CATO to OOTPB 2007 - Calling all programmers

[JWay]

I know Markus is doing his doing something special here if he gets it done, I pray that he does. It'd be a programming miracle. Good luck Markus!

[spiffamous]

Originally Posted by battists

This is generally right, although I'd say you might not see news of it until 2-3 weeks after patch 3. I do want to mention again, just in case anyone cares, that Markus hasn't promised that this will happen. He's going to take a look and see what he can do, but the fact is, he wasn't involved in Cato in any way, the original author isn't around, and he isn't sure whether it's even possible, given the way 6.5 and Cato worked, compared to 2007.

I'm just hoping this isn't going to turn into one of those H2H things where people complain years later that he "didn't deliver on a promise" if he can't get it to work.

Steve

Unfortunately this (http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...highlight=cato) sounds like a promise to code it:

"Third, the Cato-OOTP 2007 conversion will have to wait for a few weeks, but since I will code it so you can import your leagues history after importing it into 2007 itself, there should be no problem to convert your online league right now"

[John P. Yuda]

Originally Posted by battists

This is generally right, although I'd say you might not see news of it until 2-3 weeks after patch 3. I do want to mention again, just in case anyone cares, that Markus hasn't promised that this will happen. He's going to take a look and see what he can do, but the fact is, he wasn't involved in Cato in any way, the original author isn't around, and he isn't sure whether it's even possible, given the way 6.5 and Cato worked, compared to 2007.

I'm just hoping this isn't going to turn into one of those H2H things where people complain years later that he "didn't deliver on a promise" if he can't get it to work.

Steve

Nothing like the smell of an official backpedal starting in the morning...

[Chappy]

Ha, spiffamous, I was going to bring up the same post.

[Chappy]

I'm gonna be blunt here for a second...

I am fully aware that the catobase was not Markus's creation, and that he is under no obligation to make his game work with it. BUT, having one continous history is basically a make-or-break issue for my online league. OOTP6.5 is a great game, and we will be happy to continue using it if we must, despite all the bells and whistles of OOTP 2007.

As more and more time goes by, I am so thankful that I didn't take Markus' word (as quoted above) and convert the league.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by battists

I'm just hoping this isn't going to turn into one of those H2H things where people complain years later that he "didn't deliver on a promise" if he can't get it to work.

Steve

I'm sure he'll be able to do it. As I've said a few times I'm willing to have a look at it (if I had a 6.5 league on the 1st Jan xxxx to convert and the relevant catobase.mdb to look at), but we'll wait till we get a yay or nay from Markus.

[battists]

Originally Posted by John P. Yuda

Nothing like the smell of an official backpedal starting in the morning...

Well, it ain't a backpedal from me. You won't find any posts from me promising that it would happen.

But, I guess I can't speak for Markus in this regard. I wasn't aware of that post.

[Killebrew]

This is probably repeating what others have already said, but here goes:

The main reason some of us are interested in the catobase-data-into-OOTP 2007 project is due to us wanting the historical league info that was left our of the league import functions of OOTP 2006/2007. Is that fairly accurate?

No one should be expecting any type of Catobase data that is not already in OOTP 2007 to be part of this project. Things like the baseballref inspired 'similar players', black/gray ink tests, and HOF standards are not part of the deal, and neither are the winshares of Catobase. What I believe we're hoping for is stuff like historical team/league data like year by year standings, awards, playoff/Series winners, and perhaps even GM records. If that is accurate then wasn't much of that info in the previous game versions that support OOTP 2007 imports (OOTP 6/6.5)?

[theasfl]

I endorse the above post.

[Chappy]

I don't think I am understanding what Kbrew is asking.

[Schrodinger's Dog]

http://www.stata.com/products/transfer.html

I stopped reading the thread early as it ventured off from dealing with the presented problem. Could some software help anyone get working?

[andy m]

Originally Posted by Chappy

I don't think I am understanding what Kbrew is asking.

Read it again then, it is pretty clear.

[enuttage]

Originally Posted by Chappy

I don't think I am understanding what Kbrew is asking.

I believe he's asking folks to temper their expectations of what will be converted if Markus is successful in adding this functionality. No miracle drug here.

[eriqjaffe]

Originally Posted by enuttage

I believe he's asking folks to temper their expectations of what will be converted if Markus is successful in adding this functionality. No miracle drug here.

Where are these placebos, and where can I get one?!

[Chappy]

Originally Posted by andy m

Read it again then, it is pretty clear.

"If that is accurate then wasn't much of that info in the previous game versions that support OOTP 2007 imports (OOTP 6/6.5)?" suggests to me that "year by year standings, awards, playoff/Series winners, and perhaps even GM records." import into the game, and they don't as far as I know...

[Killebrew]

My post could probably have been a bit clearer . I just tried to politely indicate that I was disappointed this important historical league info was not part of the original OOT7 2007 league import feature since that data was in the old OOTP version league. I suspect since much of the old historical data was in flat text files the parsing required would have taken far too long to make it a reasonable part of the OOTP 2007 design. Since Catobase stored this data yearly in one big database it's possible to pretty easily output this into flat files that might be importable into OOTP 2007 (using similar logic to how OOTP imports the Lahman data from master csv files).

One of the more challenging aspects of the proposed Catobase data import feature is that the OOTP Lahman historical imports happen when you start a league, while the Catobase data import would occur after a league has simmed for awhile (unless a league has not yet converted to OOTP 2007). Another challenge is that there are several different active versions of the Catobase DB. It seems to me this would require different Catobase data export scripts based on what version of Catobase you used (not really very difficult though).

If I were in Markus' shoes I'd request that the OOTP community handle the various Catobase version export scripts (all the scripts would need to output to the same Lahman format csv's) while he focused on importing this old Lahman style csv data and having that data displayed as the leagues historical data within the game. This design might include league setup option called "Import old historical data" that uses a textbox path to the users lahman style csv files that he generated. If Markus can design the new import feature like this then I think it may be possible to import historical league data from any old OOTP6/6.5 league, regardless whether your league used Catobase or not. All that would be required is OOTP community created parsing scripts for OOTP6 and OOTP 6.5. Many of us would prefer Markus to also write these scripts but personally I'd prefer that he focused on the game import functionality exclusively as that would increase the odds of this project actually becoming reality for us.

This is obviously a bit complicated to explain, that's my excuse for why my previous post was not clearer. It's also true as some posters pointed out that I don't want users to think that this feature is going to add all the Catobase bells and whistles to OOTP 2007, I'm pretty certain the developers intention here was just to get the key missing historical data like team W-L, playoff results, etc., so yes, Catobase users should not be expecting the moon here!

Originally Posted by Chappy

"If that is accurate then wasn't much of that info in the previous game versions that support OOTP 2007 imports (OOTP 6/6.5)?" suggests to me that "year by year standings, awards, playoff/Series winners, and perhaps even GM records." import into the game, and they don't as far as I know...

You're correct, that data does not import into OOTP 2007, but most of that data was in the pre-conversion OOTP6/6.5 files so it's a kind of a shame this proposed feature has focused on the Catobase users instead of anyone who still had their last OOTP6/6.5 league file before conversion. Again, it seems to me that data parsing scripts could be written by the OOTP community to extract the old historical data from the old OOTP league files and you'd end up with the same kind of Lahman style csv files that you'd get from Catobase.

If Markus focuses on a new OOTP 2007 feature that successfully imports and displays Lahman style csv's that contain the historical data then I really think this could work, and depending on his design, it may even work for users without Catobase. Note that no matter what kind of design was implemented (if any), there would likely still be some or many empty historical data columns in the game! Hopefully that tempers expectations a bit after probably increasing the expectations of this proposed feature for non-Catobase users .

[jdettbarn]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

If I were in Markus' shoes I'd request that the OOTP community handle the various Catobase version export scripts (all the scripts would need to output to the same Lahman format csv's) while he focused on importing this old Lahman style csv data and having that data displayed as the leagues historical data within the game.

This has been done for awhile and Markus has the utility. Ryan W (I think it was him) created a utility to export the latest Catobase DB into Lahman format.

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by jdettbarn

This has been done for awhile and Markus has the utility. Ryan W (I think it was him) created a utility to export the latest Catobase DB into Lahman format.

If what you say is accurate then I'm hoping Markus is thinking along the lines I suggested in the last post. Note that at least 2, maybe three versions of such a user-made utility would need to be created to cover the various Catobase DB formats out there, and of course they would need to create the flat files in the same Lahman format.

[Long_Long_Name]

Eek. That probably means that Catobase pages would not be enough, that the database file would be necessary, correct?

[theasfl]

anything?