Player Manager Guide

Building a Tactic for Kick Off 2

Probably you already know that Kick Off 2 comes with eight built in tactics: 424, 442, 433, 532, Falcon, Blitz, Balanced and Lockout. The second four are simple variants of the first four. There is the possibility to build a personalized tactic using Player Manager, that comes with a simple editor that lets you to load/save/modify an existing one or to build a brand new one. So while you already have a good number of tactic, you could ask yourself “…but do I really need another tactic, when I already have got eight of these?”. The answer IMHO is “Sure!”, but for you it couldn’t be so convincing…. The best way to understand my point is to play with a built in tactic versus a personalized one, and feel frustrated to take lots of goals and see things that you can’t do with your tactic. So here this is a step by step tutorial, as simple as it can be drinking beer, to build a personalized tactic that you’ll use to humiliate your friends playing Kick Off 2!

Load the editor in Player Manager

Simply insert PM disk into Amiga, load the game and click Demo->Tactics. You’ll see this (screenshot 1). So this is the editor: now we decide to load an existing tactic and modify it. We cold use what we see on the screen as well, but this is a guide and you have to learn everything you know.

Load a tactic

To load a tactic, just click the icon pointed on the screenshot 2. Now you should see this (screenshot 3). It’s sufficient to click on a tactic on the left, and then click ok. I have chosen 4-4-2 the worst one IMHO. Now you should be back to the usual editing screen, but with 4-4-2 ready to be modified, and see this (screenshot 4).

Modify the tactic

Now let’s learn how to put a single player wherever you want: simply drag it there! Got it? Like in every modern OS, you can click the left mouse button on a number representing a player, and with the button clicked, drag it where you want and then drop it releasing the button. Note that you can move the players only in the main field (screenshot 6). The field is divided in numbered areas: if you try to click on some areas in the field represented in the upper right corner of the screen (screenshot 5), than you’ll see the main field changing (screenshot 6).

What’s the meaning? The tactic has to be built basing on the ball position in the field! So if you want the players to be in a certain position when the ball is in centre midfield, just behind the midfield row, you have to click the 6th area in the upper right corner and put the players where you want. The areas are divided in this way: 1-5-3 for the defence, 2-6-10-3-7-4 for the midfield, the 4-8-12 for the attack, 1-2-3-4 for the left of the field, 9-10-11-12 for the right, 5-6-7-8 for the centre … as you can guess from the arrow under the main field. So we have 12 areas on the field, but in addition you can decide special dispositions for the following cases: your kick off (a), the opponent kick off (b), throw in by your keeper (c), throw in by the opponent’s keeper (d), your left (e) and right (f) corner kick, the opponent left (g) and right (h) corner kick. All these are icons clickable on the right of the screen (screenshot 7). Simply click on the right icon, and then put the players.

Save or delete a tactic

Now the most is done, so when you have finished your tactic you should save it. So put in df0 drive an Amiga formatted disk, and click the icon pointed in the screenshot 8. You will see a screen similar to the load one (3), but here you need to give a name and click Ok. In the case you want to delete a tactic, from this screen just click on the tactic you have to delete and then click Delete on the bottom of the screen

Other commands

On the top of the editor screen, there are 3 icons not yet used: the reason is that aren’t strictly necessary….but could be useful in some cases. Let’s see them. You can copy the player’s disposition from an area to another, using the right icon. Let’s say that we want to copy the 3rd area over the 11th one. First click on the 3rd area (screenshot 10), than click the icon pointed in the screenshot 11, finally click the 11th area. You can follow the movement of the player from an area to another, in this way. Let’s see the movement of the player when the ball goes from the 6th area to the 7th area. First click on the icon pointed in the screenshot 15, then click 6th area (screenshot 13), finally click on the 7th area (screenshot 14), and see the result. To deactivate the follow mode, reclick the same icon as before. Last, there is the possibility to flip the players disposition of an area, around the horizontal axe, like this: let’s click on an area like the 2nd one, then click the icon pointed in the screenshot 16 and look the result.

Some tips

In case of your corner kick, the player near the corner kicks the ball, so the best is placing a playerthere to avoid the CPU to choose for you. Players doesn’t reach instantly the right place, when the ball goes from an area to another, because they runs to the point they have to reach with their proper speed … so consider it. Plus, the player doesn’t start to run immediately, but after a little bit of time (*). The speed decreasing of the player, let me call it “fatigue”, does not seem (*) to be affected from the distance that players covers but only by the time passing. Beware that lots of players near means more probability to control the wrong one in the wrong moment. Don’t use the copy + flip commands to save design time reproducing the 1-2-3-4 areas disposition in 9-10-11-12 areas…it doesn’t work, try to think why :)

• Considerations from personal experience.

Credits

• Luigi “Il Maestro” Freguglia – Author
• Gianni “Torchiador” Torchio – Advices