Creating A Season Help

[sal]

Im knew to modding and i wanted to attempt to make a season. But i dont know where to start and what tools i will need to accomplish this project. If anyone can give me a list of tools i need to download so i can start creating things that will be great. For the rosters, do i create all new players from scratch or is there a tool to import rosters. thanks for the help and advise.

[Homer]

making a season mod is no small task. you really need to start by being familiar with how to edit all aspects of this game. the rosters are probably the first place to start. when editing rosters, you need to be familiar with mvpedit, portraits, player audios and cyberfaces. the most important thing i can tell you is to back up your work before you start modding each time. since you're new, you will make mistakes. start by reading this thread. be sure to read markb's faq list too, which should be linked in there.

when making a season mod, the rosters can be done team by team. you can actually use the lahman database to import each team in. but again, start by familiarizing yourself with how these programs work and making errors along the way.

[sal]

Ok thanks so much, i will check the link out and do as you say before i start to do anything. thanks for the tips.

[Jim825]

Im knew to modding and i wanted to attempt to make a season. But i dont know where to start and what tools i will need to accomplish this project. If anyone can give me a list of tools i need to download so i can start creating things that will be great. For the rosters, do i create all new players from scratch or is there a tool to import rosters. thanks for the help and advise.

Sal - It's great to hear that you are thinking about creating a single season mod. They can be a lot of work, depending how fancy you want to get with them, however, the work is enjoyable as the mod takes shape, especially once you can start importing pieces into the game. Here's a high level description of what you will need. If you have questions feel free to PM me.

1. Rosters

Rosters are usually the first thing that I work on. Stecropper has developed a process for creating rosters and tweaking player ratings. I've used this on all of the single season mods I've created (1978, 1956, 1951) and have gotten some very nice results. When I've run simulations, the league leaders and award winners (Cy Young, MVP, etc.) have come out pretty close to the actual results from the season I've modded. Here is a link to a thread describing the process: http://www.mvpmods.com/index.php?showtopic=32568

The essential roster editing tool is RGlass' MVPEdit. You can find a link to it on this site, and I believe it is included in the Forums FAQ. Creating the actual teams themselves is pretty simple, thanks to the Lahman Database, which has team rosters from the 1880's up to the present. From the main MVPEdit menu, select File->Import->Lahman Database. When you do this, a window will pop up on the screen.

Scroll down to find the team you want to import. In the "Import to Team" window, select the team that you want to overwrite. In the "Import Mode" window, make sure that "Replace" is checked and in the "Career Year by Year Stats" section, make sure that only "Import Until Team Year" is checked.

Click the OK button and repeat this for every team you want to import.

Once you've imported all of your teams, you now have to cut your rosters down to a 25 players. When you import teams from the Lahman database, you will find that there are more than 25 players on the team. That's because the database includes every player who played for the team that year, even if it was only one game.

When it comes to cutting down the teams, I go to the granddaddy of all baseball stats sites, http://www.retrosheet.org Retrosheet allows you to look at any team's rosters from any year that they have been in existence. I follow a few rules when I am cutting down my rosters:

1. A player can only appear on one team roster

2. Players are selected based upon the number of games they played for the team

3. I carry 15 position players and 10 pitchers

If I see that a player played less than half a season for the team, I bring up his profile to find out if he might have played more games for another team. If he has, then he is a candidate for the other team.

Once you have the team down to 25 players, you need to set batting orders and pitching rotations. For teams from 1956 and later, retrosheet.org lets you look at player "splits". Part of the information shown is the number of games that the player batted in each position of the batting order. Using this information, I can put together a batting order. For pitching rotation, I usually do that based upon the number of games started and the number of innings pitched.

Once you have set the rosters for each team, you run through Stecropper's global tweaks.

A site I use for finding jersey numbers for any team is http://www.baseball-almanac.com. Another nice thing about this site is that for any given year, it will give you the league leaders (top 25) in a number of categories for batters (homeruns, RBI's, walks, steals, doubles, triples, hits, etc.) and pitchers (wins, ERA, strikeouts, walks, complete games, etc.). I use this information to fine tune my rosters after running sims to make the end of the year stats as close to real as possible.

2. Portraits

Depending upon the season you are creating, it may be easy or it may be difficult to find pictures you can use for portraits. This is where the Internet is your best friend. For older teams, I find that baseball card sites can be good sources for portraits. eBay is very good, as is google.com and altavista.com.

Portraits need to be 128 x 128 pixels, so you will need to resize your pictures to this size. If you want to get fancy, you can add borders or backgrounds to the portraits. If you look at some of the teams in Total Classics 9, you will see what I mean. For editing pictures, I use a free utility called Irfanview. You can get it here: http://www.irfanview

Each player on your roster needs to have a unique portrait ID. This is assigned in MVPEdit on the player tab in the "Photo / Audio" tab. MVP 2005 uses the same ID for the portrait and audio (i.e. the player's announced name).

Once you create a player's portrait, you can assign it to the player using MVPEdit.

3. Player Audio

As I said, the game uses the same ID for the portrait and the player audio. Over the years, we've been able to create new audios for the classic players in Total Classics. I know nothing about doing this - AlexTony is the expert. He has developed a spreadsheet that lists all of the classic players with audio in Total Classics and their audio ID's. I can send this file to you if you'd like and tell you where to find the play-by-play and PA files in Total Classics 9 so that you can hear the player names. Be aware that the spreadsheet does not list the players who were already in the game when it came out in 2005.

4. Uniforms

There are many, many uniforms available in the download sections. That's where I found many of the ones I used in my season mods. To see what the uniforms for your particular season looked like, you will want to visite the "Dressed to the Nines" online exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame website. Here's a link: http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dre...es/database.htm

You enter the year (or years) you want to see and the particular team (or league) you want to see and it will display pictures of what the uniforms looked like.

If I find that a uniform for my year has not been created, I look at Dressed to the Nines to see if another modded year's uniforms are close to the ones I want. For example, you may find that a team used the same uniform design for a range of years. Teams like the Yankees and Tigers haven't changed much over the years.

If I can't find a uniform, I am also not afraid to post a message on the mod request forums at this site. A number of the uniforms in my mods came from requests I made. A number of uniform modders have graciously helped me over the years by creating uniforms for me.

To install uniforms, I use Kraw's Total Installer Thingy tool that you can get over at EAMods.com

5. Stadiums

Over the years, guys like Pirate, Sean O, Paul W, HardcoreLegend and others that I'm sure I'm overlooking have cranked out numerous stadiums that greatly add to the realism of the game when you are playing classic seasons. If you look in the stadiums download section or in the classic mods that I and others have created, you will probably find any stadiums you need.

Installing stadiums is simply a matter of renaming them to the slot you want them to go into. For example, if you replace the Washington Nationals with the Montreal Expos and you want them to play in the Olympic Dome, simply copy the olymdome.big file to rfksday.big and rfksnite.big.

6. In game text

The in game text is found in the FEENG.LOC and IGENG.LOC files. The text in these files can be edited with the LOCLook tool. This tool is available on this site.

7. Loading screens, Menu screens, Click to Start screen

For loading and menu screens, I find pictures on Google or Altavista and then size them the the correct size. For these screens, the bigger the picture the better. If they are too small, they will look distorted or grainy if you have to expand them too much.

For loading screens, I extract the images from the files load01.big, load02.big, etc. using nfshtool. I then have a template that I use with Photoshop Elements to create the new screens. After creating them, I import them back into the appropriate .big file using nfshtool.

Menu screens are in the bkgnds.big file and so is the Click to Start screen. I create my Click to Start screens using the "All Screens" utility that I downloaded from this site.

This is a lot of information, but it should be enough to get you started. As I said, feel free to contact me or if you have questions (or post your questions on this site) as you move forward on your season mod.

[sal]

wow thanks, between you and homer i think im set. I will definatley pm you if i run into problems or have a question. once i read up on all the how to's and download all my essentials i will start my season. Im lookin foward to your opinons after i get started. thanks again your your help. tlak to you soon.

[Yankee4Life]

wow thanks, between you and homer i think im set. I will definatley pm you if i run into problems or have a question. once i read up on all the how to's and download all my essentials i will start my season. Im lookin foward to your opinons after i get started. thanks again your your help. tlak to you soon.

What you got to realize sal is that you got responses from two of three top season mod creators around here. The information that Homer and Jim gave you is extremely helpful and essential if you want your project done right. The other guy who did not respond in this thread is a guy named stecropper, but he hardly posts in here and in all likely never saw this thread. He's just as helpful as these guys.

Best of luck and most of all welcome to this website.