Baseball Mogul 2007 gets serious

[MizzouRah]

Garbage is right.

You seeing this jb?

I wonder when he'll have the "Baseball Mogul 2008 suggestions" thread up?

I would however, love to see Clay prove us all wrong... but he has a lot of work to do.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Originally Posted by Schmidty

Even if BM ends up having all of those bells and whistles doesn't mean the guts of the game are going to be anything more than garbage.

I actually think the guts of the game are fairly solid. I loved the variety of player development models that he had in the game (a few versions ago anyway).

Up until four years ago, I fell into the small crowd that just preferred to play Baseball Mogul over OOTP. Seasons went along quickly, there was enough of an AI to make taking a small budget team to success challenging for me with a few simple house rules, the player models felt realistic, and the financial engine was solid. It simply felt like a complete game, as opposed to OOTP at the time, which felt more like all these great half complete features that kind of worked (I remember spending three or four days of my life trying to get the financial model in one of the older versions of OOTP to simply function at all logically).

About three/four versions ago though, things really spiraled downward with Baseball Mogul. Patches were released hidden on the fourth page of an obscure post, usually with something like "Give this a try". New features were non-existant. I remember I ran about 30 seasons worth of stats to test the development of the baseball world, then posted the info on the board pointing out what seemed off, and getting a response along the lines of "That's great work. Very helpful." And I remember thinking, "You mean, no one did what I just did to check the patch before releasing it? Isn't it kind of obvious that something is wrong when team ERA plummets to 3.00 over the first twenty years of every sim?" Or something like that. You get the idea.

Then things just went from bad to worse. No information from anyone involved with the company on the forums. No news of patches. Last official post would say something like, "we're working on a patch to fix these issues. It'll be out soon." and that would be about four months old, with no subsequent posts. Versions of the game were left unfinished, with annoying bugs that simply carried over from one version to the next.

In short, I didn't feel the love.

As much I liked the series, I promised myself never to buy the game again until I had seen glowing reports that it played as intended and that it was indeed complete, with solid long-term stats and player development.

I'll jump right up and buy the game again if it gets to that stage. But someone else is going to have to go first and let me know how it looks.

[miked]

Originally Posted by SFL Cat

dola -- could be the sim baseball equivalent of MAXIMUM FOOTBALL

Close, but BM actually exists and sells...just really sucks. Maximum Football doesn't quite exist yet unless your name is Bubba.

[SFL Cat]

Originally Posted by miked

Close, but BM actually exists and sells...just really sucks. Maximum Football doesn't quite exist yet unless your name is Bubba.

Previous versions exist, yes. But not the pie-in-the-sky 2007 version.

[sovereignstar]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

Sounds like there's a method to the madness. If he did raise the price, then there WOULD be greater expectations - greater than what he'd like to live up to. I'm sure he's quite comfortable with the $19.99 pricepoint.

There is definitely something behind the 20 dollar costs. As Todd put it last year:

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

At $20, I took the chance.

[sovereignstar]

Okay, this is funny.

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...postcount=1059

[sovereignstar]

da da DA!

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...postcount=1169

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar

Okay, this is funny.

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...postcount=1059

What, no takers?

[FBPro]

Originally Posted by SFL Cat

dola -- could be the sim baseball equivalent of MAXIMUM FOOTBALL

Exactly what I was thinking.

[ice4277]

Originally Posted by FBPro

Exactly what I was thinking.

Well, the fact that we know that Baseball Mogul actually exists puts it a step ahead of Maximum Football.

[FBPro]

You do have a point there, a small one but a good one.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Shkspr

No, no, Marc, he's got an exclusive license. You'll have to take that feature out.

Over. My. Dead. Body.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Over. My. Dead. Body.

Bucc, we knew you were old, but dead?

What's your secret?

[iansmith]

Hello, I thought I would throw my two cents in.

Even EA, with hundreds of people on Madden can't put everything in they want. With a very small company, we have to pick and choose what to do each year. Sometimes we get everything in, sometimes a feature turns out to be more complicated than we guessed.

Deciding what to put in is often harder than doing the work. Trying to figure out if a feature is widely wanted or just demanded by a vocal minority can be difficult at best. Trust me... we don't choose what to put in based on how much it will annoy our customers! Only billion dollar companies can get away with THAT!

If you think we are missing a vital feature, feel free to post to the boards or write an email. We do read everything we get. I spend a good part of my day responding to emails, as does everyone else here.

As for the Lahman Database, exclusive means just that.. we are the only game developer to pay him to use his work. This is not new, we have been licensing his database for several years, we just never mentioned it before. There is nothing stopping other developers from doing the same thing. But until they do, we can brag that we are the only ones. :-) The data, the actual stats are public domain, but the compiled and sorted database is copyrighted to Sean Lahman.

Last, there is a good reason there are arcade baseball games, text only number sims, and the various management games. Tastes in games differ, and what one likes, someone else hates. Pick one you like, and have fun!

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by iansmith

Hello, I thought I would throw my two cents in.

Even EA, with hundreds of people on Madden can't put everything in they want. With a very small company, we have to pick and choose what to do each year. Sometimes we get everything in, sometimes a feature turns out to be more complicated than we guessed.

Deciding what to put in is often harder than doing the work. Trying to figure out if a feature is widely wanted or just demanded by a vocal minority can be difficult at best. Trust me... we don't choose what to put in based on how much it will annoy our customers! Only billion dollar companies can get away with THAT!

If you think we are missing a vital feature, feel free to post to the boards or write an email. We do read everything we get. I spend a good part of my day responding to emails, as does everyone else here.

As for the Lahman Database, exclusive means just that.. we are the only game developer to pay him to use his work. This is not new, we have been licensing his database for several years, we just never mentioned it before. There is nothing stopping other developers from doing the same thing. But until they do, we can brag that we are the only ones. :-) The data, the actual stats are public domain, but the compiled and sorted database is copyrighted to Sean Lahman.

Last, there is a good reason there are arcade baseball games, text only number sims, and the various management games. Tastes in games differ, and what one likes, someone else hates. Pick one you like, and have fun!

Your bullet points make it sound like you have "real" minor league players in the game. Can you clarify if you do?

[iansmith]

I assume you are asking about the line: Plus personalized data for over 1,500 minor leaguers.

We will be including players from the current minor leagues in the new release, so yes they are real players.

In fact, I can peek over my monitor and see minor league players on Clays screen right now. Clay says hi.

[jbmagic]

same old hype like BM 2006 and that game was full of bugs that was never fix.

i dont see BM 2007 being any different.

[dervack]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

same old hype like BM 2006 and that game was full of bugs that was never fix.

i dont see BM 2007 being any different.

So speaketh JB.

If he hates the game, you know it's bad.

[jbmagic]

Originally Posted by dervack

So speaketh JB.

If he hates the game, you know it's bad.

others beside me are saying the game is bad too.


go ahead and be the sucker and buy the game. so we can laugh at you.

be a fanboy and buy the game.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by dervack

So speaketh JB.

If he hates the game, you know it's bad.

No, if he hates the game or calls it full of bugs, you know he still doesn't have a clue.

[sovereignstar]

Originally Posted by dervack

So speaketh JB.

If he hates the game, you know it's bad.

I'd say things are worse if MizzouRah says it's bad.

[jbmagic]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

No, if he hates the game or calls it full of bugs, you know he still doesn't have a clue.

umm

am i the only one in the thread saying this?

i guess you have a clue and you will be the smart one to buy it.

BM 2006 suck big time.

[sovereignstar]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

umm

am i the only one in the thread saying this?

i guess you have a clue and you will be the smart one to buy it.

BM 2006 suck big time.

Bucc doesn't play anything besides FBCB. Judging by his old IHOF team, I'm not sure if he ever played FOF.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by sovereignstar

Bucc doesn't play anything besides FBCB. Judging by his old IHOF team, I'm not sure if he ever played FOF.

Don't forget Civ4. Which reminds me, I should be getting back to that game instead of pontificating at FOFC on a Friday Night.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

umm

am i the only one in the thread saying this?

i guess you have a clue and you will be the smart one to buy it.

BM 2006 suck big time.

No, jb. I believe he's saying that you don't have a clue in general, an example of which is the fact that you somehow thought he was only talking about BM.

[dervack]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

others beside me are saying the game is bad too.


go ahead and be the sucker and buy the game. so we can laugh at you.

be a fanboy and buy the game.

Uh, hello, I have never, ever bought a BM and never will. If I'm going to wait until a demo for OOTP 2006, you think I would just buy this game because of a press release that features an eharmony.com feature?

[Drake]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

No, jb. I believe he's saying that you don't have a clue in general, an example of which is the fact that you somehow thought he was only talking about BM.

I thought Bucc was saying that he knew BM's all too well.

[Buccaneer]

SkyDog is correct.

[DanGarion]

BM is good as a fast sim game if you just want to browse through numbers and stats. That's basically one of the main reasons I bought it. Another is the ease of doing a quick 20-30 season league. It's nice to be able to put a game on autopilot for 30 minutes and then seeing what happened.

2006 was the first BM I had purchased. I've already purchased OOTP 2006 so I don't know if/when I will get BM, I'd still like to give Puresim a shot one of these days.

[Izulde]

You know what I find sad? Once upon a time BM used to be really fun and exciting to play, but then that all changed along the way.

[Young Drachma]

I didn't mind BM2006. It simmed fast enough and served its purpose as far as that was concerned for me.

[fantastic flying froggies]

Clay's real good at writing feature lists, sadly not so good at implementing them...

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by KerryWood

Did you guys even PLAY Baseball Mogul 2006?

It is FAR AND AWAY the most realistic baseball sim I've ever played. Diamond Mind has problems with short seasons. If a guy went 4-for-5 in 1967, DM makes him bat .800 and then get injured!

OOTP has the same problems with short seasons of course, plus major sim flaws like guys routinely hitting 80 homers.

Mogul 2006 has none of these flaws. In fact I've probably played over 1,000 seasons and never seen anything unrealistic. From the playing time to the pitching and talent levels over time, they totally got it right in this version.

I have a Mogul sim in 2087. Hank Aaron is #3 on the All-Time homer list. Pujols is #2, and a ROTY ended up topping 800.

Mogul 2006 got a "90" from PC Gamer. Note that these are the same guys that game the previous version a "74".

If it's been a while since you played Mogul, you need to pick it up again instead of just shooting one-liners back and forth on this thread to boost your post count.

KW

Priceless!

[Cuckoo]

Originally Posted by KerryWood

Did you guys even PLAY Baseball Mogul 2006?

It is FAR AND AWAY the most realistic baseball sim I've ever played. Diamond Mind has problems with short seasons. If a guy went 4-for-5 in 1967, DM makes him bat .800 and then get injured!

OOTP has the same problems with short seasons of course, plus major sim flaws like guys routinely hitting 80 homers.

Mogul 2006 has none of these flaws. In fact I've probably played over 1,000 seasons and never seen anything unrealistic. From the playing time to the pitching and talent levels over time, they totally got it right in this version.

I have a Mogul sim in 2087. Hank Aaron is #3 on the All-Time homer list. Pujols is #2, and a ROTY ended up topping 800.

Mogul 2006 got a "90" from PC Gamer. Note that these are the same guys that game the previous version a "74".

If it's been a while since you played Mogul, you need to pick it up again instead of just shooting one-liners back and forth on this thread to boost your post count.

KW

Just wow.

This has to be sarcasm. Otherwise, it's a disgrace to one of my favorite Cubs.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

... served its purpose as far as that was concerned for me.

That pretty much sums up my take as well.
It's easy to beat with "metagaming", easy to build dynasties in, the numbers sometimes (okay, often) border on the absurd ... but I also got more playing time & enjoyment out of it than any baseball game I've played in several years.

It was quick, it was easy, it was very low-impact gaming (good for mindless fun basically) and I was primarily interested in just strolling down memory lane with the inbound rookies from the database as they entered the league each year anyway.

It sure as heck wasn't brain surgery ... but I easily got my money's worth out of it last year. And that ain't a bad thing IMO.

[Fouts]

Originally Posted by Godzilla Blitz

I actually think the guts of the game are fairly solid. I loved the variety of player development models that he had in the game (a few versions ago anyway).

Up until four years ago, I fell into the small crowd that just preferred to play Baseball Mogul over OOTP. Seasons went along quickly, there was enough of an AI to make taking a small budget team to success challenging for me with a few simple house rules, the player models felt realistic, and the financial engine was solid. It simply felt like a complete game, as opposed to OOTP at the time, which felt more like all these great half complete features that kind of worked (I remember spending three or four days of my life trying to get the financial model in one of the older versions of OOTP to simply function at all logically).

About three/four versions ago though, things really spiraled downward with Baseball Mogul. Patches were released hidden on the fourth page of an obscure post, usually with something like "Give this a try". New features were non-existant. I remember I ran about 30 seasons worth of stats to test the development of the baseball world, then posted the info on the board pointing out what seemed off, and getting a response along the lines of "That's great work. Very helpful." And I remember thinking, "You mean, no one did what I just did to check the patch before releasing it? Isn't it kind of obvious that something is wrong when team ERA plummets to 3.00 over the first twenty years of every sim?" Or something like that. You get the idea.

Then things just went from bad to worse. No information from anyone involved with the company on the forums. No news of patches. Last official post would say something like, "we're working on a patch to fix these issues. It'll be out soon." and that would be about four months old, with no subsequent posts. Versions of the game were left unfinished, with annoying bugs that simply carried over from one version to the next.

In short, I didn't feel the love.

As much I liked the series, I promised myself never to buy the game again until I had seen glowing reports that it played as intended and that it was indeed complete, with solid long-term stats and player development.

I'll jump right up and buy the game again if it gets to that stage. But someone else is going to have to go first and let me know how it looks.

Best post in this thread.

Edit: I loved the first version I played, and even tried the online game. It was fun, but not very difficult. I liked the newspaper articles though. Looking forward to a demo.

[Coop]

Originally Posted by KerryWood

Did you guys even PLAY Baseball Mogul 2006?

It is FAR AND AWAY the most realistic baseball sim I've ever played. Diamond Mind has problems with short seasons. If a guy went 4-for-5 in 1967, DM makes him bat .800 and then get injured!

OOTP has the same problems with short seasons of course, plus major sim flaws like guys routinely hitting 80 homers.

Mogul 2006 has none of these flaws. In fact I've probably played over 1,000 seasons and never seen anything unrealistic. From the playing time to the pitching and talent levels over time, they totally got it right in this version.

I have a Mogul sim in 2087. Hank Aaron is #3 on the All-Time homer list. Pujols is #2, and a ROTY ended up topping 800.

Mogul 2006 got a "90" from PC Gamer. Note that these are the same guys that game the previous version a "74".

If it's been a while since you played Mogul, you need to pick it up again instead of just shooting one-liners back and forth on this thread to boost your post count.

KW

VIRAL MARKETING ALERT

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Coop

VIRAL MARKETING ALERT

Exactly.

[Swaggs]

This thread just developed a lot of potential.

[Dreslough]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

How can one mention the following as "features" all in one breath: "pitch-by-pitch mode", "minor league simulation engine" and "faster simulation speed". Okay, what this says to me is: different engines for minors vs. majors (yuck).

Oops. Then we shouldn't have described it that way. The past engine essentially created "minor league equivalencies" for every player BEFORE playing minor league games (since every player already has "major league equivalencies" stored in memory, regardless of what level they are at). This made sense at the time. For example, Manny Ramirez might hit .390 in AAA, so I boosted his batting average to .390 for every minor league game. I did the same for pitchers -- cranked up their stats for every minor league level below the majors. This was a shortcut since the first Mogul didn't have minor league games. But the shortcut led to inaccuracies. It's like if the stock market goes UP 50% and then goes DOWN 50%. It's not back where it started. It's actually 25% BELOW where it started.

So, there is a "new minor league engine" this year in that I have completely re-done the way it matches up batters and pitchers. Instead of giving each a "bonus" for playing against minor league competition, I compare the player abilities directly. This made it more accurate and sped it up since it was time-consuming to translate everyone's stats before every at-bat.

A "tacked-on" pitch-by-pitch mode - you can't have faster sims and at the same time add that level of micro game management. Unless...there's two different engines being used - one for pitch-by-pitch and one for quick simming. Oh great, when I use pitch-by-pitch, my team is 12-0, but when I quick sim, we're 5-15!

There's only one simulation engine. I add detail, then Ian makes it faster. He runs tools that tell me things like the fact that one function is eating up 67% of our CPU time. Then we look at the function and find a way to make it faster. Sometimes we cache values (like storing a player's "On Base Plus Slugging" instead of calculating it every time you need it). Sometimes we re-write or merge code. Sometimes we 'inline' functions.

It's actually pretty amazing how fast the simulation has gotten. It only takes 6 seconds to sim a full season now. The other 23 seconds (on my machine) are mostly spent doing GM-related AI.

I don't know if anyone's interested in an introductory computer science course, but there are good reasons the sim is faster than the AI. The sim is "linear". It checks a list, see's who's batting next, picks a pitch, throws it, sees where it's hit, checks if a defender makes the play, moves the runners, then records the result. It repeats this tiny little loop over and over.

If simming 20 games takes 20 milliseconds, then simming 2000 games will take 2000 milliseconds. It scales linearly.

In contrast, the AI has a number of functions that scale in proportion to the SQUARE of the data involved. For example, if I'm sorting 15 players to find the best 9 for my lineup, I need to evaluate every player and then go back through the list twenty times to sort it. Since each path through the list has 15 calculations, I'm doing 15 x 15 = 225 calcuations.

If I'm sorting 125 players to find the best 9 for my lineup, I need to evaluate every player and then go back through the list 125 times to sort it. Since each path through the list has 125 calculations, I'm doing 125 x 125 = 15,625 calculations -- much more than a linear increase from the 15-player example.

It's obviously more complicated than this -- with player aging, contract negotations, free agent signings, injuries and everything else going on in the background. But the basic lesson is that the sim itself isn't the bottleneck.

So, this year's sim is both more detailed and faster than last year. Ian gets 99% of the credit for the speed of the sim.

Clay

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Dreslough

Oops. Then we shouldn't have described it that way. The past engine essentially created "minor league equivalencies" for every player BEFORE playing minor league games (since every player already has "major league equivalencies" stored in memory, regardless of what level they are at). This made sense at the time. For example, Manny Ramirez might hit .390 in AAA, so I boosted his batting average to .390 for every minor league game. I did the same for pitchers -- cranked up their stats for every minor league level below the majors. This was a shortcut since the first Mogul didn't have minor league games. But the shortcut led to inaccuracies. It's like if the stock market goes UP 50% and then goes DOWN 50%. It's not back where it started. It's actually 25% BELOW where it started.

So, there is a "new minor league engine" this year in that I have completely re-done the way it matches up batters and pitchers. Instead of giving each a "bonus" for playing against minor league competition, I compare the player abilities directly. This made it more accurate and sped it up since it was time-consuming to translate everyone's stats before every at-bat.


There's only one simulation engine. I add detail, then Ian makes it faster. He runs tools that tell me things like the fact that one function is eating up 67% of our CPU time. Then we look at the function and find a way to make it faster. Sometimes we cache values (like storing a player's "On Base Plus Slugging" instead of calculating it every time you need it). Sometimes we re-write or merge code. Sometimes we 'inline' functions.

It's actually pretty amazing how fast the simulation has gotten. It only takes 6 seconds to sim a full season now. The other 23 seconds (on my machine) are mostly spent doing GM-related AI.

I don't know if anyone's interested in an introductory computer science course, but there are good reasons the sim is faster than the AI. The sim is "linear". It checks a list, see's who's batting next, picks a pitch, throws it, sees where it's hit, checks if a defender makes the play, moves the runners, then records the result. It repeats this tiny little loop over and over.

If simming 20 games takes 20 milliseconds, then simming 2000 games will take 2000 milliseconds. It scales linearly.

In contrast, the AI has a number of functions that scale in proportion to the SQUARE of the data involved. For example, if I'm sorting 15 players to find the best 9 for my lineup, I need to evaluate every player and then go back through the list twenty times to sort it. Since each path through the list has 15 calculations, I'm doing 15 x 15 = 225 calcuations.

If I'm sorting 125 players to find the best 9 for my lineup, I need to evaluate every player and then go back through the list 125 times to sort it. Since each path through the list has 125 calculations, I'm doing 125 x 125 = 15,625 calculations -- much more than a linear increase from the 15-player example.

It's obviously more complicated than this -- with player aging, contract negotations, free agent signings, injuries and everything else going on in the background. But the basic lesson is that the sim itself isn't the bottleneck.

So, this year's sim is both more detailed and faster than last year. Ian gets 99% of the credit for the speed of the sim.

Clay

Thanks for coming on here Clay. Unfortunately you'll get a lot of grief here and as you already probably realized. I've been happy with you game and what it brings to the table. There are parts are like about it and parts I dislike. But that's the same as any game out there.

Good luck on BM 2007.

[Galaril]

For those that dare:

Baseball mogul '07 previewBM 2007

[Bee]

I probably won't get BM 2007 because I'm not a baseball fan and if I buy a baseball game it will be the SI Games OOTP one. That being said, I did buy BM 2006 and while it had bugs and issues, I didn't find it to be as bad as others seemed to. I actually had some fun with it for a couple weeks which is more than BBCF has given so far. I was disappointed BM 2006 wasn't patched to the point that I thought it was a good game, but I didn't see it as the complete disaster that I guess some others did.

[Toddzilla]

BM2007 = Maximin Football - Vaporware

[Galaril]

http://www.gameshark.com/previews/31...07-Preview.htm

Bill Abner sees some hope for this series still I am leery. But, it is good to have some competition

[SunDevil]

I will never buy this game. Every year it's suppose to be better and different, and every year it falls flat and I save money.

[Ragone]

Originally Posted by dervack

Awesome. Finally Baseball Mogul has something in common with match.com

i think thats e-harmony.. but i digress.. is joey long in this game?

[Fouts]

Supposed to be available by download around March 22nd (I'll be playing Oblivion though).

From the website;

Baseball Mogul 2007 is the only game that lets you play in any season from 1901 to 2006, complete with accurate rosters and ratings for thousands of major and minor league players.

This makes it sound like the minor leaguers from every season (1901-2006) are included. Is this true? I wasn't aware that Lahman's database had all the minor league stats.

[21C]

Baseball Mogul 2007 is the only game that lets you play in any season from 1901 to 2006 ( where the 2006 season will be complete with accurate rosters and ratings for thousands of major and minor league players.

I think it's meant to read that way although I'm sure someone at Mogul would like you to read it the other way but only find out after you've bought it.

I would seriously wait like a month after release to see if there are any lingering issues which I'm sure there will be - based on empirical evidence in the past.

Mogul is like one of those girls you meet in a club and you think she looks OK after you've had a few drinks. You take her home and she still seems like the real deal but when you wake up in the morning you see her in the harsh light of day, and you're sober, and you start considering gnawing your own arm off so that you don't have to wake her to leave.

[Marc Duffy]

Just incase it's not clear, OOTP Baseball 2006 still fully supports the Lahman database.