Anderson Utilities

[Comedian2004]

The team section is giving me a hard time, but I will get around it.

First thing I will do is create individual team html sheets showing:

Year by year record
All draft picks with links (if they exist) to the player

Whatever I can dig out of the files.

[Comedian2004]

I found a flaw in the way they treat retired hall of famers. It does not automatically create the r####.html files for the HOF players. But, I have found a work around. If you open up the game and go to Almanac and click on HOF and then click on the member, then click on PLAYER HTML page, it will create a player sheet and put it in the BOXSCORE folder. It DOES not use the player's original p#### number, as it may be in use, I guess. (It was in this case).

I wish they would give me some way to access the dat files, the way that the data is laid out.

[Bonedwarf]

Wow! Do you ever sleep?

The HTML is only autogenerated IF you have the Almanac option activated, I believe. I don't imagine many people don't have it on, though.

The only thing I wish I could get for OOTP6 is a program like the old Ryan's Util from OOTP4 that he wrote in Java. Cato's program is great, but I do miss being able to just feed the HTML output of OOTP into a program, and have it generate Baseball Reference style pages. I don't really care about most of the stuff Cato generates. Just some form of indexing every year of a players career. Doesn't even need to import the player pictures or anything.

With the Almanacs in OOTP6, I could do it every decade or so. I would think that would probably be a nightmare to create, and be far beyond the scope of the current program, sadly, but you wanted ideas

I'll shut up now

[Bonedwarf]

Actually, I just thought of a possibly do-able idea that would, mostly, achieve what I was looking for.

I've not played with the latest version you've done, but would it be possible to feed the Almanac HTML files to the util, and have it generate an HTML index of EVERY player, coupled with links to their player pages in the Almanac? Or, more logically, just the one link to the last time that player was active? (Thus getting their complete history on their final player page before they retired.)

Perhaps even put a number next to each player to indicate how many years they were around for.

So, say Joe Bloggs, ID 0001, played 1945 to 1949. Have the util trawl the Almanac and cross reference ID 0001, and thus, in the main index your program would create, It would have:

Joe Bloggs (5) 1949

The 1949 bit being a link to his last player page, so you can see a final overview of his career. Then whoever 0001 became when he retired, would get an entry for 1950 to whenever they retired etc... Of course, the outputted file would have to be sorted alphabetically to be any real use.

I think you mentioned that you can have the program pick a random player. The ability to do that from the Almanac would be fantastic.

I hope all this makes sense. I didn't really think it through. I just wanted to post it before I forgot. I don't even know if it's possible.

Regretting asking for ideas and feedback yet?

[Comedian2004]

Sleep? Bah humbug, who needs it?

I plan on looking into the almanac next. I just noticed something that I did not notice before. In the almanac there is a setting that says 'include player reports'. But by default, it is off. My 100 year simulation that I am running, it was off. I just turned it on. So, unless that is on, the data will not be there. However, in the league's folder, there is a file called retired.dat. I am assuming that it contains every player that was ever retired. But I do not know the format the data is in. I have asked Marcus for help in reading that, but not sure if he will help me or not.

That is the problem that I am finding, is that not all of the players stats are available, but seeing that it has to be turned on, that would explain it. (See, your post did help).

I am going to create a small league and run a multi year simulation on it and see if I have more to work with.

[BigCity]

A couple things Larry.

Not ALL players have retired files. Only those that had significant careers. However, if you have player HTML on in the almanac, EVERY player (as he completes his career) will have the last HTML file in that year.

That's why Ryan's utility read in each and every year of the complete player files so complete player histories could be built for EVERY player - whether he got a "retired" file or not.

[Comedian2004]

Thanks Big.

I am just starting to notice that. If Marcus gives me some code to read in the DAT files, I think I could pull it out of that.

[Comedian2004]

I just uploaded a new version of the program. If you have the previous version, uninstall it from the control panel and re-install this version. The other version was not saving the configuration file properly.

I will be working with the almanac information now. I am running a 100 year simulation while I am out and about to have data to work with.

[Comedian2004]

I just ran a 27 year simulation with player reports saved in the almanac. I will work on getting the player list from there.

Question: Why would you want to pick a random player form the almanac? The way it is now, it picks just active players, on a team or off a team, but it will not pick retired players.

I started a historical league using the Lahman database in 1920 and let it run for 27 years. I will be using that data to manipulate the data.

BTW, Pitts was awesome, running off 7 World Series in a row from 1933-1939.

[Bonedwarf]

Well the one problem I have with my leagues is interest. I've started creating new players by hand every few years, after I saw a league online doing that. Gives you something to follow.

The more I think about the random player idea, the less I see the point to be honest. If it's pulled from the current season, you may as well just pick a random team and click a random player in game. And if it's from the almanac, to be any real use, it would have to be the last year they played. I don't know. I can't think of a really good use for it

Clicking randomly on the index of all players, if you implemented it, would be largely the same thing. Unless things got REALLY complicated, so you could say "Okay, pull a random player who played more than 7 years in the majors, with an AVG. below 280, and less than 10 RBI per season, and who played between 1940 and 1968". That's getting a little silly

As for the player reports, I've never seen the point of having them off in Almanac. Of course, I horde everything. I have all box scores saved too. Most of the time I save game logs as well. (Hard disk space be damned)

I'll try the latest build tonight if I can. Your site wasn't responding last night. (Could be my ISP.) And the system I'm on now doesn't have an OOTP league to speak of on it.

[Comedian2004]

I uploaded the lastest version at 6:30pm est.

NOTE: It has a couple bug fixes. Also, in Utility there is a ALMANAC INDEX, it will run and create a retplayers.txt file with all the retired players in it. That part works correctly. I think I just have it checking 30 years now, as I am in the middle of that code now. It will error if you click one of the years on the left.

[Comedian2004]

Yes, I can't see a point in picking a retired random player. But picking an active random one, yes. And that works perfect. One click and you get him, with a link to his page.

Here is what I have planned for the retired. OOTP does some weird stuff. Like:

1921, 2 players retired. It gave them r1.html and r2.html.
1922, 4 players retired. It gave them r10 through r14, but also listed r1 and r2 there.

Note: These numbers were NOT the original player's numbers.

1923, 1 player retired. It gave him r20. The others were also there. (I see a pattern)
1924, no one retired. All r's were listed.
1925, 1 player retired. It gave him r26. The rest were listed. So much for the pattern.

Jump ahead to 1943 and we are in the r440's, yet, some of the previous R numbers are gone. Very strange. But #1 and #2 stayed there the entire time.

But the way my program works, is it searches 1st year almanac and gives each retired player the R number they have, then when it goes through all the years, you will have a list of all the retired players. R1 is first, R2 is second in the list, r99 is 99th. If there is no R188, a blank line is there.

This way, if I want to see Babe Ruth's stats, I read the file in, line by line until I come across Babe Ruth. If I find it, I count the lines and I have his R#### number.

I plan on creating a folder called: XXXXRetired, where the XXXX is the starting year, so in this case, it would be 1920RRRR and having my program copy over all the R####.html files to it for easy access. This also makes it very easy to upload this folder to your server and write HTML pages to access it (which my program will do.)

Some of the things I want to do with the almanac is pretty cool.

Show 10 windows across the screen with the numbers 1-10 at the top. Then list the #1 draft choice, year by year for each team. This way you could see a teams #1 draft choice over the lifetime of a team. #2 draft choice, etc. Of course you can click on the players name to see how he is doing now.

Also, a year by year listing of a player's ratings, so you could see how Babe Ruth's ratings dropped year by year.

All this would become HTMLs that you could put on a website. Online leagues would be able to display some cool information.

[Comedian2004]

Also, all other searches in the program would check the 1920Retired list if it cannot find the player in the active list. This way, you can display everyone that won 20 or more games and click on their name and see their entire career, even if they retired and did not make the HOF.

One thing I had to change was the autosort list. It works fine for 100 or less entries, but when I had 27 seasons, the 3+ homeruns contained over 300 entries. The program bogged down when trying to sort. I will tweak that later on to see what I can do to bring it back.

[Comedian2004]

This is getting to be fun for me.

Just uploaded another version: (May 18th @ 12:11am est)

I really liked this new function:

Let's say the folder you generate league files to is c:/leaguesite

Head into utilities and click on Index Almanac

There are two text boxes next to it, start year and end year.

It first creates a folder called "Retired Players" under the leaguesite folder (or whereever you set the league site to be.

It then goes year by year looking for retired players. If it finds them, it copies them over to the "retired players" folder. If it finds duplicates, it does not copy it the second time, saving time. The button changes to reflect what year it is at. It does this very quickly. At the same time, it is creating a file called 'RETplayerindex.txt' with a list of all the retired players that my program can use to find a player very fast.

When it is all done, it saves the last year that you indexed. So, next time you load the program, the default start year is the year you ended with. The default endyear is the startyear + 1. Of course, if you have simmed more than 1 year, you can increase the end year.

Once a year is indexed, it never has to be indexed again, thus saving time.

So, now what? Well, we now have an index of active players and we now have an index of retired players. So, once I change some code, you will be able to view, for instance, the 20 game winner list. Click on one of the players and it will check if he is active. If he is not, then it will check the retired players. Thus, you should be able to see all players very easy.

Now I take it one step further. I take the retired player list and create a retired player html file (much like the PLAYERS in the generated HTML) and once put online, anyone can view any retired player.

This is a major breakthrough for me, as it opens the door for everything. So far, the program is very quick in doing all of the stuff. However, when I was indexing the whole league for retired players, I noticed it slowing down as it moved to the next year. That is why I had it save the last date you saved, since years already indexed do not have to be indexed again.

NOTE: If you index the retired folks from start to finish, the RETplayerindex.txt file will be correct, but if you add years, (anotherwords, do 1920-1930, then come back and do 1931), it will not be correct. That will be fixed next.

BTW, I have a reason for posting all the changes like this on the forum. First, it lets you follow the development of a program. I know some people like to follow something like this, plus it helps me write the program, it just helps me with the thought process. Everyonce in awhile, someone chirps up and gives me a suggestion and it helps.

I really expected more participation than what I am getting, but I guess a lot of people are scared of beta. I can understand that. But as stated before, I am being very careful NOT to modify ANY files that are used by the league. NOTHING is wrote to the .lg folder or the OOTP folder. Only to the installed folder (OOP 1 by default) and to the leaguesite folder. The leaguesite folder is erased when you generate the league files for uploading inside OOTP.

[Faroo6]

being able to see the changes in a player's ratings would definitely be something I would enjoy. I know BOSI does it but this utility seems to be a bit simpler to use. I can never remember where my players abilities started a season most of the time.

[Bonedwarf]

I'll endeavour to get some serious play time in tomorrow with this. Today got away from me for various reasons.

It's sounding like this is, for me at least, turning into the coolest util since Ryan's one. I mean ultimately I would love a program like that again. As I've said before, Cato's is awesome, but I was looking through the output today, and really, it goes far FAR beyond the scope of what I want. I don't want anyone to think I'm disrespecting it. I'm not. It's an awesome achievement. But it's overkill for my needs.

You're already nailed the player index it seems. The only other thing I can think of right now is producing a page of stats leaders, with links to their player pages. For career leaders, obviously link to their final page (if they're retired obviously). For single season... Not sure what the best option would be. Linking to the most recent page for that player probably.

I wish I still had some sample output from Ryan's util around, to show you the sort of thing I mean. But you can get the idea at Baseball Reference. Though you've pretty much made my day with the player index.

I'm going to give this some more thought. I'm sure I can come up with other cool ideas. I'll try and give the program a thorough pounding tomorrow. Will need to sim a few more seasons of one of my leagues, though.

Another thought... How hard would it be to pull together pages on TEAMS? Listing their results for each year etc... Maybe list all the players that have ever played for them. Not sure if trades could make that a nightmare. And if a player returned to the team later, that could probably cause chaos.

What other cool info could be gleaned for team pages? The team they do best against? The team they do the worst against? Say maybe the 10/20/50 players in the history of the league who've had the best performances against them. (Of course now you're venturing into game log territory. A scary place)

The one thing that has always irked me with OOTP6 is the fact you have, say, the list of perfect games. How about a link to the actual box score/game log attached to that info? I guess you'd have to pull the date, find the appropriate file etc...

Another idea: When a player has a milestone that's listed in his history, so like "hit first homerun off..." or "Had 5000th hit...", have that link to the game log/box score.

I don't know. Just randomly spouting nonsense now. I'm gonna sleep on it, see what I can come up with. I'm enjoying throwing all this stuff out If it doesn't make it in, that's cool. It's just fun to brainstorm on what would be my ideal OOTP app.

[BigCity]

I would suggest to everyone to get involved at some level of this development. Larry is slowly creating something here that resembles Ryan's utility and Jeff's Catobase, but is updated to V6 and improves in many ways over the originals. The important thing is we have someone actually working on it

Give the Anderson Utilities a try and give Larry some feedback. Encouragement goes a long way in keeping the developer interested

[Comedian2004]

That is what I worked on tonight, was the team section. Here is what I have so far:

You click on TEAMS and then INDEX TEAMS. It shows a list of teams on the right. You click on the team name on the right and there are two more text boxes next to it. The first is filled with the teams year by year record, showing wins/losses pct, games behind, etc. The other column shows the #1 draft choice. Later the you can click on the players names and show the player.

Here is a screen shot.

http://www.sim2005.com/oop6.jpg

[gcsii99]

just downloaded the program and like what I see so far...I'll definetly be keeping track to see how it progresses in the future...Great Job!

[Comedian2004]

Thanks for the feedback. You are right, positive feedback is like a bunch of short skirt cheerleaders cheering me on.

I just uploaded a small change that allows you to click on the #1 draft choices to see their pages.

NOTE: You will need to reindex the players, as I have changed the text file name to be XXXXplayerindex.txt, where XXXX is the starting date of the league.

Also found out what my bug was. In one of my leagues, I had changed the team names after season one. So, the original team name was trying to be referenced and did not exist in seasons 2 and out. Will have to come up with a solution for that, or will I? How many leagues change their team names during a run? It messes up the history.

Historical leagues, that change team names, league size, etc., just will not work in a program like this. Just too many things possible to check.

I am now working on the "can't find active player, is he in the retired section?" routine.

You can download the latest version at www.sim2005.com/oop1.htm

I will just be uploading the EXE file in zip format, just unzip it to the OOP 1 folder. Every couple of days I will create a new setup. No need to uninstall it and reinstall it everytime I make changes.

Keep the feedback coming.