Fighter stats and almanac

[vulcan]

Will retired fighter stats be kept and will there be an almanac for tracking of all stats? Also, how 3rd party friendly is this game (will utilities be easy to make for it)? Thanks

[Andreas Raht]

When I understand you correctly, you want to make "snapshots" of the fighter stats and ratings to track the fighter's development, right? Well, as long as you don't play the role-playing version next year, you do not have a time based process of the game, I mean you don't have months or years to make an almanach for example each "sim year" like in OOTP.
But: the whole printing and output stuff will be done with HTML-files, i.e. if you want to print the stats and ratings for a fighter, a HTML file will be created and opened with your browser. Then you're having the chance to print it or - voila! - to save it on disk.
I guess a nice feature would be to save the fighter's data (and maybe those from all fighters of a group?!) with only one menu click into a given directory fully automatically and to list those "snapshots" in the fighter records screen to open them whenever you want to check the fighter's development...
But this is a feature which can be added after the game is finished.

Regarding the 3rd party products:

- All graphic and sound files are editable. They are not hidden in a .dll file or something like this. You may edit all graphic and sound files! We won't make much drawing with the program, but we'll use images, which can be changed by anybody.

- All graphic files are in a folder, which is named in the config.ini file, like we did in TQ! So you may have multiple "skins" and switch whenever you want. Same for sound files and for data files!!

- The fighter data will be in a binary text file, not in a MS Access database. But since there are no secrets in those file, we will publish the file format. So you could easily import those data to MS Access or Excel or whatever with a little bit coding. (Well, it's a database, so don't use Excel )

- All output and printing is done with HTML files, but we don't have a single HTML tag "inside" the program. We use templates for everything. So the complete output can be changed, you just have to use certain tokens like $$Fightername$$, $$Winner$$ or $$Round$$ which the program uses to insert data into the templates. Each page is made from multiple template files.

- We will proceed to work on Title Bout like it is done with for example OOTP year by year. It's definitly a product which shall be continued to develop until we don't find any further possible feature, and as soon as we are at this point, we'll start to translate it into 50 languages So if you want any tool or add-on, give us a note, let's talk about it, maybe we find a way to implement the tool directly into TB, or to create an interface or something.

- We'll create a "Mods" forum for TB, where we'll list all files and how they are used, and how to change and modify the game's "look and feel".


IMO the possibility to "customize" a game is very important for several reasons, and therefore I'll always watch this issue when coding TB. Sometimes it needs more time to find a customizable solution, i.e. using templates is much more work for the programmer than just creating the HTML files directly. Well, at least it seems to be easier and faster. But in the end it's faster to work with templates, because for example our graphic guy Aurelio can modify my raw templates into nice HTML pages without needing to work on my C++ code

But please understand that we have to release TB first now, before we may use too more time for the "Mods" stuff.

[GDE]

Andreas,

Let's say a fighter has had 10 fights. When you look at that fighters stats, will the fights be numbered 1-10 OR will there be calendar dates for each fight?

Originally posted by Andreas Raht
When I understand you correctly, you want to make "snapshots" of the fighter stats and ratings to track the fighter's development, right? Well, as long as you don't play the role-playing version next year, you do not have a time based process of the game, I mean you don't have months or years to make an almanach for example each "sim year" like in OOTP.
But: the whole printing and output stuff will be done with HTML-files, i.e. if you want to print the stats and ratings for a fighter, a HTML file will be created and opened with your browser. Then you're having the chance to print it or - voila! - to save it on disk.
I guess a nice feature would be to save the fighter's data (and maybe those from all fighters of a group?!) with only one menu click into a given directory fully automatically and to list those "snapshots" in the fighter records screen to open them whenever you want to check the fighter's development...
But this is a feature which can be added after the game is finished.

Regarding the 3rd party products:

- All graphic and sound files are editable. They are not hidden in a .dll file or something like this. You may edit all graphic and sound files! We won't make much drawing with the program, but we'll use images, which can be changed by anybody.

- All graphic files are in a folder, which is named in the config.ini file, like we did in TQ! So you may have multiple "skins" and switch whenever you want. Same for sound files and for data files!!

- The fighter data will be in a binary text file, not in a MS Access database. But since there are no secrets in those file, we will publish the file format. So you could easily import those data to MS Access or Excel or whatever with a little bit coding. (Well, it's a database, so don't use Excel )

- All output and printing is done with HTML files, but we don't have a single HTML tag "inside" the program. We use templates for everything. So the complete output can be changed, you just have to use certain tokens like $$Fightername$$, $$Winner$$ or $$Round$$ which the program uses to insert data into the templates. Each page is made from multiple template files.

- We will proceed to work on Title Bout like it is done with for example OOTP year by year. It's definitly a product which shall be continued to develop until we don't find any further possible feature, and as soon as we are at this point, we'll start to translate it into 50 languages So if you want any tool or add-on, give us a note, let's talk about it, maybe we find a way to implement the tool directly into TB, or to create an interface or something.

- We'll create a "Mods" forum for TB, where we'll list all files and how they are used, and how to change and modify the game's "look and feel".


IMO the possibility to "customize" a game is very important for several reasons, and therefore I'll always watch this issue when coding TB. Sometimes it needs more time to find a customizable solution, i.e. using templates is much more work for the programmer than just creating the HTML files directly. Well, at least it seems to be easier and faster. But in the end it's faster to work with templates, because for example our graphic guy Aurelio can modify my raw templates into nice HTML pages without needing to work on my C++ code

But please understand that we have to release TB first now, before we may use too more time for the "Mods" stuff.

Andreas-

Excuse me while I wipe up the drool that's collecting on the floor.
I WANT MY TITLE BOUT CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING!

[vulcan]

Well, I wanted to know if retired fighter stats will be kept OR when a fighter retires, will he be wiped off the face of the planet and be forgotten? The almanac question is concerning every fighter that passes through TBCB. Will there be a place in the game where we can see retired fighter stats along with the fastest knockout recorded, most wins by a fighter for their division, best ever record, ect.

[vulcan]

Originally posted by GDE
Andreas,

Let's say a fighter has had 10 fights. When you look at that fighters stats, will the fights be numbered 1-10 OR will there be calendar dates for each fight?

This is a very good question. I like the calendar idea, where you see a date for each of the fights. Not just numbered 1-10 or so on.

[Andreas Raht]

Sorry, but it's planned to be numbers, until the role playing module is released.
In TB you're free to enter a date of your choice for each fight as it has been in TF. IMO it makes not much sense to use a calendar when you may enter a date which is 10 years before the latest fight which you've simulated.
In role-playing this will be different of course. Then you will have a calendar, and you will have to look for long enough intervals between bouts and so on.

[Andreas Raht]

Originally posted by vulcan
Well, I wanted to know if retired fighter stats will be kept OR when a fighter retires, will he be wiped off the face of the planet and be forgotten? The almanac question is concerning every fighter that passes through TBCB. Will there be a place in the game where we can see retired fighter stats along with the fastest knockout recorded, most wins by a fighter for their division, best ever record, ect.

Retired fighters will be kept in the database. We will have the following concept:
- You may have multiple databases in different folders, and you may switch between them. A "database" is the whole amount of tables: fighters, judges, venues, fight history and so on. Since all of this is simply handled through the Windows filesystem, you may easily duplicate your database and play around with it.
- In each database the fighters are managed in "groups". You can arrange them into groups, but each fighter can only be in one group. The default database released with the game will offer the groups "Active" and "Retired".
- All stats in a database, doesn't matter to which group they belong, will be kept. Of course a fighter will keep his "fastest knockout record" after retiring, until another fighter beats the record. Just like in reality!

[vulcan]

Originally posted by Andreas Raht
Retired fighters will be kept in the database. We will have the following concept:
- You may have multiple databases in different folders, and you may switch between them. A "database" is the whole amount of tables: fighters, judges, venues, fight history and so on. Since all of this is simply handled through the Windows filesystem, you may easily duplicate your database and play around with it.
- In each database the fighters are managed in "groups". You can arrange them into groups, but each fighter can only be in one group. The default database released with the game will offer the groups "Active" and "Retired".
- All stats in a database, doesn't matter to which group they belong, will be kept. Of course a fighter will keep his "fastest knockout record" after retiring, until another fighter beats the record. Just like in reality!

This is good to hear. Thanks for responding.

[Bronx Bomber 15]

report generations for things like "fastest KO", most consecutive KO", "most title defenses"...etc would be awesome