Suggestions: Customization

[battists]

This suggestion thread is designed to collect suggestions for the next version of OOTP, on the following topic:

Customization

Includes
- Suggestions related to the customizable features in the game, such as nations, names, injuries, skin elements, logos, etc.

Excludes
- FaceGen, covered by a separate thread

Instructions
We will use this thread to collect suggestions on the above topic. Later on, we hope to present this information back to the community in a way that would allow you to vote and prioritize certain features.

If you would like to participate, here are the rules!

1. Only 1 suggestion per post.
2. Suggestions must be on-topic for the thread.
3. Constructive, non-inflammatory suggestions only.
4. No comments on others' suggestions are necessary. That means, we don't need 15 posts in the thread saying "Great idea!" or "I agree!"
5. Please don't link to other forum threads as your way of making suggestions. ("My suggestion can be found HERE.") If it's important enough to you that you want it in this thread, then it should be important enough to put it in the format I've asked for here!
6. You can certainly post suggestions that conflict with or build upon earlier suggestions.
7. Mockups are welcomed, they really help Markus see what you're interested in accomplishing.

Format for Suggestions

Suggestion
What is your suggestion? Be as specific as possible; include the screen you're talking about, if applicable.

Reason
Why do you think this is important? If this is to correct what you perceive as a problem in OOTP 2007, what is that problem? Be as specific as possible.

Priority
In your opinion, how important is this suggestion?
High (MUST have), Medium (should have), Low (nice to have))


Handy Cut-and-Paste Suggestion Form:

Suggestion


Reason


Priority


Thanks for participating!

Steve

[battists]

Suggestion
Find a way to showcase custom logos more, both in-game and in the HTML reports.

Reason
Many modders make astounding custom logos, but the sizes used in the game really reduce the visual effect of these logos. If there is a way to showcase these, they vastly improve the visual appeal of the game.

Priority
High

[Muzamba]

I realize this is an extremely general request, but...

Suggestion
Make as many things editable/customizable in the game as possible.

Reason
Simply put, the more control we have over the functionality and appearance of OOTP, the happier most of us are.

Priority
Generally speaking, VERY HIGH. Of course, some things being customizable are more important than others.

[Qrusher14242]

Suggestion
Improve Ballpark editing. Make it easier to set up photos for ballparks. Maybe have it like logos, where it looks for anaheim_stadium.jpg or something like that. Also, allow adding/deleting of ballparks. Make it so when in historical leagues when a new ballpark is introduced, it doesnt overwrite the old ballpark

Reason
Very hard and time consuming to type in the filename of each ballpark. Also, hard to keep track of ballparks if you have a lot of them

Priority
High

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by battists

Suggestion
Find a way to showcase custom logos more, both in-game and in the HTML reports.

Reason
Many modders make astounding custom logos, but the sizes used in the game really reduce the visual effect of these logos. If there is a way to showcase these, they vastly improve the visual appeal of the game.

Priority
High

Agreed, and let me build upon the above.

First, team logos should, as much as is reasonably possible, be presented at the full 150x150 size (the size at which the logos are originally created at). Obviously this can't be done on every game screen, but certainly some could be improved. A team's home page, for example, ought to sport the team logo at full size somewhere at the top (at some point I'm going to try redesigning the team home page so as to provide at least one possible example).

Second, in cases where a team logo must be shown smaller, then allow a team secondary logo to be used instead. Real ballclubs have primary and secondary logos, so why not teams in OOTP? Since team uniforms now allow separate jersey and cap logos, then allowing the game screens to support team primary and secondary logos seems a natural follow-up.

I suggest the secondary logos have a smaller defined size (say 75x75, or half the primary logo size). Primary and secondary team logos could be distinguished by different file names. In cases where the game cannot find a dedicated secondary logo, then it can use the primary logo instead and scale it to fit the available space.

Team logo sizes in general should also be consistent as much as possible across game screens, ideally in no more than two or three sizes. This reduces the amount of scaling the game has to do to fit logos onto the various game screens.

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion
In game Modder portal

Reason
The manager has a page with links to all important functions. Modders should too. It should centralize links to customizing logos, uniforms, team colors, FaceGen, schedules, ballparks, and whatever else can be modded.

Priority
HIGH

[Stu]

Suggestion
Provide a modding tool that allows you to edit players, rosters, stadiums, stats, etc.

Reason
For modders, editing players, rosters, stadiums, stats, etc on a large scale can be extremely cumbersome in the game. A simple external editor would allow mods to be created much easier.

Priority
Medium

[Who Killed Kenny?]

Suggestion
Allow for Third-party plugins

Reason
Currently we have all these fantastic 3rd-party mods that use the data dumps to do some quite awesome things. What would be really neat is to expose what is normally exposed by the data dumps to utilities that run within the game. So all team, player, and coach information would be available for a savvy programmer to alter. This would not affect the proprietary pieces, only things that are available.

Everyone who owns the game would be able to run a plugin (no more PC vs Mac wars) and within game (for the non-computer savvy).

Priority
Low

[Who Killed Kenny?]

Originally Posted by Who Killed Kenny?

Suggestion
Allow for Third-party plugins

Suggestion
Plugins to overwrite certain AI functions of the game

Reason
Going along the same lines of my previous post, this time allow for certain functions to be overrwritten. My example would be Hall of Fame. I don't really care for its election process currently. If I was able to overwrite it I would replace the election with something I do like (see Bill James' HoF work). Then my plugin would overwrite what is there and seamlessly works within game.

In Object Oriented Programming, extending classes or interfaces so that new functionality is created is common. Basically for the chosen AI functions (like HoF election) define that the function takes parameters X and Y and must return output Z. Include a unit test that the programmer must pass and everything should work fine in game.

I understand this is a reach. But it'd be a good built in feature.

Priority
Low

[idle_dreams73]

Would love to see a better schedule editor.
Currently I'd rate the schedule editor as 'barely passable'.
I haven't worked out in my head yet exactly how to go about such a thing...but there just has to be a way to come up with a better design for creating and editing schedules.
Somewhere out there on the web is something called the Stickware schedule generator. I haven't even tried to locate it for attempting use with ootp07 because my first attempts at trying to figure out how to export and import schedules in ootp07 ended in feeling frustrated and giving up.
I don't know if there's even currently a way to export a schedule to a spreadsheet and alter it there and re-import it...and, really, at least for now, I've given up on caring whether or not there even is.
Instead, I just 'bit the bullet' and spent a few days going through the tedious process of entering a schedule one series at a time.
I know there's even a thread here at the forums where others have pre-made schedules available, but it would be great to not have to sift through them, download them, etc. and instead to have an intuitive and useful means of creating and editing schedules in the game.
thanks.

[injury log]

Suggestion

Greater flexibility with off-field injuries. In particular, the severity boolean should be changed (it should at least be possible to make off-field injuries automatically severe). It should also be possible to determine the frequency of individual off-field injuries; it is impossible to make an off-field injury common now, for example.

Reason

Off-field injuries offer a great opportunity to recreate real-life situations, but the implementation is too inflexible. To take just one example, it is impossible for me to customize the injury database to recreate the minor league steroid suspensions of 2005, because it is impossible to force off-field injuries to be severe, and impossible to force certain injuries to occur frequently enough. If the severity boolean was changed to a 2-bit value (0=light/day-to-day, 1= light/day-to-day or mild, 2= mild or severe, 3= automatically severe) that would help, although an injury time implementation as in injuries.txt would be preferable. A frequency value would also be very useful for a variety of customization purposes.

Priority

High.



EDIT- it would also be useful to be able to attach a specific diagnosis to an off-field injury; at the moment a diagnosis is chosen at random from among all on-field injuries that might fall in a similar category.

[injury log]

Suggestion

Implement a new category of injuries: suspensions.

Reason

Suspensions cannot be implemented correctly as injuries at present, because injuries are counted in days, not in games. This injury implementation would allow a variety of customization opportunities; disciplinary suspensions could be triggered by off-field events (for visa issues, missing the team flight, bar-room brawls, or in a customized database, steroid use, narcotics use, etc), or by on-field events (doctoring the baseball, corking the bat, charging the mound, beanballing). Suspensions would need a new tag (code 7) in the off-field file. In order for suspensions to work well, there would need to be some control over their frequency; if a customizer is attempting to recreate the 2005 season, there would need to be far fewer suspensions for baseball doctoring than for PEDs.

Note that I am not requesting that, say, steroid suspensions be added to the database, merely that the architecture exist for customizers to modify the database to reflect whatever scenario they choose.

Priority

High, especially if ejections are implemented.

[injury log]

Not sure if this is the best place...

Suggestion

Greater flexibility when choosing 'Create Fictional Player'. Besides position and current player experience, I'd like to be able to choose:

-current ability (in stars)
-potential (in stars)
-player type (e.g. for pitchers: flamethrower, finesse, neutral, etc; for batters speedster, power hitter, contact guy, all glove, etc)

Reason

Creating new rosters is inordinately time-consuming. I tried it, and for most prospects, I neither had the information to enter potential ratings accurately, nor did I want to know when I started game-play what precisely those ratings were. If I could have entered- 'Dellin Betances, very raw, SP, flamethrower, 3 star potential' I could have generated the player in a few seconds, and then corrected one or two details (age, name) that might be important.

Priority

Medium.

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by Stu

Suggestion
Provide a modding tool that allows you to edit players, rosters, stadiums, stats, etc.

Reason
For modders, editing players, rosters, stadiums, stats, etc on a large scale can be extremely cumbersome in the game. A simple external editor would allow mods to be created much easier.

Priority
Medium

I would echo this, but believe it to be a HIGH priority. The fact that there was no 07 roster to start the game is 1000% due to the cumbersome nature of updating quickly in the game. Even FM has a better editor and that editor stinks.

For a game that's so powerful, a little editor that allows for rapid updating or importing of information would be a really huge addition.

[nanaimo]

Suggestion:

Add feature similar to facegen that relates to stadiums. Game could even have say a database of 100 different major league stadiums with corresponding correct dimensions and pictures.

Reason:

Facegen was the added jewelry that really pushed this game for me this year. The stadium pictures would send me into fits. Third party tools are great and appreciated but not always user friendly for dummies (me). For a lot of fictional league solo players, being able to set up a league and set that the Vancouver team has grass and a retractable roof and then the game assigns an appropriate picture and park factors would be very cool.

Priority:

Maybe low unless you consider that this will really help market the game. The parks baseball is played in are our cathedrals. They help make the game what it is. What a fantastic selling feature and way to really generate interest in the game.

[targy]

Suggestion

Make it so that ball park factors for the stadiums stay the same and do not reset every year

Reason:

You have to overide the settings you changes from the year before..

Priority:

Medium High It now takes too long to change the dimensions every year for every stadium

[Ktulu]

Suggestion:
Add a function to assign the major league team's colors(and even uniform styles) to all affiliates in one-click.

Reason:
It would be a quick way to create continuity in all organizations when you don't have the time, or the need, to set up logos and uniforms for all teams.

Priority:
Low, but it should be quick and easy

[HerbD]

Suggestion
Allow the user to edit the stats line to produce ratings. My preference would be to have two seperate stat lines, one for Vrighties and one for Vlefties.


Reason
I believe this would make things easier for anyone trying to edit player ratings. Especially for roster makers but for everyone in general.


Priority
High...it is just horrible the way it is now with the trial and error approach.

[Le Grande Orange]

Suggestion:

When importing a schedule file, allow the user to specify exactly which team in the league will use which TeamID number from the schedule file.

Reason:

Though the handling of schedules is much better, there is still room for a little improvement. There still can be an issue at times when importing a schedule in regards to being able to precisely specify which team in the league will matchup to which TeamID number in the schedule file. So being able to specify exactly ahead of time which TeamID belongs to which team would be quite helpful.

It'd probably be best to place this specifying option into some sort of "Advanced settings" area so as to avoid more casual or new users from accidentally messing up their league schedules.

Priority:

Medium.

[Raidergoo]

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