As release day approaches, I hope this is helpful to new fans of OOTP, especially those looking for a historical sim.
Remember that OOTP 2007 ships with fictional players and its own database, but third-party developers have created all kinds of rosters and updates, including arod/garlon, gambo, cubby fan, and more.
Here's the standard file that you'll want to start with and download for your own use in OOTP 2007. It was created by Sean Lahman and friends and includes the complete statistical history of any player who ever played in the majors.
http://baseball1.com/statistics/
You need to download Lahman 5.4 comma-delimited version. Save this so it will be simple to find when you import it from OOTP 2007. The easiest is to create a folder in your C: drive called stats and copy everything into there.
You're now ready to play any year in baseball history with this database and to import the real history and real stats to your league history and each player card or profile.
Start OOTP 2007 and click New Game. The new league wizard will pop up and you can follow the easy steps. You can also go to advanced mode and jump right to all of the huge list of possible settings. That might be intimidating for the first-timer, but it's also the fun of starting new leagues over and over again to test all the variety that this game offers.
To keep this simple, here are the basic settings that I would use to get into this game quickly, not be challenged by all the messages and decisions when using coaches and scouts, and just get a basic understanding of the game.
Step One: Open OOTP 2007 and choose New Game.
2. League Wizard pops up. Select Create Historical League.
3. First link asks you to Select Path to database. Click on this and browse to where you put that folder (c/stats). Click on the master.csv file. This is the index to everything in that folder and what the game needs to find its way.
4. Season year. Type in the year that you want this real historical league to begin. I like the 70s because that was my boyhood era for the Big Red Machine. Remember that the Lahman database gets kind of incomplete for data before 1901 and only goes through 2006 so make sure you choose between those years.
5. Import complete history: This is a wonderful new feature that brings in all of the career stats, leaderboards, playoff champions and more from the entire history of the Lahman database. If you want everything that ever happened before your starting season, click the box. If you started in 1970, it will take a long time to import everything back to 1901, but it's worth the wait.
6. Leave all other settings at default and click Next Step in the lower right.
7. The next screen shows you the exact team names and division settings. Click next step.
8. Step 3 asks for what levels of minors you want. This is important for future play and to really get into the details of player development and progression. However, for this first-time sim, it's much easier to learn the game if you allow the reserve roster to function by default and not mess with all of the management and roster moves.
9. Step 4. Also leave all these settings as marked by the wizard. You'll get automatic expansion when the new teams really arrived in history and the player recalc is set to three years by default. Player recalc is the most significant advancement in OOTP 2007 in my opinion as a long-time historical simmer. It looks at the real stats of each player and pulls them back into line if the sim departs too much from normal. What this means is that it's unlikely that anyone will top 61 HR until after 1961 when Maris did it; it will be rare for a .400 hitter in the modern era; players will change positions and pitching roles somewhat close to the real thing because of this. In beta testing, we got repeated, reliable results for season leaders and the career leaderboards looked very realistic. Obviously, each time you sim, an alternate universe will happen. JR Richard won't suffer a stroke in his prime and could become a very dominant pitcher; Lou Gehrig won't have his career shortened; Cal Ripken might actually suffer a career-ending injury; etc. Player recalc does not work when a player sims beyond his real career; that's when the game's player development code takes over and makes random decisions based on that player's age, ratings, etc. to allow the career to continue. This helps for players like JR Richard or when Ted Williams serves in WWII and has no stats.
10. Step 5 of the wizard. This is where you can choose to turn FaceGen on. This is a remarkable new feature and much more than eye candy. It's extremely valuable for fictional players because you can actually begin to identify with them from their individual portraits. In historical play, you will find on the boards the option to download all of the real player pictures in history and bring that into your game without ever needing FaceGen. But for this first-time sim, let's leave the default setting of FaceGen off for a historical league and not worry about importing real photos. Click next step.
11. Step 6 of 6 in the wizard. Name yourself as the human manager. Select the team that you want to control. Do not go into commissioner mode. (This is an advanced option for future use that allows you to make any change you want, including stadiums, editing players, and more). You can name your game, but leave the year alone. Click next step.
You could start right now, but I want to take you to the advanced mode of game setup and tinker with a few more settings. By the way, you're on the new home page for your human manager. Look at all the links and easy ways to find your way around the game from this critical page. Remember this. You can get to it from the menu at the top as manager home page or by clicking the far left icon at the bottom, the manager home icon.