New Roster Project Planned: I Need Your Help! First: Ratings

[Qbrick808]

Hey Wudl--

Big time congratulations on getting this initial full-league release out there.

It seems like ages ago when we were discussing the various ways to go with so many of the formulas. I am well aware of all the hard work which was required by you to reach this moment, and you are greatly appreciated.

I've been playing games with the new roster all day -- probably 10 or more -- and I'm having a blast!

One thing I was wondering about was if you plan to make any "manual corrections" to players abilities when the outcomes of the formulas just don't match the truth. It's pretty clear that your design isn't going to reflect every MLB player quite accurately by comparison to all the rest because there are certain elements which will simply not translate so perfectly into the standardized formulas.

Just a quick example which comes to mind. I was playing a playoff series with the Braves and I chose to use Brian McCann as my cacher. McCann is a good guy to look at if you want to see a player who is not nearly as good as he shoud be relative to the rest of the league using the model in place.

One thing might be to take a closer look and see why that is (and if it can be compensated for within the structure of your design), but another option is obviously to just bump up his offensive numbers a bit so he's more on the level where he belongs. I realize that the goal was to try and avoid arbitrary decisions based on the general perceptions we have, so you might decide that you're content to just roll with what the formulas spit out even if some players seem to be too good or not good enough.

People always have the choice to make adjustments themselves if they wish, so if a Braves fan is annoyed that McCann seems a bit too light with the bat, they can always go in and give him a boost to make him the player they believe he should be.

Regardless, I haven't seen too many glaring issues like that, and the experience thus far has been tremendous! I find that this is helping me to really feel as if they in fact did release a new 2013 PC version because with your changes, all of the offseason player movement, and some of the other mods which have come out or that I am working on myself, it's actually feeling a lot like a whole new game.

Again, the hard work is so greatly appreciated, and I can only hope you keep working on ways to discover and implement more improvements and come up with new ideas as we roll with this into the new season just ahead. You've got a lot of support and gratitude behind you, so hopefully that will help you to maintain the momentum which has propelled you this far.

The work has proven to be a booming success. I have to believe this has turned out better than you realistically envisioned, and that's always an inspiring experience. Keep up the A+ performance!

[wudl83]

Brian McCann is on the Gwinnett Braves, right?

The players on this team weren't edited yet! I stated in the Readme and in this thread that only the players that are on the MLB teams have gotten rating edits. Since then it is called a BETA version.

I think in a future version Brian McCann will have satisfying ratings.

And big thank you for your kind words! It feels good to get such responses.

Nonetheless I am already working again. By now I am working on the players of the Halos that are on their 40 man roster but haven't been edited by me yet. I also edited the service time of all LAA players and edited the rookie eligibilty. I gonna edit the contracts for all Halos players now.

I think I gonna give every team an AAA affiliate with real players (consisting mainly those which are on the 40 man roster), change the service time and rookie eligibility and then edit the contracts.

After that I probably gonna do that for the AA and A as far as I got time.

[wudl83]

Hm, but one question.

E.g. I got CJ Cron, Travis Witherspoon and Kaleb Cowart on the Angels as they are 3 of their top prospects.

Has anybody a suggestion for me on how to arrange their contract numbers? How much money and how many years?

[Qbrick808]

Brian McCann is on the Gwinnett Braves, right?

The players on this team weren't edited yet! I stated in the Readme and in this thread that only the players that are on the MLB teams have gotten rating edits. Since then it is called a BETA version.

I think in a future version Brian McCann will have satisfying ratings.

And big thank you for your kind words! It feels good to get such responses.

Well, that would certainly explain the McCann issue. I was so eager to get playing that I cruised right past any ReadMe files and just fired it up (atypical for me). Even still, it's not like McCann was SO terrible... I just thought it was off to see him in a lineup where Freddie Freeman was the better of those two lefty hitters in every way, but I guess that's a non-issue now with your explanation.

The bottom line... one long day of gameplay and I'm loving it... I'm hooked.

It is my GO TO roster when I set up any longer term mode play (that's why I've been doing Post-Season Mode instead of Franchise, because I know that this is not quite ready to use for a 162 game season just yet).

[tsizzle7]

Can somebody please walk me through how to get the game to read the roster file? I copied the .ROS file into the MLB 2K12 folder and I'm getting nothing. Pointers, please? This is my first time trying to do this.

[Qbrick808]

Hm, but one question.

E.g. I got CJ Cron, Travis Witherspoon and Kaleb Cowart on the Angels as they are 3 of their top prospects.

Has anybody a suggestion for me on how to arrange their contract numbers? How much money and how many years?

Ignore signing bonuses. If you can't get the actual info, give them four-year deals at the minimum MLB salary.

If/when they sign new deals to get more money and sell out arbitration years (or beyond), theoretically you would update with that info which would be more publicized and easy to find.

[wudl83]

Well, that would certainly explain the McCann issue. I was so eager to get playing that I cruised right past any ReadMe files and just fired it up (atypical for me). Even still, it's not like McCann was SO terrible... I just thought it was off to see him in a lineup where Freddie Freeman was the better of those two lefty hitters in every way, but I guess that's a non-issue now with your explanation.

Yap I think that should explain it.

The bottom line... one long day of gameplay and I'm loving it... I'm hooked.

It is my GO TO roster when I set up any longer term mode play (that's why I've been doing Post-Season Mode instead of Franchise, because I know that this is not quite ready to use for a 162 game season just yet).

Nice to read. I hope I get enough freetime the next few weeks to get this roster finished!

Ignore signing bonuses. If you can't get the actual info, give them four-year deals at the minimum MLB salary.

If/when they sign new deals to get more money and sell out arbitration years (or beyond), theoretically you would update with that info which would be more publicized and easy to find.

Ok that would be a solution. Thank you, gonna do this in this way.

[wudl83]

I got the bug which leads to automatic change of many names again. It seems that it somehow has to do with Reditor. But I do not exactly know what causes the problem.

[Qbrick808]

I got the bug which leads to automatic change of many names again. It seems that it somehow has to do with Reditor. But I do not exactly know what causes the problem.

I'm not sure if this will help you track this down, but I was in a game against the Red Sox, and their SP was definitely John Lackey. All of the graphics said "John Lackey" but the announcers talking to us (at least Gary Thorne for sure) were very obviously calling him "Aaron Cook" for the entire game; not just once or twice, but every time the Boston starter was mentioned by name. I can't recall what the stadium PA Announcer called him because I never thought to listen for it.

Maybe the Audio ID for Names Table or some other table location can shed some light on this in general if you can see what's what with Lackey and Cook specifically.

[wudl83]

Rofl...that never happened to me. Totally strange.

Especially since Aaron Cook is on the Phillies minor league system...I gonna play a game with the Red Sox right now and test it out.

EDIT;

Played two quick innings and they didn't call him Cook...

[wudl83]

This is the problem. I open Reditor and have a ton of player names empty. This happened some time before and now it is happening again. This is big time sh... since now I am not able to edit the skin tones because every time I open the Reditor this happens. And I also got no idea why espacially those players are affected and not others? This only happens with Reditor. With Ty's editor I do not get this problem. But when I try to address the problem with Ty's editor I get the bug where a bunch of players gets the same name automatically.

[Qbrick808]

That is pretty major. Did you say there's any explanation for what causes this to happen for the first time with any given roster tables?

I just used REDitor to open each of the rosters I've been using recently and all of the cells in all of the fields appear normal and populated.

I'll be checking that periodically to see if I can identify some specific action which precedes the change to a database looking like the one you just displayed. That's never happened to me ever.

[wudl83]

I remember that it happened first (when I was editing some rosters some weeks/months ago) after I had edited a certain amount of players. Now that I have edited many custom players for the Angels affiliate teams this happens again. It seems that always when I edit too many of those generic players I cause this problem...

If I do not find a workaround for this I either won't be able to edit enough minor leaguers or I won't be able to edit service time, contracts and skin tones. Both options don't satisfy me to be honest.

I was so deep into this and now this damn thing occurs again. I could puke.

[Qbrick808]

I remember that it happened first (when I was editing some rosters some weeks/months ago) after I had edited a certain amount of players. Now that I have edited many custom players for the Angels affiliate teams this happens again. It seems that always when I edit too many of those generic players I cause this problem...

Hmmmmmm... I don't know all that much about editing lots of generic players.

Could this be related to that internal file which has a hard coded size limit preventing you from changing more than a certain number of player names in the game? I remember hearing about that limitation last season when I had a plan to make an all-time classic mod with the top players in franchise history for each team. It was explained to me that I'd never be able to do it because at some point I'd be unable to change any more names. Nobody specified what would happen if I reached that point, but maybe the table freaks out instead of just giving a message saying that it's full or that changes can no longer be made.

[wudl83]

I think it was hardcoded that the game can not have more than a certain amount of players (or created players)?

I never heard of anything that there was something like preventing to edit more than a certain amount of players.

BSU-Fan's roster has a ton of edited players (there even weren't any fake names ingame anymore) and the file works (but I think Vlad's editor wasn't released so he only used Ty's editor and edited ingame).

The strange thing is the following: I have given the generic players the real names ingame. Then I saved the file and went to Ty's editor to edit their positions, bat/throw arm, and so on. Until then I had realized no problem at all. After that I opened Reditor and THEN those wholes occured.

So I truely think it is something correlated to Reditor and not to anything else. This sucks so badly.

[Qbrick808]

If I do not find a workaround for this I either won't be able to edit enough minor leaguers or I won't be able to edit service time, contracts and skin tones. Both options don't satisfy me to be honest.

I was so deep into this and now this damn thing occurs again. I could puke.

I know we all have different ideas of what's good enough to continue on with a project, but I can tell you for certain that as long as I have a fully functioning MLB organization level, I'm happy enough to make improving the game well worthwhile. I have to imagine that I'm not alone in feeling this way. I usually have little involvement with any AA and A level players except to release the worst ones if I make a move which requires me to do so because of roster size rules and limitations.

[wudl83]

Yeah of course it would be no big problem for me either to have AA or A players or to have them not. But I have the fear that sooner or later Reditor will screw it all up nevertheless.

But it definately seems to have something to do with the editing of the generic players. With my first BETA 0.1 file I do not have this problem. But when I do open roster version 0.1.1 I got empty slots...

[Qbrick808]

Yeah of course it would be no big problem for me either to have AA or A players or to have them not. But I have the fear that sooner or later Reditor will screw it all up nevertheless.

Yeah, I can relate to that thought.

The reliability factor to give you the confidence you need to feel comfortable plays with your head as soon as you have reason to question the stability of the project's foundation.

I guess I'd feel all right about that as long as I always maintained clean and safe backup versions which never have this problem and can be drawn upon at any time to avoid the nightmare of losing more than just enhancements to the core elements.

[wudl83]

Know what you mean. I do keep backups, so it is no biggy right now. But it could be a problem longterm!

I have one possible solution in mind but that would require further testing. I gonna do this.

[sabugo]

Just played a game with your rosters and slider set. A little too many hits but it was only one game, and I can always adjust the sliders.

So, I played Yankees vs Rays and beat them 8-3. I got 16 hits and they got 10.

It was also a Sac-fly fest with two for each team.

Sabathia was pitching for me and while I struggled a bit with control in the first few innings I got to work around it and one gave up one walk and 7 hits over 7.1 with 5 K's. At one point I retired 9 in a row.

Brett Gardner went 3-4 with a double. Matt Diaz hit a double down the line and hit 2-4. Cano hit 3-5 with a 3-run homer to left. Youkilis homered to leadoff the 5th and welcome Hernandez into the game, after a 4 run 4th inning chased Hellickson, who was pitching pretty well until that, out of the game. Jeter struck out 3 times, so I figured I'd give Nunez a try and he singled.

For TB, Jennings stole 2nd two times, but we all know Chris Stewart sucks behind the plate.

79% strikes for TB and 68 for the NYY but I wasn't really being patient, just wanted to try the rosters. I chased a bunch that I shoudln't have. 7K's for Tampa and 6 for the Yankees.

All in all, the gameplay is good and as realistic as I think this game can be, except for the hitting but like I said, it was only one game. I'll have to play some more to give you better feedback.

Still, excellent work!

[wudl83]

It seems that when I only work in Reditor the problem does not occur. But when I start editing names and so on ingame or in Ty's editor and then try to edit things in Reditor again it screws up.

@Sabugo:

Thank you!

Feel free to adjust the sliders to your likings. I had a slugfest yesterday, too. Played the Rockies vs. the Pirates and I bombed Wandy Rodriguez out of Coors Field. He was pulled after 1.2 innings...Won the game 11-5 on 17 hits. Then today played another game with the Rockies against the Dodgers. Couldn't hit anything against Greinke and ended up scoring 2 runs on 4 hits the whole game lol.

[tsizzle7]

I've got the .rar file downloaded, but how do I get it into the game to test it? Just let me know where I need to drag and drop it. I've been playing these games for a while and I'd love to help with feedback. You guys are doing a killer job!

[sask3m]

It seems that when I only work in Reditor the problem does not occur. But when I start editing names and so on ingame or in Ty's editor and then try to edit things in Reditor again it screws up.

@Sabugo:

Thank you!

Feel free to adjust the sliders to your likings. I had a slugfest yesterday, too. Played the Rockies vs. the Pirates and I bombed Wandy Rodriguez out of Coors Field. He was pulled after 1.2 innings...Won the game 11-5 on 17 hits. Then today played another game with the Rockies against the Dodgers. Couldn't hit anything against Greinke and ended up scoring 2 runs on 4 hits the whole game lol.

We had a similar problem when working on rosters switching between in game editor and reditor. Sometimes we would end up with chinese looking characters for names. It seemed if I would edit them using reditor then they would be ok again.

[wudl83]

Strange...Maybe I will do now all edits in reditor only although I like the interface of Ty's editor more to be honest.

[sask3m]

Strange...Maybe I will do now all edits in reditor only although I like the interface of Ty's editor more to be honest.

I know what you mean. Vlad's editor isn't the greatest at setting lineups and other than the starting pitchers your beat there. i did ask him to add the relievers as well and he was going to but I think he must be busy with his nba editor.