Anderson Utilities

[Gastric ReFlux]

I'm gonna give this a spin. I should have looked at it more closely yesterday, when I could have downloaded the DotNet redistributable through a broadband connection, and burned it to a CD. Oh well, there's plenty else to do while waiting for it to get sucked in through the modem straw.

[Comedian2004]

New version has been uploaded. Uninstall the previous version and empty the RETIRED PLAYERS folder.

After installing and verifying that your LEAGUESITE data is updated:

Run OOP1, click on CONFIG. Located league and LEAGUESITE location, enter a league name (i.e. 2000), click save. Click on CLOSE.

Click on TEAMS, click on CLOSE after teams load.

Click on Utility: Click on the listed buttons (in this order): Note: The last one will take 20-30 second PER TEAM.

INDEX PLAYERS - INDEX ALMANAC - ADD RETIRED - NEW SEASON - FIND ORPHAN

Now, everything is ready. Every player that has ever played, even if 3 games in the minors 15 years ago, his stats are now located in RETIRED PLAYERS. So, he is indexed and my program will locate him in seconds.

Everything looks good now. I fixed all of the known bugs and a few unknown bugs. Now will be working on the ratings section. Also a HTML output screen for the team.

RocknRoll

[Comedian2004]

No update, but just added the ability to search through any box scores, fixed a couple bugs with the draft #3 and #4 picks, added a routine that displays total wins and losses for each franchise and division titles in a sortable grid. Working on the team HTML output now. Have a team sheet for each team, showing wins/losses by year with total at bottom.

Next uploaded file will be a patch file, so no more uninstalling and re-installing. Just run the patch and let it do the work.

[Bonedwarf]

I thought you could already search box scores? Or is this the feature to do the almanac too?

Did come up with another idea. Since you now register every single player whoever played, a search feature to pull up within a certain range. So for example "Show me all players that had between 200 and 300 AB's between 1950 and 1967".

Still not got to play for a while, so I've not had the chance to play with the latest iteration yet.

Keep up the great work! And I would still like to know if you're going to be 6.12 and 6.5 compatible.

[Comedian2004]

Yes - there was a box score search feature before. It now lets you search almanac folders or any location.

That will be more an almanac function.

Not sure on the 6.5. I guess they are not going to ask me to be a beta tester on it. I am undecided on purchasing it yet.

[Bonedwarf]

I've already decided I'm not. Don't want to get into another argument in regards to the patch/expansion, but ultimately, I'm interested in just one of the additions, and it ain't worth $10.

Awesome you've put the almanac search in. Searching the box scores can turn up some interesting stuff.

Will endeavour to try the latest version tonight. (I don't like just playing for a couple of minutes, so I need a good half hour clear to really tinker. Plus I've got to output more league data.)

[Comedian2004]

Excyclopedia Update:

After dumping the whole program, I have a re-written version in progress that is coming along smooth.

Here is what is does:

You select the league you want to collect data on using the handy browse button. In this example, let's use a league that started in 1968 and is currently in 1975 at the start of the season.

The program first examines the team.dat file and pulls out the number of teams, names and abbreviations for the teams. (A tricky routine). It saves this information in a text file.

Now, it then starts in 1968. It loads in each p#### file and parces the html code. It pulls out the following information:

Year, Name, Nickname, Number, Team, Position, Age, desire for winner, loyalty, team leader skills, consistency, clutch, injury rating, star rating, salary, hitting ratings (contact, gap, power, eye and avoid k's) for both hitters and pitchers. It then pulls the pitcher ratings for pitchers, (stuff, control, movement and velocity), then pulls running speed, stealing, baserunning, sac, bunt for hit and hitter type. Also grabs the fielding ratings, including arms.

At this point, that is all it grabs. Next on the list to grab is hitting/pitching/fielding/postseason/minors and fielding stats.

Now, this is just for THIS year, 1968. It then adds it to a text file with commas between each field. It does this for every player in 1968 and then moves to 1969. It keeps going until it reaches the current year. So, it is pulling all of this information from the almanac. It takes about 15-30 seconds per year to play with the stats.

When done, it then loads all of this into a grid. Each column can be clicked on to sort up or down (like Excel). Every single player that ever played is listed here. If he played 10 seasons, he would have 10 listings.

Now, surrounding this grid are all sorts of gizmos and pull down menus. For instance, pull the team menu down and select Detroit and you just see everyone from Detroit. Pull down the position menu and select first base and you then have all of the first basemen from Detroit ever.

Now click the 'Show latest' radio button and you only see one of each player. You can specify years, 1920-1940 or 1920 only. Select age groups, 18-23 or 40-90.

Click a player's name and you get just the results from all of his years. At last, minor league totals and year by year fielding.

Click the SAVE DATABASE and it will prompt for a name, to pull up later. For instance, save the database of 1B from Detroit to look at later.

These databases (the extra ones you create or the main one), can easily be loaded into Excel or Access.

Click on the ADD CURRENT and it will merge in the stats from the current season, but not save it, since the season is not over.

At the beginning of each season, when you are ready to play game one, you enter the program and click ADD SEASON and it will add the latest season to the database. Or, if you simmed three seasons, it will add those three.

HTML output will be added later.

Screen shots to come this week and maybe a release this weekend.

[endgame]

Those sound like outstanding capabilities. I'm really looking forward to starting this season in order to generate some stats and check this out further. Good work! If it turns out your Utilities are not compatible with 6.5 this alone may give me a reason to keep a 6.12 league going. You must have had an epiphane of some sort to do the 180 on the direction you were headed with the Encyclopedia. Just a genius spark?

[Comedian2004]

I have some tricky code that had to work around a bug. If a player has an orgin that is more than 14 characters (I think it is 14), it will display one or two little squares. (how this got by the beta testers amazes me).

It will also do it if their nickname is too long. I am sure everyone has seen that in playing solo games. (How could that have never been fixed?)

When my program reads in that line, it removes the garbage character and then reads in the next line, if needed. Sometimes the character causes the line to break.

Another tricky part was reading pitchers and batters at the same time. It actually has an added routine (if position is a pitcher then...) to pull in the pitching ratings.

The only hard time I see with the rest of the program is reading in the fielding, since some players play multiple positions. It may be easier than I think, as it is reading all of the different ratings for multiple positions, it just causes it to have extra columns at the end showing this information and it can't be sorted.

In the hitting stats, I will read in the Batting, vs. LHP, Home/Away, close/late, scoring position and pinch hitting for each year.

[Comedian2004]

If the change the outputted HTML files that I use, like the P#### files or any of the text files, or even the team.dat file it will bomb out. The retiring players coming back will not matter. I think I remember hrs allowed by pitchers being added, so if that is added to the HTML output, it will throw everything out of synch.

I will just have to wait. Too bad I was not considered for beta, as I would have modified the program as I wrote it for both. They have a great game here, but 3rd party development support is lousy, NONE at all! Not even a reply to e-mail questions on it.

The re-write was because I was backwards thinking on the program. I had some bad flow ideas early on and rather than redo the code, I just started over. Of course, I was able to re-use a lot of routines from verson one and from the other program.

Originally Posted by endgame

Those sound like outstanding capabilities. I'm really looking forward to starting this season in order to generate some stats and check this out further. Good work! If it turns out your Utilities are not compatible with 6.5 this alone may give me a reason to keep a 6.12 league going. You must have had an epiphane of some sort to do the 180 on the direction you were headed with the Encyclopedia. Just a genius spark?

[endgame]

I can relate to the no-replies issue. Frustrating to be in the dark. With 3rd party contributions that have demonstrated merit, such as yours, it seems a shame there aren't avenues of more resource. Then again, perhaps when the 6.5 focus dies down there will be opportunity for communication. And I wouldn't rule out some of those who did beta-test being able to assist in some areas. This is still a very resourceful community.

I may have missed it, but is the Encyclopedia contained within the Utilities? The entire package is still driven through the main menu options to access ALL of these features?

[Bonedwarf]

I wouldn't have even bought OOTP without it's 3rd party utils. The fact they ignore them is pitiful. Ah well, their loss. I'm pretty much done with the current version anyway. I could probably score a review copy of OOTP 7 or whatever the bloody hell it'll be called. The question is, can I be bothered?

That encyclopedia is sounding awesome!

[cody8200]

Comedian, keep up the great work! This program is really coming into its own and the newest features sound great!

[Comedian2004]

Thanks for the support Cody.

OK, I broke down and went out in the street today with a sign that said, 'Will fix your computer for $9.95' and I was able to get a customer, so I spent my hard earned cash on the 6.5.

I first moved my 1901 career season over and converted it over. I DO NOT use this league as a test, since I did not turn on the player history save until 1925. I do peek at it occasionally to see make sure it works with incomplete seasons, like this.

So, I created a new historical season. 1968. I ran a season. (Detroit won). I then noticed that it was set for REPLAY instead of CAREER, of course, AFTER I hit the next season button. So, I simmed again. I simmed three seasons. (Frank Howard hit 66 homeruns and someone had a .357 average, not so accurate!!)

So I then ran my new Encyclopedia program on the data it compiled. It ran through all of the importing and sorting with no errors. In fact, the program worked PERFECT, except for one little thing. On the new P#### file, there are 2 new fields. (Maybe more when I inspect further). The Local and National popularity. Now what my program did, was to pull in that data, but it lost the last two data fields for that line. (Injury Rating and Star Rating). It looked like everything else was inline.

So, simple mod to this program: While reading the P files, I have to determine if 6.0 made this file or if 6.5 made this file. Searching one line for the word POPULARITY will tell me that. Then read in the extra two fields. I also have to put in some default value (like n/a) for pre 6.5 versions.

When you load in a previous season, it DOES NOT convert any almanac files over.

They have also added a new row titled PROJECTED. But at this point in my program, the next step was to import in the stats. I have all of the ratings, salary, etc. already done. So, there is no problem there. I just have to write two codes at the same time.

____________
Ok, the OOP 1 program.

When I ran it on the 6.5 data, it did everything fine, no errors. Basically the same problems with the above program. The extra data caused everything to shift. Should be pretty easy to work around.

However, when I went into TEAMS, it read the team names fine, but when I click on a team, I get an error. I have not looked further into this.

So, the good news is that my program will work with 6.12 and 6.5. Hopefully I will have a OOP1 update this weekend and maybe release the OOP Encyclopedia this weekend too. Depends on how my work week goes. Already tied up tomorrow all day and Friday don't look good either, well, for sitting around the house drinking A&W Cream Soda, eating George Foreman grilled burgers, listening to my massive music collection (6500 files on computer (all copied from MY original, if the FCC is lurking)), and programming. I have to go make some hamburger and expansion money.

[Comedian2004]

They are two different programs, not to say that they may not interact in the future.

Originally Posted by endgame

I can relate to the no-replies issue. Frustrating to be in the dark. With 3rd party contributions that have demonstrated merit, such as yours, it seems a shame there aren't avenues of more resource. Then again, perhaps when the 6.5 focus dies down there will be opportunity for communication. And I wouldn't rule out some of those who did beta-test being able to assist in some areas. This is still a very resourceful community.

I may have missed it, but is the Encyclopedia contained within the Utilities? The entire package is still driven through the main menu options to access ALL of these features?

[Comedian2004]

For what it's worth, the conversion in code amounted to 15 lines for the Encyclopedia. Working as it was yesterday, just displaying a little more information. I have not done the other program yet.

Here is a screen shot of the Encyclopedia. This is on a three year season starting in 1968. It takes about 45 seconds to import the league, then after that, it just takes about 5 seconds to load EVERY player that has ever played.

I loaded the grid and then selected Detroit on the left and then sorted by position. You can scroll three screens to the right for more data. More 'show/hide' buttons and drop downs will appear. There will be another button to 'show hitting stats' and 'show pitching stats'.

screen shot: http://www.sim2005.com/enc3.jpg

More to come.

[Bonedwarf]

You caved and got 6.5. For shame hehehe

Glad you'll be compatible with both!

I set up my league to run all last night, generate a ton of history... Only to forget that this backwards ass automation stops at the end of the first season to ask "Import real rookies?"

Yeah, thanks Marcus... Couldn't have it ask that BEFORE could you? I mean how much sense does that make? Having a "Sim X Years" feature, when you then have to sit there and wait for the first season to end so you fan hit "No", then "Yes".

GRR!

[Comedian2004]

It was peer pressure from the left side of my brain.

I know about that waiting a year thing. It gets me everytime too, forgetful. I just do not understand how something as simple and obvious as that gets by the beta testers or even the programmer.

Originally Posted by Bonedwarf

You caved and got 6.5. For shame hehehe

Glad you'll be compatible with both!

I set up my league to run all last night, generate a ton of history... Only to forget that this backwards ass automation stops at the end of the first season to ask "Import real rookies?"

Yeah, thanks Marcus... Couldn't have it ask that BEFORE could you? I mean how much sense does that make? Having a "Sim X Years" feature, when you then have to sit there and wait for the first season to end so you fan hit "No", then "Yes".

GRR!

[rasnell]

This is very good news that you can quickly fix oop1. I think this is the greatest utility. Can't wait for the encyclopedia function.

[Bonedwarf]

Got screwed again last night. Got the game running before I went to bed, and remember the rookie thing this time. Hit the right buttons, and went to bed happy in the knowledge that while I slept, my universe was feverishly working away, generating a massive history...

I get up, and approach the computer expectantly... The monitor flickers into life...

"E. Johnson has the chance of his 500th homerun".

ARGHHH!

I had forgotten to turn off the event notifications, HR's being the only one I have on, meaning it had sat there all night, having only gone from 1958 to mid 1964, waiting for me to push the button.

Of course I can't blame the program for that one, the problem was clearly between the chair and the keyboard