Alright Boyz, Here We Go!!!! (OOTP 2007 release thoughts!!!)

[TroyF]

Was simming through a 100 year fictional history before I started my managerial career. Then a Microsoft C++ error in 1973. I can't get passed it.

Ugh. Guess I'll change some settings and try again. I had the same thing happen to me when trying to do this with the demo. I may just have to sim 50 seasons and be done with it.

To the bug thread I go. . .

[Coop]

I really haven't put much time into the game but I was fooling around yesterday with the game and encountered a “Low on Virtual Memory” error. My commit charge was over 1000 out of 1357. Has anybody else had this problem? I don’t see why a text sim would be giving me this problem :-\

[Senator]

I am a managing the, what else, Washington Senators of 1920, and I just witnessed an epic pitching battle between Walter Johnson of the Senators and Pete Alexander. I have the photos of the era associated with it, and watching it was like being a little kid witnessing something magical. For a little bit, I was really wide eyed. Neat game.

[Lathum]

So has anyone encoutered the problem of there not being many available players in the first year player draft. I started in a 10 round draft. Full league and in the 1993 draft there were only 180 availoable players?

[JPhillips]

Lathum: There is a setting for how many players are available in the draft. It's in the same place as the number of drat rounds.

Coop: I think there's a memory leak somewhere. Sim speed decreases for me with each season until it's at a virtual crawl. I got through the first year in about 15 minutes, but by year nine it was well over an hour.

[molson]

For the amount of stuff that's going on this game, and the reputation of the prior version, it's pretty shocking how playable this thing it is out of the box. There's very few obvious issues for even the first patch.

[Drake]

Had my first history-related bummer:

I started a historical sim in 1984 and ran it up to 2006 before taking over a team. The FaceGen routine starts running prior to the first day of the regular season and the name Darryl Kile popped up. On Opening Day 2006, he was pitching for the San Diego Padres in the midst of a long and solid career.

Not a big surprise, of course, but it bummed me out for a couple of minutes.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Coop: I think there's a memory leak somewhere. Sim speed decreases for me with each season until it's at a virtual crawl. I got through the first year in about 15 minutes, but by year nine it was well over an hour.

I'm running into the same issue. My first season simmed in roughly 9 minutes and now its taking around 20 to sim a full season.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Lathum: There is a setting for how many players are available in the draft. It's in the same place as the number of drat rounds.

all I see there is date of draft
number of rounds
pool reveal date and the checkbox if you want one


I am under League setup/ rules.

can I not change it after I begin?

[Coop]

I just posted it on the Tech Forum..

[Qwikshot]

Did we solve Lathum's problem where the rookie draft only had a few players...I think the Gambo database only generates if the player made it to the majors. Anyone who didn't was eliminated...hence the really small draft group.

I see that one could import a rookie draft, but I didn't see an option (after starting the game) where the draft would have random created players....

[JPhillips]

If it's an historical league I think Quik is right and the draft size is set by the database. AFAIK there are no fictional players generated ala FOF in historical sims.

[Lathum]

I think so also. I created a college league and I am hoping that may generate more players.

[DaddyTorgo]

*cough*

I just want to brag about the season Rube Waddell just had for me in 1913 at age 36.

30-10, 2.15 ERA, 360.1 IP, 89 BB, 257 K ,.96 WHIP, .200 OAVG, .237 BABIP,
35 QS (out of 41), 35 CG, 7 SO, 83.8 VORP

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

*cough*

I just want to brag about the season Rube Waddell just had for me in 1913 at age 36.

30-10, 2.15 ERA, 360.1 IP, 89 BB, 257 K ,.96 WHIP, .200 OAVG, .237 BABIP,
35 QS (out of 41), 35 CG, 7 SO, 83.8 VORP

That's nothing compared to the 100.1356742 wins he had for me in Maximum Baseball.

[adubroff]

Originally Posted by LionsFan10

Okay I've got an honest question about this Gambo database. It seems like the database I'd rather use for historical accuracy and what not, but from reading his instructions I have to open the .csv with notepad, go back and delete every year prior to the year I planned on starting at. So if I wanted to start in 1990, I'd have to go back and delete from 1876-1990, using notepad that would take FOREVER am I missing something here? I hope that's no longer required.

I probably don't know there's an easier way to delete everything prior ... hopefully I'm wrong about this.

I wrote a quick little app to do this:

http://s21.quicksharing.com/v/718873...stall.msi.html

You must enter a start/finish year or it will probably crash. You must copy the database files to the directory where this application installs. It will create copies of the files trimmed by year as appropriate and put them in a folder called "output" in the same directory as the app.

[Oilers9911]

Guys,

One of my favourite projects with OOTP 5 (haven't bought since) was a fictional league I had where I didn't control a team. I just watched history unfold season after season and it was great fun. Can I do that in this version? I am running a league right now where I control a team but can I also run a league where I just watch the league unfold?

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Oilers9911

Guys,

One of my favourite projects with OOTP 5 (haven't bought since) was a fictional league I had where I didn't control a team. I just watched history unfold season after season and it was great fun. Can I do that in this version? I am running a league right now where I control a team but can I also run a league where I just watch the league unfold?

Sure can. You can just be in Commish Mode and run the league and not take over a team and just watch the history unfold slowly or speeding along if you choose.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by Oilers9911

Guys,

One of my favourite projects with OOTP 5 (haven't bought since) was a fictional league I had where I didn't control a team. I just watched history unfold season after season and it was great fun. Can I do that in this version? I am running a league right now where I control a team but can I also run a league where I just watch the league unfold?

You can actually play in commish mode (or regular) without controling any teams.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Oilers9911

Guys,

One of my favourite projects with OOTP 5 (haven't bought since) was a fictional league I had where I didn't control a team. I just watched history unfold season after season and it was great fun. Can I do that in this version? I am running a league right now where I control a team but can I also run a league where I just watch the league unfold?

Absolutely. And in OOTP7, the options for creating a custom league are greatly enhanced. I don't think people haven't scratched the surface yet of what's possible.

If Jim ever releases a game with this kind of customization, it's all over. I mean, I don't know what I'll do for money, because nobody would pay me for the kind of crap effort and hours I'd be capable of.

[Young Drachma]

I finally took over a team and we're in Game 7 of the ALCS against the Yankees, it's 1998 and we were up 3 games to 1 in the Series. I'm about to deal with Game 7 right now and I'm a little nervous about it.

And as far as "selling your soul for the title and to never win another in your lifetime?" Might want to think twice about wishing that on your favourite club. The Cincinnati Reds won four straight World Series titles from 1927-1930. But in six tries since then, they haven't claimed a title.

And this include their string of four straight NL pennants from 1980-1983, without claiming a World Series.

But they managed to win the NL this year (of course, they're now the Carolina Reds) and so, we'll see if they can finally break the curse.

[Ksyrup]

That's all I've been freaking doing so far, simming history from various points in commish mode. And with auto-expansion, simming the real history has never been easier.

[Ksyrup]

BTW, I'm in 1979 with a 3-year recalc mode sim with Lahman from 1901 with Redsox45's historical template, and I've been very impressed. Best player, by far, has been Ted Williams. He had 793 HRs at the end of 1959 and got hurt during Spring Training the next year, was out 12 months, and retired at the end of the season just shy of 800 HRs. Ruth finished with 726 HRs, and only a couple other guys have hit 600.

[Ksyrup]

I mentioned earlier in the thread that I had done some research on minor leagues a few years back while playing a previous version of OOTP. FWIW, I went back to my links and surprisingly, found that this one still works. This is a fantastic resource to find specific league/team info:

hxxp://www.geocities.com/big_bunko/total.htm

And here's a good site for logos (aside from whatever the OOTP community has already created):

hxxp://www.logoserver.com/Baseball.html

[Oilers9911]

Thanks for the answers guys. If I am in commish mode the teams will make transactions etc as normal? I always thought commish mode kinda meant you made all transactions for the teams.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Oilers9911

Thanks for the answers guys. If I am in commish mode the teams will make transactions etc as normal? I always thought commish mode kinda meant you made all transactions for the teams.

It just allows you to control any team in the universe. You don't have to control them if you don't wanna. It'll run as normal otherwise.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

BTW, I'm in 1979 with a 3-year recalc mode sim with Lahman from 1901 with Redsox45's historical template, and I've been very impressed. Best player, by far, has been Ted Williams. He had 793 HRs at the end of 1959 and got hurt during Spring Training the next year, was out 12 months, and retired at the end of the season just shy of 800 HRs. Ruth finished with 726 HRs, and only a couple other guys have hit 600.

Ted Williams is my all-time leading home run leader too. He's only got 647 in my league though. Mickey Mantle is third on my list with 497 and the only active player in the top 100 (I just finished 1998) is Mark McGwire with 183 and he's been playing since '87.

Though we're experiencing a power surge (as well as an increase in strikeouts, since I changed the league totals) and so, we'll see how that all pans out.

[Young Drachma]

I updated the "nation as a state" mod that Kelric on the OOTP boards released for OOTP 2006.

Here it is.

[Ksyrup]

What does that mean?

[Young Drachma]

Oh, the idea would be if you wanted to start a sim that would say make a high school league have players only from that particular state, you could load North Carolina or something as a nation in the game -- rather than having a high school or college league right now that has players from all over the country because you can't control for that.

It's much more useful this year than it was last, but those two files changed a bit and I wanted to use them so I modified them myself.

http://ootpdevelopments.com/board/sh...d.php?t=131060

[Young Drachma]

I think there needs to be a team named the Florida Oranges. So I moved the ballclub in Buffalo to Orlando to finally give Florida MLB representation (since I never created the Marlins), even if I'm not sure how I feel about MLB being there outside of spring training.

The Reds finally won a World Series at the expense of my ballclub. I think I probably stocked up too heavily on starters and outfielders during the offseason, at the expense of balance throughout the lineup. But oh well. It's really fun and immersive and the possibilities with the universes make this by far my favorite OOTP. I'm almost wondering how they'll top this version save for fixing the bugs in this one and refining a few things.

There's always H2H, but that's not really interesting to me as a solo player.

[yabanci]

Originally Posted by Icy

Once my stuff is installed, it will be auto used by any new game that uses the real teams names, no matter if fictional or real players, as long as you have a team in a new game named Florida Marlins, it will have the real logo, jersey and cap, the same for every team from MLB and minors.

I finally figured out why I can't see any of the jersey logos. Compared to the examples you posted, the facegen images from my game are zoomed in too much. You can see a little bit of the Orioles logo, but for almost all the other teams you don't see any of the logo (mine is top, yours is bottom). Any idea why this is and how to fix it to match your examples?

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by yabanci

I finally figured out why I can't see any of the jersey logos. Compared to the examples you posted, the facegen images from my game are zoomed in too much. You can see a little bit of the Orioles logo, but for almost all the other teams you don't see any of the logo (mine is top, yours is bottom). Any idea why this is and how to fix it to match your examples?

Go to "Game", then "OOTP Preferences". There's an option to zoom in and out on facegen pics.

[SackAttack]

You can also change that from within the team editing screen where you fool with the textures and such to begin with. You can also set the angle of the picture. angled, straight-on and random.

[yabanci]

thanks, I never would have found that.

[yabanci]

a couple more questions:

1. in the AI evaluation options, is it best to go with the default weights or is there better setting? I read in the Gambo database readme that he recommends 40\30\20\10.


2. the stadiums look like a complete mess. All the data appears incorrect. The Astrodome is listed as an open air stadium and all the seating capacities and ballpark factors are all wrong. I downloaded the stadium photos and this huge database that gives all the correct data, but if I understand it correctly you have to enter all that information manually. What's the best way to deal with the mess?

[Scholes]

His name is Barry Cort, and he's joined Johnny Vander meer in baseball history. On May 30th and June 5, 1983, Barry threw back to back no-hitters.

His lifetime stats? 44-56 with a 3.72 ERA, and of course two shutouts in 8 MLB seasons.

Real life stats? 1-1 with a 3.33 ERA in 3 games started in 1977.

Talk about lightning in a bottle.

[Ksyrup]

I'm really enjoying watching my current sim. I'm now up to the end of 1992, and the Red Sox beat the Cubs in the WS. I haven't seen the teams aside from the leaderboards as they scroll past me, but it looks like one of the reasons for the Cubs success - they have both Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson! It'll be interesting to see if they keep one or both of them.

[Ksyrup]

LOL!

Apparently Ken Griffey can't get out of his dad's shadow. Using Gambo's historical facepacks, he has his dad's pic.

[Drake]

I get a Windows error message whenever I try to quit the program. The game saves correctly and everything, but it hangs between closing the database and shutting OOTP down. Is anyone else seeing this? It isn't a big deal to me because, as I said, the game is saving like it's supposed to, it just isn't closing the program fully.

[Ksyrup]

Here's an example of why I have issues with the recalc option:

Mike Maddux came up with the Phillies as a starter. IRL, his first year was the only year he was exclusively a starter, and he sucked. From that point forward, he was a reliever and spot starter.

In my sim, he also sucked his first year as a starter, but they kept him as a starter in 1987 and he went 11-10 with a 2.93 ERA. The next year, he became a reliever and didn't start a single game, seemingly based solely on the recalc which made him a reliever. However, the 1988 Phillies lost 92 games and certainly could have used a starter who the previous year had an ERA under 3, instead of throwing a ton of starts at a few crappy pitchers.

I like the results I'm getting with the recalc option overall, but if I dig deep enough, I'm going to find tons of examples like this where, in the context of the game, it just doesn't make sense for guys to change like this. Or at least, their teams shouldn't make the change until it makes "game sense" (i.e., Maddux is ineffective as a starter) to switch him to reliever.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Drake

I get a Windows error message whenever I try to quit the program. The game saves correctly and everything, but it hangs between closing the database and shutting OOTP down. Is anyone else seeing this? It isn't a big deal to me because, as I said, the game is saving like it's supposed to, it just isn't closing the program fully.

I'm not getting an error message shutting the game down, but once I do, I have been unable several times to power down my computer. I have had to manually shut it down. It hasn't affected anything, though.

[Critch]

I've not been getting that error message, but I do get a crash to desktop if my laptop hibernates while the game is running.

[Ksyrup]

Ouch. Seattle traded Randy Johnson in 1990 to the Cubs for Hector Villanueva. Cubs management refuses to comment on the report that they made the trade solely to accomodate Haray Caray's inability to pronounce Villanueva and didn't think Johnson would ever live up to his potential.

And before you wonder WTF was Seattle thinking, HV hit .362 in 60+ ABs in 1990 with the Cubs and perhaps looked like a good solution at C, while Johnson was walking everyone in sight and not doing much for Seattle (he only had 140 IP in 1990). After giving HV the starting catcher job in 1991, HV hit .213 in 563 ABs and was dealt in the offseason to California for Walt Weiss. Johnson, OTOH, had a solid 1991 and then broke out in 1992. He's still walking a ton of guys, but he's about to turn that corner. If the Cubs can resign Maddux this offseason and Johnson in a couple of years...watch out.

I'm going to enjoy finding little gems like this...

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Here's an example of why I have issues with the recalc option:

Mike Maddux came up with the Phillies as a starter. IRL, his first year was the only year he was exclusively a starter, and he sucked. From that point forward, he was a reliever and spot starter.

In my sim, he also sucked his first year as a starter, but they kept him as a starter in 1987 and he went 11-10 with a 2.93 ERA. The next year, he became a reliever and didn't start a single game, seemingly based solely on the recalc which made him a reliever. However, the 1988 Phillies lost 92 games and certainly could have used a starter who the previous year had an ERA under 3, instead of throwing a ton of starts at a few crappy pitchers.

I like the results I'm getting with the recalc option overall, but if I dig deep enough, I'm going to find tons of examples like this where, in the context of the game, it just doesn't make sense for guys to change like this. Or at least, their teams shouldn't make the change until it makes "game sense" (i.e., Maddux is ineffective as a starter) to switch him to reliever.

From my understanding the AI during a trade will look at the team's "overall" improvement with and without the players involved in the trade. It seems like something similar should be done with position switches. That way it still considers the switch every recalc year, but will only complete the switch when it benefits the team overall.

[Ksyrup]

Is there any way to change the players' league designation on the player card to properly show AL or NL, versus ML? I thought the game used to do that in the older versions. Looking at the cards now, I have to do some digging to tell whether a guy played with the Mets or Yankees, or Giants and Yankees in the 20s, or Browns or Cardinals, etc. The specific league affiliation would be much preferred.

I'm assuming this has something to do with the world league options, where the MLB is now just "a league" among potentially many other leagues, so the game is essentially treating the sub-leagues like divisions and only affiliating players with THE league. If so, it stinks!

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Bee

From my understanding the AI during a trade will look at the team's "overall" improvement with and without the players involved in the trade. It seems like something similar should be done with position switches. That way it still considers the switch every recalc year, but will only complete the switch when it benefits the team overall.

Yes, that would be greatly beneficial. And also on positional switches. What if the Astros need a catcher and have an all-star at second base...does Biggio still get converted? Or Robin Yount from SS to CF? Once I'm done with my sim, I'll have to do some digging through the stats to see how some of these things played out.

[Ksyrup]

Just from the bit of digging around I did, I really like the trading that's going on. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any huge blockbuster deals for superstars in their prime, but good players are being dealt at the "crossroads" of their career. I was trying to figure out how Cecil Fielder ended up with the Dodgers and saw that he got dealt in 1988 for Robin Yount, who got dealt for Dale Murphy. So it's not just bit players being traded. I also want to look at whether prospects are being dealt - it doesn't look like it, at least not promising ones, which would probably go hand-in-hand with no blockbuster deals.

[MizzouRah]

Allright, now my fictional league seems boring with all this "historical" talk. Damn you guys!!

What's the consensus on settings and which db to use?

[Ksyrup]

I'm using Redsox45's historical template with the Lahman database and 3-year recalc. The only setting I changed was to turn off FA, and to stop periodically to update the names of the playoff rounds, add FA, arbitration ,etc.

I like the results, outside of what I've been discussing about the lack of context for player position changes.