OOTP13: Is some kind of in-game graphics engine still on the table?

[hluraven]

Originally Posted by thbroman

This makes sense to me. By the way, I happen to be one of those astonishing few who plays the fictional/fantasy version of the FM. I know that Christian Ronaldo is playing for someone or other up there in the upper echelons of the soccer world, but down where my team begins its epic quest for the Premiership, it doesn't matter!

Getting really OT but I'm playing FM11 and in 2032 I still haven't made the Premier with my save, got as far as the Championship from the lowest level but not quite made it yet. At least with FM12 only being available by Steam I actually will wait for the final patch before playing it so I have a while longer to reach the top

[Chicagofan76]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Tell that to Sports Interactive. They sell a million copies of their soccer management game world-wide each year.

The only problem is that US customers so far haven't discovered their love for such games yet. Hopefully this will change some day. It's just a different culture of gaming at the moment...

We hate soccer which is all that it comes down to. Football, basketball baseball, hockey, NASCAR, golf even watching paint dry are more popular in the US than soccer. I can't tell you 1 person that I know that roots for the Chicago Fire or anyone in the Premier League. The Fire have had more success then Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Bears, Hawks combined in the last 10 or so seasons, yet Chicagoans overall don't care.

I only read page 1, so I dont know if something has changed from what I had originally heard about graphics in 13.
Would I like to buy 13 whether it has graphics or not, yes. Will I? Undecided. Even the rudimentary graphics that have been talked about by Markus before is still better to show the game then the current setup. Wouldn't graphics attract the Nintendo generation without alienating the Strat-O-Matic generation?
Would I love to see my SS go deep into the hole diving for the ball and throw from his knees to throw Ichiro out at 1st, heck yes. I am a fan no matter what (within reason) OOTP decides on this subject, but you would take the best baseball simulation and make it better with graphics.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by hluraven

The main difference I can see is that nearly all football management games concentrate solely on taking over a real team now and playing into the future. Taking a historic team or a fantasy team is as good as unheard of and holds absolutely no interest to the vast majority of gamers. (EDIT: Referring to FM gamers and equivalent in other sports).

Might that be because there is less connection or interest in football history as there is for baseball? It's been suggested that a big reason for the fascination for baseball history is because the sport has over a century of detailed statistics. And that long record of statistics is what helps fans be interested in past seasons since one can use that wealth of numbers to compare the players and teams of today to those of the past.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Lusche

I think the console version of fifa 12 sold 4mio in the first 2 weeks and thats without pc sales and only counting xbox360 and ps3 ...

and I think its worse than madden

From what I've seen Madden is worse than FIFA.

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Might that be because there is less connection or interest in football history as there is for baseball? It's been suggested that a big reason for the fascination for baseball history is because the sport has over a century of detailed statistics. And that long record of statistics is what helps fans be interested in past seasons since one can use that wealth of numbers to compare the players and teams of today to those of the past.

Probably. I would like to see classic seasons in FIFA and / or FM though.

[thbroman]

Originally Posted by Lusche

I think the console version of fifa 12 sold 4mio in the first 2 weeks and thats without pc sales and only counting xbox360 and ps3 ...

and I think its worse than madden

It's clearly all about playing with the joystick, . . .
And I won't even attach an emoticon to reinforce the suggestivity of it all.

[the_32_pitch]

No no no on any type of graphic engine. The game is about stats and ratings. Numbers. It's not about graphics. If you want graphics go to MLB The Show or some other action game.

OOTP is a simulation for intelligent minds that like math and numbers and like to pour through statistics that the average person would find no enjoyment in.

A graphics engine runs completely counter to everything OOTP represents.

[the_32_pitch]

If time is spent it should be spent on improving the computer AI not on graphics. The biggest flaw in the game right now is how badly the AI handles teams on its own.

Time should be spent improving the AI and not on graphics.

[Henry]

Originally Posted by the_32_pitch

No no no on any type of graphic engine. The game is about stats and ratings. Numbers. It's not about graphics. If you want graphics go to MLB The Show or some other action game.

OOTP is a simulation for intelligent minds that like math and numbers and like to pour through statistics that the average person would find no enjoyment in.

A graphics engine runs completely counter to everything OOTP represents.

I think you missed a few description above 32 - any addition of graphics would only be superficial in that it would not determine outcomes - only emulate the test play in graphic form. It would be the book's cover - not its pages.

[HH20xx convert]

Originally Posted by Henry

I think you missed a few description above 32 - any addition of graphics would only be superficial in that it would not determine outcomes - only emulate the test play in graphic form. It would be the book's cover - not its pages.

Henry, I think you missed (or chose to ignore) the tone underlying his comments. He is just another poster claiming his vision of the program trumps all others. I hope we get graphics-- but I don't claim my opinion is the only valid choice.

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by HH20xx convert

but I don't claim my opinion is the only valid choice.

The opinion of Markus is the only valid choice.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by the_32_pitch

If time is spent it should be spent on improving the computer AI not on graphics. The biggest flaw in the game right now is how badly the AI handles teams on its own.

Time should be spent improving the AI and not on graphics.

They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive (Although for a small company like OOTP, it's easier said than done). Graphics doesn't, in itself, mean that AI is being neglected.

[OakDragon]

[QUOTE=Bigrod;3212613]

Originally Posted by OakDragon

OOTP already has text to speech abilities. You can enable them in the app.cfg file. Player intros can also be used. I did them for all of mlb teams for ootp 11. You can easily create your own if you run windows using sound recorder or dl mine and use a sound editing program to cut and paste to create your own. There available on Padresfan's site. There's both home and away intros included.

Seriously??? Thanks! I did not know that!

In that case, this needs an option to turn it on/off in the preferences.

[ike121212]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

it will not include a 2D/3D representation engine (people on a field running around, throwing the ball etc.) because the freelance programmer who was supposed to do this engine for us (basically for free) got a real job in the meantime and thus could no longer work on it.

I'm shocked to hear that this was the plan for the primary release feature. I'd rather have no graphics than bad graphics, so it's probably a good thing that the plug got pulled on this plan early.

[OakDragon]

[QUOTE=OakDragon;3213107]

Originally Posted by Bigrod

Seriously??? Thanks! I did not know that!

In that case, this needs an option to turn it on/off in the preferences.

Hmm, do I need to do something else to get TTS for the PBP? It's not doing anything (on my Mac).

[Peterk]

You know, I think a lot of it comes down to whether people sim or play out their games. Simmers naturally will see no advantage to graphics. People who play out their games may find that they get tired of the game a lot more slowly if graphics were present. The play by play is excellent but it does get repetitive after a few hundred games and then one pretty much stops reading it and starts playing on a sort of auto pilot, and soon after that burn out will probably occur. I've been playing a lot since I got v11 about 3-4 months ago, but after 7 seasons (about 1200 games played out...yikes!) I think I need a break and am done for a little while.

Off topic, but just for fun and to keep my coding chops sharp, I started fooling around with coding a little graphics engine this afternoon (it's 2D for now like the old FM display) and I learned tons about baseball I never knew before. Did you know that the infield area is a wedge of a 95 foot radius circle centered on the pitchers mound? Or that a 100mph fastball moves about 142 feet a second?

It's quite a challenge to build up a baseball field using basic geometric shapes. Had to go back and refresh myself on all that high school and college geometry, trigonometry and physics that I forgot.

Step one of the project is to be able to generate a batted ball (various types of contact and hit velocity) to any of the OOTP field positions (there's 40 in the infield). Just that is likely to take quite a while since I have to convert all of those to X,Y co-ordinates on a "real" field.

I'm imagining that OOTP is giving me the end result of the play and I have to generate something that displays it. One problem I'm seeing right away if this were for real, is that the text play by play would have to be cued and driven by the graphics rather than running freely by itself on the side.

Originally Posted by the_32_pitch

No no no on any type of graphic engine. The game is about stats and ratings. Numbers. It's not about graphics. If you want graphics go to MLB The Show or some other action game.

OOTP is a simulation for intelligent minds that like math and numbers and like to pour through statistics that the average person would find no enjoyment in.

A graphics engine runs completely counter to everything OOTP represents.

[conception]

[QUOTE=OakDragon;3213107]

Originally Posted by Bigrod

Seriously??? Thanks! I did not know that!

In that case, this needs an option to turn it on/off in the preferences.

I'd love to see some kind of guide or tutorial for how to do this and where to get what you need for this to work.

[Chicagofan76]

Originally Posted by OakDragon
OOTP already has text to speech abilities. You can enable them in the app.cfg file. Player intros can also be used. I did them for all of mlb teams for ootp 11. You can easily create your own if you run windows using sound recorder or dl mine and use a sound editing program to cut and paste to create your own. There available on Padresfan's site. There's both home and away intros included.

can someone create a tutorial on how to create this for non modern/fictional leagues.
Sorry i dont know if oak or B-rod said this.

[Bigrod]

[QUOTE=OakDragon;3213122]

Originally Posted by OakDragon

Hmm, do I need to do something else to get TTS for the PBP? It's not doing anything (on my Mac).

Sorry, can't help you there...I know nothing about macs. Gonna have to ask someone else or Google "Mac Speech Recognition" or something similar..See if this will help.
Hack Attack: Make your Mac's Speech Recognition work for you

[Bigrod]

[QUOTE=conception;3213125
I'd love to see some kind of guide or tutorial for how to do this and where to get what you need for this to work.[/QUOTE]

I'm not that familiar with it, I run win 7 ultimate and the speech engine is built in. So to activate it in windows, find the app.cfg file in in your documents. if you can't locate it manually, you can open it within the game. Start the game and select "Preferences" and click on the "Troubleshooting" tab then on the bottom left, click on "Open the folder containing file app.cfg". Open app.cfg in notepad or similar text editor. The first few lines will look like this.I've highlighted the line you need to edit in Red.

 
CURRENT_SKIN
 ootp 12
show_rebuild_skin
 0
FULL_SCREEN
 0
HEIGHT_UNIT
 0
MENU_MODE
 1
WEIGHT_UNIT
 2
WINDOW_SIZE
 13
add_debug_info_to_in_game_commentary
 0
cache_templates
 1
compress_html
 1
debug_templates
 0
trace_mode
 0
enable_performance_tests
 0
show_debug_dialog
 0
use_player_involvement_caches
 1
disable_sound
 0
enable_text_to_speech
0

Simply change the 0 to 1 to turn it on. Likewise, change it to 0 to turn it off. Save it and restart the game and that's it. Now when you play out a game, it will read the pbp, but it's not all that great. But if one wants to take the time and teach Microsoft Speech how to pronounce the words correctly, it will be better. You can also get different voices for it. Most are costly, but there are some good free ones. I think it's called TrueVoice.
If you don't have windows speech already, google it. It's free from the microsoft website. In winxp I used to use Microsoft Speech 5.1
Hope this helps.

[SSG Troyer]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Tell that to Sports Interactive. They sell a million copies of their soccer management game world-wide each year.

The only problem is that US customers so far haven't discovered their love for such games yet. Hopefully this will change some day. It's just a different culture of gaming at the moment...

Thing is, most of the people I talk about OOTP and FM to that say, "That sounds great! Must be lots of fun!" aren't gamers...