world_default.xml

[ukhotstove]

Originally Posted by Muzamba

(By the way, you might also notice continents within the geographical hierarchy. In the past, these couldn't be edited. However, you can now create your own new continents, if you want, with constituent nations, states, and cities! )

Please feel free to continue asking any questions you have about the new world db and I will be glad to answer anything I currently know the answer to (and if I don't, I'll speculate. )

So am I right in saying Skelphland my fictional country can be placed in it's own continent instead of in the past were I've had to place it in Europe even though theres no such country, or am I just dreaming that I can have a totally fictional world. If this is the case I could see me still adding countries, cities and such when OOTP75 comes out

[Chicagofan76]

Muzamba thanx for clarifying several issues I was having that other people in their stubbornness were unable to explain to my satisfaction.
Prior to this post I thought the only way to open and edit the XML files was in an XML editor or in IE.. Now that i can open it in notepad that makes it easier..

Can you or someone post a tutorial thread on how to add/edit your own countries to the current XML file. I currently have approx 12 different nations in 11 and I would like to add some more cities to each of those along with 12-25 more nations with cities.

What ID # does my 1st nation need to start with? In 11 it was 229. The last file in the XML says Region ID 74. So I guess what I am asking is what is the ID # for the start of my new nation and the ID # for the 1st state in that country.


Another question maybe you can clarify....In 11 I had taken out each of the cities in Illinois to have an Illinois Baseball League with players only from IL..Is there a way to do this without making IL a nation by itself and having to use just the cities of IL...
seems that theres some info in the XML that I would have to put in a new? xml along with Illinois and the cities of IL and i am not totally sure at this point which info I would have to include.

Thanx Gumby.

btw All i want to do as i did with 11 is add my Endor universe to the existing info in 12, not replace it.

[ukhotstove]

I'll be honest this thread as made me feel better about working on my city file, yes it's going to need a bit of work but not as mad as I was at first.

Another question I'd like to ask is next to, using the example Morocco it states the population is 32034572. Now in past versions when I've made a new nation it worked out the population in game does it still do this or do I have to add up each city population myself so as to put the population total on the nation line, same goes for the state line it says.

<STATE id="2126" name="Casablanca" pop="3363569" abbr="CAS">

Do I put these in myself or will the game work them out ?

[Ktulu]

Here's some advice for those wanting to create their own fictional world. This assumes you have your data in a spreadsheet, similar to how you would have done this in with the old csv/txt file system. This is basically a method to enter your city data in a much less tedious way. I also recommend using a text editor that has line numbers. If you make errors OOTP will give you line numbers of XML errors when it tries to import the XML file.

First step is to strip down the world_default xml file so that all you have is the basic structure tags without all the cities. Creat your country/continent/state etc tags as needed.

In your spreadsheet of cities, keep each country on it's own worksheet (you could even break it down further and keep states/regions seperate).

Create the six columns for the city data needed in the xml (ID,City Name,Population,City Latitude,City Longitude,Abbreviation)

Once you have all your data entered insert a column to the left of each of the previous six columns, and one to the right of "Abbreviation".

This is where you add the xml info. Under each column enter the following for each row.

< CITY id="," 
name=", " 
pop="," 
lat="," 
long="," 
abbr=" 
" />

So one row in your spreadsheet of cities should look like:

< CITY id="	508	" name="	Fictionalcityname" pop="	23000000	" lat="	42	" long="	-17	" abbr="	FIC	" />

Copy and paste your cities into the world_defalut.xml file between the appropriate <state> tags. Use search and replace to replace the spaces/indents caused by the spreadsheet. Voila!

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by ukhotstove

So am I right in saying Skelphland my fictional country can be placed in it's own continent instead of in the past were I've had to place it in Europe even though theres no such country, or am I just dreaming that I can have a totally fictional world. If this is the case I could see me still adding countries, cities and such when OOTP75 comes out

Yes, you can indeed create your own continents and place fictional countries, states, and cities in them.

Originally Posted by ukhotstove

Another question I'd like to ask is next to, using the example Morocco it states the population is 32034572. Now in past versions when I've made a new nation it worked out the population in game does it still do this or do I have to add up each city population myself so as to put the population total on the nation line, same goes for the state line it says.

<STATE id="2126" name="Casablanca" pop="3363569" abbr="CAS">

Do I put these in myself or will the game work them out ?

Actually, neither. You can just enter whatever population you wish. Unlike before, when a nation's population was the total population of every listed city within the given nation, you can now add the actual population of a nation, regardless of its cities' populations. In other words, you could have Skelphland include a single city with a population of 1000, yet list the total population of Skelphland as being 100,000,000. (Now, how this affects player creation, I'm not exactly sure. Will Skelphland produce a relatively equal number of players as a real nation of 100,000,000 or will it only produce the same as a country of 1000? I don't know. It's entirely possible that the total national population is just cosmetic and only serves to make the data look realistic in a list.)

Either way, the good news is that you don't need to calculate anything.

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by Chicagofan76

Can you or someone post a tutorial thread on how to add/edit your own countries to the current XML file. I currently have approx 12 different nations in 11 and I would like to add some more cities to each of those along with 12-25 more nations with cities.

If you'd like to set up a spreadsheet to do this, you can use the instructions Ktulu posted above.

Now, since you don't have an outrageous number of nations, you could probably justify making your edits/adds using notepad. Here's what I would suggest doing...

ADDING NEW NATIONS:

1. Find the last nation listed in the db, which is currently "Falkland Islands". On the line below </NATION> you'll see a line that contains </NATIONS>. Place your cursor at the very beginning of this line and hit the return key twice to create two new empty lines. This should push </NATIONS> down two lines.

2. Copy an entire line that begins with <NATION id=... (including the preceeding tab spaces) and insert it into the top new line.

3. Copy an entire line that contains </NATION> into the second empty line.

4. Change the information within the quotes to that of your new nation.

5. Repeat this process for each new nation you wish to add.

ADDING ETHNICITIES:

1. Find a set of lines that begin with <ETHNICITIES> and ends with </ETHNICITIES> and copy them.

2. Go back to your new nations. Place your cursor on a line that contains </NATION> and hit the return key. This should create a new empty line.

3. Paste the copied lines into the new empty line.

4. Change the ethnicity information to that of your new nation. Refer to the "Languages" list at the top of the page to determine the ID ("lid") for the ethnicities you want to include. You'll also want to change the percentages ("pct") to adjust your nation's ethnic distribution. (Remember that this a number out of 1000 and not 100.)

ADDING STATES & CITIES:

1. Between the line that contains </ETHNICITIES> and the line that contains </NATION>, insert two lines, one that contains <STATES> and one that contains </STATES>.

2. Using the same method you used to insert new nations, repeat the process for states, placing them between the <STATES> and </STATES> lines. Just remember that each state entry should start with <STATE id=... and include a subsequent line that contains </STATE>. (And of course, don't forget to change your info.)

3. Repeat the process for cities. Add a <CITIES> and a </CITIES> line in between the appropriate <STATE id=... and </STATE> lines, then copy and paste lines that contain <CITY id=... and </CITY> between the <CITIES> and </CITIES> lines.

Also, if you want to give your nation a capital, insert a line just above the line that contains </NATION> (ideally with tab spaces at the beginning that causes it to line up with </NATION>) that includes the following: <CAPITAL id="#" /> with # being the city id of the city you want to be the capital. (Note that states cannot currently have capitals.)

Hopefully I didn't make this tutorial confusing by including too much detail.

Originally Posted by Chicagofan76

What ID # does my 1st nation need to start with? In 11 it was 229. The last file in the XML says Region ID 74. So I guess what I am asking is what is the ID # for the start of my new nation and the ID # for the 1st state in that country.

As of right now, here are the highest ID numbers that are being used...

Nation - 252
State - 3341
City - 89997

However, keep in mind that new locations (especially cities) are likely to be added to the db, so you'll probably want to jump up to much higher ID numbers for your locations. To be safe, I would recommend starting with the following...

Nation - 270
State - 3500
City - 95000

Originally Posted by Chicagofan76

Another question maybe you can clarify....In 11 I had taken out each of the cities in Illinois to have an Illinois Baseball League with players only from IL..Is there a way to do this without making IL a nation by itself and having to use just the cities of IL...
seems that theres some info in the XML that I would have to put in a new? xml along with Illinois and the cities of IL and i am not totally sure at this point which info I would have to include.

Well, currently you're not able to base entire leagues within a single state, at least using the existing structure. So unfortunately, you'll still have to make Illinois a nation to ensure that all players come from locations in Illinois.

However, there's some good news on the horizon.

As soon as Markus implements Regions for league setup, you'll be able to add or modify a region that includes just the state or states you want. I won't give a detailed tutorial right now, since its not yet implemented, but I will as soon as the feature has been added.

But, as always seems to be the case, there's still a catch.

You still won't be able to configure it so that all players come from the state you set your league up in. American players will continue to originate from locations throughout the U.S. (although I'm pressing Markus hard to allow both ethnic distribution and baseball quality to be set at the state level, in addition to the national level, which should help control which states players come from.)

Originally Posted by Chicagofan76

btw All i want to do as i did with 11 is add my Endor universe to the existing info in 12, not replace it.

So yeah, I would just add Endor as its own continent. I'm not sure if Endor is its own nation, but if it is, you can include it as both a continent and nation (kind of like Australia IRL). My hope is that we will eventually add Worlds as a top level of the geographic hierarchy, so that interplanetary locales may be eventually added to the same db. But until then, I suppose being able to place other worlds on their own earthbound continent is an improvement over the old setup.

[Markmeister]

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Yes, you can indeed create your own continents and place fictional countries, states, and cities in them.



Actually, neither. You can just enter whatever population you wish. Unlike before, when a nation's population was the total population of every listed city within the given nation, you can now add the actual population of a nation, regardless of its cities' populations. In other words, you could have Skelphland include a single city with a population of 1000, yet list the total population of Skelphland as being 100,000,000. (Now, how this affects player creation, I'm not exactly sure. Will Skelphland produce a relatively equal number of players as a real nation of 100,000,000 or will it only produce the same as a country of 1000? I don't know. It's entirely possible that the total national population is just cosmetic and only serves to make the data look realistic in a list.)

Either way, the good news is that you don't need to calculate anything.

Muzamba,

I guess you haven't see the New York City bug in the OOTP12 forum?

There is an issue with having the nation population greater than the city population. Currently the game doesn't know what to do with the extra players and makes their birthplace the largest city in the country.

I generated a small test U.S. league with just 184 players and 48 were from New York City.

The fix to the bug is to make the nation's population equal the total population of the cities in it.

State populations don't seem to me causing an error.

[Chicagofan76]

Muzamba this sounds like a ton of work again...Last yr it took me maybe a month to do my cities/nations using notepad since openoffice.org sucks. After going thru 15 yrs worth of player stats to see where each player was from. Although I already have that info and would like to add additional cities for various nations, I am looking at 2 months of work to get my league into 12. Atleast I can still play my game in 11 til I finish this file.

Question I had thought Markus said there would be a City editor in game like the nation editor in 11, did it make it in or am i thinking that he meant 13 not 12? If it is in 12 I might try to do all changes in game, although I have the most unique names for my Endor league.

[ukhotstove]

Personally it does take longer to work with xml rather than the old txt files but I'm getting used to it, someone in another thread mentioned notepad++ so I downloaded that and find it easier to work with that specially being able to collapse and such.

I'll probably wait until the patches have been done to buy the game so that will give me time to work on the files, and yes I've again decided I'm not happy with the cities in my league so it will be a total rewrite which will make around 11,000 cities that I've come up with and deleted in the last few months

Anyway just want to thank Muzamba for his input and also everyone else for their suggestions.

[silvam14]

Thanks for this thread. Just what I was looking for!

[tylertoo]

Originally Posted by silvam14

Thanks for this thread. Just what I was looking for!

Agreed.

Until there's actually a manual for v12 which covers .xml, this thread should be stickied.

[gord]

So if I want to duplicate 1920s baseball and have it completely Caucasian, what in the XML file do I need to change?

[Markmeister]

Originally Posted by gord

So if I want to duplicate 1920s baseball and have it completely Caucasian, what in the XML file do I need to change?

You would change the XML to remove all references to other enhnicities/langauges. For example

<NATION id="206" name="The United States" short="United States" pop="218840792" lid="0" gender="0" bbqual="5" abbr="USA" dem="American">
<ETHNICITIES>
<ETHNICITY lid="0" pct="100" />
</ETHNICITIES>

This makes the U.S only draw from the U.S. Modern language names.

There is a second step too. Open the ethnicities.txt file and change the first lline to:

0,U.S. (Modern),0,0,0,1000,0,

[tanstrom]

I went in to edit the XML file to try and get a baseball world that would look like 1880 to kick off my fictional league. I edited baseball quality so that these were the only nations to rank above non-existant quality:
USA - Excellent
Ireland - Average
Mexico - Fair
England - Fair
Cuba - Fair
Canada - Fair
Wales - Poor
Scotland - Poor
Puerto Rico - Poor
Northern Ireland - Poor
Germany - Poor

However, when I created my league (with 5% foreign players) these were the results I got:
USA - 703
Puerto Rico - 9
Dominican - 8
Venezuela - 5
Mexico - 4
Japan - 3
Cuba - 2
Ireland - 1
Panama - 1

Even though the world explore reflects the changes I made to the XML the game created players like I hadn't made any changes at all. Any idea what's going on here?

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by Markmeister

You would change the XML to remove all references to other enhnicities/langauges. For example

<NATION id="206" name="The United States" short="United States" pop="218840792" lid="0" gender="0" bbqual="5" abbr="USA" dem="American">
<ETHNICITIES>
<ETHNICITY lid="0" pct="100" />
</ETHNICITIES>

This makes the U.S only draw from the U.S. Modern language names.

There is a second step too. Open the ethnicities.txt file and change the first lline to:

0,U.S. (Modern),0,0,0,1000,0,

I just discovered something interesting.

I'd previously stated in my little tutorial that the "pct" number for ethncities was not actually a true percent, but a number out of 1000. When you wrote that it was a number out of 100, it prompted me to check the db for confirmation.

It would appear that for every nation, the "pct" is in fact a number out of 100... that is, for every nation but the United States. For the US, it is apparently a number out of 3000.

So it seems we may have both been wrong. It actually looks as if one can use whatever total they want to express the ratio of one ethnicity to another in a nation.

However, it's also possible that this may be an exception to the rule for the US that doesn't apply to other countries. Read on to the next post and I'll explain why I think this might be a possibility.........

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by tanstrom

I went in to edit the XML file to try and get a baseball world that would look like 1880 to kick off my fictional league. I edited baseball quality so that these were the only nations to rank above non-existant quality:
USA - Excellent
Ireland - Average
Mexico - Fair
England - Fair
Cuba - Fair
Canada - Fair
Wales - Poor
Scotland - Poor
Puerto Rico - Poor
Northern Ireland - Poor
Germany - Poor

However, when I created my league (with 5% foreign players) these were the results I got:
USA - 703
Puerto Rico - 9
Dominican - 8
Venezuela - 5
Mexico - 4
Japan - 3
Cuba - 2
Ireland - 1
Panama - 1

Even though the world explore reflects the changes I made to the XML the game created players like I hadn't made any changes at all. Any idea what's going on here?

I just recently discovered Markus and Andreas' "dirty little secret" when it comes to player origins...

For the US, at least, nationality distributions are hardcoded!

I'm not sure to what extent one can tweak the bq ratings to ultimately get the desired results, but let's just say that I tried repeatedly to adjust the numbers of players from different countries and I pretty much always ended up with the same results. So you may just be stuck if your league is based in the US.

While I understand the reasoning behind the decision to hardcode these totals - Apparently, it was the only way to get realistic nationality distribution for an MLB-based league - it exposes a major flaw in the way player/personnel nationalities are determined in the game. Furthermore, I question whether this was the best way to go about fixing the problem. Unfortunately, we had major time constraints this beta cycle, or else I would like to think more logical and permanent solutions would have been explored. Still, I worry that this will be yet another band-aid that's left on for years while other more 'popular' issues are addressed.

FWIW, I already logged a request for Markus to look into this issue ASAP. I'm not counting on it being made a priority for OOTP 12, but I can reassure you that I will be pushing Markus and Andreas incessantly to continue the work that was started on revamping the world database system in v12 and hopefully we'll get this glaring deficiency resolved by v13.

In the meantime, I have an idea for a workaround, if anyone wants to try it. (If you do attempt this, be absolutely sure that you have a backed-up copy of the world_default.xml file.)

In your extra copy of the db, change the ID number for the US to 300. You'll also want to change the name to just "United States" (In other words, just remove the "The ") and change the abbreviation to something else (maybe something like "USX") just in case the game engine is somehow reading the text in addition to the ID. Then try inserting your own data into the "Ethnicities" brackets. Finally, save the file and try starting a new league. This may force the game engine to recognize it as a different nation and prevent the hardcoding from affecting the output.

Now, it's altogether possible that this may not work. The game may reject the notion that there's no "The United States" in the db and cause some sort of unexpected results or even errors. Therefore, you may have to try a more complex workaround.

This would involve copying all of the United States' data and tacking it onto the end of the "Nations" section. You'll still want to change the ID, name, and abbreviation, and update the ethnicities in the copied version. After that, go back to the old USA and delete all states and cities, leaving just the line for "The United States" and it's closing bracket (</NATION>). Again, save the file and start a new league. Be sure to base it in the new nation of "United States" and not "The United States".

I offer absolutely no guarantees that either of these methods will work. Hardcoding can be very pervasive sometimes. Nevertheless, if you want to take back control over nationality distribution in the US, it may be worth a shot.

If anyone does try this, please post the results here. I'd love to know if it can be done.

Good luck!

[Markmeister]

Muzumba,

Thanks for the info.

1) I had set up an 1871 test league to work on various things. Languages U.S. Historical 2500 and Hispanic 40 and there didn't seem to be any name creation issues. I will change to 2900/100 and see what happens.

2) I ran quick test with the United States changed to 300 using my modified world for 1871. Nothing else on that line was changed. Made a 40 team league with full minors to get as many players as possible.

Leaving the name as The United States didn't work. Lots of players from non-baseball nation of Venezuala and proportions were wrong. The poor quality nation of Puerto Rico had more players than average quality nation of Canada.

Changing to United States works. I could tell something was different before the league was even created as the change 'broke' the league creation wizard. The first try had The United States pop up as the league's nation, but it was blank this time around. I changed the nation to United States and only the nations with baseball quality had players and proportions were correct.

This is the line I used if anyone wants it.

NOTE: My file is edited to remove New York City and only has the 5 boroughs. Make sure that you use the correct population for your world.

<NATION id="300" name="United States" short="United States" pop="218840792" lid="39" gender="0" bbqual="5" abbr="USA" dem="American">

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Muzamba

I just recently discovered Markus and Andreas' "dirty little secret" when it comes to player origins...

For the US, at least, nationality distributions are hardcoded!

Indeed.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

I'm not sure to what extent one can tweak the bq ratings to ultimately get the desired results, but let's just say that I tried repeatedly to adjust the numbers of players from different countries and I pretty much always ended up with the same results. So you may just be stuck if your league is based in the US.

Yep, you're stuck.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

While I understand the reasoning behind the decision to hardcode these totals - Apparently, it was the only way to get realistic nationality distribution for an MLB-based league - it exposes a major flaw in the way player/personnel nationalities are determined in the game.

It may be realistic for the MLB in 2011, but it certainly isn't a realistic distribution for earlier eras.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

FWIW, I already logged a request for Markus to look into this issue ASAP. I'm not counting on it being made a priority for OOTP 12, but I can reassure you that I will be pushing Markus and Andreas incessantly to continue the work that was started on revamping the world database system in v12 and hopefully we'll get this glaring deficiency resolved by v13.

You have my gratitude and support, but I hope this doesn't take until a new version to fix. Right now, I'm trying to start a 19th century league and it's maddening to have to deal with all these Japanese and Venezuelan players. The irony is that version 12 finally came up with reserve clause rules for early-era gamers. It looks like it hit a home run when it came to financials, but struck out with the bases loaded when it came to demographics.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Muzamba

I just recently discovered Markus and Andreas' "dirty little secret" when it comes to player origins...

For the US, at least, nationality distributions are hardcoded!

Then what is the point of being able to do fictional historical leagues, and why even include the US in the XML file?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

Then what is the point of being able to do fictional historical leagues, and why even include the US in the XML file?

Couldn't agree more.