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06-17-2006, 03:01 AM | #1 |
Minors (Triple A)
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 294
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Tilting at Windmills: the diary of an XML tinkerer
Thanks to the amazing, incredible, and miraculous OOTP text editor (which I, uh, kinda like. Y'know... carnally.), I can finally do something I've wanted to for a long, long time: go through all the in-game text and make it more lifelike-- more like you're dealing with an actual person or reading an actual news story, as the case may be; and, in the process, replace the text objects that, well, kinda look like they were written by a German programmer who lives and works in England.
This is a ginormous undertaking, and the truth is that I don't know if I'll complete it, but I do know two things are on my side. First, I'll be posting updates in this thread with samples of my better work, and that should keep me honest; and second, you have no idea just how much spare time I have on my hands this summer. No. Idea. It's ridiculous. I grow weary of this endless talking, gentlemen. Let's do this thing.
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." Last edited by DAL 9000; 06-17-2006 at 05:47 AM. |
06-17-2006, 03:57 AM | #2 | |
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Day 1 report and update
My first reaction when I opened up the OOTP text editor was: "Good LORD, there are a lot of templates here." Which there are; thousands and thousands of them. But the second thing I said was, "AND ALL OF THEM WILL BOW TO ME, FOR I CONTROL THEM UTTERLY!" ... and the best part is, I do!
So as I rolled up my sleeves and set to work, I hummed a merry tune, undaunted by the enormity of my task. OK, maybe I was slightly daunted: it's /really/ gonna be a lot of work. To put it in perspective, I've been editing comments for several hours now, and I'm only about halfway through the first subcategory of the first category of text objects. There's an amazing amount of text in this game, and I salute Markus for putting it together, especially in a foreign language. Having said that, I'm about to tear down all his work and reassemble it in a manner much more to my liking. First up: editing the e-mails you receive in player contract negotiations. I've always thought that you could just do so much more with those e-mails-- that you could make the game world a thousand times more immersive by giving them some real variety and personality, and that's what I've been doing so far. Generally, what I do is select a text object that's slightly... off... and then edit it so that it's (usually) longer and is more polished or conversational (or both). Now, sometimes the original text is just a hideous abortion of the English language and there's no real way to clean it up. When that happens, I take it as a sign to scrap it all and re-write it from the bottom up-- and have a little fun in doing so. Which brings me to the subject of today's sample of my work. And yes, for "[Person.First Name]," you SHOULD be reading "Rickey." Quote:
Two ways: first, you can set conditions for each text object. Using a condition for a text object is kind of like using a filter for a player search-- the text object will only be displayed if the condition is met. In this case, I set CONDITION: MINIMUM PLAYER QUALITY IS 4. Player quality is rated on a 1 to 7 scale, where 3 is an average major leaguer and 7 is an all-time great. So when you get this message, it really /won't/ be from "some random scrub"; at the very least, the player will be a good-to-very-good player whose self-opinion is, uh, a little bit inflated, and it might also come from a star. But, although that goes /some/ way towards making it unlikely that this message will be repeated, it still sounds /fairly/ likely that it will be. This is where the second part of my concept comes in: Markus wrote a ton of these text objects, which is why they very rarely repeat. I'm not going to delete those-- I'm going to alter and, in some cases, entirely rewrite them, so that the frequency of each /individual/ e-mail is still fairly low. Will that actually work? I won't know until I run a test league with this puppy, and that'll be a while in the future. In the next exciting, yet much /shorter/ update, you'll hear all about what I'm doing with the contract negotiation e-mails that are supposed to read like they've been sent in by an agent, including several samples that give you a taste of how a much more ordinary e-mail in this category looks. That's all for now, though, so I'll wrap up with a progress report: CURRENT SUBCATEGORY: PLAYER_CONTRACT_REACTION_GOT_BETTER_OFFER CURRENT CATEGORY: PLAYER CONTRACT NEGOTIATION SUBCATEGORY COMPLETION %: ~50 CATEGORY COMPLETION %: Oh, geez. It must be under 5%. It might be under 1%. PROJECT COMPLETION %: Let's just say I'm not too far along, OK? And then let us never speak of it again.
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." |
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06-17-2006, 01:18 PM | #3 |
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Excellent read. Enjoy the narrative of your experiences. Seems one of the peripheral benefits of the game's complexities is that areas like this exist that, in reality, can become games in and of themselves. Great to see you investing such energies in it and taking the time to share it with us as well. Nothing like a little inspiration to make others consider immersing themselves in a similar manner. Good work. Keep us posted.
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06-17-2006, 01:25 PM | #4 | |
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06-17-2006, 09:20 PM | #5 |
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This is a cool diary. I'm going to put together some of my own text too, because as a solo player, that's probably been the #1 problem for me when reading stuff in the game is just the fact that I wasn't able to fully "get into" the articles and such because they made no sense.
Though they are a little better now than in the past, this is a great tool we have at our disposal now.
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Godfather of Fast-Sim OOTP My Mods: GMExcel 24 Major League Women's Baseball (OOTP24) quickstart Indian Premier League | 300+ years of baseball quickstart | Expatriate League quickstart | Off-Field Injuries Update | Women's Name File for OOTP | My (outdated) market calculator & financial spreadsheets |
06-17-2006, 11:09 PM | #6 |
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Taking the feedback in order here:
1. Thanks, endgame. And I do mean that-- thanks. The first response to a dynasty thread always takes a load off the writer's chest-- and this /is/ basically a dynasty report, when you think about it. It's just that whereas most dynasty reports are about boring things like teams and players and alternate universes and one man's long struggle to overcome the odds and ultimately triumph in a moment of powerful emotional satisfaction, /my/ dynasty's about /exciting/ things, like editing the English.XML file for hours every day. If this thread were an album, it would totally go platinum, f'r sure. 2. Y'know, I'm not sure how to feel about that, treedom. On the one hand, I'm embarrassed that I didn't realize that earlier. On the other hand, by saying that much of the text is, um, not quite up to snuff, I've also just insulted some longstanding members of the community by accident. But on the third hand, they deserved it. Seriously, some of the text in there is terrrrrible. But on the /fourth/ hand, how come I keep thinking there's a little nip-slip going on there with your avatar? I mean, I know there's /not/, but still, for just a fleeting moment every time I see that picture, I'm dead certain there's a wardrobe malfunction going on before my tender eyes. And it occurs to me... if you're ever about to be lynched by a mob of rowdy 12-year-old boys, all you have to do is pass a copy of your avatar around the crowd and sneak away while they're all hypnotized by its nipple-licious power of suggestion. Your avatar is a survival tool. 3. darkcloud's right! OOTP Text Editor /is/ a great tool. In fact, "great" doesn't even begin to describe it; it's already leapfrogged Catobase as my all-time favorite OOTP utility. Lemme tell you something. If the guy who wrote the editor were here right now, I'd give him a bear hug and start weeping uncontrollably in gratitude. Then he'd mumble something awkwardly and try to disengage himself from me, but I'd just start sobbing even harder and let out an incoherent cry of joy as I used his sleeve to loudly blow my nose. And after he shoved me and started running away in terror and disgust, I'd fall to my knees and scream, "WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, MY SAVIOR?!" Because I'm just that grateful for it.
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." Last edited by DAL 9000; 06-17-2006 at 11:13 PM. |
06-17-2006, 11:23 PM | #7 | ||
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It's how I protect myself from the rabid fanboyzz.
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06-18-2006, 04:42 AM | #8 | ||||
Minors (Triple A)
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Posts: 294
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Update for Day 2: fight!
A random observation to start off my second update: yesterday I talked a little bit about conditions, which basically tell you when an item /is/ and /isn't/ eligible to be shown. What I forgot to mention, though, is that some of the preset conditions-- the ones that, by default, go with the comments-- are extremely weird. For instance, this text object:
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Probably not, though. I can't think of any reason to make service time a component of the aging algorithm. Anyways! To business. (Tiny yellow dudes: By George, we'll drink to that! TO BUSINESS! Disheveled-looking, wild-eyed old man: You young kids today disgust me. The way you two drink and carry on, there's no doubt in my old mind that pretty soon there'll be a Commie in the White House. Bystanders: Tiny yellow dudes: Disheveled-looking, wild-eyed old man: A Commie /terrorist/. Ghost of V.I. Lenin: You rang? Allow me to introduce my colleague Koba, sometimes known as Stalin, who-- uh--who... oh, dammit. Where's he gotten to? Koba? Koba? [spots him] KOBA! Stop consorting with the bourgeois youth! Ghost of Iosef Stalin: I'm sorry, Comrade Lenin, but I can't hear a word you're saying! I'm too busy rocking out! Ghost of V.I. Lenin: ... idiot. Well, then. Comrade Trotski, maybe YOU can sort of stand off to one side and loom threateningly while I talk. Ghost of Leon Trotski: Ohhh... please don't talk so loud, Il'ych. I have an awful headache. MEANWHILE, in Shannon's apartment, unbeknownst to any of the Commie ghosts: Shannon: Oh, Mike! Mike: Yes, Shannon! Shannon! ... when SUDDENLY... Shannon's boyfriend Eric (from offscreen): Honey, I'm ho-ome! Guess who left work early-- [opens door to bedroom] OH MY GOD! WILL Eric demand Mike duel him to the death... or will he take revenge right here, right now? Perhaps the two of them will have an angry dance-off for the hand and heart of Shannon! But maybe things will take a /sexy/ turn. Yes, there could be... a THREESOME! And what will become of the ghosts of Commies past? Find out on the next episode of... DAYS OF OUR EMOTICONS! ) Yeah. So anyways, to business. Remember when I said that in this update, I'd talk about my grandiose plan involving player agents? I /am/ going to talk about it. And while I talk about it, it would be a good idea if we both pretend that it would be a significant addition to the game, as opposed to a cosmetic one. Let me backtrack and explain here. My Super Smart & Totally Completely Brilliant Plan (tm) was simple. I would write the contract negotiation e-mails in five distinct styles, ranging from a guy who really does care about his client's personal ambitions, but employs a ludicrously soft sell: Quote:
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So in theory, at least, you can use the greed rating to divide all players into five bands, and ALL players within each band who will only send out e-mails signed A) by one specific agent... or B) in their own name. Point B is why the agent system is, as I was saying earlier, only a very small improvement on the status quo. The e-mails in that category are all (well, almost all) just short, generic messages, such as this: Quote:
Now, the truth is that I /could/ do that if I wanted to devote the time and effort to it. But honestly I don't, because that's not my goal -- mostly I just want to clean up the awkward and frequently deficient prose in the game's text, and add more variety, flavor, and realism so the game feels more immersive. You could say that my plan consists of two prongs: 1) smooth, and 2) improve. Tearing down what's already there and building something wholly new to take its place... well, that's neither smoothing nor improving. BONUS QUESTIONS FOR ACTUALLY READING TO THE END OF THIS INSANELY LONG-O POST: 1. Remember how my Day 1 update claimed my update for Day 2 would actually be shorter? 2. Did you believe that? 3. Really? 4. Hahahahahaha! I can't believe how gullible you are.
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." Last edited by DAL 9000; 06-18-2006 at 11:39 PM. |
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06-21-2006, 04:39 AM | #9 | |
Minors (Triple A)
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 294
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DAY 3 REPORT: Father's Day. No progress.
DAY 4 REPORT: Spent aaaaalll my time on an unrelated personal project. Once again, no progress. DAY 5 REPORT: Finished up the first sub-section! I also decided that, if I come up with any ideas for Totally Kewl Features (tm) in the course of this project-- like, for instance, my elaborate idea to create a bunch of player agents, which I mentioned above-- I will NOT immediately start trying to make it work. Instead, I'll make a note of it... and then completely ignore it until I've fully edited all the categories. This will keep me focused on the most important work, as opposed to getting sidetracked every time I think of something nifty. Today's sneak preview of the coming attraction that is DAL's English.xml file: text object #3267, which was the last object I edited in the got_better_offer subcategory. Since it had been a long and grueling process, I figured it was time for a fiesta. A /limerick/ fiesta. Quote:
CURRENT CATEGORY: PLAYER CONTRACT NEGOTIATION (#1 of 7) CURRENT SUBCATEGORY: PLAYER_CONTRACT_REACTION_NEGATIVE (#2 of 13 in category) PROGRESS ON SUBCATEGORY: 0% COMPLETED SUBCATEGORIES: PLAYER_CONTRACT_REACTION_GOT_BETTER_OFFER SIDE PROJECTS: Player agents
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." Last edited by DAL 9000; 06-21-2006 at 06:36 AM. |
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06-21-2006, 06:43 AM | #10 |
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Mm, short posts. So quick to write. So effortless. So accurate. (On the other hand, they leave no scope for things like Emoticon Theater, which let me come within an ace of fulfilling my lifelong dream of using-- in a contextually appropriate way-- every possible emoticon in just a single post. Plus, even though I know it's rude and crude and just plain sad to laugh at your own jokes, I gotta say... the two-bananas-and-a-cat thing? Stroke... of genius. But, however, I digress.)
Tune in tomorrow (probably) for my next update, when we'll pay a visit to the seedy back alleys of Sesame Street and document Oscar the Grouch's darkest secrets... and the /shocking truth/ about his past. Also, we may produce a clear, concise explanation of what we're trying to achieve with this project in the specific areas of news text and PbP commentary, which would enable us to avoid lengthy and confusing explanations later in the project when we reach those areas. But on that front we make no promises. We're good at lengthy and confusing. Clear and concise is frightening, and strikes us as unnatural.
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." |
06-21-2006, 07:15 AM | #11 | |
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06-21-2006, 09:07 AM | #12 | |
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06-26-2006, 04:25 PM | #13 |
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Posts: 311
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if you're doing all this work, wouldn't it be more fun if it wasn't brad hampton, but was Scott Boras? I know most of the updates beign worked on for this game are an attempt to make it mirror real life....I know the minute i get an email from scott boras, that i might want to look for a different free agent to sign
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06-26-2006, 04:37 PM | #14 | |
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Glad you like it ....I think I mumbled something awkwardly when I read this.... If you use it alot and have suggestions on improving it, drop me a note.
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"The man who was the spearhead of the Dodger offense throughout the year, who saved them in the LCS, will not see any action tonight, for sure." -- Vin Scully on Kirk Gibson, 1988 WS Game 1 |
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06-27-2006, 06:05 AM | #15 | ||||
Minors (Triple A)
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 294
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Once upon a time, I read that, in order for an activity to become a habit, you have to do it every day for about five weeks straight. Wouldn't it be awesome if it only took five /days/?
Mmmm... impossible dreams. Speaking of impossible dreams, here's the latest progress report. DAY 5 REPORT (Wed. 6/21/06): No progress. DAY 6 REPORT (Thurs. 6/22): No progress. DAY 7 REPORT (Fri. 6/23): No progress. DAY 8 REPORT (Sat. 6/24): No progress. DAY 9 REPORT (Sun. 6/25): Progress! Fired up the text editor again and started in on the insanely long subcategory PLAYER_CONTRACT_REACTION_NEGATIVE. It raised some interesting questions for me, chief among them this: why are there so many text objects for player responses to bizarro lowball offers? There must be almost 30 objects that will only display if your contract offer meets these two conditions: CONTRACT OFFERED SALARY REACTION -3, CONTRACT OFFERED YEARS REACTION -3. Now, -3 is the absolute lowest either value goes. If you offered Albert Pujols a one-year contract at the league minimum, that would be a -3/-3. So my question is... why are there so many -3/-3 messages? I always assumed that most players followed the same general free-agent strategy I did: make a competitive offer from the start. Are there, in fact, a significant number of players who prefer to start things off with an insane-o lowball offer? Anyways, I'm pleased to report that, having applied my subtle and delicate touch to the -3/-3 e-mails (I've included an example below), they now sound suitably pissed off. Several of them demand that, before their talks with you go any further, you apologize for making such a blatantly insulting offer. Hm. Note to self: go back and edit at least one e-mail to include the phrase, "Cur, abase yourself before me and repent, and I might suffer you to live." DAY 10 REPORT (Mon. 6/26): More progress! Having finally escaped the doldrums of the -3/-3 reactions, I'm moving along at a steady clip. As I write this report, in the last two days I've edited (and as always, by "edited" I mean "rewrote the entire thing from scratch in about 80% of cases, and cleaned ") a little more than 100 text objects. Now, I don't know how many hours that took me, but it was certainly no less than four. Six sounds about right. SIDE NOTE: My engineer friend Sarah informs me that she used the Power of the Calculator to discover that, if it did indeed take six hours to edit ~100 objects, at my present rate I could work on this project three hours a day for every working day in a calendar year and STILL only edit about 12,000 messages. The good news is that I'm pretty sure there aren't actually that many in-game e-mails, and the editing process (I've peeked ahead to reassure myself that this is true) will be sped up enormously once I get to play-by-play stuff. The bad news, though, is that I'm obviously /not/ working on this five days a week. I'd say there's about a 50/50 chance I'll be finished with this before OOTP 2K7's out. But gentle reader, don't despair. I've come up... with a /plan/. Specifically: when I finish each text category (the categories are: Contract Negotiations, Game News, Game Play-By-Play, League Events, League News, Manager News, and Player Season Descriptions; please make sure to put your answers in the form of a question. Hi, Eck! ), I'll release an updated .xml file for download so that all you undeserving peons will be free to bask in the glory of my prose. /side note SUMMARY AND SAMPLES: Since this is, after all, player_contract_reaction_negative (emphasis on the negative), the e-mails I've been writing have been decidedly unhappy. Sunday's e-mails were the worst, of course; I spent Sunday working on all the -3/-3 reactions (again, -3 salary/-3 years), and those were mostly flat-out angry: Quote:
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Happily, the -1/-3 reactions are much more civil; they're basically in "This isn't nearly good enough, but we can work with it" territory: Quote:
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OVERALL PROGRESS REPORT: CURRENT CATEGORY: PLAYER CONTRACT NEGOTIATION (#1 of 7) CURRENT SUBCATEGORY: PLAYER_CONTRACT_REACTION_NEGATIVE (#2 of 13 in category) PROGRESS ON SUBCATEGORY: ~30% COMPLETED SUBCATEGORIES: PLAYER_CONTRACT_REACTION_GOT_BETTER_OFFER SIDE PROJECTS: Player agents Tune in for our next update, when you'll discover that Ben Franklin had a shocking secret. (HINT: He was a zombie Satanist.)
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." Last edited by DAL 9000; 06-27-2006 at 06:39 AM. |
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06-27-2006, 06:52 AM | #16 | |
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." |
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06-27-2006, 07:11 AM | #17 | |
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OK, it doesn't /say/ "you're an idiot;" it's a question mark. But still! Uh, OK, so where was I? Oh. Right. It was pretty clever of you to put that function in there. And if it weren't for the fact that I'm a seriously broke college student who doesn't even have a summer job, I would pay you for making this. Of course, I'm pretty sure that no one with a paying job would have enough free time to discover OOTP Text Editor, let alone play with it and be awed. That kinda sucks for you, huh?
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Llama farmers of Wisconsin! "Welcome, and enjoy our llamas." |
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06-27-2006, 09:17 AM | #18 | |
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I like your writing style, cracks me up at times. Keep up the good work.
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"The man who was the spearhead of the Dodger offense throughout the year, who saved them in the LCS, will not see any action tonight, for sure." -- Vin Scully on Kirk Gibson, 1988 WS Game 1 |
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06-27-2006, 11:27 AM | #19 | |
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As a 1.0, it is silly solid. I am anticipating what comes next. |
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10-18-2016, 04:02 PM | #20 |
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So, uh, any more of that emoticon theater?
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I write a monthly newsletter on the Food Baseball Association. I also listen to music no one's ever heard of in hopes of looking cool and alternative. |
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