Old-Timey Logos & Eventually More: A Reboot

[tm1681]

So...the thread I'd made displaying my work doing 1800s-style logos was going along nicely until a couple of months ago, when I caught a nasty case of Bronchitis, on top of Long Covid, ON TOP of bleeding Ulcerative Colitis, AND I'm the primary caretaker of a two-year-old.

-3/10 - would not recommend ever.

What I've decided to do is restart the thread from the beginning, partly because I've been so out of sorts and partly so things are a little better organized. Also, I want to actually share some of the files this time.

If you'll remember this all started with me putzing around on and off for years in Illustrator during my down time from remote work, and then I decided to turn it into functioning leagues when I lost about 90% of my remote work due to Covid in 2020.

The first league I decided in which I decided to take logos, include more, and create a functional league was something called the National Base Ball Organization, which was meant to be an amateur-ish analogue to the real-life National Association of Base Ball Players that started up in 1857.

I came up with team names below in three ways: some I made up (ex: Kings County BC), some I took from famous clubs of the day (ex: Knickerbocker BBC), and some I took from this excellent page at MLB.com's Memory Lab showing the names of the earliest known baseball clubs in many states and some countries.

When all was said and done, I had a 48-team, two-league setup split into six city or regional "championship" divisions with a 70-game schedule. Here's how it all looked (primary logos 1st, then secondary logos):

NBBO NEW YORK LEAGUE




















NBBO NORTHEASTERN LEAGUE




















Since I started my first graphics thread I bought a Microsoft account that has 1 TB of storage space, so I've uploaded a number of files related to this first league that any of you can use:

1 - A zip file containing the just the caps, jerseys, & logos
2 - A template containing the league
3 - A quickstart for the league that HOPEFULLY works

The link is here and I've set the password as OOTPNBBO.

Hopefully this works for any of you that are interested. If the password is an issue I can just take it off.

I'll go back through more of my work and get it organized for sharing tomorrow.

[Scipio Africanus]

Really impressive work! Thanks.

And the password/MS account worked fine for me.

[Jabez54]

Whoa!! Christmas came early!

Sweet Old-Timey Logos!!

[20_range]

Excited to get to use these

[Eugene Church]

Beautiful work, tm1681.

Thanks for sharing them.

[tm1681]

Thanks everyone.

I need to add a note about pants. I forgot to put them in the Zip file that has just the other graphics files in it (caps, jerseys, logos) because I didn't do them from scratch outside of OOTP.

There is a folder containing pants graphics for all the teams in the Quickstart zip file - obviously just labeled "Pants". They're all pretty simple, as back in the 1850s baseball pants were pretty much just all white and went all the way down to the shoe. The color code for all of them is 255/255/230 if you're going by R/G/B - FFFFE6 for a HEX code. Pants, shirts, and logos use that off-white color because stark white is just a bit harsher on the eyes.

Teams have one set of jerseys and pants because in the earliest days of the sport, as far as I know, there weren't really home/away uniforms.

Also, for some reason I had to add an extra underscore to all the secondary logos in order to make OOTP recognize them for some reason - had to name them Team_Name_small_50_ instead of the norm for them to auto-load in.

I also didn't add in the financial changes I'd done when I made the league for myself initially, because that required frequent balancing every few years to keep the league working well. Just figured it would be easier to just let it go with OOTP defaults and let users decide what they want to do with it.

[tm1681]

One more thing:

The jerseys are done in the old format. Part of the reason is that quite a few were done before OOTP23 and the introduction of the new format, but another part of the reason is that I've found that vintage jersey elements translate terribly to the new format because of the mesh - it tends to warp things near the top of the jersey and it ends up looking poor in player pictures.

I'd prefer it if they just didn't have the mesh there at all.

Of course, that means some of the jerseys have the issue with the front where part of it repeats at the bottom. But, what can you do?

[tm1681]

I should mention that I've made a thread detailing how my in-game universe unfolds.

When my game hit 1871, ten clubs split off from the NBBO to form the first professional league: the American Professional Baseball League (APBL). This is another analogue to real life, as in 1871 there was a pro-amateur split that led to the creation of the National Association, which became the National League that we all know and love today.

I decided that the ten founding members would change their names in order to formally go by nicknames, and the changes went like this:

Alleghany Base Ball Club became the Pittsburgh Industrials
American Baseball Club became the Philadelphia Patriots
Flour City B.B.C. became the Rochester Millers
Kings County B.B.C. became the Brooklyn Kings
Knickerbocker Base Ball Club became the New York Knickerbockers
Newark Base Ball Club became the New Jersey Clippers
Niagara Base Ball Club became the Buffalo Blues
Orange Base Ball Club became the Manhattan Orangemen
Quaker State B.C. became the Pennsylvania Quakers
Shamrock Baseball Club became the Boston Shamrocks

Here's how they looked:








In order to keep balance and maintain a 48-club competition, the NBBO responded by inviting well-run clubs from the Northeast into the fold as direct replacements for the ten departures:

Auburn Base Ball Club replaced Niagara B.B.C. (Upstate NY)
Baltic Base Ball Club replaced Orange B.B.C. (New York City)
Diamond State B.C. replaced Newark B.C. (Coastal)
Frontier Base Ball Club replaced Flour City B.B.C. (Upstate NY)
Maryland Base Ball Club replaced Shamrock B.C. (Coastal)
Lancastra Britannia B.C. replaced Alleghany B.C. (Inland)
National Baseball Club replaced American B.C. (Coastal)
New York Athletic Club replaced Knickerbocker B.B.C. (New York)
Philadelphia Tigers Social Club replaced Quaker State B.C. (Coastal)
Star Base Ball Club replaced Kings County B.B.C. (Brooklyn)

As before, I came up with names using this list from MLB Memory Lab and things I made up. In particular, I thought it would be fun to give the NYAC a baseball club because, if you take a look at their website, it seems like they run teams in every sport but baseball.

Here's how the ten NBBO replacements look:








I intended for the two leagues to run together, so I've made a template and quickstart (fingers crossed) containing both leagues, along with zip folders containing APBL graphics files and files for the ten new NBBO clubs.

The link to the files is here, and the password is APBLNBBO.

[Jabez54]

Again, very impressive old-time looking logos!! Thank you for sharing once more!!

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by Scipio Africanus

Really impressive work! Thanks.

And the password/MS account worked fine for me.

Didn't see this at first, but thanks for letting me know!

[Scipio Africanus]

Originally Posted by tm1681

Didn't see this at first, but thanks for letting me know!

Unfortunately, the link from your post yesterday isn't working as well. When I click the link it wants me to sign in using my email address, etc.

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by Scipio Africanus

Unfortunately, the link from your post yesterday isn't working as well. When I click the link it wants me to sign in using my email address, etc.

Let me make another link for it without a password, because it's not as if 500,000 people are waiting in line to download it.

Hopefully this one works

Another note about the first two sets of graphics files. If you use them in your own game, it's highly recommended that you use them with the name, number, and high sock settings turned OFF, though the sock settings one is more optional. This is because names weren't on jersey backs in baseball until about 1960, numbers weren't used until (I think) the 1920s, and in the 1850s & 60s baseball pants were full-length and, in some cases, attached to the shoes somehow.

The only thing I wish I could do would be to set all players to wear black shoes because that's what everyone wore then, but I haven't found such a way to do it.

[tm1681]

In my Fictional Simulation thread I've posted the logos for an Irish league starting in 1896. That was were where I was at before the Bronchitis/Long Covid/Ulcerative Colitis triple combo hit. I haven't finished doing all of the graphics for that league yet, but when I do I'll post them here as part of the timeline with all of the other stuff I've done.

I'll probably do the jerseys in the old style because, again, vintage jersey elements simply don't translate well to the new format due to the mesh warping things in certain places.

[txranger]

Nice work, very nice indeed!

[Scipio Africanus]

Originally Posted by tm1681

Let me make another link for it without a password, because it's not as if 500,000 people are waiting in line to download it.

Isn't working for me but maybe someone else can try it. The problem could be on my end.

[poiuy]

Originally Posted by Scipio Africanus

Isn't working for me but maybe someone else can try it. The problem could be on my end.

It does work for me.

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by Scipio Africanus

Isn't working for me but maybe someone else can try it. The problem could be on my end.

Originally Posted by poiuy

It does work for me

Odd...it doesn't say that you need to have a Microsoft account to access the OneDrive link, but maybe you do???

[poiuy]

Originally Posted by tm1681

Odd...it doesn't say that you need to have a Microsoft account to access the OneDrive link, but maybe you do???

I do not have a Microsoft account, and it worked for me.

[tm1681]

Back to more of the stuff I was doing before I got really sick...

As my in-game universe progressed through the 1870s the APBL expanded and added two teams: the Excelsior Knights from the NBBO's Brooklyn Championship and the Massachusetts Bay Pilgrims from the NBBO's Coastal Championship...





In the middle of decade a bunch of the NBBO teams changed their identities so they had nicknames of their own, but you'll see those later once the teams are in different leagues.

In response, the NBBO added two clubs to get back to 48: the Marathon Baseball Club and the Salem Scarlets...





Yes, the Salem Scarlets are an obvious literary reference given the town name - The Scarlet Letter was written in Salem - and to make reference to the Salem Witch Trials I named their home venue The Crucible.

I have graphics files available. They'll be in another post.

[tm1681]

In 1884, the APBL expanded once again, but this time by four teams instead of two. The new teams: the Baltimore Blue Crabs (formerly Maryland B.C.), the Jersey City Longshoremen (formerly Port Jersey B.B.C.), the Providence Saints (formerly St. John's B.C.) and the Washington Eagles (formerly National B.C.)...





Once again, to stay at 48 teams the NBBO brought in four replacements: the Bunker Hill Cannons, Camden Conductors, Harrisburg Senators, and Worcester Highlanders...





Yes I know they're not in alphabetical order (cries). Also, when making these teams it completely skipped my mind that the Harrisburg Senators are an existing and long-standing minor league team (since 1976). Whoops!

Since the expansion & replacement team graphic files only have six teams each, the zip folders for both are small enough that they should be available as attachments here. I've uploaded them, so let's see if they work...