totally confused

[laywho]

I am a newbie and want to know a few things.

First, how do I start a new season? Just load my league and start on my schedule?

Second, I was trying to sign some free agents before my first season and whenever I offered a contract it would pop up and say...Minimum is $100,000...even though I was offering millions. What is up with this? It will not let me sign any players!! Please help!

[Steve Kuffrey]

Leave ALL punctuation out of contract offers.

[Killebrew]

Originally posted by laywho
First, how do I start a new season? Just load my league and start on my schedule?

Copy/paste from the manual:
QUICK START

Creating a New League

Launch Out of the Park Baseball and select Create New League from the File menu.

Creating a New League

Next, click the 2002 Career League button, and then click the League Name button. Enter a name for your league in the text box. When you are finished, press Enter on your keyboard and then click the GENERATE LEAGUE button. Depending on the speed of your computer, it may take anywhere from 15 seconds to 60 seconds to generate your new league.

Managing a Franchise

Once league generation is complete, you will be prompted to Start League with a draft. Select No. Out of the Park Baseball will then send you to the LEAGUE STANDINGS screen. From the Teams menu, select Atlanta. We will control Atlanta in this tutorial.

You should now be viewing Atlanta's roster. Click on some of the buttons (Pitching Stats, Batting Ratings, etc.) to cycle through different views of the roster. You can also browse Atlanta's minor league affiliates by clicking on AAA, AA and A. Click on the All button to view all players in the organization.

Atlanta's Roster

You will also see a new menu item on the menu bar, Atlanta. Select Front Office from the Atlanta menu to open the ATLANTA FRONT OFFICE screen.

Front Office

There are a number of options on the Front Office screen. Let's raise ticket prices slightly. Click on the Set Ticket Price button twice to increase the price by $2 to $12. Note that $10 is the default ticket price in Out of the Park Baseball.

Finally, we will generate a financial report to demonstrate the game's print and export capabilities. Click the Financial Report button which appears in the upper-right portion of the screen. A reported entitled, "Atlanta Financials" will appear, along with options to Print, Text Export and HTML Export. Click HTML Export and type the path C:\myreport.htm in the text box. Click OK and then Close. Using Windows Explorer and your browser, you should be able to navigate to, and view, the report you created.

Playing & Simulating Games

Now it's time to play some games! From the League menu, select Schedule. The opening day schedule for the entire league should appear, similar to the figure below. The start times, records and starting pitchers for each game are all listed. Additionally, a new menu item, Simulate, appears on the menu bar.

League Schedule

In Out of the Park Baseball, you can play/manage individual games, simulate one or multiple games, or alternate between playing and simulating. In this example, we will simulate the season's first week of games. From the Simulate menu, select Simulate WEEK. Out of the Park Baseball will begin simulating your league's games, and will also update the Standings at the conclusion of each day. When the simulation period has concluded, you will return to the League Schedule screen.

Next we will play an individual game. Find Atlanta's scheduled match-up on the LEAGUE SCHEDULE screen and click the Play button. If Atlanta does not have a game scheduled for the current day, simulate a day's worth of the games until Atlanta's next match-up appears in the LEAGUE SCHEDULE.

Pre-Game Options

You should now be viewing a GAME OPTIONS screen similar to the one above. Click on the Offense, Defense and Substitutions buttons to toggle on human control. We'll let the computer control base running for Atlanta, and all of the management of our scheduled opponent. Click CONTINUE TO LINEUPS to continue.

Setting the Lineups

A simple drag-and-drop mechanism is used to arrange your starting lineup. Using the left mouse button, double-click and hold on any player that appears in the table to the left, drag them to the desired batting slot on the right, and release the left mouse button. When prompted for the new player's fielding position, make a selection from the pop-up window that appears. You can substitute your starting pitcher in the same manner by clicking the SHOW PITCHER LIST button, and drag-and-drop from the list of available pitchers to the starting pitcher slot. Click the CONTINUE button in the lower right portion of the screen to continue.

Pre-Game Show

The PREGAME SHOW screen will now appear, showing the starting lineups for both teams, and pertinent statistical information for each player. You may also notice that some players' boxes are shaded light red or light blue. This signifies which players are "hot" (red) and which are "not" (blue). Click CONTINUE GAME to begin the game. You should now see a screen similar to the one below:

Stadium View

To begin the game, click the Pitch + Normal button in the lower left section of the screen. This area contains various strategic options which will change depending on the game situation, and whether you are playing offense or defense. Try out various options and play through a few innings. Then click the Simulate button in the upper right portion of the screen. You can have the computer simulate up to a certain inning, or, simulate the rest of the game. Click the End button to have the computer simulate the rest of the game.

At the conclusion of each game, the box score will appear. You can also toggle the view for the game log, which gives a batter-by-batter account of every game event. These reports can be saved and printed in the same manner as described above.

That concludes the Quick Start section of the manual. Feel free to experiment with the "test" league you created here, or, continue on to the next section of the manual, Career vs. Replay.





If that was all you need then ignore this next part, which is just for online league play:

If by "my league" you mean an online league that you joined then you just unzip that league's zipfile into it's proper folder:
-Either it's built into the zip path in which case you just unzip into the OOTP4 directory. (you have to check the zip file for this)
-Or you need to create the league folder - remember the league folders need the *.LG extension, where * is the league name.

Once that league file has been unzipped into the proper folder just start the game & open that league in the games file menu (don't have the game open but look for "Open League" on the menu). Good luck!

[Scott Vibert]

1.) Load your league and start playing the first season.

2.) As mentioned above do NOT include dollar signs, commas, or decimal points (or cents) in any contract offers.

So instead of $1,000,000.00 type 1000000