The InteGREATed Mod: Stars of the Negro Leagues in the MLB

[cfagyal]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

I believe Dr. Doom would need update the tool for OOTP26 before we could crack it open and generate the modded historical.database.odb necessary. So, that'd be the long pole in the tent but we'll do our best.

Since the day we dropped the mod, I've pitched OOTPD repeatedly (probably to the point of annoyance ) to try and make it part of the game itself. I feel like many historical players have waited forever for the NeL'ers to play as per their abilities (as best a good faith MLE can estimate) as opposed to their sparse (though growing!) stat lines. Garlon and I just finally, with some prodding from friends, got off our duff to dig into the MLEs and translate them into MLB stats that OOTP can use. So, we'll continue to advocate for the MLEs and keep trying to make it as easy as possible for the community to incorporate them.

Glad you are enjoying the mod!

Some of the best work i've seen to date for the game honestly. I've been waiting for this for years. As soon as I found this post I pulled it down on Steam and applied it to my Random debut historical, GEBA, and it was a major impetus to start a new fresh random debut historical. I truly hope it gets pulled into the main historical DB.

[Jeff1787]

I used this database to create a Random Debut league. Everything worked out just fine. During the creation process I saved a World Template. This was before I started the game. I then started the game and there were 704 players in the Inaugural Draft.

I later used the same World Template to start a new game. The very same 704 players were in the Inaugural Draft.

The manual states: Templates created during the game creation process contain only the structure of your game. Templates created after a game has started include all of the players in that game as well.

What am I doing wrong?

I have also posted this in the Technical Support forum. No responses so far. Very frustrating!

[LansdowneSt]

Not a mod issue but as toit as to why it is happening in the game in general for initial drafts. I think the Inaugral class is generated as part of the creation process. That is, one does t advance a day to the draft but rather they are there literally “moment one” before you can take any action.

[Jeff1787]

Thanks for the quick reply, but I don't actually understand your response.

I am still confused. Maybe having a senior moment!!

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by Jeff1787

Thanks for the quick reply, but I don't actually understand your response.

I am still confused. Maybe having a senior moment!!

May have been my error reading too quickly as you did state that you saved the template before you had "started the game" by which I think you mean, Day One - so still in the Wizard, I presume? I took it as before you advanced a day in the sim after creation.

I'd have to test with an ordinary RD game under the same conditions. Not sure what the difference would be as, at the heart of it, the mod is just redirecting the game to use the /statsNeL folder instead of the /stats folder when looking for a historical.database.odb. I can't think of a part of the Advanced Setup involved that might generate the inaugural class. I do wish it were similar to navigate to alt databases though in case it was something in that Advanced Setup that was doing it to you.

[luckymann]

If I might weigh in for a moment.

Templates are one of many "half-baked" features in the game for which some love and affection from the devs is wayyyyyy overdue.

One thing I have noticed is that, when you import a saved template into a newly-created game, it actually adds the template and makes it so there are two leagues present. See the screenshot below

Perhaps that's happening in yours and if you delete the one containing the 704 players, it will retain the structure then create a new game with new players?

Not all that confident but might be worth a shot.

[Jeff1787]

When loading the template it only shows one MLB. So, that is not the problem.

I guess to have a new Inaugural Draft pool I will have to go thru the entire creation process which will be time consuming and a real pain in the neck.

[Jeff1787]

OOTP26 now has NeL players in the historical database. Are those players the same as the ones in your database?

If so, then I can use the OOTP26 database in a random debut league and it will include NeL players, correct?

[LansdowneSt]

A Word on the NeL MLEs of OOTP26

How many and who are the Negro League (NeL) players with MLEs in OOTP26?

The MLEs in OOTP26 are from the 212 players that were modified in The InteGreated Mod. They were selected by Garlon and I because they were some of the greatest players of their era and because they spanned a wide range of years. Included in the count are players that also played crossed over into the AL/NL after Jackie broke the color barrier and some that played the majority of their time in Cuba or Mexico. They listed in the bottom of the post.

What is a “Major League Equivalency?”

At its simplest, an MLE stat line is an estimate of what that individual would have done had they been dropped into the AL/NL in that given year.

Where did these MLEs come from?

The mod’s, and thus the MLE’s, starting point was the work of Eric Chalek. I first starting reading Eric’s posts on the old Baseball Think Factory website and then in the Hall of Eric and Miller. Now, he has a new home. You can find out more about him and his great work here:

https://horsehidedragnet.wordpress.com/

While Eric’s MLE’s were impetus for Garlon and I to get to work on fleshing out the players (OOTP needs a lot more info to make the players work in-game – including defensive attributes). Led by Garlon's expertise, we spent about a year putting it together and then released it during the middle of the OOTP25 cycle.

So, has the InteGREATed mod, as played in OOTP25, been incorporated into the game?

No, it’s not that simple. First, the stat lines are not exactly what was in the mod. Since its release, I’ve continued to work on those 212 players. For example, creating batting lines for the pitchers, reviewing them for typos, consistency across batting/pitching/fielding stat lines and doing an additional review for stat reasonableness. It is that version that was provided to OOTPD. Additionally, all the alternate IDs we assigned to our modded players have reverted back to the BBR IDs with the exception of players that had careers entirely before 1920 who kept the ID we created in the BBR format and added a -98 numerical value to.

Okay, so tweaks to the numbers, alignment of the IDs to OOTP defaults, that sounds fine – is anything else different?

Yes, something very important is different! Whereas Garlon and I simply modified the core database files within the historical.database.odb, directly added the NeL players via an alternative /stats folder, and harnessed the OOTP engine as-is to make the mod work, OOTPD has gone a different direction. OOTPD treats the MLEs in the same way it treats neutralized stats, an alternative csv file of data that the game can look to in order to create ratings for players already in its database.

What are the pros and cons of each approach? Start with the mod.

For the mod approach, the biggest con is that the game cannot be played with Real Minors on. If you were to turn on Real Minors while using the mod’s database, you’d end up with duplicate players – one set of NeL players with our MLE stats/ratings and another set of NeL players with the default in-game NeL stat lines. So, we instruct users to turn Real Minors off when using the mod.

The pros are significant though. OOTP is designed to take MLB stat lines (AL/NL) and create player ratings based on those stats and then the players with those ratings enter your sim and do what they do. So, we thought, why not treat the MLEs like the actual MLB stat lines they proport to represent and just let the engine do what it does best? The game has no idea that the MLE stat lines entered for Oscar Charleston’s in the database are MLEs and not actual MLB performance stats. The game just makes the player based on the stats it sees and ties them to the ID assigned.

As a result of this approach, the game debuts and retires the players perfectly according to their MLE years. The players miss the war seasons that the MLE stat lines account for. The players appear in Random Debut sims seamlessly along with all the other players. The excess talent can be absorbed by a modified Teams.csv file, if desired. Any modded Teams.csv file doesn’t impact other, on-going sims you may have running off the default OOTP /stats folder. The use of an alternative /stats folder (the mod uses /statsNeL instead of /stats) also keeps the core mod files from being overwritten every time an OOTP patch is installed. Lastly, to check performance, the Real Stats tab is populated with the MLEs so one can compare in-game performance against the stats being used to create ratings.

What about the pros and cons of the OOTPD’s alternative approach?

The biggest strength is the fact they are building something that will work in all game types – including the one we can’t do, Real Minors on. As modders, we don’t have to make a mod that fits everyone’s play style. We made one for ourselves and shared it, with disclosure of its limitations. OOTPD has a wider audience with all sorts of varied play styles, and I understand wanting to use programming and other tools they have – and we modders don’t – to try and make that happen.

Once you understand their point of view at OOTPD, I think you have to give them time to make it work for everyone. So, let the community play with the new OOTP26 MLE functionality and report their feedback so bugs can be identified and fixed. For example, unlike the neutralized database, there is not necessarily a perfect match of stat line to stat line. Will the game be able to properly align all the vital minor league NeL stats with the MLE stat lines? Given the game is wired to look to the real-life debut and retire dates, how will the players perform absent an MLE for any given year? Will Random Debut games know to use Satchel Paige’s MLE debut age or is it still too tied to his AL one? It takes a lot of programming to sort all of that. Not an insurmountable challenge, of course, and a lot of work has already gone into it, but it’s still a challenge and far, far more complex than the approach the mod took.

So, stay tuned. Soon they’ll know what’s a bug in need of squashing (be patient – it’s a brand-new feature so after all!) and what is just an inherent limitation of the legacy programming.

So, how will you play the game?

With Real Minors off and with the mod on, of course. It’s perfect for my style of play and I have no one to blame for any glitches other than myself. Also, that way I can keep adding new NeL MLE-based players (and even other international players for whom MLEs exist). I’ve already got some I want to add as soon as I can crack the OOTP26 .odb file open and get to the .csv files. I also love my customized Teams.csv universe at this point.

One thing that is a huge help to those that do dabble in modding databases, is that Step One of the Historical Wizard now has an easy way to navigate to a custom database. No more complex Advanced Settings to wade through – and that might be my personal favorite underappreciated feature of OOTP26. Well, that and the facegens not bloating based on in-game weight.

So, if you want to give their approach a try, go for it and give them feedback. If you prefer the mod approach, be patient as it will take us a bit to get into the files for 26, come to a consensus on additional tweaks, realign our IDs to deconflict the overlaps with OOTPD’s new approach, and get it out there.

Thanks for all the support and thanks to everyone through the years that has poked OOTPD to try new things to get the NeL players to play more like they ought to!

[luckymann]

Nice going Lans.

Is the plan to release a v26 Mod with these updates you mention and adds once Doom hopefully updates his DB tool?

And if so, will this new mod transition / work smoothly with saves already begun using the v25 iteration of the mod?

Thanks

G

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Is the plan to release a v26 Mod with these updates you mention and adds once Doom hopefully updates his DB tool?

And if so, will this new mod transition / work smoothly with saves already begun using the v25 iteration of the mod?

That's what I'd like to do. And add players to it. I have not had time to huddle with Garlon - we both have had a ton going on not least of which assisting in some of the background stuff in our areas of expertise for OOTP26.

The OOTP26 mod will change the IDs to avoid conflicting with the OOTPD MELs. I have already prepped that. I think if you are moving a game that is modded with InteGREATed from OOTP25 to OOTP26, I'd go to Leage Settings>Historical and toggle off the "use MLEs" option. It's unnecessary since the players are already in the db that you are using in such a sim. I can only think of ways the new embedded OOTP MLE approach could get in the way in a migrated InteGREATed game.

I posted on Doom's thread the other day. He hasn't been on in a while, but we'll turn to the 26 edition once Garlon and I have the time to circle round to it and the Doom tool is available.

[luckymann]

As you may recall, I have been putting the mod through its paces in a couple different ways.

The first of these is using dev only in a hybrid universe with fictional players and historical MLBers. This is a bit of fun and not wholly concerned with historical accuracy so I'm thinking I might switch it over to the new incorporated version when I move it to 26 in a couple months once the thing is a bit more stable. See how that goes and react accordingly.

The second is my full historical Dodgers save, currently in 1915, which I do not want to mess with. My initial feeling is to leave this on 25 until if and only if I can be assured the switch won't cause any hiccups and transition smoothly from 25 to 26. I don't use the dev lab with this and the Draft is pre-orchestrated, so the new 26 features are no incentive to move it unnecessarily. That said, I'd like to eventually.

Obviously, we'll keep in touch along the way but I feel the integrity of the mod will be greatly enhanced if the user can at least be guaranteed safe passage from 25 to 26 for their saves that are using it.

G

[djc]

I’m starting in 1882 with the InteGREATed db. I’ve got my solo league on the web https://donsbaseballreplay.com/wp/OO...standings.html. I also have been working on other MLE projects here. https://donsbaseballreplay.com/wp/. I’m post right shoulder replacement surgery so I have some down time and I can’t work on the honey do list. That’s a real bummer

[LansdowneSt]

djc,

thehef told me you reached out with regard to the timing of the additional 4 teams. The teams appear on the first day of the offseason in 1910 and the expansion draft about three weeks later.

On this page make sure, on the right side, it definitely reads "statsNeLmod as the database and on the left-hand side, that Automatically expand league is turned on. We modded the Teams.csv file so the game things those 4 teams really existed and so it brings them in like any other team that will appear in history.

[djc]

I am in the middle of a replay using OOTP25 with the InteGREATed database. I am in my now in 1947, started at 1901. I have decided to not hold an amateur draft and also use free agency since the expansion in 1910. I have noticed there have been quite a few years were players are not signing contracts. ie. 40 year old Satchel Paige, 31 year old Dizzy Trout, 29 year old Lou Boudreau, 26 year old Hal Newhouser. That seems to be too many hold outs to me. Pretty frustrating since I am soo long into my replay. I have to admit I not real familar with the free agency process in the game but I thought I would see how it goes. It's been interesting seeing top players leaving their clubs after six seasons and playing the field so to speak. But this hold out thing is kinda of bummer. I have uploaded all 47 seasons here
https://donsbaseballreplay.com/wp/OO..._100_home.html if your interested.

[LansdowneSt]

Give some clubs more revenue is my initial thought. If FA linger, it is usually that there is an imbalance in revenue/budgets to demand. Consider it a post-war economic boom and drop an extra $x revenue (can be tailored per team) in National Media Contract. It happens in regular games without the mid too. Not all the time but now and again.

[luckymann]

The "Goldilocks Zone" for the number of clubs is so tricky. I honestly feel that, were it not for how the LTMs are calculated, then it could easily stay at 16 and have the talent level dragged up and some of the fringy historical MLBers miss out. At least until 1920.

On the other hand, if the settings aren't right and you keep it at 16, this sort of thing happens where they go for "cheap" over "old" and FA that you don't want left unsigned start creeping in, as you are seeing.

20 seems too many in those early stages but from 1920 onward is the right choice by the lads for this mod. Still, there are so many moving parts it is nigh on impossible for the pieces to all fall into place perfectly.

I'm using the mod in a modified historical minors setting in which I am heavily orchestrating the placement of players. I started with 16 clubs then added four NeL franchises in 1906. I have just expanded to 24 for 1918 ahead of "peak hour" for the NeL player influx. Three of these new expansion clubs are fictional, plus the Black Barons as a designated NeL club.

So each season, the better-known players or those who played for chunks of time with a club go to those clubs as rookies. The NeL rooks get allocated to the NeL clubs in a kind of "mini-Draft". I am now adding a sprinkling of fictional players, with the pick of them added as rookies to the fictional franchises.

Obviously not even remotely accurate in a historical sense but it is a lot of fun for all the hard work involved. Let's face it, this isn't an exercise in trying to replicate the existing history but, rather, to upend it and offer an alternate one. So I am OK with the hybrid nature of this one.

All thanks to the hard work of Lans and Garlon, for which I am forever grateful (GREATful?).

G

The MLB

[djc]

How can the intGREATed mod be changed so the expansion happens in 1920 or 1919?

[djc]

I was also thinking of not holding an amateur draft and not expanding. Can I pull this off with the InteGREATed mod or do I need to use the basic db and add the NeL players individually with the mod db?

[LansdowneSt]

The Teams.csv file that is embedded in the histroical.database.odb sets up the game in the first year. The Teams.csv file outside of the historical.database.odb controls auto-evolution thereafter. Open the Teams.csv that is in the statsNeL mod folder. Go to the bottom of it and delete the NeL teams there for the years you don't want them (presumably 1910-1919). So, to push off expansion, start the game, say, in 1908. Then, let your adjusted Teams.csv file dictate the auto-evolution for the teams. That should work.

To not expand and not have a draft (so the AL/NL players go to their teams per real life and all the NeL'ers are free agents), repeat the steps above but delete the Expansion teams from 1910-1960 (and for the one league through 1961).

But the Teams.csv file is the key.

I'm working on the new edition of it as we speak and I've already decided that the modded Teams.csv should not be inside the odb. That will allow users the ability to set expansion on their own with greater ease and not need to start the game before 1910 date we fixed.