Era-Appropriate Names, Ethnicities

[joek1972]

My favorite style of play is Fictional Historical. One thing that sort of kills the immersion factor for me is player names and ethnicities. When I'm in 1914 I don't want the league heavily populated by Latino players, nor do I want players with "modern" names like Cody and Austin. I would LOVE it if something was built into the player generator mechanism that resulted in a player base that reflected era-accurate names and demographics.

I know that Questdog designed an era-appropriate names file some time back, but I don't think it works with recent iterations of the game and it was a bit clumsy to work with in the first place.

Does anybody else have interest in something like this?

[Cornelius McGillicuddy]

There are mods for this. There's an All-American mod for ethnicities and a couple of name mods. And one for what injuries are called. Go to the new ootp mods repository. Used to be padresfan but there's a new one. If you can't find it pm me with your email addy and I'll send it to you.

I don't think there's one for off field injuries though.

[Jabez54]

OOTPMODS.COM

[Biggio509]

Unless the base code is rewritten in 13, the ethnicity mods do not work. The US is hard coded. You have to make a new country or use a foreign country. That is the only way to get rid of heavily Latino percentages in say 1910 when there were a handful of Cubans in MLB. Even with that you still might need to modify the percentage of ethnicity in the US. The good news is you can do this as often as want. Players are created every year so you can change the settings. The US as big of a problem once I created a new US but Canada produces a lot of Asians it seems with names very Asian names. I had to adjust ethnicity in the world editor. I don't think there is a way any more to just load ethinicity files like you used to be able to do.

[Syt]

Similar with Hungarians who by default tend to draw heavily from Finnish names.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

Unless the base code is rewritten in 13, the ethnicity mods do not work. The US is hard coded.

I hope that's fixed, even though it doesn't really affect me (I don't tend to use the US for leagues anyway) because I think it was a foolish decision in the first place.

[The Wolf]

None of that should be hard coded. Why put a world editor in if it doesn't really work? Not smart.

[Cornelius McGillicuddy]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

Unless the base code is rewritten in 13, the ethnicity mods do not work. The US is hard coded. You have to make a new country or use a foreign country. That is the only way to get rid of heavily Latino percentages in say 1910 when there were a handful of Cubans in MLB. Even with that you still might need to modify the percentage of ethnicity in the US. The good news is you can do this as often as want. Players are created every year so you can change the settings. The US as big of a problem once I created a new US but Canada produces a lot of Asians it seems with names very Asian names. I had to adjust ethnicity in the world editor. I don't think there is a way any more to just load ethinicity files like you used to be able to do.

Wow. I've just been playing with real history. Been thinking seriously of starting my first fictional in the deadball era with v13 but won't do it unless this is fixed.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Cornelius McGillicuddy

Wow. I've just been playing with real history. Been thinking seriously of starting my first fictional in the deadball era with v13 but won't do it unless this is fixed.

This is a fairly well-known problem for players who want to start fictional leagues that are based in the US. Markus hinted that this problem might be addressed in version 13, but I have seen nothing definitive about it. Until it is fixed, the solution outlined in Biggio509's post is the only way to avoid anachronistic ethnic breakdowns for US-based fictional leagues.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Syt

Similar with Hungarians who by default tend to draw heavily from Finnish names.

That's one of the more perplexing things about the nationality mix (the Finnish and Hungarian languages are somewhat related, but Finnish and Hungarian names are nothing alike) -- but with only forty nationalities, some choices had to be made. Still, it seems rather odd that there are separate files for German and Austrian names while widely disparate nationalities -- such as Lithuanian and Russian -- are lumped together in a single file.

You can, of course, make your own Hungarian name files and substitute them for an unused nationality, but you need to make sure that the ethnicity is the same, as that appears to be hard-coded as well. I tried to substitute Negro League name files in the place of the Vietnamese nationality files, but the players all ended up looking Asian. I then replaced the African nationality file instead and everything worked out fine.

Long term, I think the plan is to discard the nationalities files altogether and replace them with an .xml file (like the world_default.xml file) that will allow an unlimited number of nationalities. But then, with all the problems that have plagued the world_default.xml file, that may not be such a good thing.

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

This is a fairly well-known problem for players who want to start fictional leagues that are based in the US. Markus hinted that this problem might be addressed in version 13, but I have seen nothing definitive about it. Until it is fixed, the solution outlined in Biggio509's post is the only way to avoid anachronistic ethnic breakdowns for US-based fictional leagues.

Can't you create a league, then change the U.S. to 100% historical, then use the global rename function? What am I missing? I know it was said earlier that the U.S. can't be changed, but I know when I've done this the names are being drawn from the historical database. It is because I'm in commissioner mode?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Thundercrack

Can't you create a league, then change the U.S. to 100% historical, then use the global rename function? What am I missing? I know it was said earlier that the U.S. can't be changed, but I know when I've done this the names are being drawn from the historical database. It is because I'm in commissioner mode?

For a fictional league based in the US, none of those changes would make any difference to the ethnic mix. Also, you can't make changes in the world_default.xml file that would affect an existing league, and, if I recall correctly, you can't change the names to "US Historical" in the world editor because that isn't available as an option. So, for a variety of reasons, you can't do what you are suggesting here.

[Thundercrack]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

For a fictional league based in the US, none of those changes would make any difference to the ethnic mix. Also, you can't make changes in the world_default.xml file that would affect an existing league, and, if I recall correctly, you can't change the names to "US Historical" in the world editor because that isn't available as an option. So, for a variety of reasons, you can't do what you are suggesting here.

There is an option for US historical in the world editor. Not sure if it accomplishes everything you're trying to do, but it's there.

[Cornelius McGillicuddy]

Perhaps it would be a good idea if Markus would let us know where this issue stands.

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

That is the only way to get rid of heavily Latino percentages in say 1910 when there were a handful of Cubans in MLB..

Dolf Luque was probably the only one.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Thundercrack

There is an option for US historical in the world editor.

You are correct. It's the French Canadian names database that is not available under the nation editor.

Originally Posted by Thundercrack

Not sure if it accomplishes everything you're trying to do, but it's there.

Changing the names file only changes the names. It doesn't change the ethnic mix, which is hard-coded for fictional leagues based in the US.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

Dolf Luque was probably the only one.

Ah looking at my spread sheet I should have said 1910 to 1920. There were no Cubans in 1910 but there were a couple in 1912 then 4 to 8 for the rest of the decade. In '18 there were more Cubans than Canadians in MLB but we have to remember there were not many foreign born players at all. Cuba had 8 and Canada 7. After that there were 4 or 5 Irish players at most a year. There were a few other countries like Austria with 1 or 2.

This makes me rethink things a bit. So far I have edited baseball levels for countries. However, in those days with maybe the exception of the Cubans most "foreign" baseball players were just born in another country and come to the US at a younger age. They probably learned baseball in the US. So maybe just adjusting the ethnicity would be better for countries like Ireland. So instead of having Ireland level 4 it would be ethnicity Irish X%. That would throw off the foreign percent but it could be recalculated.

Sorry went off a tangent there.

[Muzamba]

I agree that this is something that desparately needs to be fixed. I think the problem has been that it's not a project that Markus seems to believe would be a "back-of-the-box" improvement. He seems to underestimate the community's appetite for more realistic league and player creation. Therefore, we've only been making incremental adjustments over the past few versions.

I'm going to continue pushing for an overhaul of the database until all of the above issues have been addressed, but I need the public's help. I already have most of the raw data available and resources at the ready for most of the rest of what's needed. It's just a matter of Markus and Andreas coding OOTP to allow it to be utilized.

That said, I would personally like to encourage everyone who feels this is an important area of the game that needs to be improved to sound off and let Markus know that it IS a big deal.

[Charlie Hough]

There is still an ethnicities file that contains settings for U.S. historical leagues in the OOTP 12 database. Why wouldn't this still be used?

Anyway, as others have said, you can use the world editor or edit the world_default.xml file to get the results you'd like.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Muzamba

That said, I would personally like to encourage everyone who feels this is an important area of the game that needs to be improved to sound off and let Markus know that it IS a big deal.

Thanks, Muzamba, for all you've done to keep this issue from being swept under the rug. I've done my bit to beat the drum about the world_default.xml file's deficiencies, but so far the only thing I've heard from Markus is that some unspecified change might be included in version 13. I have not ordered v.13, and I don't intend to until I learn whether or not this problem has been addressed. As someone who plays 100% fictional and who would like to start a nineteenth-century league based in the US, this is pretty important to me.