Kenny

Win it, three passes, one-on-one, done. ⚽ I'm Kenny. I'm making Essential Soccer on my own in Chippenham: a top-down soccer game where every player is hand-animated. Demo is free to play right now in your browser on PC/Mac: essentialsoccer.app Full game on Steam soon

Nobody scripted this. AI v AI, a corner, a parry, a scramble, a goal.

Building Essential Soccer Day 8: Positional Foundations From day one, I wanted the computer-controlled teams in Essential Soccer to play proper football: build from the back, move the ball through the thirds, and only then go for goal. 14th September was the night I got that back on track. The night before, I'd spent two hours chasing quick wins near goal: sharper through balls, better finishing, cleaner one-on-ones, better crosses. Six changes, one after another. It made them look busy, but it wasn't the football I'd set out to make. So on the Monday night I wound the game back to the last version I trusted and went back to the original plan. The computer teams now build in a positional style through the thirds: playing out from defence, progressing through midfield, then picking the moment to attack. Both teams also play by exactly the same physics as you. Same sprint energy, shooting, tackles, passing and keepers, with no hidden extra speed or reach. Before acting, they now weigh up to 19 options (passes, cutbacks, through balls, crosses, carrying the ball, shooting) and predict whether a defender can cut each one out. The goalkeeper is the first attacker. The centre-forward is the first defender. Good attacks start at the back. Options to go short or long with depth in attack, keep width to spread the opposition and create the space to play into. That was always the idea.

Building Essential Soccer Day 7: Menu & User Interface Spin the globe. Pick your team. Kick off. Then a free-kick the keeper has other ideas about.

Building Essential Soccer Day 7 : Player Sprites Player sprites were my biggest blocker for years. One of my early internal demos used the Sensible Soccer sprites animated in Unity but obviously I couldn't use those and they now look pretty dated anyway. Trouble is I am not an artist and so I have been looking around for high-quality player sprite assets that suit the task. Easier said than done! Given I'm not trying to create a sim I had to get the feel right. Fun but not photo-realistic. The players in the game are my own, made in-house. The 3D footballer and goalkeeper models were built in Blender with MakeHuman, a free tool for making human figures, through its Blender plugin called MPFB. They were added on 23 September. The sprites the game shows are pictures rendered from those models by the project's own Blender scripts, and most of the animation was written by hand in code. The gestures, trophies, stretcher and crowd fans were made in-house the same way. The goalkeeper motion capture is the one outside source. It's 14 animations built on Adobe Mixamo's Y Bot. This is also still very much a work-in-progress. Building and learning at the same time. 🤓

I have wanted to build this game for over 30 years. It is only this year that I have finally been able to produce the product that I have envisioned, thanks to the power of frontier models. As far back as the first PlayStation with its development kit in 1996 I’ve explored the viability as a solo developer but always found it either prohibitively expensive, technically challenging or limited by artistic creativity. Sensible Soccer and Sensible World of Soccer (SWOS) was a real epiphany. It proved than 3D, motion capture and expensive studios were not required to create an accessible, pick-up and play experience. It was addictive. Jon Hare and the small team at Renegade were so far ahead of their time it’s laughable. What a legacy. It is with that inspiration that I am now driven to make Essential Soccer the best it can be. I will share the build experience here, good and bad. It’s finally happening. What a time to be alive.