TDCB Revisited

[MizzouRah]

Well, now that March madness is in full swing, I am again wondering if TDCB is worthy of a purchase -or- should I pass until next year?

Doesn't seem like there's alot of traffic on the .400 studios TDCB forums, so I thought I'd ask where I trust most of your opinions.


Thanks,

Todd

[henry296]

I am having a blast. Arlie, is getting one more patch together that has some final tweaks. It isn't perfect by any means, but fun and that is all that matters.

Todd

[MizzouRah]

Originally posted by henry296
I am having a blast. Arlie, is getting one more patch together that has some final tweaks. It isn't perfect by any means, but fun and that is all that matters.

Todd

Thanks for the reply. I think I'll wait to see what v1.30 brings to the table, before making a decision.

I guess there is a logo pack and/or a roster patch for real player names and teams? Also, how is recruiting? ..compared to TCY? To me, TCY is too in-depth.

Todd

[Samdari]

I'd like to add one thing. I think the game is fairly well done, but after buying a new nForce2 motherboard and 2GHz CPU and still having the game speed crawl, I had filed it under the category of "unplayable."

That was with Windows 98. When I upgraded to XP, I saw a huge increase in speed with the same hardware. So, I would say Yes, it is worth a purchase if you have XP, no if you have 98. I don't know for sure, but I would assume that 2000 acts similarly to XP. If you run ME, there is simply no hope for you.

The difference was so marked that I basically think .400 should change their system requirements to 2000/XP, as it is a decent game in XP and godawful on 98.

[moriarty]

Ditto the operating system remarks above. I had ME and it was awful playing TDCB ... changing to XP made all the difference.

As far as getting the game I would recommend it if you are a basketball fan. It still has its moments that leave you scratching you head, and it could use a little more immersion factor (news clippings of significant events would be nice), but it's still fun to play and a nice effort for a first time offering.

I'd recommend downloading the lastest demo (I believe it's an 'almost' 1.30 version). If you tried an earlier version, you'll be impressed by the changes. There's some key additions including career/game/seasons stat leaders and I've had no stability issues.

[henry296]

Like in the basketball some ccoaches are better in the college game than the pro, like Pitino, I am the opposite when it comes to text sims. I am much better with professional game. I wasn't very good with TCY and have only made 2 tournaments in 8 years in TDCB so take my comments on recruiting with a grain of salt.

I am playing a relatively low prestige school, Penn and almost always get 3 star recruits and maybe a 4 star every couple of years. Some are good and some turn out great and others are real bad.

I find that recruiting takes me 5-10 minutes per week. There is some ability to filter and almost all you need to know is shown on the screen so you can make real quick decisions. There is a custom search feature which helps me towards the end to filter out the committed recruits and you can scroll through recruits the a back and next although it only works on the recruits displayed at the time. The other advantage of recruiting in TDCB is that you usually have only 3-4 scholarships to offer vs. 16 in TCY. I like it better than TCY.

I have not played with the real rosters, so I can't judge that.

Todd

[MizzouRah]

Thanks for the replies! I have Xp, so speed should be just fine.

If you run ME, there is simply no hope for you.

You mean people still use this god awful os?

Henry,
That's good to hear, I was hoping the game was similar to what you are explaining.

I guess I'll d/l the demo and check it out.


Todd

[cincyreds]

Hey Mizzou it is a solid game now. I highly recommend it.

[MizzouRah]

Originally posted by cincyreds
Hey Mizzou it is a solid game now. I highly recommend it.

Thanks,

Getting ready to run the demo now... just have to wait until my boss goes upstairs.


Todd

[MizzouRah]

dola,

Maybe I'm just in time... a recent post from Arlie.

I have created a save game from right before the tournament. The save has complete and realistic rosters for all 64 teams (I chose UNC Asheville as the play-in winner). I also went in to each team in the editor and modified the health and status of certain players to reflect the current lineups as well.

The game will start right before the first NCT games and can be simmed until the end of the tourney and even continued onto next season (although recruiting is completed).

The plan for today is for me to get everything together and provide the following:

1. Full Download that has the game, all the utilities and manual included.

2. Full Utility update that includes all the utilities installed in the correct path.

3. Full update to 1.30 that will also be an EXE that is installed.

So, if you have never installed TD, you would do install option 1. If you have any other version of TD (from 1.00 to 1.28) do the following:

A. Remove/uninstall all utilties. This includes both the game editor and the report writer. You should be able to just delete the files without any harm.

B. Install the full 1.30 Update and make sure to choose your current TD directory as the install location. This is very important! If you currently have the game at C:\Program Files\Tournament Dreams\, make sure you choose that path in the update process.

C. Install the full Utility Update and also choose the same path as in part B.

The full size of these updates should be around 20 MB total. Once I get everything posted, I will give these instructions again and the location of the updates.

Much of the changes in 1.30 involved fixing areas of the engine (specifically wierd rebound totals and FG%s), some PBP oddities and some other minor enhancements. I also made some changes to the Game Editor and finalized the multiplayer utility.

Arlie

This is indeed good news. I like the part about complete and realistic rosters. I'm wondering if there is an option to start a new career with this roster set? Sounds like you have to finish the tournament first.

Todd

[Swaggs]

I think it is definitely worth the cost. You will get your money's worth. However, it is, by no means, as great of a game as it could be. It is a good skeleton with a some meat on it.

One tip that I got that improved game speed was to turn off the save after after sim option. It made the game go from highly frustrating/almost unplayable to very enjoyable. Another is to turn off your virus scan, if you have one.

[EagleFan]

I have ME and take it from me, don't even bother trying if you have ME. It's even more frustrating because I can see the promise there. It took a half hour to save a game yesterday. This means that you can only play if you have enough time to save the game, and make sure you stop playibng soon enough to be able to save the game. It also seems to kill my system. When I close the game and it's still running in the background to close itself I can do nothing while it closes as my system is practically screaming in pain at that point.

I may have to make the jump to XP. This is the only thing that gives me problems in ME that I know of.

[MizzouRah]

I may have to make the jump to XP. This is the only thing that gives me problems in ME that I know of.

It's worth it. Windows 2000 is perfect for business use and XP runs well after SP 1. Everyone who bought ME should demand a refund from Microsoft. What trash.


Todd

[kcchief19]

Who "buys" any Windows product from Microsoft? That implies we have a choice of some sort. Don't get me wrong -- I'm far from a MS fan -- but I don't have the problems with ME that others seem to, but I hate XP with a passion. With each version, MS has taken more and more control from the end-user. XP is worst than ME for that reason alone, not to mention the memory it hogs for no apparent reason.

I downloaded the TDCB demo and played it with ME and didn't really have a problem with sim speed. It was slow, but not painfully slow. My beef with it was that even though I waited until Joe and Arlie said the game was "fixed," it wasn't. The demo I played was bug-riddled and unplayable.

Sounds like its better. I hope so. Good luck, MizzouRah!

[MizzouRah]

You're in the minority then. ME crashes like it's Win 95 version A. Really, XP is very stable with SP1, and Win 2000 is the best os ms has put out, imo. It's not taking more control from you, it's allowing you to protect your data and make your pc more secure. Sure, it's dummied over with the GUI, but really it makes things alot easier on the user. Get a good book on XP and see all that it has to offer in a more 'advanced' lesson. It's easy enough to use right out of the box, but if you look closer, there's so much more to it.

If it's not broken, then don't fix it... If ME runs fine for you, then stay with it. I'm glad you've had little problems.

One note, the demo did crash on me once, but I have yet to experience it since. Once I have real players, the game might really draw me in.


Todd

[FBPro]

I'm glad atleast one person has had a good experience w/ ME, I used it for awhile and it was a piece of crap. In order to get just about any program to run I had to reboot 8-10 times a day.