Brendan's 1973 Topps inspired OOTP Cards (now including awards cards)

[La La La Linoleum]

I have just completed the base image for the awards card, here it is:


I have also completed 3 more options for the All Star cards (the first four options are still on the table):
Five
This is the Variant I am most leaning towards.


Six
The same as one but flipped and using the AL color.


Seven
This one has the unique advantage of possible being able to change between two similar templates based on the league name since all the text is centered on both. Like option three in my previous comment this base would use two facegens of the same player (It would essentially be the exact same picture twice as facegens do not vary much in zoom or angle).


The plan now is to do all the xml for the awards cards so I can continue playing my fantasy simulation. After that is done I can work on the base card while playing out the offseason.

Finally on the topic of Mac support: I still haven't been able to find any specifics on how to support the platform so here is what I recommend.

1. Follow the installation instructions included in the download
2. Navigate to the bb_cards/templates folder in the data folder of your install
3. In another window open the mod download again and navigate to the bb_cards/templates folder within the zip archive
4. In the zip archive's bb_cards/templates folder is a folder named ootp21. Rename the folder ootp21_mac and copy it into the data/bb_cards/templates folder you have open in the other window.
5. When prompted combine folders and replace files
6. Try creating the cards in game and let me know about any errors or discrepancies so I can try to fix them

Looking forward your feedback!

[zappa1]

#7

[La La La Linoleum]

I am currently leaning towards using the same awards text on the 1974 cards as the 1973 cards. Here's why:

• I am struggling to find any more card writeups or similar for awards. When I made the '73 cards I used the best sentences I could steal from the back of Topps cards for each award from 2002-2006. With all of the best material used and no other sets featuring distinct cards for Gold Glove, MVP, Cy Young, ROY, and Silver Slugger, I tried to turn to newspapers which leads to the next issue.
• It is very difficult to find useful writeups for baseball award winners older than a few years ago. I tried newspaper databases and google searches as well as the MLB press releases site (which does not allow search by date).
• What I can find is usually not very useful as it states information too specific for use with every player that could possibly win the award OR directly references information that cannot be recalled by the baseball card creator, this year's MLB.com writeups for Gold Glove winners being an excellent example as it frequently referenced stats without tokens (DRS, DWAR, CERA) and previous award history. Some examples:
  

  Originally Posted by MLB.com

  ...taking home his third straight Gold Glove Award and his fourth in the last five years

  Originally Posted by MLB.com

  ...en route to taking home his first career Gold Glove Award.

• That second example brings up a another point. It is currently not possible to create conditional text on baseball cards in OOTP 21. If I wanted to write a line that would work the sentence has to make sense for all numbers. words like first, consecutive, etc. are off limits. This is probably not a bug and should not be a priority so I would not expect it to change soon.

Until I can find a good source of write-ups that would work for OOTP, the game is updated to allow more of the write-ups I have already found, the game offers a token that generates a card write-up based on the player that can be inserted, or I become more confident in my writing skills I'll probably settle for the back of card text being the same for all winners of each award every year.

EDIT: I bit the bullet and wrote custom write-ups. They're probably not ready to adorn the backs of real Topps cards but I'm proud of them. That leaves XML and tracing fun fact images before 1974 is done. The latter could take several weeks... stay tuned.