Post-Fight Comments

[Cap]

Don't know if this belongs here or anywhere. Just a couple of things that bug me. Had a card last night featuring a 10 rounder between No.8 ranked Kallie Knoetze and No.11 Victorio Campolo. These rankings are "in game", not my own. The fight ended in the first round when Campolo asked the ref to stop it, and ref Stanley Christodoulou did just that. Knoetze had been down twice, the first from a shot to the bread-basket. Following the second knockdown, Campolo managed to land a single jab which didn't hurt but still scored points. Then Campolo motions to the ref to stop the fight and he does! I could understand if he landed a bomb and Knoetze was hurt again, or even if he landed a few shots unanswered, but one piddly jab....Campolo's point count was 28, Knoetze's was 0. I may never let Christodoulou work a fight again.

The other thing. After the win, Campolo dropped from 11 to 14!

One other comment. The blow-by-blow commentary is sooooo important to this game. Maybe second only to accurate results. Boxing is such a visual spectacle, and the commentary in TBCB has to fill in. Can it possibly be improved upon, add even more variations, so it doesn't seem like we've "heard" it all before? After watching a few dozen bouts, it seems like it's just repeating itself. Don't know if anything can be done. There are one or two comments that show up in "every single fight" and have become really annoying. English is a wonderfully colourful language, and so many words have been used to describe boxing matches over the decades. Take your cue from those descriptions. Use slang terms for instance, even archaic ones, to liven things up.

Cap

[Bonedwarf]

Regarding commentary, the way it worked in Championship Manager was good. There was a big text file with lines of text that occured in certain situations. The beauty was it was ALL editable. SI's default was pretty bad in spots and the game soon became repetitive, but the fan community came up with a HUGE addition to the file, making the commentary hugely varied and, to be honest, reading FAR more like a real soccer game.

In short, if the file for the commentary was user editable, we could "roll our own" as it were.

[djday45]

Bonedwarf I did not know the commentry for CM had been expanded. Do u have any websites I could download the expanded files?

rgds
Dean

[BradS]

Understand what you're saying about the jab landing and causing the fight to be stoped. One thing i keep in mind is when commentary describes (a punch landing) there will be 5 to 7 seven other punches that land also, if you're looking at the stats column of the fight screen.

[Jim Trunzo]

Well, I understand what happened with the stoppage. The "jab" scored enough points to trigger the stoppage. Had the commentary read "a vicious left hook", all would have been well The obvious problem here is that you never know exactly when the "number" for a TKO will occur so you can't dictate the punch type or comment to make it "fit" every time. It's the sequence of events that make it impossible: points previously scored (check for TKO), next punch (add points/check for TKO) = print commentary. And with jabs - every one can't be "jolting" or "powerful, head-snapping". It's a tricky situation but we'll look into it.

As far as the rankings - I'm mystified. That's Tom's routines and it's a thankless task. The biggest problem is that people are used to watching the ratings that are arbitrarily decided upon by the "alphabet groups". There's no logic, in many cases, to their decisions. However, if you go simply by the numbers (as we did originally), the competition factor can create some weird rankings as well. Complicating that is the fact that we are trying to create variety within a number of organizational rankings.

I do know this: everytime we make an adjustment or change, some other problem creeps up.

We need to scrap the whole system and try something new. It will continue to be looked at in detail before the release of TB2, and playtested until we puke to make sure it's at least as realistic as the WBC/WBA/IBF!

Jim

[Bonedwarf]

Originally Posted by djday45

Bonedwarf I did not know the commentry for CM had been expanded. Do u have any websites I could download the expanded files?

rgds
Dean

Oh crap, put me on the spot why don't you The last one I actually used (being the last CM I actually played as if my life depended on it) was for the last Cm3 iteration, 01/02. I probably got it from somewhere like The Dugout. http://www.thedugout.net/

I can't remember the name or anything. There may be versions for later CM games (or Football Manager as the new version is called) but I don't know.

I MIGHT even have the 01/02 one on CD somewhere!

[Mudster]

the drop in his ranking is easy to explain...a fighters ranking is based off of his last 10 fights, the overall rating of the fighters he fought those last ten fights, and if he won or lost. the most likely scenerio is that the fighter that dropped from 11 to 14 after beating a ranked contender had a victory over a fighter with a higher rating that knoetzee 11 fights earlier but, that fight is no longer being considered in the rankings due to it being 11 fights ago. A nice addition to the game might be to allow the user to determine how many previous fights are used to determine rankings. As it is, it is up to 10 fights, then only 10 fights. The biggest problem with this is that a top contender that loses a couple big fights in a row will find himself often out of the rankings to people that racked up a bunch of wins in a row against a bunch of tomato cans. My very first universe had a few good examples of this happening. I was running a 40's heavyweight universe and Tommy Gomez (not a top notch guy at all), after starting out as a .500 fighter for his first 25 or so fights, ran off an impressive streak of wins against lesser opposition and found himself the number one ranked contender and getting a shot at Joe Louis' title even though the likes of Charles and Walcott had far superior records against better opposition, but had just a couple of recent losses. Needless to say, Gomez got smoked in the third or fourth round(even though he did drop Louis twice in the first for a very exciting round) and managed to run off a impressive string of losses against top ten competition to never see the top ten again. Keeping in mind that the previous 10 fights do determine a fighters ranking, you could throw some flavor into managing a fighter by seeing what fight is going to drop off and how it might effect him. If a top fight is going to fall off, a desparation fight against a top opponent could be in line to keep his ranking, but if a tomato can is going to fall off, you could either line up a "hand picked" fight to keep your ranking the same and pad the fighters record, or go after a top fighter in hopes of jumping up in the rankings. I hope I didn't ramble on too much and confuse anyone here.

[Jim_Kidd]

Originally Posted by Jim Trunzo

Well, I understand what happened with the stoppage. The "jab" scored enough points to trigger the stoppage. Had the commentary read "a vicious left hook", all would have been well The obvious problem here is that you never know exactly when the "number" for a TKO will occur so you can't dictate the punch type or comment to make it "fit" every time. It's the sequence of events that make it impossible: points previously scored (check for TKO), next punch (add points/check for TKO) = print commentary. And with jabs - every one can't be "jolting" or "powerful, head-snapping". It's a tricky situation but we'll look into it.

As far as the rankings - I'm mystified. That's Tom's routines and it's a thankless task. The biggest problem is that people are used to watching the ratings that are arbitrarily decided upon by the "alphabet groups". There's no logic, in many cases, to their decisions. However, if you go simply by the numbers (as we did originally), the competition factor can create some weird rankings as well. Complicating that is the fact that we are trying to create variety within a number of organizational rankings.

I do know this: everytime we make an adjustment or change, some other problem creeps up.

We need to scrap the whole system and try something new. It will continue to be looked at in detail before the release of TB2, and playtested until we puke to make sure it's at least as realistic as the WBC/WBA/IBF!

Jim

Jim,

Maybe this is oversimplifying it, but what if the system was designed so it could be overridden by the gamer at any time. For instance... if the IBF decided to drop a fighter to from #4 to #10 (for some strange reason), all you'd have to do is drag and drop the fighter to whatever position you wanted him (or her) to be in and everyone else below would simply move down one notch.

It's done that way at times in real life. Why not the simulation?

As for the jab ending the fight... Mike Williams (a heavyweight from the 80's) was stunned and floored several times with jabs. I think, if I remember correctly, it was on the undercard of Tyson vs. Spinks, but I could be wrong.

I've had jabs end fights before - even back in the days of the board game. I just assumed that the fighter was just about out on his feet (due to the points scored against him) and the "jab" was all it took to leave him sagging against the ropes, defenseless, on the seat of his pants unable to rise, etc.

Anyway, I don't think it's too much of a problem to get around with a little imagination

Jim

It's been ages since I played it, but I think that in the Title Bout board game, a fight could be stopped only if a hard punch landed, even though the fighter was up to his limit in points scored against him.

In real life, I've never seen a fight stopped by a jab. The closest was a fight between Larry Holmes and Larry Jones. Holmes had his jab working perfectly that night - I winced every time it landed on Jones' face. However, I think the fight was stopped after Larry landed an assortment of hooks in addition to the jabs.

[djday45]

Originally Posted by Jim Trunzo

As far as the rankings - I'm mystified. That's Tom's routines and it's a thankless task. The biggest problem is that people are used to watching the ratings that are arbitrarily decided upon by the "alphabet groups". There's no logic, in many cases, to their decisions. However, if you go simply by the numbers (as we did originally), the competition factor can create some weird rankings as well. Complicating that is the fact that we are trying to create variety within a number of organizational rankings.

I do know this: everytime we make an adjustment or change, some other problem creeps up.

We need to scrap the whole system and try something new. It will continue to be looked at in detail before the release of TB2, and playtested until we puke to make sure it's at least as realistic as the WBC/WBA/IBF!

Jim

Myself I would not like to see the alpahabet rating system modelled. We all know those ratings are a corrupt joke.

Something along the lines of the Ring magazine system would be much better.

I would lose the system based on ranking points and imstead base it on automatically rising or falling in the ratings depending on who you beat/lost two.

For example if a fighter ranked 18 beats the number 5 ranked fighter he should automatically be ranked number 5.

The previously ranked number 5 fighter can drop a number of ranks depending on the manner of his loss.
Split/Majority - 1 place
Un. Decision - 2 places
TKO stoppage - 3 places
KO stoppage - 4 places.

Something simple like that. The champion is always rated above the division until beaten then he enters the division ratings again depending on the manner of his loss.

If a fight is a draw the lower ranked fighter automatically gains the spot below the higher ranked fighter.

when fighters drop in the rankings due to losses those underneath them automatically rise up one spot.

I know it sounds overly simple but it would be accurate and fighters would gain rankings depending on WHO they beat and we would have none of this last 10 fights with a big result dropping off the radar nonsense.

rgds
Dean

[Bogie]

I really (really) like the idea of being able to change the rankings ourselves, the drag and drop idea would be very cool!
Bogie

[Cap]

Originally Posted by Jim Trunzo

Well, I understand what happened with the stoppage. The "jab" scored enough points to trigger the stoppage. Had the commentary read "a vicious left hook", all would have been well The obvious problem here is that you never know exactly when the "number" for a TKO will occur so you can't dictate the punch type or comment to make it "fit" every time. It's the sequence of events that make it impossible: points previously scored (check for TKO), next punch (add points/check for TKO) = print commentary. And with jabs - every one can't be "jolting" or "powerful, head-snapping". It's a tricky situation but we'll look into it.

As far as the rankings - I'm mystified. That's Tom's routines and it's a thankless task. The biggest problem is that people are used to watching the ratings that are arbitrarily decided upon by the "alphabet groups". There's no logic, in many cases, to their decisions. However, if you go simply by the numbers (as we did originally), the competition factor can create some weird rankings as well. Complicating that is the fact that we are trying to create variety within a number of organizational rankings.

I do know this: everytime we make an adjustment or change, some other problem creeps up.

We need to scrap the whole system and try something new. It will continue to be looked at in detail before the release of TB2, and playtested until we puke to make sure it's at least as realistic as the WBC/WBA/IBF!

Jim

Jim, thanks for the response. Has the team given any thought to revitalizing the blow-by-blow commentary? I see this as a huge component of the sim. Consider the writings of Charles E. van Loan, particularly "Inside the Ropes" and his classic collection of short stories of the ring "Taking the Count". One of his short stories is available to read on the internet. His work would be a great source for authentic "old time" terminology for use in the game's commentary. And please give some thought to reducing the number of times we see that "Both Predict a Win" line. I cringe at the sure knowledge I'll see it in every fight.

Good luck.

Cap

[Cap]

Bumped for Viewing by Senor Santiago Trunzo.