1993 Minor Leagues (and more)

[KiwiLifter]

Greetings!

 

I've been enjoying the 1993 classics mod for some time now, as it captures the very year when my interest in playing and watching baseball were at their peak. I had the chance to watch and meet Ken Griffey Jr., Bo Jackson, and others, and my nostalgia for the year runs deep.

 

In the town I grew up in, though, we only a single A team. I loved watching minor league baseball. In fact, I prefer the experience to the Majors these days. The 1993 mod does a great job filling up the AAA rosters with mostly real players, but their stats are often not accurate, and the AA and A leagues are mostly generated...until now.

 

I am 70% through editing every player from every roster, Major to A, based on their stats on Baseball Reference. Every player in the game will have their own portrait, often based on a baseball card (there is a great site for this: message me if interested). I'm also making all the free agents based on real players who were bouncing around the minors or who retired that year, again with photos and stats that reflect their on field performance.

 

There were also many errors, especially with pitchers, such as a 36 movement and 36 velocity, or a 15% homerun chance, or virtually all free agents having 100 on pick offs. All of these have been fixed.

 

I realize this is a quixotic task, perhaps of no interest to anyone but myself. But if you do have interest, I would be glad to share the files that I've edited so that you can have a look and provide feedback.

 

Cheers

[Dirtdog]

Of course, there is interest. Especially by me, i have been working and updating this mod for personal use for some time now. Making faces for it for the past few weeks.

 

The minor leagues roster is the main reason why.

 

Coincidentally this mod was just being discussed a couple of days ago.

 

And Yes i am interested in your roster, even though I have worked on one, mostly by adding face changes and skin tones.

 

Read this thread,

 

The Mega face pack is ready, I should be releasing it soon, 123 faces

 

 

[Dirtdog]

Hmmm, maybe i should pause the release of this facepack?

 

Since you are working on a new better roster update, and I was going to have to release a roster update to accompany the faces anyway.

The only changes my roster was going to have from the original was added face ID#'s and a few skin tone changes.

[KiwiLifter]

How cool that we've both been working on something similar. I probably have replicated a lot of your portraits, but I've only added about 10 new faces, so much of that would be new for me.

 

I will have added well over 1000 new portraits by the end of this month, though I am not cropping most of them or adding a background matting, just trying to get a card with good clarity. I've also tried to add a mix of action shots rather than just head shots or batting or pitching poses. Personally, I enjoy seeing all the old Fleer and Bowman cards, as I used to be a collector, though I understand that not everyone will have that connection. 

 

I should add that besides adding portraits, I have literally looked over EVERY minor league player, their batting, baserunning, and fielding stats at baseball reference, and made adjustments in line with my study of similar players in the original game and subsequent mods. There were a lot of GREAT minor league sluggers such as Brad Kommisk and Sam Horn, who couldn't stick in the Majors. I'd like to see them get their numbers in the  minors without becoming stars in the bigs. Hopefully my changes will allow for that.

 

There were literally hundreds of players with some type of stat error: minor leaguers with 100 in pickoffs and fielding, or guys who played 160 games that year with 10 durability, or pitchers with 36 movement and velocity on a 12 to 6 breaking ball whose pitches would literally almost go through the Kingdome roof and come down again at super slow motion speed. That last one was kind of fun until the game crashed....Anyways, I made what I feel was a reasonable assumption that those values were not intended by the mod author, and I've changed them to normal values.

 

I had to close my business for a while here, and had a lot of time on my hands

[BallFour]

7 hours ago, Dirtdog said:

Hmmm, maybe i should pause the release of this facepack?

 

Since you are working on a new better roster update, and I was going to have to release a roster update to accompany the faces anyway.

The only changes my roster was going to have from the original was added face ID#'s and a few skin tone changes.

I'd be down for this facepack whenever. Would it be cool if I borrowed some for MVP 98?

[Dirtdog]

Hey, BallFour. Of course man

 

That MVP 98 mod is one of the most anticipated!

 

You could even find more, because through my travels looking for faces for 1993, plenty more could have been used for 1998

 

I have a list compiled, easy to find who is who

 

 

I even added some of your early 90's MILB uniforms you created, they look great in game

[Dirtdog]

14 hours ago, KiwiLifter said:

I will have added well over 1000 new portraits by the end of this month, though I am not cropping most of them or adding a background matting, just trying to get a card with good clarity. I've also tried to add a mix of action shots rather than just head shots or batting or pitching poses. Personally, I enjoy seeing all the old Fleer and Bowman cards, as I used to be a collector, though I understand that not everyone will have that connection.

 

So, the portraits you have made don't have the borders that are used in 1993 mod?

I haven't been using that border either, but I do crop them all. I try for good quality headshots unless I can't find one.

With the older photos it's nearly impossible to do them with a transparent background, so I just make then using a 256x256, 0000-a.bmp instead of the alpha image.

 

My go to are the 1993 Pinnacle Cards. The backs almost always have a nice high-quality head shot - Perfect Portrait photos

[KiwiLifter]

I used good headshots when they are easy to get, but doing this many portraits, if there's not an easy take, I just choose what I think is the card that tells the most about the player.

 

You're more than welcome to use the roster even if you don't want the portraits. Or, I could upload the portraits (they are all named) and you could edit them. At any rate, I've gone over every player on every roster, or will have done, and it would be a waste to do the rosters again yourself. There were a lot of errors with the old roster. Some I fix, but if it seemed like the author's intention to include a player on a team that they didn't play for, then I leave them there. 

[Dirtdog]

Hi,

No keep up the good work and the roster.

 

I have no intention on working or making a new roster.

The only reason i would have needed to release a version Hawks roster was because i was adding faces.

 

Sounds like you are definitely improving it!

 

 

Portraits can be easily mixed and matched. No biggie

Over 1000, that is alot of work, so you have to have lots of great ones.

 

 

I would like to test that roster, when you get a chance.

 

And,

if you are able to release it, you will need all the correct face #'s so the game won't crash.

One thing about this mod, it runs smooth. I have never had a single crash.

 

 

I have been given the go ahead to release the 123 face pack.

 

 

But i have also added player audio, some new portraits, uniforms and a couple of other things as well off of previous mods. But these are not my works, so they are just for personal use.

 

This is Hawks excellent project, I don't want to step on it