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Old 01-09-2014, 11:40 AM   #1
Vyper
Minors (Double A)
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 114
Pro Baseball - A Complete History

Hello all,

A lot has changed since I first picked up Season Ticket Baseball 2003, which was basically the retail version of OOTP 4. I’ve always been fascinated with doing a complete historical replay of professional baseball, starting in the early days of the National Association straight through to today. Over the years, I’ve picked it up, invested countless hours into reproducing the most accurate simulations I could, then put it down again, but I’ve never lost the hope of one day seeing this through to the end and finally simming an entire history through OOTP. I picked up OOTP 14 a few days ago, and have spent most of my free time trying to familiarize myself with all the changes, and I think I’m ready to give this a go again.

My plan:
- Starting in 1871, simulate the entire history of professional baseball through 2013, or beyond.
- I will be using real leagues, teams, stadiums, rosters, transactions, and schedules from the beginning. (obviously OOTP is a different game after 1901, so this will involve a lot of manual work for the first 30 years).
- Use a combination of historical information available online and merge it with events as they happen in my simulated league in order to provide a more immersive experience as you read along.
- Obviously the "OOTP factor" will be included, I'm not looking for 100% accuracy. If I was, there's no point to this, consider it a look at an alternate universe, where everyone plays a little bit differently, but everything else is similar.
- I still have a few small tests I want to run, but hopefully I will be able to post at least the 1871 season by the end of the weekend.

My settings:
- I have to keep this short because there is so much customization, but I’m relying a lot on the simulation engine here. If a player was available for the Boston Red Stockings in real life on September 13, 1871, I want him available here. That said, trades, retirements, injuries, etc… will be handled manually. Once I get to 1901, I’ll turn on the historical expansion, lineups and transactions (assuming those are available options if you start in 1871), otherwise I’ll be handling it on my own. For now, the only thing I’m letting the computer handle is lineups and rotations.

What I need:
- Early transactions: I see they’re all included from 1872 – 1901 in historical_transactions.odb, but the game doesn’t read them. I either need to figure out a way to easily read/sort the log, or start my own spreadsheet, which means looking at every new player every year til 1901, as well as other resources like retrosheet, and making sure all trades, reassignments, missing years, etc... are accounted for.
- I’m missing some early logos, photos, etc… but those aren’t a big concern for me. After 1901 I’ll worry about it, right now, it’s cosmetic
- Schedules after 1871. I found that I had to manually create my own schedule. That wasn’t too bad for 1871 where there are only about 30 games per team, but still it took me close to 2 hours to get it accurate.
- What date do players normally retire? What date are new players imported to their teams? This is a big one, if anyone knows the answer, I’d really appreciate the help. Since I have to do it manually, I don’t want to mess up the stats by having someone appear in a year they didn’t actually play.

Last edited by Vyper; 01-09-2014 at 11:42 AM.
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