Comments on Graphics (From Trade AI)

anpham · 04-23-2003, 04:01 PM

Most of you provide perspectives from a video game player's point of view which is expected. Frequently providing real life scenarios you've encountered while playing or ones you'll hope to encounter with this game but have yet to see happen. It's pretty easy to add suggestions or criticisms when all you're aware of is what's in front of you. But as you go through the game and you see certain things such as typos, missing links, text overlapping each other, etc. you can probably assume that none of them were on purpose. What this leads me to believe is this is someone who is trying to hit deadlines and doesn't have the time to get certain things to be exactly the way he envisions it. Obviously the most important deadline to hit is getting your game out to the public before opening day which passed about a month ago.

For instance if you look at your text placement on the screen you'll often see the text overlap each other occasionally. One example would be your minor league teams if you've given them long names. In this case the team name will run over the team record and obviously this is not what you want. Do I think he is aware of this? Yes. The exact moment he typed the line to place that text there he knew that in certain instances this was going to happen. Is there a workaround available? There usually is. And in this case the workaround is pretty easy to code but just requires additional time. Is this text overlap problem going to affect the game play dramatically? No, it's just cosmetic and may only happen on 20% of people using the product. However there are other portions of the game which are not purely cosmetic and require the time of the programmer as he works to get his game out before opening day. To me this code to fix this text overlap problem could take less than a day or just hours to do so I tend to scratch my head as to why this is the case. Maybe he has plans to overhaul the interface again so in the next version it won't be like this. Then there would be no point in spending time on it since it's going to be code that he eventually just throws away.

I probably will never take on the point of view of the critique because I've been there before. Maybe not at the level of scope as a video game but with something that had a fairly large audience. Any suggestions were nice and duly noted but I usually didn't pay much attention to them at all. Why not? Because they usually didn't fit my plans or were things I already knew or wanted to do but someone just happened to regurgitate it. You are basically just arguing with yourselves on how you think things should be. Each person here wants a different thing they've seen happen in real life that mimics the way baseball happens in every way and that's just not feasible right now. I read them and they are all very possible but they're also all very time consuming and mostly cosmetic changes. What this thread does help do is more or less provide a bug testing forum. You show him some mess-ups, he goes and fixes them. The trade AI is a very important part of the game itself but there are other things which are way more important.

I don't usually play out any of the games and the reason I don't is because the way this game plays games is rather boring. The radio is better than nothing but it obviously pales in comparison to being able to play the game out with 3D players. I always would want to play at least one game each season to see the team I created which is why I initially wanted to purchase MVP Baseball and had already rented High Heat. This game didn't have that feature. Will it ever have the 3D players? I have no idea. Can the current "radio" format be improved upon? Yes it can. Even if it stayed with the “radio” format I could see it develop in a way that could make it more fun to play and I’m sure he knows how to do it as well. In this case those people who bought this game hoping for actual game play would be less disappointed when they compare it to the games they’re used to buying. This to me would be priority number one. What you guys are asking for in the trade AI is just a bonus to something that is already pretty good. He is just one man so you need to be aware of what only one man can do. I’m pretty sure that if he started to develop the “radio” more and you guys found it more fun to play then a lot of your suggestions would start going there instead of in here and you’ll forget about all of this trade AI nonsense.

PAtricapillus · 04-23-2003, 05:15 PM

When I was a kid playing Atari 800s StarLeague baseball with HEAT, CURVES, KNUCKLES as the pitchers or MicroLeague, or Earl Weaver, or FrontPage Sports...all of these implemented graphic representation, from crude to "cultured"

If Out of The Park could just slap a mid 90s FrontPageSports physics/graphics engine into the code, instead of the pre80s radio text display, it would be heavenly...heck, even the last of the Earl Weavers was passable graphics-wise.

04-23-2003, 05:15 PM	#2
PAtricapillus Minors (Single A) Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 52	anpham makes a really good point When I was a kid playing Atari 800s StarLeague baseball with HEAT, CURVES, KNUCKLES as the pitchers or MicroLeague, or Earl Weaver, or FrontPage Sports...all of these implemented graphic representation, from crude to "cultured" If Out of The Park could just slap a mid 90s FrontPageSports physics/graphics engine into the code, instead of the pre80s radio text display, it would be heavenly...heck, even the last of the Earl Weavers was passable graphics-wise.

04-23-2003, 04:01 PM	#1
anpham Bat Boy Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 10	Most of you provide perspectives from a video game player's point of view which is expected. Frequently providing real life scenarios you've encountered while playing or ones you'll hope to encounter with this game but have yet to see happen. It's pretty easy to add suggestions or criticisms when all you're aware of is what's in front of you. But as you go through the game and you see certain things such as typos, missing links, text overlapping each other, etc. you can probably assume that none of them were on purpose. What this leads me to believe is this is someone who is trying to hit deadlines and doesn't have the time to get certain things to be exactly the way he envisions it. Obviously the most important deadline to hit is getting your game out to the public before opening day which passed about a month ago. For instance if you look at your text placement on the screen you'll often see the text overlap each other occasionally. One example would be your minor league teams if you've given them long names. In this case the team name will run over the team record and obviously this is not what you want. Do I think he is aware of this? Yes. The exact moment he typed the line to place that text there he knew that in certain instances this was going to happen. Is there a workaround available? There usually is. And in this case the workaround is pretty easy to code but just requires additional time. Is this text overlap problem going to affect the game play dramatically? No, it's just cosmetic and may only happen on 20% of people using the product. However there are other portions of the game which are not purely cosmetic and require the time of the programmer as he works to get his game out before opening day. To me this code to fix this text overlap problem could take less than a day or just hours to do so I tend to scratch my head as to why this is the case. Maybe he has plans to overhaul the interface again so in the next version it won't be like this. Then there would be no point in spending time on it since it's going to be code that he eventually just throws away. I probably will never take on the point of view of the critique because I've been there before. Maybe not at the level of scope as a video game but with something that had a fairly large audience. Any suggestions were nice and duly noted but I usually didn't pay much attention to them at all. Why not? Because they usually didn't fit my plans or were things I already knew or wanted to do but someone just happened to regurgitate it. You are basically just arguing with yourselves on how you think things should be. Each person here wants a different thing they've seen happen in real life that mimics the way baseball happens in every way and that's just not feasible right now. I read them and they are all very possible but they're also all very time consuming and mostly cosmetic changes. What this thread does help do is more or less provide a bug testing forum. You show him some mess-ups, he goes and fixes them. The trade AI is a very important part of the game itself but there are other things which are way more important. I don't usually play out any of the games and the reason I don't is because the way this game plays games is rather boring. The radio is better than nothing but it obviously pales in comparison to being able to play the game out with 3D players. I always would want to play at least one game each season to see the team I created which is why I initially wanted to purchase MVP Baseball and had already rented High Heat. This game didn't have that feature. Will it ever have the 3D players? I have no idea. Can the current "radio" format be improved upon? Yes it can. Even if it stayed with the “radio” format I could see it develop in a way that could make it more fun to play and I’m sure he knows how to do it as well. In this case those people who bought this game hoping for actual game play would be less disappointed when they compare it to the games they’re used to buying. This to me would be priority number one. What you guys are asking for in the trade AI is just a bonus to something that is already pretty good. He is just one man so you need to be aware of what only one man can do. I’m pretty sure that if he started to develop the “radio” more and you guys found it more fun to play then a lot of your suggestions would start going there instead of in here and you’ll forget about all of this trade AI nonsense.