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Old 03-17-2014, 08:44 PM   #1
Charlie Hough
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Any Interest in Accurate Ethnicity Mods for Hispanic Players?

I've developed an update to the ethnicities, names, first_names, and world_default.xml files that provide a more accurate reflection of the racial and ethnic differences between Hispanic populations in Mexico and Central America vs. South America and the Caribbean.

OOTP lumps together all Hispanics as a single ethnicity. It uses a single, overall setting for Hispanics that distributes Spanish names across the racial/ethnic groups like African, Hispanic, and Caucasian.

This is problematic and unrealistic because, based on real world ethnicity data, the African ethnicity in OOTP should be virtually non-existent in Mexico and some other countries, while it should have high representation in places like the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

But OOTP treats all these places equally, so the percentages of these racial types are applied the same way to ethnically Hispanic players in any Spanish-speaking population and also in the U.S.

I have not refined my mods yet, but they are based on recent real world population data, and they replace the Pakistani ethnicity and name set (37) with a new ethnicity and a copy of the Spanish nameset that represent Mexico and Central America. This allows those countries to have a distinct ethnicity that provides more accurate racial representation for players from those locations.

Meanwhile, the original Hispanic ethnicity file has been tweaked and is used for countries like Venezuela, Colombia, Dominican Republic and Cuba.

Of course, this is an oversimplification, so I might need to create a third ethnicity to make things more accurate. After all, the racial makeup of other countries in this region varies widely. In Argentina, for example, you would almost need a unique ethnicity and nameset just for that country, with an overwhelmingly Caucasian population and especially a mixture of Spanish, German, and Italian surnames. But I will probably save that for a future day when maybe OOTP expands its number of supported ethnicities.

By the way, I chose to eliminate the Pakistani ethnicity simply because it was the first one, starting from the bottom of the numerical list, that is not important for a realistic reflection of contemporary baseball. I would probably move up to #36 and the Indonesian ethnicity to do the next set.

NOTE: As a bonus, I also used U.S. census data to add thousands of surnames to the nameset for the modern U.S., including quite a number of Spanish surnames that are often combined with English first names and have been around baseball for the past few decades.

I removed many prospective surnames from this new list because they represent real-world ethnic groups that still have minimal representation in baseball at any level, including Little League. So, for example, you don't see Arabic or Persian names in this set. But you get a far more diverse and realistic nameset for American players.

In testing, I have really liked the results thus far.

Last edited by Charlie Hough; 03-17-2014 at 11:38 PM.
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Old 03-17-2014, 08:48 PM   #2
Lukas Berger
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Yes, there's interest here! Sounds wonderful Charlie, really good stuff!
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Old 03-17-2014, 09:57 PM   #3
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Old 03-17-2014, 11:37 PM   #4
Charlie Hough
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Okay, before I release anything officially, below is a link to a zip archive with the required files. Consider this a beta release.

IMPORTANT: As always, back up your original or current database files before using these. The changes will apply to newly created games only. Also, be aware that the new world_default.xml file turns OFF the hard coding of player origins for U.S. leagues. But that's okay because you can still get those defaults in the player origins settings during your league setup.


MORE BACKGROUND

The first names file has remained unchanged except that I copied the Spanish first names into the new ethnicity #37 for North American Hispanics. Also, the Spanish surnames in the names file have not been changed, again other than duplicating that set for the North American Hispanic ethnicity.

In addition, please be aware that the U.S. modern ethnicity and nameset are updated as well. You may notice that the Hispanic racial type is set to 0 for the modern U.S. This is because the U.S. entry in the world_default.xml file has been updated to pull its Hispanic population exclusively from the new Hispanic ethnicities #1 and #37.

OOTP handles all of this stuff in a somewhat confusing way, so just trust me that you'll still get plenty of Hispanic players, all of whom are configured based on real life tendencies among the populations in the countries that tend to produce MLB players, including the U.S. And you'll get some American guys like "Michael Lopez" and "Donald Cruz" who are Caucasian or African but have Spanish surnames that are very common in the U.S. The frequencies of these blended names are adjusted in the namesets so that they appear at realistic levels.

Also, I added a select few Asian surnames like Chen and Chang, which are the most common Asian surnames in the census data and are frequently combined with English first names these days. But these are not set to be very frequent at all for American players, so you will only occasionally see them. Otherwise, I have continued to allow OOTP to handle Asian-American players as it normally does, with their own fully Asian nameset.

If you open the ethnicities file, you'll notice that ethnicity #1 is now labeled Hispanic (Caribbean and Latin America), and ethnicity #37 is now labeled Hispanic (North America).

Please feel free to try these files and share your feedback. My primary way of testing them is to create a new league, use the View All Players list, and then sort it by country of origin. I then review the U.S. players and those from the 'Hispanic' countries to check out the racial distributions and the names. So far, I've been very happy with the results, and I'm known for being a demanding pain in the ass. But, inevitably, you may find, like I do, that you still need to do some occasional maintenance to eliminate duplicate names in a draft pool or modify the odd Facegen or name that doesn't quite suit your preferences.

And please point out any U.S. modern surnames that seem particularly out of place. Occasionally, I still find one that I don't think is realistic, so I remove it from the nameset.

http://www.ootpmods.com/mods/Hispanic_Ethnicity_Mod.zip

Last edited by Charlie Hough; 03-17-2014 at 11:39 PM.
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Old 03-18-2014, 08:24 AM   #5
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Glad to see you do this, Charlie. People who know more about Hispanic surnames than me have complained about this problem for a while, so it's good to see someone making the effort to address this issue.

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Also, I added a select few Asian surnames like Chen and Chang, which are the most common Asian surnames in the census data and are frequently combined with English first names these days. But these are not set to be very frequent at all for American players, so you will only occasionally see them. Otherwise, I have continued to allow OOTP to handle Asian-American players as it normally does, with their own fully Asian nameset.
Well, this highlights a problem inherent in OOTP's way of handling names. Say, for instance, you have white/black/Asian/Hispanic ethnic breakdown of 78/13/2/7. If you add some Asian surnames to the American Modern "0" nameset, then someone named "Michael Chang" will have only a 2% chance of getting an Asian facegen. Instead, he'll much more likely end up being white or black or even Hispanic.

As I see it, the only way to get names, ethnicities, and percentages all coordinated is to make ethnically homogeneous namesets. If you want Asian-Americans to have Asian surnames paired with "typically American" first names and also with Asian facegens, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to create an Asian-American nameset.
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Old 03-18-2014, 01:14 PM   #6
Charlie Hough
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Sure, you're absolutely right, which is why I may continue to tweak and update my mods. Unfortunately, though, OOTP doesn't give us a lot of room to do this without sacrificing a lot of other ethnicities around the world in order to create the necessary mods.

However, I controlled for your concern in my work. Also, one thing I will point out is that, with some of these common Asian surnames in America, many people who have them don't necessarily fit the usual Facegen 'appearance' that you'd expect. If you view the lists of prominent people of various ethnicities in America and then look at their pictures, it becomes clear that these "mismatches" are quite common among the most popular Asian names that go back generations in America. But that's why I don't add anything beyond the top few Asian names, which are almost all Chinese by the way. Beyond those, the "mismatches" are much more rare, so I exclude those possibilities.

The theory behind my limited use of them in the U.S. modern nameset is that, yes, these players will end up being a certain racial type at the same ratio as other Americans, but the world_default.xml file still pulls the vast majority of American players with those surnames from their dedicated namesets and with the usual Facegen that you'd expect.

So, in the end, you get the occasional Asian surname and a Facegen that is Caucasian, Hispanic, or African rather than Asian, which is realistic on the Caucasian side and might even make sense for a Hispanic Facegen with a guy like Bruce Chen (if he was American).

However, the vast majority of American players with Asian surnames will still come from the dedicated Asian namesets. So the names and Facegens will match, meaning that the exceptions will be rare.

For me, if I end up with a name and Facegen that doesn't match to my liking, then I simply regenerate it. And, since the frequencies are so low, this seems very manageable to me. In fact, in my testing, I still haven't seen some of my Asian exceptions yet.
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