OTBjoel

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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