This Visual Basic program is a hockey team management game called "Slapshot", which I based on a card game of the same name. The game was originally published by Avalon Hill in association with Sports Illustrated, but is now out of print. I programmed it in Visual Basic 6.0, and have since updated it, first to the original VB.Net, and more recently to VB 2008.
The game features:
- Human vs AI player
- Each player controls a hockey team
- Each hockey team is comprised of 3 forwards, 2 defensemen, and a goalie
- Players take turns drafting, trading and playing hockey games
- Hockey game sound effects
- The AI plays a VERY competitive game!
The game opens with the main screen pictured here on the left. Here the manager can view his team and see how good they are. The manager has a choice of three things to do on his turn: Draft, Trade, or Play a Game. Drafting lets the manager drop one of his bad players and randomly receive one (hopefully better) from the draft pool. Trading is similar, but the player dropped goes to the opposing team, and the manager receives a player from that team (chosen at random, but of the same "type", forward, defenseman, or goalie).
If the manager decides his team needs to be improved, he will usually want to Draft on the first turn. Clicking on the Draft button will bring up the screen shown to the right.
The manager then follows the three simple steps listed: he picks the position being drafted, then selects which player from the list to drop (the worst one of course), and then clicks the "Release This Player" button to finalize the switch.
If the manager decides to Trade instead, he simply clicks the "Trade" button and then follows the three steps as shown on the screen pictured at left. These are identicle to the draft steps, but instead of getting a new player from the large draft pool, you would be "stealing" a player from the other team. Hopefully, you are giving the other team a worse player than you are receiving back, but this will not always be the case!
Also, be aware that the AI manager is highly intolerant of bad trades and will relentlessly trade back its lousy players to you!
The AI, on its turn, also has the option to draft, as shown at left. Note that the human manager will know what position was drafted, but will not know how good a player was drafted.
Both the human and the AI manager, on their turn, may choose to play a game against the other. This would open the game screen shown at right.
To move the game along, the human manager clicks the "Go" button. Each click randomly matches up two players, one from each team. The player with the higher number scores against the other, except for goalies, who do not score, but stop the other player from scoring. Ties result in no goal.
Once all players have matched up, the hockey "game" is over, and high score wins.
The winner of each "game" then moves up in the Standings, as shown here at left.
If a hockey game ends in a tie, it goes into Sudden Death Overtime, where the first team to score wins!
Each win advances the winner's team pawn up the standings board. When a team reaches the top of the board, the Playoffs begin! At this point, there are no more trades or drafts allowed: Each team is stuck with the players it has! The Playoffs are a best of seven series, so the first team to win four playoff games wins the Cup!
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