OTBjoel

Total Classics - "Oldtime" Edition OverlayHello all,Oldtime Baseball is back! This is an alternate overlay for your Total Classics conversions based on an "Oldtime" theme. This overlay will be used in a future total conversion mod for the Negro Leagues and an All-Time Franchise Greats teamset. You get an exclusive pitch count box that shows at the bottom corner of the screen. Each batter comes up with a torn "Newspaper" overlay. The portrait frame has been enlarged so you get a better view of the player's 'card'. The Cooperstown overlay was reworked back into the Total Classics overlay to bring back that Oldtime feel from the past. You also get a Green classic scoreboard in the box score area. Used with the MVP Overlay swapper, you can use this anytime you want to recreate a Classics Replay. This overlay comes in two flavors - with or without Trues' stat infobar. I personally prefer it without the infobar because I watch it in spectator mode but you might like the infobar if you like to play the game. Either way, this overlay is a great choice for the Classics fans. See the picture for a preview.The preview makes the overlay look a lot busier than it really is. You typically won't have all those items on the screen at once. I wanted to show as many features as possible.Changes in version 1.5:Added a new and different classic green scoreboard for when there are no runners on base. I found a graphic on ESPN that I had to work in there. The change can be seen in the preview. Not a big change but should add to your enjoyment of the overlay and offers something different. Hope you guys like it.Changes in version 2.0:Moved the floating scoreboard to right hand side of the screen for right handed batters so that it is out of the way when in batter view. Change made per user request.Changes in version 2.1:One of these days I'll quit messing with this thing but for now, it's still a work in progress. Changed info bar slightly. New version now shows speed of batter as well. Colorized header in speed graphic to sepia tone and separated from info bar. This matches the latest version of Trues' info bar. No change to the no infobar file. Modification made per request. Changes in version 2.2:This was a fix more than anything else. Added blue/yellow 'blip' back to PIP when runners are on base. IGSCR.fsh was updated. Pointed out by danc. New in version 3.0:If the stamina bar wasn't enough, I've now added a pitch count indicator (a mod of Trues' pitch count box).

New in version 4.0
First major changes in over a year. Changed the "Baseball's Top Prospects" overlay to a "Baseball's Immortals" overlay. A nice feature to enable for your Hall of Famer's in your Total Classics replays. Just turn on the Top Prospects flag in MVPedit (thanks to emath for this tip). Commemorative of the Classic Card Set that came out in the early 1980's. Also reverted to the Cooperstown scoreboard overlay when there are runners on base. After having tried other scoreboards, I've found the color scheme of the Cooperstown version just seems to look best. Screenshots of the new features are displayed.

New in version 4.1
An automated installer created by Jim825 is now included with the mod. You now have two options for installing the overlays, either manually or with the installer. Complete instructions on how to run the installer (or install manually) are included.
 
New in version 5.0
Following a post on MVP mods regarding removing the pitching meter, I started to mess around with this overlay again. While I was removing the pitching meter, I remember a request by Homer to see if I could change the pitch speed indicator to an oldtime -themed Chrome indicator ala the "Time Machine".  At the time Trues said it couldn't be done, not sure why.  I played with it again and although it's not perfect, I think it will work.  Also, I'd been playing with the idea of putting in a tube TV outline overlay so simulate the feel of watching a game back in the day.  Stecropper gave me the thumbs up so here it is.  This screenshot shows the changes made.  Pick the file called otboverlaytv.7z ....Enjoy.

This overlay is an extension of work previously done by Team Classics. Special thanks to Trues for permission to use his player infobar. Install either with Kraw's TIT or manually copy the files into the datafrontend folder. The igscr.fsh file should be copied into datafrontendigshapes .Feel free to PM me with any comments or questions.
 
 

It's been three years in the making but "Legends from the Booth" featuring Vin Scully, Mel Allen, and Ernie Harwell is now complete. This website article:

http://baseball.about.com/od/baseballinpopculture/tp/top10broadcasters.htm

rates them #1 thru 3 as the best baseball announcers of all-time. All members of the Baseball Hall of Fame and winners of the Ford Frick Award; Mel Allen was the first to receive the award in 1978 (along with the pioneer of broadcasting, Red Barber). Vin Scully was next in 1982 and Ernie Harwell received his in 1991. Vin Scully is generally regarded as the best baseball broadcaster of all-time, regarded so by his peers and Ernie Harwell even said as much in his Audio Scrapbook. Nobody will forget Mel Allen’s “How about that!” or Harwell’s “He stood like a house by the side of the road… and watched it go by”. Legends from the Booth celebrates the work these men did during their careers. Except for Vin Scully, these announcers are no longer with us. Ernie passed just last year and luckily Mel Allen provided the source for many of these audio clips right before he passed in 1996. However, you can relive those baseball moments and calls, and most important seemingly bring them back to life with this mod.

Although I have "completed" the mod, I do not mean for this to be the final version by any means. With the help of the MVP community, we can continue to work on this to improve it and work out the bugs.

If you are expecting perfection from this mod then you will probably be disappointed. It was very difficult to find an exact match for many of the sound calls especially with the Krukow color. There will be some oddities like one voice doing the introduction for a player but then another announcer actually says the name. You might even think there are "too many cooks in the kitchen". However, without finding the sound calls from all of the resources available, this
mod would not be nearly as complete if I only used the Vin Scully calls. Using all three announcers made it possible to fill in many blank spots. The transitions between announcers isn't as smooth as I would have liked but judging from early feedback, I think most folks will be happy with it. Now that it is complete, the transitions have smoothed out quite a bit. The best way to enjoy this mod is to simply allow the classic voices of these announcers soak in, taking you back to a time when their voices were the average fan's connection to the game before television.

Along with the benefits of the classic Play-by-Play, this mod is also the most ambitious project of including as many players from the history of baseball as possible. There are about 9650 player audio calls in this mod. This last summer, I spent some time compiling the audio indices of all the Total Classics mods as well as the single season mods after 2005. My mission was to create one common index that would be as compatible as possible with all the Total Classics releases and anything left over would come from the modern single season mods. The result of my efforts is included in the spreadsheet “LegendsIDS”. I have made it so the mod will be completely compatible with the original MVP05 and most of Total Classics. It should be about 80% compatible with Total Classics seasons mods but in cases where the name index might be different against Total Classics, the season mod may differ. Right out of the box, you will be able to plug in my mod with just about any season mod and be able to hear mostly accurate audio. The index works first from Totte’s original audio list to Total Classics and then the single season mods. I have made my own additions after starting from that framework. Most of the important, famous players are included.

The PA audio has also been expanded with this mod for many classic players and for historic players that I have added. As a minor addition, this mod also includes my Bob Sheppard announces the Yankees PA announcer mod. For Yankees fans, Sheppard will always announce their favorite all-timers in this mod. I hope to expand on this aspect in the future if we can ever get a library of Bob Sheppard announcements or if they develop some voice morphing software that can closely mimic his voice.

In case anybody is curious, here is the final distribution of the play by play calls by the Legendary Announcers:

Mel Allen: 2840
Vin Scully: 5465
Ernie Harwell: 2870
BLANK: 3925

Vin Scully is appropriately the primary announcer with Mel Allen doing additional play by play and Ernie adding some color commentary. Ernie also does some play-by-play where neither Vin nor Mel has the call in their repertoire. All in all, the mod plays out pretty seamlessly as you get a nice blend of all of these classic announcers.

Note on full classic names: Full players names for modern players are announced by Vin Scully. For classics, Vin Scully tries to say most of the starting pitchers full names regardless of whether they are modern or classic. Mel Allen introduces pitchers coming out of the bullpen so he says many of the reliever’s full names instead of Vin sometimes. Mel Allen says most of the full batter players names for the classic players although Vin says many as well. Classic full player (batter) names are split about 50/50. Vin says more Dodger players and Mel says more Yankee players. Mel simply has more classic names in his database and I think an original classic name pronounced by Mel sounds better than a spliced together name by Vin. Most last names are announced by Vin, classic last names by Mel only if the Mel last name sounded way better than a created Vin Scully last name.

Although you may install this audio mod into any of your existing mods, it assumes you are currently using the stock audio files from a clean installation. Specifically, you need to have the original stadium headers as well as team name headers in order for these to come out correctly. Check with the mod’s author to see about making it Legends from the Booth compatible. I have already spoken to a few mod creator’s and they are already on their way to making this happen.
As a bonus, I am including my special "Oldtime" between innings audio (bdcstdat) in this mod. It just adds a nifty classic feel to the game as well as Ernie Harwell calling the "Voice of the Turtle" in the intro background before the national anthem.

I recommend using the following volume settings:
Broadcast Announcer = 5
Music = 4
Crowd = 3

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
---------------------------------------------
Compared to audio in some other baseball games, the MVP PBP has a lot more variation. Some calls unfortunately had to be repeated since the replacements simply don't have as much variation.

These are the files included in the mod in case you want to back them up before installation:
pnamehdr.big --> to be copied to: MVP Baseball 2005\data\audio\spch_pbp\

pbpdat.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\
pnamedat.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\
stdnmdat.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\
tnamedat.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\

All four will be copied to: MVP Baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\

PA audio
pnamedat.big \data\audio\cd\spch_pa\
pnamehdr.big \data\audio\spch_pa\

Note: These file names are exactly the same as the pbp player names except that they go into the spch_pa directory. These files are also significantly smaller than the pbp files.

In between innings music: bdcstdat.big
bdcstdat.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\bdcst_mx\

If you have an existing mod where stadiums and team names have been moved around, you might just want to copy the pbpdat.big and the pname files.
Here’s a brief summary of what some of these files do:

pnamedat.big - this file stores audio for player names.
pbpdat.big - this file is the big daddy. It contains the actual PBP commentary with Krukow blanked out.
stdnmdat.big - if you want Vin and Mel to announce the stadiums in the game intro, then copy this file into your game folders.
tnamedat.big - if you want Vin and Mel to announce the major league teams in the game intro, then copy this file. Ernie Harwell will announce many of the minor league teams.
If you decide to use either pnamedat, stdnmdat, or tnamedat, then you must also use the corresponding pnamehdr, stdnmhdr, and tnamehdr file into \data\audio\spch_pbp\

Acknowledgements and Thanks to:
AlexTony (the original TotalClassics audio guru) for his hardwork with the Vin Scully names and Eddieel for his work with Mel Allen. Special thanks to Hory for teaching me how to resample wave files into condensed .asf and .mus format. This project would have sounded like crap if he had not taught me the key switches in the SX program. HardcoreLegend for originally coming up with the concept of using Vin Scully to replace the default announcers. TyWiggins for the program that was able to extract the Vin Scully sound clips. Stecropper for inviting me over to MVPmods initially. Pohdna, the mission is accomplished. We converted the Mel Allen mod to MVP and made it better with Vin and Ernie. Thanks to the entire Total Classics team especially the founders (Frank, Jim825, AlexTony, and Stecropper) whose work on the classic concept have kept my own vision alive and kicking. I don’t think I could have done this without following the road they already paved. There have been a few others along the way and if I ommitted, I apologize. There was a forum member early on in the process who taught me how to use Audacity to split the name sound clips but his name escapes me right now and I don’t think he’s around anymore. If you’re out there, let me know. More recently, Redeck and the prolific DennisJames have provided some much needed energy and support. Future thanks to Jim825 who is working on putting these files in an easy to use installer. If you prefer to use a packaged installer to implement this mod, just keep an eye out for it in a couple of days.

Finally, this project is a continuation of a project I originally did for High Heat in the early 2000’s. Back then, it was just a Mel Allen/Ernie Harwell project with Curt Gowdy doing PA. I eventually finished it and then merged in Vin Scully when those sound clips became available. It wasn’t until the MVP version of the project that I was able to unlock and extract the Harwell sounds but that just made it that much better.

This project is free on MVPmods. The only payment I ask in return is that SeanO, Rolie, and DennisJames get together and build me San Francisco Seals Stadium

So those of you waiting for me to release this mod before re-releasing your own conversion mods, I give you my blessings. Go for it. You can now include this with your own mods along with whatever tweaks you need to make it work.

Finally, I can leave my cave and join the rest of the world. Hope you all enjoy.

-------------------------------------------

*** VERSION HISTORY ***

v3.0

- Updated stadium announcements. More variety and "colorful" announcements.
- Updates/Fixes/Additions to many player names
- Updated Play-by-Play calls. A year's worth of fixes.
- Found about 100 dynasty game calls that were inexplicably missed, that Ernie Harwell now calls..

v2.0

Repackaged with Jim825's easy-to-use installer.

v1.0

Initial release

After lobbying for somebody to hopefully do this stadium, I decided to just do it myself. The base is from Sean O's Wrigley Field L.A. After changing the walls and the crowd, and a few other things, it's passable for Seals Stadium. I had been keeping this to myself for a while but decided to put it out there just in case anybody else wanted. If anybody wants to improve upon this, please feel free.

Rename the stadium to a stadium slot in data/stadiums that you want to replace.

With this stadium, all the classic stadiums that were included in Oldtime Baseball are now available on the MVP platform.

Lates update has subtle crowd updates as well as changed seat colors from red to green. The small change makes a huge difference in the "feel" of the stadium. Hopefully more improvements to come.

Enjoy.

This updated file will give you new and varied stadium introductions. In it, you will hear Vin Scully make references to the Green Monster, the Ivy covered Walls of Wrigley Field, the planes from La Guardia next to Shea, Cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, and the Palm trees of Los Angeles, just to name a few.

Added variety to your Legends from the Booth experience. Try it out with some of your favorite teams/stadiums and see what you think!

Unzip and then copy the included file to c:\program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp

Copy all contents of this zip file into
c:\program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp

run the koufaxfix.bat (just double click it)

It will replace Scully's Koufax name with an improved version.

The old one was done with Mel Allen saying the "fax" part of his name.
I was able to find an audio with Scully saying the word "facts" and it was
easy enough to splice this into the audio instead. Sounds much better.

This is a combo portrait file that can be used with most Total Classics releases. The numbering convention exactly matches the id's used in my "Legends from the Booth" project, which means this file is completely compatible with Total Classics Phase 10 and the original MVP 05 roster, and mostly compatible with other Total Classics releases. The big feature in this file are the portraits from the Microsoft Baseball Encyclopedia from 1994/95. I was surprised that nobody had used this resource to get pictures from before as it's got a lot of really nice, high resolution photos of players from the 70's - 90's. For the 1930-50's, still pictures were taken from the When It Was a Game color movies. Also included is the portrait file from Tony LaRussa Baseball. Users of the 1998 conversion mod will find many photos they can use here. Check the screen shot for examples of the portraits included.

Since this file is not 100% perfect for any mod, for many of you, the best way to use this file would be simply as a file archive to extract from into your own mods. The .BIG file format does a really good job of compressing files so there was really no advantage in zipping it up as a .RAR file. By having this file in .BIG format, there are a couple of advantages:
1) You can preview the pictures using EAGRAPH without extracting them
2) You can use it directly in the game if you choose to by copying the file to \Program Files\EA Sports\MVP Baseball 2005\data\frontend

I built this file because I got sick of eating up hard drive space and wanted to have a basic MVP setup where all I would have to do is switch out rosters.

To check compatibility with different total conversion mods, check the listing below.
Rated on a scale of 1-5, this is how compatible this combo file is with these mods:

5 - Very compatible
4 - Mostly compatible
3 - Compatible
2 - It works
1 - Probably shouldn't try it

Original MVP '05 - 5
Total Classics Phase 10 - 5
Total Classics 1927 - 5
Total Classics 1946,1951,1956,1961,1964,1967,1969,1978 - 4
MVP - '06 - 3
MVP '98 - 1

This file is an extension of the mega portrait file I had originally created for Oldtime Baseball more than 10 years ago. Many of those pictures were reused in this file from my own collection.

Hope you guys enjoy these portraits as much as I had enjoyed putting them together. Thanks to the Total Classics team for the awesome card pictures which make up much of the pictures for the 1960's players. My friend PortraitMatt is responsible for the great colorized pictures from the early years of baseball.

*** VERSION HISTORY ***

<u>v3.0</u>

Portrait indexes have been modified to be in synch with the Legends from the Booth mod

<u>v2.0</u>

I've included/replaced portraits with those from Triple Play '99. These are high resolution pictures that are much cleaner than the High Heat pictures from the same era. I've replaced my crappy Jason Giambi/Manny Ramirez pictures with much nicer Triple Play pictures. It's actually the same pictures but way better resolution from Triple Play. These pictures also work great with the 1998 mod. Enjoy.

Coming up next: rescan of my some of my card collection to replace the 256 color pictures I used with Oldtime Baseball. Some pictures actually turned out better when reduced to 256-color but others did not so I will redo those.

This is a tool which will allow you to see and extract the contents of any packed file. Not only can you use it extract standard BIG files but you will also be able to extract/import into the troublesome audio BIg files which are another animal altogether. Originally written for the NHL series, this program works on many file formats used in MVP. It can even extract and parse out the .dat files located in tnamdat and stdnmdat.big. These dat files are not single audio files but rather multi-file format. Good luck with this tool. I have found it very handy and Legends from the Booth would have been impossible without it.

"We Are Family" was the moniker of the late 1970's Pirates and this stadium will take you back to the days of Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Kent Tekulve, Bill Madlock, Phil Garner, and the rest of the gang. Three Rivers Stadium is the place where the Pittsburgh Pirates lived out their glory days. Albeit, not the most beautiful stadium, it did it's job and provided baseball fans of the Steel City some of their best memories.

If you were a fan of the stadiums in the High Heat game, then you will like this one. OK, there's not much reason to like those stadiums as they were generally hideous and not very accurate but I found some of the textures to be usable. So, I borrowed many of those textures to put this rendition together. The walls are a dark green so it's more representative of the early days of Three Rivers before the blue wall. It's interesting to note that it seems like Busch Stadium and Three Rivers both seemed to go to the Blue Walls in the 1980's at the same time and to go back to green at the same time as well

What you will see changed are the press boxes and the roof textures as shown in the screen shot. Most noticeable is the texture for the stadium walls and the luxury boxes is also different. Also changed the field textures a little bit.

Thanks to the legendary Pirate for doing the original build of this stadium.

Here is a concept stadium of the domed home of the Seattle Mariners from 1977-1999. This is a mod of SeanO's stadium that was originally included in Total Classics and the TC1978 mod. I've added many new textures that give the stadium a different feel. The color scheme is darker and not as bright but IMO, a little more accurate. Updated are the field textures and the building wall. The biggest and most significant change is the color and textures of the oufield walls. Also changed are the press boxes down the left field line. The ads are not meant to be specific for any period in time so it could really work for any era. They are a combination of different ads from past versions of this stadium. Many from what Dennis James did in his Kingdome pack so it's a little bit of a fantasy stadium. I figured when Homer gave this stadium the thumbs up that it was good enough for general release.

Thanks to Sean for his original work on the stadium. Kudos to Dennis James for the inspiration to get back to stadium modding. Thanks to Homer for the consultation on the actual wall color of the Kingdome.

Also included is a data file. Put this in your data\ folder. I've only included a nite file. Since the Kingdome was an indoor stadium, it looks the same either way.

I was keeping this file to myself but I realized a lot of Yankees fans would probably really want it. One day I hope to expand this mod and make it part of my Announcer's Legends project but I just can't find enough samples. I found these and they sound pretty clear. You will want to turn down all the other crowd noises down to '1' if you don't want to strain to hear it. I have Sheppard calling Derek Jeter but the quality is horrible so I didn't include it. If somebody has a good one, please let me know. Also, if there is somebody out there who has additional samples, I'd love to add to this mod. Here's the names that Bob Sheppard will announce:

0421 Derek Jeter
2128 Yogi Berra
2135 Whitey Ford
2138 Reggie Jackson
2154 Phil Rizzuto
2653 Mickey Mantle
5136 Graig Nettles (Minnesota Twins)
5336 Graig Nettles (San Diego Padres)
6992 Thurman Munson
7454 Whitey Ford
7562 Mickey Mantle
7574 Reggie Jackson
7577 Phil Rizzuto
7629 Reggie Jackson (California Angels)
7636 Billy Martin
9057 Don Mattingly
9275 Joe Dimaggio
9317 Graig Nettles

These numbers follow the Total Classics conversion. Extract the .7z file and put the bsheppard directory in your \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\ directory. Double-click the install.bat file and it will put the announcer files in your \spch_pa\pnamedat.big file. You may need to manually remove the bsheppard directory when all is done. It should be empty.

Jim reminded me that a player maybe in Total Classics more than once, so this new archive includes files for Yankee players if they also played for other teams if they are in Total Classics. I've notated the other teams in parentheses if it's another team other than the Yankees. You may want to remove these id's if you don't want Sheppard to announce them on the other teams. I've also included the header files in case you didn't already have them. The installer batch file puts them in the right place for you.

In the 1980's, the St. Louis Cardinals reached three World Series, winning it all in 1982. They did it with a brand of baseball dubbed "Whitey ball". It emphasized speed on Astroturf which harkened back to the days of the Gas House Gang. Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Tommy Herr, and Vince Coleman were the main culprits with most of the power being provided by Jack Clark. Busch Memorial stadium was the site of Ozzie Smith's infamous walk-off homer against Tom Niedenfuer breaking the hearts of my beloved Dodgers. It was the home of the St. Louis Cardinals from 1966-2005.

This stadium is a further modification of the 1970's Busch Stadium, also known as Busch Memorial Stadium or Busch Stadium II. Busch Stadium III just got built when MVP05 came out so it didn't come with the game but you can still download it. This is an extension of the work that Dennis James did with his nice period ads. I replaced the field model and textures in order to get a better representation of the astroturf that "Whitey Ball" was played on. The AstroTurf was added in 1971 but the dirt infield stayed intact until 1976 when it was replaced with an all-Astroturf infield. The grass returned in 1995 as the stadium returned to baseball only. It was grass for the last ten years of its life and was the site of Mark McGwire's historic but now tainted 1998 season. I also changed the outfield wall to a more accurate dark blue.

If you are using the 1974 TC mod, then you should use the Dennis James mod with the dirt infield. This mod represents 1976-1995 and should work great for the 1978, 1988 and 1994 TC Mods. Since it reverted back to grass after 1995, the 1998 TC mod probably works best with later Busch Stadium mods.

Included are day and night versions. I've also included a version that has the later greenwall. The greenwall was never in place with the all astroturf field so this would be somewhat of a concept stadium but IMHO it looks better.

This version fixes a bug in the night version of the first upload with a missing texture in the yellow line above the wall and the foul poles.

Included in this file is the Vin Scully players names for the players active in 2004-2005 when MLB '05 came out with Vin Scully. This mod will cover about 90% of the players that came with the original MVP05.

I've also made great strides with the classic players names so you will have a ton of them in here.

Special thanks to AlexTony for his hardwork with the Vin Scully names and Eddieel for his work with Mel Allen.

Note on full classic names: Full players names for modern players are announced by Vin Scully. For classics, Vin Scully tries to say most of the pitchers full names regardless of whether they are modern or classic. Mel Allen says most of the full batter players names for the classic players although Vin says many as well. Classic full player (batter) names are split about 50/50. Vin says more Dodger players and Mel says more Yankee players. As mentioned before, Vin says most of the pitcher full names. Most last names are announced by Vin, classic last names by Mel only if the Mel last name sounded way better than a created Vin Scully last name.

Installation of this mod:
pnamehdr.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\spch_pbp\
pnamedat.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\
pbpdat.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\
bdcstdat.big --> copy to \program files\ea sports\mvp baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\bdcst_mx\

As a bonus, I am including my special "Oldtime" between innings audio (bdcstdat) in this mod. It just adds a nifty classic feel to the game as well as Ernie Harwell calling the "Voice of the Turtle" in the intro background before the national anthem.

I recommend using the following volume settings:

Broadcast Announcer = 4
Music = 5
Crowd = 3

Whenever, I make an update like this, I will also include the latest pbpdat file of wherever I happen to be in the project. This will not have a version number or anything but the more "Legends" calls are replaced, the more exciting this mod gets. At this point, the play by play is at about 30% completion. The Krukow replacements are complete and the Kuiper replacements are at 2200/15930.

Legends from the Booth, the "Harwell does Color" Phase

HE STOOD THERE LIKE A HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD AND WATCHED IT GO BY..
Would you rather hear that or the bland 'He got him looking'.
I think most of us would rather hear Harwell's signature phrase.
Now we have progressed to the point where Ernie Harwell replaces most of Krukow
with his own color commentary.

You will also hear the beginnings of the PBP mod in progress in some cases. There is a little
bit of color commentary as well from Vin Scully. You will hear variations of the game intro
from Vin, Mel, and Ernie.

If you are expecting perfection from this mod then you will probably be disappointed.
It was very difficult to find an exact match for many of the sound calls especially with the Krukow
color. There will be some oddities like one voice doing the introduction for a player but then
another announcer actually says the name. You might even think there are "too many cooks in
the kitchen". However, without finding the sound calls from all of the resources available, this
mod would not be nearly as complete if I only used the Vin Scully calls. Using all three
announcers made it possible to fill in many blank spots. The transitions between announcers
isn't as smooth as I would have liked but I am doing my best. My hope is that the finished
project will smooth it out quite a bit at the end.

MAKE SURE TO READ THE 'readme' INCLUDED IN THE FILE ARCHIVE FOR INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS.
These instructions have been abbreviated.

The files included in this mod:

pnamehdr.big --> to be copied to: MVP Baseball 2005\data\audio\spch_pbp\
pbpdat.big
stdnmdat.big
tnamedat.big
pnamedat.big (this file is newly included. Not complete by any means but it's a start.
Generally speaking, Mel Allen says complete names for older ballplayers and Vin does
the more modern ones. PBP last names only are done by Vin)
All 4 of these will be copied to: MVP Baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\

**** MAKE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR ORIGINAL FILES FIRST *****

New addition:
pnamedat.big - this file is the beginnings of players names being announced by Vin/Mel/Ernie.
It's not complete yet but gives you the preview as intended.


NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
-----------------------

Compared to audio in some other baseball games, the MVP PBP has a lot more variation. In the
completed version of the mod, there will probably be more repeated sounds since the replacements
simply don't have as much variation.

With Krukow gone, there will seem to be a lot of instances of no commentary. MVP is not so
rich in play-by-play as say Baseball for Windows, Broadcast Blast is. MVP lets much of the
play on the field do the talking for it as you would have in a television telecast where
there is less play-by-play than you would have in a radio broadcast.

Names have not been completed yet. Thanks to AlexTony and EddieEl, it is a constant work in progress.
This phase includes some of the work done so far.

The player index will follow that of the Total Classics releases with gaps being filled in by the names
from Total Audio releases. I have made it so the mod will be completely compatible with the original MVP05
and most of Total Classics. TC will be the primary with Total Audio being the secondary player
name index. It should be about 80% compatible with Total Classics seasons mods but in cases where the name
index might be different against Total Classics, the season mod may be different. I cannot speak for how
other mods were done. These will probably need to be retro-fitted as well.

I feel this mod's interest will be more from the Classics fans so I feel obligated to satisfy
their needs although everybody who plays MVP can gain enjoyment from these announcers.

Well, enjoy this mod as the voice of the Tigers, Ernie Harwell moves into the color booth.

- OTBjoel

I am not giving this release a version because I don't consider this project in any way
being close to being complete. However, AlexTony suggested that I release something in
order to maintain interest in this project and let everybody know that there is progress
being made. Once I got going with blanking out the Krukow color commentary, it only took
me two weeks to do so compared to other phases of the project, it wasn't such a big deal.
Judging from the forum posts and messages from the MVP members, it seemed there's was big
demand to get rid of Krukow from the PBP audio. Not all of it is bad but he does get a
bit annoying with some of his color commentary.

This introductory phase of the project will take care of that.

You will also hear the beginnings of the mod in progress in some cases. There is a little
bit of color commentary from Vin Scully and just a little from Ernie Harwell. You will hear
variations of the game introduction from Vin, Mel, and Ernie.

There are four files included in this mod:

pnamehdr.big --> to be copied to: MVP Baseball 2005\data\audio\spch_pbp\
pbpdat.big
stdnmdat.big
tnamedat.big
All 3 of which will be copied to: MVP Baseball 2005\data\audio\cd\spch_pbp\

**** MAKE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR ORIGINAL FILES FIRST *****

I considered having an installer made but I decided not to because I want everybody to know
exactly what files they have modified so that they can properly back them up and revert to
them if they don't like the results.

You don't have to copy all the files if you only want some aspects of the mod to take effect.
I'll describe what the files do:

pnamehdr.big - this file has been modified to delete the Krukow name index so that Krukow last
names are not announced. I didn't want to delete the actual data but simply getting rid of
the headers will make it so those names are not announced. This file is needed otherwise
you could hear a Krukow name and then no commentary afterwards. It would sound a little odd.

pbpdat.big - this file is the big daddy. It contains the actual PBP commentary with Krukow
blanked out.

stdnmdat.big - if you want Vin and Mel to announce the stadiums in the game intro, then copy
this file into your game folders.

tnamedat.big - if you want Vin and Mel to announce the major league teams in the game intro,
then copy this file. I am currently working on having Ernie Harwell do the minor league
teams since those are available from his source vocal file. This should be ready by the
next phase which will be the Ernie Harwell 'color' phase where he replaces Krukow where
possible and appropriate.


NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
-----------------------

Compared to audio in some other baseball games, the MVP PBP has a lot more variation. In the
completed version of the mod, there will probably be more repeated sounds since the replacements
simply don't have as much variation.

With Krukow gone, there will seem to be a lot of instances of no commentary. MVP is not so
rich in play-by-play as say Baseball for Windows, Broadcast Blast is. MVP lets much of the
play on the field do the talking for it as you would have in a television telecast where
there is less play-by-play than you would have in a radio broadcast.

Names have not been done yet and probably won't be done until the very end. I am recruiting
help to do player names. The player index will follow that of the Total Classics releases
with gaps being filled in by the names from Total Audio releases. So Total Classics will be
the primary with Total Audio being the secondary player name index. I feel this mod's
interest will be more from the Classics fans so I feel obligated to satisfy their needs
although everybody who plays MVP can gain enjoyment from this mod.

Well, enjoy this mod for you Krukow-haters and for those who might want a preview of more to
come later.

- OTBjoel

This is an alternate crowd noise mod with many classic sounds taken from other games. The crowd ambience is amped up another notch with the background sounds from Broadcast Blast (Baseball for Windows). It's perfect for a playoff atmosphere. If the ambience noise is too much, copy everything but the crowd4a files. You still definitely want to use the rallydat.big file as it's got many organ ditties from Oldtime. The vendors are great as well. This mod should install with TIT. To do it manually: Copy all .abk files to dataaudioaems Copy all .ast files to dataaudiocdaems Copy ralldat.big to dataaudiocd ally You will love listening to the the African-American vendor sell off his hotdog and peanuts. His vendor calls are quite conversational. He even thanks you for buying him a drink. I suggest backing up the crowd files in case you want to revert back to them later. Like I said, most will love the rally music and the vendor calls. The crowd ambience may feel like too much for a regular season matchup but it's a great change-up. Updated 5/18/08: Sorry folks, I screwed up the first time. I uploaded this file again and it's now got the rallydat.big file in it. Kinda sucks I missed it the first time because the rally file is the star in this mod.

May 10, 2008 This weeks classic mod When It Was a Game is a short 1 minute intro showing a true color home movie of classic players from the 40's and 50's. The nostalgia will really hit home with this VP6 file. It's absolutely stunning. Recommended as the mvp intro. Simply copy the file to your datafrontendmovies folder and rename to mvpintro.VP6 I personally use it as the easports.vp6 because I have something else as my mvp intro. The only problem with the easports movie is you cannot escape out of it. You can also use this in one of the cameo slots and it will become one of your rotating movies.