Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

[Lisa_Bonami]

I cant for the life of be understand why no one else has ever expanded upon what I feel is one of the most exciting features of a franchise creation option. The ability to build your own ball park. And the funny thing is, of all the sports such as Hockey, Basketball, Football,....Baseball would reap the most benefits and distinct advantages of being able to customize your own stadium and field yet...The irony of this is, that all the sports games have this feature YET no baseball games have this in their games....why!?


Earl Weaver gave us this amazing freedom and creation ability almost 25 years ago...on a single 1.44 floppy disk no less! Come on, folks...I cant be the only one who love the ability to customize their own ballpark, seating, layout, field, wall dimmensions......so much potential!

[TeixeiraFanatic]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

Yeah i agree. In madden you can relocate your team and build your stadiums. It would be ideal because baseball is the only sport where not one stadium is the same. It's the only sport where you can change the dimensions, i'm just surprised this hasn't been done since MVP NCAA Baseball 2007 and that was still pretty basic. I would love to see this feature in future games.

[e0820]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

I could see the build your own stadium feature being useful if they incorporated the mode that All Star Baseball had. You were able to create a new team and take over a spot in NL or AL. They had preset teams and logos. I actually enjoyed that mode.

[baa7]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

It would be ideal because baseball is the only sport where not one stadium is the same.

And I would guess that's the reason that feature isn't in basball games. The game coding is no doubt specifically and uniquely coded for each individual stadium. That means the OF wall detection coding in Yankee stadium has to be specifically coded, and coded differently than the wall detection coding in Fenway.

And given how complex all this has become on next-gen consoles, setting your own stadium dimensions is probably next-to-impossible to code. Remember, people now want to see fans reach for balls and outfielders robbing HR's. This isn't Earl Weaver on floppy disk anymore, where that white blip traveling over the horizontal line represents a Mike Schmidt bomb.

[WildGoatMan]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

I cant for the life of be understand why no one else has ever expanded upon what I feel is one of the most exciting features of a franchise creation option. The ability to build your own ball park. And the funny thing is, of all the sports such as Hockey, Basketball, Football,....Baseball would reap the most benefits and distinct advantages of being able to customize your own stadium and field yet...The irony of this is, that all the sports games have this feature YET no baseball games have this in their games....why!?


Earl Weaver gave us this amazing freedom and creation ability almost 25 years ago...on a single 1.44 floppy disk no less! Come on, folks...I cant be the only one who love the ability to customize their own ballpark, seating, layout, field, wall dimmensions......so much potential!

Yep, I remember having that game on the Commodore. I will say this though, it's a lot easier to have adjustable outfield depths when the game isn't physics oriented like most of todays graphical games are. Earl Weaver was more board game-like that may not have even looked at the dimensions of the outfield. I could be wrong, it's been a few years.

[EnigmaNemesis]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

Considering games are more and more complex to make, due to graphical, sound and AI advancements. Not to mention the yearly development cycle now ... I can see why, especially 2K, the game of baseball has to be done right first, before they add any special additions.

I would like to see them (sports dev companies) spend more money, and have separate teams working on such additions at the same time regular teams are working on the yearly revision, so things can be added.

[SoxFan01605]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

Considering games are more and more complex to make, due to graphical, sound and AI advancements. Not to mention the yearly development cycle now ... I can see why, especially 2K, the game of baseball has to be done right first, before they add any special additions.

I would like to see them (sports dev companies) spend more money, and have separate teams working on such additions at the same time regular teams are working on the yearly revision, so things can be added.

See, I don't know if I agree with this...if you're talking about bringing in additional help solely for that purpose. It's one of those "great in theory" ideas that's usually bad in practice. The trouble with it is there is no real continuity when you start farming stuff out to multiple outside teams.

If you're talking interdepartmental (meaning forming a division with current personnel or assigning a current one to the task) then it would work (and is already, I would assume, pretty much set up like that).

The trouble with paying money for someone else to come in is that it's much too easy for things to fall through the cracks. It's a QA nightmare. It becomes more about babysitting and often times is a time constraint rather than a relief (do to the extra attention the "outsiders" require).

If you do it within your own ranks then you're less likely to have some of those same slip-ups and procedural holes. I'm not talking about bringing a guy or two on board (that's fine, and also probably normal), but paying to bring in a completely separate team.

For the record, I'm no programmer and I'm not speaking from any experience in this specific industry. The process would likely be similar to most other production/development scenarios though, and that's what I'm speaking on.

anyway, I very much agree with your first paragraph

[EnigmaNemesis]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

Clearly I am talking interdepartmental.

As in hiring more staff to get the job done. Thus make the quality and communication better.

Clearly as it stands now, it is hard to add things, without neglecting others, and vise/versa. Considering that they run on a 12-14 month dev cycle each game. And depending on what needs to be shored up in the previous.

Probably why we never see these additions till the end of a consoles life. Due to tons of tweaking and fixes needing to be done before they can think of adding things on a grand scale.

[srudoff]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

Hell EWB let you phonetically type in your name so the announcer would say it spot on.

[Rebel10]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

And I would guess that's the reason that feature isn't in basball games. The game coding is no doubt specifically and uniquely coded for each individual stadium. That means the OF wall detection coding in Yankee stadium has to be specifically coded, and coded differently than the wall detection coding in Fenway.

And given how complex all this has become on next-gen consoles, setting your own stadium dimensions is probably next-to-impossible to code. Remember, people now want to see fans reach for balls and outfielders robbing HR's. This isn't Earl Weaver on floppy disk anymore, where that white blip traveling over the horizontal line represents a Mike Schmidt bomb.

But this is an excuse that indicates that the games are simply programmed backwards. Physics in a baseball game shouldn't be forced, they should be natural. If Half-Life 2 can make a realistic physics simulation 5 years ago on the PC, then it should be possible for MLB 2K9, or any other baseball game, to have a stadium creator and accurately predict how a ball will react to different angles and surfaces.

And MVP 2006 had this feature and it worked pretty well. You could set the zaniest angles with 500ft outfields and the game played significatly differently (it was actually a lot of fun to play that way.. with tons of triples and inside the park home runs )

[KushGamer]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

Earl Weaver Baseball was the bomb! Their stadium builder was terrific too. A lot easier to do with those graphics though.

[KushGamer]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

And I would guess that's the reason that feature isn't in basball games. The game coding is no doubt specifically and uniquely coded for each individual stadium. That means the OF wall detection coding in Yankee stadium has to be specifically coded, and coded differently than the wall detection coding in Fenway.

Only a few stadium features need special code. Most stadiums don't need any. Houston happens to have two features that need special code though: The hill in center and the long wall that juts out in Left-Center creating that corner that needs to be run around.

[Lisa_Bonami]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

My 3 favorite Baseball games on any system were:

Earl Weaver Baseball -Amiga version
World Series Baseball -Saturn version
MLB the Show -PS3 version



Close runners up were:
Front Page Sports Baseball 98-PC
EA NCAA Baseball -Xbox
High Heat Baseball Sammy Sosa 2001? -PC


2K Baseball has never quite captured that pure baseball gaming bliss that really blends pure enjoyment mixed with statistically realistic gameplay and authenticity

[goh]

Re: Earl Weaver Baseball let us BUILD our OWN stadiums in 1986!

I thought you could do that in the last ASB? I seem to remember putting a pool in center field instead of a warning track.