Would a 'fog of war' MP league be possible?

[Passacaglia]

Every so often, I try playing with the FOF graphics to play a 'fog of war' style of game -- essentially I got rid of the red and green bars, and never looked at the scout overview tab to get a player's overall rating. I never got very far, though, probably because I didn't have the patience to really immerse myself in the league. But I was thinking -- maybe in a multi-player league, it might be easier to get immersed in it, due to the slow pace, and having other people involved.

So...do you think this is possible? I'm not sure if it is, but I figured I'd see if people had ideas on how it could be done. I'm thinking the idea would be that people wouldn't have access to the game file -- just the stats. They could send gameplans instead of export files. But stuff like contract negotiations, free agency signings, and depth charts couldn't be handled then. I guess people could email the commissioner that info, but that seems like a lot of work for the commissioner to enter that all in. I dunno -- maybe a FastFL style approach would be better, though it would probably lack the immersion required for people to be interested in a league with no scout ratings.

So there's my babbling on the subject. Anyone else have thoughts?

[Julio Riddols]

If there was a way to just hide all the bars and the scout overview, I think that would work pretty well.

[Kozure]

There is a way. You need a program that can edit the pictures in the game and just black them out. I can't remember what the program is called, but I've seen GMs edit the roster screen colors and icons with it.

[Kozure]

The ratings on the scout, trade and the overall rating on individual player window would be a hiccup.

[isaccoubaldi]

Interesting idea ....

[Kozure]

The program needed may be winedit. It can edit exe files.

[Kozure]

Found it. The program is called RESHacker. Not sure if it can remove all places where it shows ratings, but it should get a lot of them.

[Passacaglia]

There is a way. You need a program that can edit the pictures in the game and just black them out. I can't remember what the program is called, but I've seen GMs edit the roster screen colors and icons with it.

But even with that program, it relies on the honor system that every GM would actually use it, right?

[gstelmack]

Found it. The program is called RESHacker. Not sure if it can remove all places where it shows ratings, but it should get a lot of them.

Create a resource DLL with the changes and ResourcePatcher in the utility suite can apply it ;-)

[Passacaglia]

Create a resource DLL with the changes and ResourcePatcher in the utility suite can apply it ;-)

huh?

[Pyser]

i like this idea, if its possible

[Kozure]

But even with that program, it relies on the honor system that every GM would actually use it, right?

yup

[gstelmack]

huh?

One of the least-understood or utilised parts of the utility suite. ResHacker edits FOF directly, but what my ResourcePatcher does is provide a data-driven way to selectively apply resource tweaks others have done. In Windows it is possible to create a DLL that has only resources in it, no code. I do this with Visual Studio, but I believe you could do it with ResHacker or other tools. So what happens is:

- Someone who wants to make art updates to FOF creates the correct assets, probably using ResHacker to test them.
- Put them in a DLL, noting the resource IDs that get assigned (again, same thing you're doing with ResHacker).
- Create an XML file that describes the packages included in the DLL, and each package has a mapping of resource ID in the DLL to resource ID in the FOF exe.
- Put both in the ResourcePatcher directory where the others are.
- Run ResourcePatcher.

Resource Patcher then lists all the packages, you check the ones you want to apply, and it backs up your FOF exe and applies the edits automatically.

This makes it much easier to restore the graphics you want when a patch is released.

There are several of these packages included with the UtilitySuite, Icy's and cuervo's graphics and one or two others. I set it up so anyone else could publish packages, but no one ever really took me up on the offer.

[Passacaglia]

I'm tempted to say 'huh?' again, but I'll try poking around and seeing what I can figure out!

[MIJB#19]

Interesting idea.

[Passacaglia]

Okay, I played around with ResHack, and made some pretty good progress. The bars are gone, and the color coding in the scout overview are gone. The problem is the numbers and the words are there. Can anyone take a look at my exe and suggest any ways to get rid of the numbers?


Copy of FrFoot2007.exe (http://download1325.mediafire.com/ojkzhy6j8axg/2kid6ymy7hmje18/Copy+of+FrFoot2007.exe)

[QuikSand]

I'm not sold on this for MP purposes, but it seems like it could be very interesting for solo play. Would also highlight the inability to sort by stats, which is pretty curious if you can mentally get past our reliance on scouting bars instead.

[Ben E Lou]

I don't think it'll work in either environment. In MP, it would just create a situation where the people willing to track all the other tells would have an even bigger upper hand than they do already. There's just so much in FOF that's ratings-based that people could/would use. You could look at...

who gets pissed off about playing time
how the AI tells you to set your depth chart
searches by overall ratings
searches by individual bars
the "roster strength" rating at each position
the Grey Sheet
Gridiron Greta's reports..and probably some other stuff I'm not thinking of. That's just a list off the top of my head.


In SP, sure, you could avoid tracking stuff, but it would be extremely hard to ignore the guys pissed off about playing time, which is a clear tell that they're higher rated than the guy(s) playing ahead of them. And as Quik points out, you can't search on stats, so you'd either have to search for FA signees based on ratings or never sign FAs.

[thenewchuckd]

the "roster strength" rating at each position
the Grey Sheet
Gridiron Greta's reports

Just curious what the implications are here? Do these show unmasked values or some combination of masked/unmasked data?

There was a question in one of my leagues... Because if you look at the "most careful list", for example, it seems to used masked data points. I have noticed that super-masked QBs who clearly have a high avoid int rating (like my QB in the USFL) don't make the list, but other guys who are creeping down do make the list. Further investigation of some of Greta's other lists showed that she pretty much follows visible bar ratings that I would see if I just did a search by those bars. At least, that's what I saw on a cursory look.

[Ben E Lou]

Just curious what the implications are here? Do these show unmasked values or some combination of masked/unmasked data?

There was a question in one of my leagues... Because if you look at the "most careful list", for example, it seems to used masked data points. I have noticed that super-masked QBs who clearly have a high avoid int rating (like my QB in the USFL) don't make the list, but other guys who are creeping down do make the list. Further investigation of some of Greta's other lists showed that she pretty much follows visible bar ratings that I would see if I just did a search by those bars. At least, that's what I saw on a cursory look.None of this is relevant to this discussion. The point of this sort of thing is evidently to remove ratings--masked or unmasked--from the evaluation entirely. But all of these things use ratings.

That said, often super-masked players also aren't terribly well-developed, so things like Greta use *current* ratings, and per your example, Avoid Interceptions is one of the last bars to hit its potential.

[Dutch]

I don't think it'll work in either environment. In MP, it would just create a situation where the people willing to track all the other tells would have an even bigger upper hand than they do already. There's just so much in FOF that's ratings-based that people could/would use. You could look at...

who gets pissed off about playing time
how the AI tells you to set your depth chart
searches by overall ratings
searches by individual bars
the "roster strength" rating at each position
the Grey Sheet
Gridiron Greta's reports..and probably some other stuff I'm not thinking of. That's just a list off the top of my head.

A major problem for masking players ratings from view is that each player card actually shows their overall CUR/FUR rating (which is not a bmp/jpg/gif that can be "erased" with Reshack...unless Reshack can modify the player card view in more ways than I am aware.

[Julio Riddols]

I think one thing that could be done (if possible) would be to generate draft classes without any combines. That might add something to a league, MP or SP.