Cool Historical Idea

[Trav876]

For historical transactions, would it be too hard to have the "news stories" mention the transactions that happen, like they do in the non-historical transaction games?

I think that'd be cool... where when Randy Johnson gets traded at the deadline to Houston, for example, there's a news story (for those of us who follow the news lines in-game)

Otherwise you don't really know it happened, until you check "historical transactions" on its own.

[thehef]

I think the issue here might be that the historical transactions database isn't tracking complete transactions. For example, it's not tracking that on 1/11/77 Bill Buckner and Ivan De Jesus were traded from the Dodgers to the Cubs in exchange for Rick Monday and Mike Garman. Rather, it's only tracking separately that on 1/11/77 Buckner went to the Cubs, De Jesus went to the Cubs, Monday went to LA, and Garman went to LA.

That said, I could envision a second database (the first being the historical txns db) being created that tracks the details of a whole bunch of "significant" trades (& other txns) throughout major league history, and then an indicator being placed in the hist txns db to show the existence of add'l details in the 2nd db, and so then when that hist txn occurs in OOTP, it prompts OOTP to generate an article with a headline such as "Buckner and Monday Exchanged in Swap of Outfielders" or whatever... and then the details are included in a brief article gives a few more details (that are sourced from a few details that would be in the 2nd db). The article itself could then be a mix of player data from OOTP, such as "Buckner hit .315 in 151 games with the Dodgers last season..." and information stored in the 2nd db, such as "Monday was originally drafted by the Athletics in 1965, and is expected to start in center field for the Dodgers." I mean there are a lot of different ways this could be configured, but something like that...

In order for that to be a reasonable suggested feature, though, that 2nd database would need to be created by a user. Probably wouldn't be difficult (as all of the pertinent data for "significant" historical txns is available on retrosheet.org ~ although "significant" would certainly be open to interpretation), but it would be time-consuming... Then again, to start by restricting the 2nd db to including only info regarding txns that involve HOFers and maybe others who reached specific thresholds (batting champs, 300+ HR's, 200 Wins but not in the HOF), it might not be that time-consuming as a starting point...

[jksander]

I would love to learn how to do stuff like this but I have zero database experience.

[fredbeene]

db is my life.
they don't structure the data correctly
they continue to maintain 1999 HTML 'reports'

[thehef]

Originally Posted by jksander

I would love to learn how to do stuff like this but I have zero database experience.

What I meant by "database" here...

Originally Posted by thehef

In order for that to be a reasonable suggested feature, though, that 2nd database would need to be created by a user.

... is the simple definition of database that basically means a collection of data. For example, if you have, say, an Excel file with the names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and birthdates of your friends and family, you have a simple database... And the source of the historical transactions that are used in OOTP is really just a simple Excel/csv file. So what would be needed with this idea is simply a "collection of data" in a simple csv or Excel format. The structure of the "collection of data" need not be complex at all. The real work is in the gathering of the data to be placed in the database. And that work wouldn't so much be difficult as it would be tedious & time-consuming. But very doable

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by thehef

I think the issue here might be that the historical transactions database isn't tracking complete transactions. For example, it's not tracking that on 1/11/77 Bill Buckner and Ivan De Jesus were traded from the Dodgers to the Cubs in exchange for Rick Monday and Mike Garman. Rather, it's only tracking separately that on 1/11/77 Buckner went to the Cubs, De Jesus went to the Cubs, Monday went to LA, and Garman went to LA.

This is the issue I think. If the game executed this as a trade it would show up in league news but since the game treats each transaction as a roster move the game ignores the moves as being normal roster movement.

What should happen is the transaction should happen in game. A trade should be executed as a trade, a signing as a signing, release of a player should show up as a release in the transactions page.