OOTP 8 released!

[magnet]

Originally Posted by Bonedwarf

The SION stuff: Annoying, but I'll just pretend it stands for Sports Illustrated.

I did that with OOTP 2007 anyway.

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by Long_Long_Name

There isn't a demo version, is there?

Not right now. There will be (so battists has said several times).

Originally Posted by redsoxford

Back on the CATO, if you import it a second time does it double everything that's already there or will it ignore data that is already in the game?

Stuff doubles. You'll want to run a conversion or two on a "test" copy of your league before you do it for real, since there's essentially no "undo" button once the data has been imported.

I wrote a long post detailing all the functions and possible issues with the converter that we addressed during testing. Battists has it now, and I believe he's planning on posting it publicly. He hasn't been on the forums in a few days, though, so just hang in there. )

- Kai

[Anisoptera]

Originally Posted by Bonedwarf

Canada and US dollar are at parity right now, so what dollar stuff is set too shouldn't make any difference.

That sucks if only for the fact that referring to the US$ as the American Peso was so much fun.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by Kaitiaki

Stuff doubles. You'll want to run a conversion or two on a "test" copy of your league before you do it for real, since there's essentially no "undo" button once the data has been imported.

I wrote a long post detailing all the functions and possible issues with the converter that we addressed during testing. Battists has it now, and I believe he's planning on posting it publicly. He hasn't been on the forums in a few days, though, so just hang in there. )

- Kai

It's not for me, it's just that at least one league has been creating history by using my programs on a piecemeal basis, and obviously they now can't use the Cato importer...

[SDtwin]

I'll wait for the coupon thing, then I'll do it. I'll gladly pay 6 bucks for the new features and to support Markus. Just not 20.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by silvam14

I don't know about anyone else, but if I were to complain about shelling out another $5 for a few more features of a game that I love, I would be one of the biggest hypocrites here. I can't even think of what I have spent $5 on lately that has or will give me more enjoyment than a few bug fixes and improvements to a game I absolutely love.

for instance, I just paid for two coffees I bought for myself and my wife this morning cost ~$4.75. The extra beers I bought my friends when we were out last night probably cost me $20. All of those thing have been consumed already and the thrill is gone.

Compare that to hours and hours more baseball enjoyment in the offseason when I am generally playing football games, and the fact that the money is going to help out one of my favorite game developers, and it isn't a big deal to me.

So I've decided I'm not going to act like I am some ultra-ideallistic, ultra-frugal consumer when it come to this situation, because, basically, I'm not one.

my

I had to stop right here and give this post a thumbs up. I don't care if somebody else did the same thing later on. Nicely put, silvam.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

I had to stop right here and give this post a thumbs up. I don't care if somebody else did the same thing later on. Nicely put, silvam.

I agree too but it's still not offering the game to me at $19.99, and until it does cost what the original post from Markus says it will cost, my card is staying in my wallet.

I will happily pay the $19.99 when I get charged correctly.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by RBLwebguy

I didn't mean to come across in a jerky way about $5 or $20. I just know that I blow a lot of cash on useless things and supporting an independant developer was my way of saying thanks.

I'll just add another thought here. Whether it's $5 or $20 or $0 is a business decision. This is not a social club, although it may appear like it, with developers involved in the give and take on these boards. They are in this to make money and are entitled to charge what they think is fair and what they think they can legitimately get for their product, not what we think and wish they would do.

Now, they are counting on most of us to agree with their choices and, given the history of this business, I think they will be right. Those of us who disagree certainly have their right to refuse, but to think that an enhancement should be free because it sounds like the right thing to do ignores the profit motive that, even with all the otherwise good intentions, is the thing that produced OOTPB in the first place.

[1998 Yankees]

dola, I just chose RBLwebguy's post to reply to and did not mean to direct those comments toward him in particular.

[magnet]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

I'll just add another thought here. Whether it's $5 or $20 or $0 is a business decision. This is not a social club, although it may appear like it, with developers involved in the give and take on these boards. They are in this to make money and are entitled to charge what they think is fair and what they think they can legitimately get for their product, not what we think and wish they would do.

Now, they are counting on most of us to agree with their choices and, given the history of this business, I think they will be right. Those of us who disagree certainly have their right to refuse, but to think that an enhancement should be free because it sounds like the right thing to do ignores the profit motive that, even with all the otherwise good intentions, is the thing that produced OOTPB in the first place.

Enhancements should not be free, but bug fixes certainly should be.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by magnet

Enhancements should not be free, but bug fixes certainly should be.

Yes, you did say this:

Originally Posted by magnet

Simple. OOTP 2007 users get OOTP 8 for free (the patch), OOTP 8.5 is the patch + new features and costs money. Problem solved.

I can agree with that, but there may not have been enough time to do both.

Besides, my point was this: They will charge whatever they think the market will bear. That's a simple business concept that successful ones follow, and we want them to be successful, don't we?

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by magnet

Enhancements should not be free, but bug fixes certainly should be.

I'm thinking again about this. That one mention of additional bug fixes may be the most troubling thing about this, I will grant you.

Yes, I do think that the game's developers have a responsibility to fix all bugs. That is, all known bugs that can be found and resolved in a reasonable amount of time. This may not include the really obscure ones that are not obvious game busters for significant numbers of people and that would take a great deal of time to analyze and fix.

I guess, as one poster said, that by going back over everything in order to separate OOTP8 and provide some enhancements, they found some really minor stuff to fix. How important could these have been after three preceding patches? We were all ready to sign off on OOTP 2007 until the news of the split from SI and OOTP8 were announced.

So yeah, normally I would be outraged to pay for bug fixes. However, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one (a great relief to them, I'm sure ) so that I can view the fixes as courtesies thrown in with what I am willing to pay an additional $5 for otherwise (I would pay the $20 just for the milestone marker, shhhh . . .)

I hope that helps somebody. It helped me to type it out.

[mgom27]

City Life 08 Gold is a free Upgrade for people who already has City Life World Edition so this game should be to.
Now where's the Features like Ejectsions/Brawls,Suspenions,Minor League Team Contracts with a MLB Team,Unsigned Prospects Page,Automatically Relocation by the Computer,Teams for Sale,Live Play by Play,Home Run Derby,Olympics and so on?
Glad to see a new version out?
Will an 07 League work with this?

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

So yeah, normally I would be outraged to pay for bug fixes. However, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one (a great relief to them, I'm sure ) so that I can view the fixes as courtesies thrown in

OOTP 2007 could not be patched It is not legally possible after the SI/OOTP Developments split. Any further work required a new game. Hence OOTP 8 was born. OOTP 8 was a stopgap measure designed to pick up all the sales from October until Release Day 2008.

One thing that has never been stated by anyone at SI or OOTP Developments concerns real rosters. It is my opinion that the lack of real rosters was a contributing factor to the split. SEGA was too cautious. Their caution killed sales to an important part of the community. Once the split happened, a new course could (and was ) selected on this issue.

It was always the intention, post patch 3, to work on a CATO conversion tool. This was worked on by two people, and sometimes Markus had to wait on code from the community to come in to work on the OOTP portion.

In the meantime, the beta team complained about a few bugs, and they got eliminated while Markus waited for code from Ryan W to be re-revised (must have been more than a dozen times). The CATO conversion stuff proved much more challenging for the guys than anticipated, and hopefully it is rewarding to CATO users when they get their hands on it.

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by redsoxford

It's not for me, it's just that at least one league has been creating history by using my programs on a piecemeal basis, and obviously they now can't use the Cato importer...

It's going to depend what's been done and they've done it. Ryan W's utility converts Cato data into CSV files. OOTP8 can import those CSV files. One can - and I have, for my league - edited those CSV files prior to importing them into OOTP. I added four whole seasons of data (from before we used Catobase) to mine so that we'd have a complete History section.

Depending on the history that has been added, then, it may or may not be feasible for the people who have been using your programs to do the opposite: to strip out the related information from the CSV files before importing them to avoid duplication.

- Kai

[battists]

Hi folks,

Well, you can tell I've had a tough few weeks if this is the first chance I've had to be involved in this thread!

Indeed, I will be posting some detailed instructions for the Cato converter this weekend.

We are, of course, very apologetic to those of you who are upset in some way by this release, and we hope the majority of you enjoy it. There were things that we simply weren't able to work out perfectly, and the issue of the bug fixes was one of them. As others have mentioned, we are no longer entitled to release patches to OOTPB 2007. At the same time, since we work with eLicense and eSellerate to license the product, there is a certain amount of overhead in each license we create. Therefore, we would actually LOSE money if we released OOTP 8 for free, because we would have had to pay eLicense for each one of those licenses. Unfortunately, we're not in a position to do that. The discounted price we will be offering shortly is the least amount of money we can offer for the game without losing money.

That's about the best information I can offer right now. I'll be back later with the updated information about the Cato converter.

Thanks!

Steve

[Russ]

Originally Posted by battists

As others have mentioned, we are no longer entitled to release patches to OOTPB 2007.
Steve

Granted, but if it's done, where's the harm? You'd still have a market for OOTP8 with the new features. It's just good will, IMO.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Russ

Granted, but if it's done, where's the harm? You'd still have a market for OOTP8 with the new features. It's just good will, IMO.

It'd be grounds for a lawsuit.

[Kaitiaki]

Originally Posted by battists

Hi folks,

Well, you can tell I've had a tough few weeks if this is the first chance I've had to be involved in this thread!

He lives! Good to see you around, Steve.

- Kai

[Elendil]

Is there a list of bug fixes included in OOTP 8? I'm a beta tester and I don't know.