Front Page Sports: Football Pro changes and new features (straight from the horse's mouth). This document list SOME of the changes and new features that have been put into Front Page Sports Football Pro (heretofore called "Pro". Anytime I refer to the orginal version of Front Page Sports Football I will simply call it "Football"). It also answers some of the more recent questions that I have seen on the BBS's. Please understand that I would love to answer everyone's questions on a one to one basis, but then I wouldn't have any time to work on the game! I would also like to thank the beta testers for their time and input, and trying to answer questions on the boards since I haven't been able to. These guys are unpaid volunteers, and have done a great job. --Patrick Cook, Dynamix-- A couple of the most pertinent facts first: 1. Ship date: As I write this, the game is in final testing. It should appear in the stores during the first week of September unless something really unforeseen happens... 2. Hardware requirements: IBM compatible with a 386 and 25 Mhz or better. At LEAST two megs of RAM and Expanded Memory Manager. MS-DOS 5.0 or above. A hard disk with at least 12 Megs of empty space. VGA graphics. A 3.5" high density drive. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED: Lots of RAM (the more you have set up for Expanded Memory the better). At least one joystick. A sound card that is 100% Soundblaster compatible and has a DAC chip on it. Mouse for menu stuff. There was some misinformation on one of the boards earlier. You need to have at least 576K or low memory free, which is 590,000 bytes. One of the messages said you needed 590K, which is not correct. However, the more low memory you have available the better off you will be. NOTE TO 386SX users: The game has tremendous amounts of new AI and colors on the field, which requires even more processing time from the CPU. The game will actually run on a 386SX with full functionality, but in our opinion it is too slow to be playable, and we do not want to mislead people. We are using 386 specific commands in assembly language in many areas of the game, which is why it will not run on a 286. FEATURES: Now some of the new features, and then I will answer a few of the most common questions at the end of the document: Football Pro has literally hundreds of improvements, additions, and changes to it. We went through thousands of letters from BBS's and mail, comments at trade shows and magazine reviews to get feedback. While we obviously could not put in EVERYTHING that people wanted (sorry, fully animated half-time shows featuring Michael Jackson singing with CD-ROM quality sound and a full pyrotechnics display had to be cut due to disk space...) we have put in all of the most common things people requested, as well as a lot of other things. Following is a list of some of the highlights, and a brief description: 1. NFL players and stats We have most of the actual players names, numbers, and all the stats in the game for the 1992 season and will have our best guess for the opening day rosters for the 1993 season (since we are shipping BEFORE the final rosters are announced) so you can go back and look up your favorite players' stats from last year and then see how they do in the game this year. 2. Fast sim option and definable league set-ups When you create a league you can now define the "ground rules" for the league. Quarter length, injuries, fumbles, penalties, 40 second clock, and fast sim or regular sim. The fast sim looks at the players' ratings and stats, then calculates scores based on a complex formula. It does not accumulate highlights or stats for each game, since it isn't actually playing every play (like the regular sim), but it only takes about 20 seconds to do an entire week of games in a 28 team league with the fast sim. You can make the choice now, speed or realistic stats and highlights, whichever you prefer!. 3. Full printing capabilities Nearly all of the screens in the shell are now printable. Also, printing support in the play editor has been added. You can print out individual plays with all the logic for each position, or total game plans, or entire coaching profiles (these take about 36 pages for a whole profile, see below), etc. Supports Epson 9-pin, 24-pin and 100% compatibles, and Laserjet printers. 4. Coaching profiles You can now edit the logic for calling plays in over 2500 situations based on down, yards to go, point differential, field position (you can define your own field goal range), time remaining in half, whether you want to stop the clock or not, substitution logic for what percentage of energy you want a player to go in and out at, etc. This is one of my favorite new features, since this is where the real "guts" of the football smarts in the game comes from. Now, when you play in a BBS league, you not only can send your plays and game plans, you can send your coaching profiles. This total package will REALLY give your opponent a good representation of what YOU would call if you were there. You can pick not only a "general play type" in each situation, but you can even put in a SPECIFIC play you want called in a very specific situation. There is even a RUNTIME play where the QB kneels down to run out the clock, and a STOPCLOK play where he spikes the ball into the ground to stop the clock without using a timeout. During a game, based on your coaching profile, you will even get a "suggested play" to call in every situation, which is highlighted on the playcalling screen. To make it easier on everyone, there are 24 stock coaching profiles in the game already, so you can simply modify them as you like and save them off instead of having to fill in all 2520 situations. Per half. Why, that's what we used the beta testers for! . 5. Depth charts and substitution Rosters allow you to specify depth charts for each position. You can specify when you want your #1 running back in (4th and goal situations, for example) and when you want a different back in (kickoff returns, perhaps). You can also sub in and out based on your depth chart now (when your #1 back is tired, your #2 back takes his place, and so on). This gives the user more control over his roster. In Basic mode, you don't control your substitutions (other than how you have defined them in your coaching profile). In Standard Mode, you can substitute players for a play at a time, and in Advanced mode, you can actually adjust your depth chart on the fly during the game, which gives you total control over subs (i.e., once you put TE2 in for RB1, he will stay in for him until you change him). 6. Hot and cold streaks During the game, some players will go on hot streaks that will boost their ratings, or cold streaks that will hamper their performance. These are shown in the substitution window. 7. New animations All of the animations have been improved and now include socks and stripes on the players. Also, there are additional animations such as leaping catches, flipping tackles, diving over the top, etc. Running some of these over and over in the VCR is awesome! Especially the hits on kick returns... 8. Uniform color selection You can now define the helmet color, light pants, light jersey, dark pants, and dark jersey for your team by using slider bars to get the exact colors you want from the palette. This gives you several hundred thousand possible uniform colors. (Adding in extra colors to the uniforms is one of the things that takes more graphics processing time, which is why the speed requirement went up, by the way.) So now, if you don't like the colors that the teams come with, it is really easy to change them. 9. Hurry up/no huddle option and AI After a play, you can do a quick huddle. Computer now has much better AI for offense and defense to run the hurry up drill, and will even try to get out of bounds to try to stop the clock when it needs to, or run towards the middle of the field to keep the clock running if need be. Clock management is vastly improved as well. The computer will run as much time off the clock as possible before hiking the ball if it is late in the game and way ahead. The long waits on the playcalling screen are eliminated too. When you have called your play and the computer has called his, the clock will tick down rapidly instead of in real time like in Football. 10. All-Pro games At any point in a league, you can play an exhibition game with the best players in the league. The computer looks at depth charts and stats to decide which players make it in this game. These games don't count, and any injuries in these games don't affect the player in the league. Like the real Pro Bowl, the players that go are the ones that are voted to go by their peers, not like the All Star game with the ballot box stuffing . 11. Multiple saved games You can save league and exhibition games, and multiple games out of the same league now, then restart them later. So, if you have several people playing in one league on one machine, you don't have to finish YOUR game before another user can start their game. 12. Improved trading and free agent signing Vastly improved AI for the computer picking good players based on their key ratings. And a much smoother interface for making trades, including player-by-player ratings comparisons. When you propose a trade, you will get a list of all of the teams interested in your player and who they are willing to trade for him. The computer is also a lot smarter about who it will trade based on the ratings and depth chart. 13. On-field AI improved for computer for offense and defense Hundreds of improvements here ranging from the offensive linemen picking up the blitz to better open field running to better pursuit logic for the defense to everything in between. The players do a lot more "thinking" (which is why, again, a faster machine is better to play on). Some of my favorite plays are runs up the middle ("4 yards and a cloud of dust...") If you were beating the game by big point spreads on Football, I don't think you will find the same thing happening on Pro...be ready for a pretty good challenge! One of the neatest things to watch is a computer controlled team that is behind in score putting a 2 minute drive together. The players make very obvious attempts to go towards the sidelines and get out of bounds to save timeouts, and so on. Really neat stuff... 14. Additions to the play editor, including "flip" and "key on hot player" You can "flip" a play for its mirror image in the play editor and key on the hot player to help shut down the offense. Also improved interfaces for loading and saving plays, assigning player logic, etc. A lot smoother interface with less dialog boxes, etc. There are also over 1,000 stock plays now. That's right, ONE THOUSAND. A lot of improvements in the interface for changing logic on plays, etc., makes it a lot easier to use the play editor. 15. New sound effects, music, intro, transition screens, championship screen The sound effects are improved quite a bit, and the sound drivers have been updated. The new intro is pretty cool too (and no cliche'd exploding helmets, I promise!). And the intro to games and the championship now show the coaches names, team records, etc., so you can show off your name when you play an away game on someone else's machine in the BBS leagues. Also, there IS crowd noise and it DOES have an effect on the visiting team. Also, when you run a big play, it gets louder (if you are the home team). There is even an obnoxious fan with an air- horn... 16. More stats available (individual stats for exhibition games) You can also decide how you want to look at stats based on several qualifiers, including only stats by a certain position, only the guys who have qualified at the league minimums, only the guys who "make sense" for a stat (i.e., you wouldn't want to look at LB's for pass receptions, for example, but you could if you wanted to), etc. Tackle stats are in there on more of the screens now, as well as several others. We actually had to go to several different stat services to get all of the stats we use in the game, since no single service HAD everything we wanted! 17. Zoomable blimp views for both vertical and horizontal views This is really cool. You can watch the game from either vertical or horizontal, and zoom in and out of the field. You can also toggle the player numbers on and off (so all of the numbers are on at once--something else that takes more processor time) so you can see who is out on the field on every play. This is espeically useful in the overhead view so you can really check out your plays as a coach and see who is missing blocks, etc. 18. Can turn numbers on for all players on the field at the same time Not just in overhead, but in any of the views. 19. Can save in the middle of a regular simulation If you don't want to play a whole game, you can save it and sim the rest of it, OR, you can sim part way through the game, then save it and PLAY the rest of it! 20. Convert old leagues, plays, and game plans to new formats. If you have a lot of plays, or leagues from Football, there is an UPGRADE utility that will come with the game that converts those files to the Pro format so you can keep using those leagues, or plays. Game plans are now 64 play for offense and 64 for defense, as well as several new special teams plays (the squib kick is pretty neat...), so you can convert your 32 play games plans into Pro format, and still have room for 32 more plays! 21. New rules We put MOST of the rule changes for 1993 in for this version (some of them weren't announced until pretty late, so they didn' make it in). For example, the 40 second clock, the "loosened" intentional grounding rule, the clock running after the play goes out of bounds in certain times of the game, clock continues to run when a player gets out of bounds or on kickoff returns or on declined penalties UNLESS it is in hurry up time, etc., etc. 22. Full team control in a league On the Leage Data screen, there is a button called "Manage Teams" that allows you to turn ALL of the teams in the league to human controlled, or computer owned, or computer manager, or change their playcalling and action mode, etc. all at once. That would let you actually change all the teams to human and then let YOU do the same trades that are happening in your favorite professional league (such as the No Fun League). 23. BBS user option This is a "power user" option requested by a lot of the "play by mail" users and BBS players. There are now command line options that lets one player as the "commissioner" run a league and send out the league files to all of the players at the SAME TIME. They can then play their games individually. When the commissioner gets all of the game.out's back, he can "compile" them into an updated league all at once. This is a major improvement since the owner of the the team in the second game doesn't have to wait to get the info from the owner of the team in the first game, etc. We have played several 10 team leagues through an entire season here in 10 days (a game a day) instead of the weeks and weeks it would take before, mostly spent waiting for your turn to play. 24. Joystick calibration and mouse reading improved We corrected several problems with different brands of hardware using software solutions that should make the joysticks and mice more reliable. Also, there is mouse support everywhere except in the actual arcade game (for example, on the coin toss in the VCR controls, etc.) 25. League, plays, and player control and editing We have given the user much more control over a lot of the options. For example, you can edit the players in any league (career or single season), use plays that any team has created for any other team, decide who you want to sub in for special teams plays, copy any team from any league into any kind of a new league, define your league ground rules (see above), buy or sell a team in the middle of the season, etc. Also, now, ANY play created by ANY team ANYWHERE can be USED by another other team. On Football, you would have to copy each play over and rename it (ugh!). Now it is much more simple to trade plays around and create new leagues and teams with their playbooks intact. You still can not DELETE a play created by another team, but that makes a lot more sense (how would you like to be a league with your friend who accidentally went in and wiped out your playbook? It happened here early in development for Football, which is why you can't do it! I had some great plays, too...). 26. New Manual A lot of the things people asked to see in the manual are now in there, along with all of the other changes, etc. For example, it list the key ratings for each position, how some of the ratings are used, more extensive trouble shooting, an eight page index (!), etc. 27. On field controls The cursors have been changed to make it easier to tell who is who and whether they are computer or human controlled. You can also control any player you want to on defense, including linemen. 28. Playcalling screen and game plan screens In Advanced mode, you can access all 64 plays on one screen. There is also full mouse control on this screen, and you can quickly flip through the play groups by holding your B button down and moving up and down through the rows. Also, the TIME OUT button was moved all the way over away from the Ready- Break button (yeah, I accidentally called a time out one time too many too!), and you can double click on a play to pick it instead of having to hit Ready-Break. Also, the number of time outs appears in FRONT of the words "time outs" so you don't get it confused with the downs anymore. And a bunch of other small things. The play names show up in specific colors for offense and defense, and the play types are visible above the play diagrams, and lots of other things to make it smoother. On the Game Plan editing screen, you can even look at the plays by just the diagrams, or the play names, etc. And you can print out your game plans as well (this is really cool for playing advanced mode against a friend so he can't see what you are calling). And there is now a box that tells you something like "Buffalo is in punt formation" or "Buffalo has called a regular play" on fourth down when you are playing against the computer so when you are on defense you will have a better idea about how to call your plays. 29. Retirements The rules and AI for retiring players has been modified quite a bit. Keep in mind that the average career of a player according to the NFLPA is only 3.32 years. However, the program now looks at the depth chart position, the stats, any injuries, whether a team has done well or poorly in the past year, etc. to determine who will retire. You will see a lot more LB7's and TE5 retiring than your QB1 and WR1's. 30. Many, many other things We took literally thousands of BBS messages, letters, etc. to find out what users wanted to have from Football. Many of these things have been implemented for Pro. And, of course, we had our own list of things we wanted to add and a lot of those are in there as well. All in all, it is a very different game, but it won't take you long to learn how to play it since most of the interface is the same. QUESTIONS: 1. Will the games take forever to simulate like they did in FPS:FB? A: Well, geez, I wouldn't say it took FOREVER...:-) Keep in mind that unlike a lot of other games, we are not simply rolling up random numbers within a given range from a table during a simulation. The games are actually being played, with every player movment, all the plays being called, all the stats being added up, etc., etc. happening. You just don't see the graphics. This keeps the integrity of the statistics intact for the league because all of the stats come from the same place: actual games! Also note in every single second over game play, the computer has to make over 3,000 decisions, then update player movement, etc. etc. On slower machines this may take a while. In Pro, there is a "fast sim" option when you start your league that will resolve games (described above) much more quickly. 2. Will there be a feature to just upgrade from current FPS? Meaning keeping the same teams/leagues going and getting enhancements that come w/ this game. A: Yes, there is a separate utility that will come with the game called UPGRADE. This will take all the files in the directory you specify for plays and leagues and update them. Since game plans in Pro are now 64 plays, you will need to load your plan up in Pro then save it out to convert it. That process will also convert any plays in your plan that have not yet been converted to the new format. 3. What exactly are the enhancements over the old to have a current user upgrade? A. Please see the above note. ALL of the EXACT enhancements are simply too numerous to list. 4. I thought that I saw something about modem to modem play? I know that on prodigy, Marcus Harris said that someone in development had advised him that there was no modem play? A. Currently, there is no modem play. 2400 baud, which is what the vast majority of people have access to right now, is not fast enough to update all of the information on each screen. And for just a "coaching only" game, there are simply too many deterministic problems to keep track of (that's the idea that if you start off with the exact same seed in the random number generator and all the program states are the same on both machines both machines SHOULD play the game..It is a LOT harder to do when it sounds, especially when you are changing variables hundreds of thousands of times a game--one variable gets off and now you don't have the same game on both mahcines). When 9600 or higher becomes commonplace, this will be feasible. We actually had some early attempts at modem play SORT of working, but with the new AI and colors and other speed hits, it simply became unplayable. This is a very complex game, and it just overwhelms a 2400 baud modem. If you are interested in modem play, you can get into a BBS league and play that way. Or, if you are interested in real head to head modem play, Tom Landry Football has that feature, and NFL Pro League is a good choice as well. 5. Also, MH had advised that the AI was to be improved. Is this still the case? Are you still able to use AAFTCs Plans on here, or do you need to use the new ones that they come out with? What about Shaun Sullivan's editor? A. The AI is VASTLY improved. With the coaching profiles, if you see the computer do something YOU don't think is a smart call as the coach, you can simply go in and change it! The beta testers spent a lot of hours working on these profiles, and they all had different coaching styles, so you may see one team call a time out somewhere that another team does not. As far as the AAFTC Plans, you should be able to update them with the UPDATE utility. I'm sure Marcus and other people will have new plans and profiles on the boards within a short time of the release of Pro, and you'll REALLY be able to have a coaching duel. And regarding Shaun Sullivan's editor, I'm not entirely sure about everything that it did, but most of the options are now in Pro. However, the league and file formats have changed so his editor won't work DIRECTLY on Pro, but you can always use it on Football and then update your leagues. 6. Is trading ability more realistic? I'd offer good players that no teams would try to obtain. Also, can you trade players for draft choices? Will computers do better job of offering their players to human owned/managed teams? A. Trading is improved. See the note above, please. 7. Do you still have the limitation where roster spots are reserved for a specific position? Also, can I have a DB return punts/kicks instead of just WR/RB? A. If you mean the 34 assigned slots, yes. But those are the rules of our favorite professional league, not some arbitrary number we just picked out. The assigned slots are there to assure that you actually have enough players in certain positions to be able to play a game. It would cause havoc in the game if you brought a team in with nothing by DB's on it. As far as picking who you want to return kicks, etc., yes, on the special teams plays you now have much greater control over who is in the play. You may take the stock special teams plays and put your players into it, then save it off as YOUR special play. 8.. What will be the upgrade price for registered users? I've seen in some magazines that the regular price will be approx. $70.00 A. Due to some contractual obligations with the NFLPA there will not be an upgrade offer for registered users. Sorry. But I have already seen Prot advertised in some places for $42.00, so it is pretty reasonably priced for what I think is the best PC football sim ever done! 9. I really enjoyed being able to use the '92 teams (with AOL's download), and was wondering when one might expect to see an upload with '93 teams? A. We'll make our best guess at who will be on the teams based on the data the NFLPA has given us (and the players that our contract with the NFLPA will allow us to use) early next week when we do the final disk. However, the final NFL rosters won't be known until the Tuesday before the first week of the season, and by then, the game will be on the shelves (I hope!). Undoubtedly, some die hard fan (SportsFan, or Rich Heimlich, or Marcus, or the Sports Connection BBS, etc.) will update the leagues pretty quickly since 95% of the rosters will be accurate and it won't take much changing for the names. We are going through a couple of jars of aspirin trying to combat the headaches from following the roster moves in the off season this year! Free agency...Arrrghhh!! Which brings up the point of the ratings: We have assigned ratings to the players based on their performance during the 1992 season. For example, Marino and Young will have very high ST, IN, and DI ratings compared to, say, Marinovich or Trudeau. But no doubt there will be as many arguments about how the ratings should be set up as there are people who buy the game! So, you can adjust the ratings however you see fit! If you don't agree that Marino, (who had the highest number of attempts and yards last year) should be one of the highest rated QB's, feel free to adjust him. I would love to see some good debate on the relative ratings of the players on the boards. We are just giving you a good starting point that is pretty close to what the stats turned out, but you can take it from there if you want to! 10. Will I be able to beat Washington with Phoenix like I can now? A: Attention: Please call Joe Bugel immediately, he needs your help! Seriously, this brings up a good point about the design philosophy we were trying to achieve with Football, and with Pro. We are NOT trying to simulate the NFL!!! We are trying to simulate the action, the strategy, the injuries, the condition, the situations, etc. that HAPPEN in the NFL, so you can play in your OWN NFL-like world. If you want the NFL, the best thing to do is sit in front of the tube on Sunday afternoon like I do! . Really, with so many different things that you can do, expecting the game to be an NFL simulator is unrealistic. Unless you have the coaching profiles EXACTLY the same as the real coach would, unless you know who will get what kind of injuries and when, exactly what the free agents will be like and who they will be, what the weather conditions will be like, etc., etc., for every game and in every possible game situation... And if you can figure THAT out, then you can forget Joe Bugel, because I'm sure there are some people in Las Vegas that would like to talk to you as well! ($$$$$) With the NFLPA players in there, and if you can do a good coaching profile, then you should have a fairly accurate model of what would happen in the NFL, but that was never the REAL intent. I would love to see people trading coaching profiles and game plans around the the BBS's as well to see who can best imitate Mike Holmgren, Marty Schottenheimer, and Chuck Knox (okay, my bias is showing . Go Packers! Go Chiefs! Go Rams!) In fact Sierra/Dynamix may be sponsoring some contests for the best profiles and plays and plans in regional playoffs later this year. 11. As for the game itself, I am really looking forward to it. Improvements to what is already the greatest sports game on the market have me drooling. A. I have found, especially in dealing with the programmers on this project, that chewing on Saltine Crackers will help the drooling problem. However, you will then have the problem of crumbs in the keyboard to deal with.... Seriously, there are a LOT of new things in the game, and it IS a lot better. I think you will be pleased. 12. Will there be a Macintosh version? presently I have Tom Landry's strategy football which is excellent. Drawback : It is not licensed by NFL so names of players are different. Any suggestions on another good macintosh football game? A. Sorry, no plans for Macintosh or Amiga, although I've heard rumors about some other platforms . Geez, I don't know too much about Mac football games, really. I used to have XOR's NFL Challenge on the Mac, and that was pretty good (even on the IBM, a few years ago) but I'm afraid I am not too current on what is available on the Mac. I know Tom Landry Deluxe is coming out soon, and if they did a Mac version of the first one, it is likely they will do a Mac version of Deluxe. 13. You have said that players, especially defense, react better to plays--would this have to do with new logic options in the play editor, or is it solely due to improved AI? If there are new logic assignments, can you say what they are? Lead blocking on offense, maybe? A: There is a new assignment for defense called Key on Hot Player that looks at which guy has been burning you the last several plays and then keys on him. But mostly the AI has been improved. The key on and line up on man works a lot better (CB's cover WR's based on Speed, LB's usually cover TE's and RB's, etc.) and a lot of other things. As far as lead blocking goes, there is a technique you can use that works pretty well on Pro that wasn't in Football, and it is due partly to new AI and the way the Block Nearest was implemented: A blocker with "Block Nearest" as his logic will now look several yards to either side of his Move To to check for any defender coming in, and will abandon his Move To logic to block that guy IF his last logic is a "block nearest". So, if you want a pulling guard to get all the way out to the edge of the line before he blocks, give him a tiny little move to in his path, then a block nearest as his last command. But if you want him to pick up any defenders on the way, just give him a straight line out there and then a block nearest at the end. Remember, this is new for Pro. Downfield blocking is smarter as well. Once you catch a pass, your other receivers will actually do a better job of picking off the defenders. 14. Will the NFL schedule creation routines create rotating schedules as per NFL, and will they take into account the previous year's finish? A. Yes and no. The schedules are not actually generated on the fly at the end of each season, they are actually built from schedule templates. So there isn't really any account as to where you finished (sorry, the NFL scheduling algorithm confuses even the NFL, much less us!). But the schedule for Pro DOES now change the interconference division you play from year to year, so the schedules are different. 15. I think I can guess the answer to this question as no, but I'll ask anyway. Will the new version support the Gravis Ultrasound Card? A. Yes and no. Yes, as a Soundblaster compatible (which actually treats it as an AdLib--i.e., no DAC chip). But in GUS native mode? Sorry, it does not. The GUS is, frankly, a pig for CPU time. It sounds fantastic as long as you aren't doing too much other stuff at once, but with so much processor time needed for things besides sound in Football and for Pro, it would simply grind things to a halt. So, it is treated as an AdLib card. Football and Pro, however, only have digitized sounds in them. Even on the AdLib and PC speaker, we are playing digitized sounds. But since the AdLib and GUS (and the PC) do not have a DAC chip, we have to use the CPU to play the sounds. And it takes about 80% of the CPU time to process the interrupt, etc., so the action slows down. The optimal sound card for Pro is one with a DAC chip on it. Future Dynamix games, however, DO have plans to do better support for the GUS (including FPS: Baseball). 16. Does the game still have the option of career and single season league? A: Yes, it does. And you can now copy any team from any league into any other format of a league. So, you can take the teams out of a single season NFLPA92 league, for example, and build a league with your favorite 8 teams into a career league, or take career teams and copy them into single season leagues, etc. 17. I've heard rumors that Dynamix has tentative plans on releasing a CD-ROM version of FPSF Pro sometime next year... A: We do? Geez, my boss never tells me anything anymore . Thanks for keeping the BBS's full of your feedback. Although there are simply too many BBS's and letters for us to answer and keep track of, we DO try to read as much feedback as possible, and I do carefully read and consider ever letter and suggestion that I get here at Dynamix. We will be on America On Line on August 21rst at 10:00 ET in the Grandstand for an on-line conference, and then also on Compuserve on September 2nd at 9:00 ET. Check those services for the exact times and places. I would be happy to answer any more questions you have then.