and tribulations of running a pro franchise. Perhaps the best current example of this is Front Office Football: The College Years. The latest addition to the award-winning line of pigskin management simulations from Solecismic Software is only be available online from its developer, but it's every bit as challenging and entertaining as you could expect.
The textual play-by-play and a dynamic scoreboard let you 'watch' games.A prequel of sorts to Front Office Football, which focused on the NFL, The College Years is a text-only management sim that lets you take the helm of one of 117 college football programs and guide it to the top of the rankings, all the while building your own reputation to the point where you might be offered more prestigious positions with other schools. Instead of dealing with fussy, spoiled pros and their big-money demands, you're now dealing with fussy, spoiled amateurs and their own particular set of quirks. These changes make a huge difference to how the game plays out, with the action at the stadium fading into the background because of pressing demands involving everything from scouting potential freshmen and hiring staff to making sure that your stars keep their grades up and maintain their eligibility. Your involvement in their virtual lives as a coach and surrogate parent is extraordinarily moving, creating a role-playing environment that's appealing even if you're not a football fan.The heart of The College Years lies in its superb depiction of player recruiting. You'll spend more time with this aspect of the game than any other, poring over lists of top prospects from more than 14,000 high schools across the country. This list encompasses hundreds of small towns, giving the game a winning regional flavor that allows you to recognize local schools and perhaps even your own alma mater. During the lengthy downtime between games, you're provided with an allotment of 10 phone calls and eight visit requests with which to buzz attractive players and attempt to gauge their interest in your school.
All are ranked in the initial viewing screen with a color-coding system that lets you separate those who might welcome your call from those likely to mutter a quick 'No thanks' before hanging up. There are four colors denoting a player's eagerness to consider an offer: green, meaning 'give me a call;' blue, meaning 'I'll think about it;' red, meaning 'Gee, thanks, but I've had my heart set on BYU for years;' and black, meaning 'Buzz off, I'm waiting for Oklahoma.' Keep an eye on your players, or they might lose their eligibility.The reactions when you do actually establish contact are diverse and realistic. Individual player preference is rated in all sorts of categories, so you're never really sure what sort of response you're going to receive. A local boy who favors distance over academics might have no problem settling for Bowling Green if that means he's just 30 miles from mom and dad. On the other hand, another local boy with his heart set on playing for the best football program in the country might be willing to move from one coast to the other.
The same thing works in regard to academics. If your school doesn't measure up to the player's expectations in his chosen major, he may choose to ply his gridiron talents elsewhere.
As an added note, it's good to see that Solecismic played academics for a few laughs. It's often not nearly as important to a player as he initially says it is, and many of the purported majors in the game are laugh-out-loud funny. Random number theory and jurisprudence are a couple of the highlights, along with slightly more down-to-earth options such as hotel management and computer game design.Depending on the initial phone call, you can decide to either continue the pursuit or cut your losses and try other avenues. If you opt for the former, you'll find yourself angling for an invitation to visit the player at home, and you'll soon be competing against recruiters from other programs. You can choose to be as up front or as down and dirty as you'd like in these efforts.
Get positive feedback and you'll soon be able to throw a scholarship offer on the table, or even a bribe. Of course, if you get caught with any of the underhanded Barry Switzer stuff, your team might be placed on probation and miss a few bowl games. This makes such maneuvering very risky, though you might still find yourself venturing down that path if you're running a lower-tier or even a mid-grade school without much to offer budding NFL stars. Recruiting on behalf of those institutions can be very difficult in The College Years. Even a respectable middle-of-the-road school like Syracuse has trouble finding good young talent willing to suit up for the Orangemen. And it gets even worse if you opt to skip out on the big national institutions and run a program in the fictional Solecismic Eight, a division of small state schools that can be set up in any state. Recruiting from obscure small towns is a key part of The College Years.Fortunately, it's this sort of challenge that makes The College Years so addicting.
Although you will likely start off slow with the game, tinkering with settings and getting comfortable with the text-heavy interface, things pick up when recruiting begins in earnest. Setting targets and going after them is incredibly engaging, so much so that you can easily lose entire evenings to a single season's negotiations. Your 'den mother' role is further enhanced after your recruits arrive for their freshman year. The game tracks detailed information about all the players on your squad as they proceed through their college careers, including overall grade point averages, grades in each class, overall happiness, how they spend their time, and even if they've managed to find a steady girlfriend. Keep an eye on all these factors and make adjustments if necessary, as they play an important role in how the player performs. If your star quarterback is spending too much time training, he might lose his academic eligibility. On the other hand, if he spends too much time studying, his football might suffer.
And if he devotes too many hours to either, he could lose his girlfriend and grow so miserable that his performance in both areas will drop. Ah, the struggles of the big man on campus.The only drawback to all this is that your team's performance on the field becomes somewhat inconsequential, at least for the first few years of operation, while you attempt to build a powerhouse. Even then, there's so much emphasis on constantly building and rebuilding for the future that it's easy to think of the games as something you have to endure every week in order to get back to recruiting. There is some justification to this belief.
In comparison with the deep recruitment system and the monitoring of each player's personal life, the actual football game simulation is rather weak. Although you possess the ability to set the depth charts and extensively alter your team's game plan, it's often effective to just leave these settings on automatic and fire your coaches if you run into trouble. Personality seems to play a bigger role than tactics here. Get stuck with an offensive or a defensive coordinator that roster players (and often potential recruits as well) dislike, and the whole team's performance will plummet. Hey, whatever works.But the most disappointing aspect of all is that you have no control over anything after the opening kickoff. At that point you're reduced to a mere spectator watching a dynamic scoreboard to see how the players that you recruited are faring each week.
This is actually quite well done, complete with interesting play-by-play text and accurate stat accumulation, but it's hardly as engaging as manning the phones and flying from one end of the country to the other in a constant attempt to build a winning program. Seeing the nobody you discovered in a one-horse town in Arkansas turn into a national sensation just isn't as satisfying as bribing him into coming to your school in the first place, mainly because the emphasis of the game isn't on gridiron accomplishments. Even though the desired end result is success between the painted lines, it's secondary to the road you take to get there. The College Years is more about the trip than the destination.Unlike its predecessors, Front Office Football: The College Years is more of a sports role-playing game than a hard-core football simulation. That's not a black mark on its overall quality by any means, though it might come as a bit of a surprise to those expecting something a bit more serious in terms of on-field strategizing.
Diehards expecting to white-knuckle their way to a top national ranking by guiding their club through every down might be disappointed that the most suspense is generated by attempting to cajole Joe Blow from Sioux City into choosing your school over Texas A&M. On the other hand, they might also be delighted at just how captivating such ostensibly bland pursuits can be, when depicted as attractively as they are here.