I'll be posting some modified database files soon

[cbbl]

Hey all...

Some of you may recognize my username, as I've been playing OOTP on-and-off since at least 2006, but because I'm intermittent with my play (sometimes taking 2 years off between playing), I'm not consistently on these boards.

Anyway, I'm a historical fictional player, meaning that I like to create fully fictional universes based in the past. As much as I can, I want the feel of the league to mimic what baseball was during the era when I'm playing, including era-appropriate names, schedules, finances, statistics, etc. While some of this is well controlled by the OOTP game engine, as you all know well, other things require changes to the OOTP database files.

As I'm doing this, I want to share my modified files with you all. I'll post the files in the respective subforums, and continue to add to my thread(s) as my league progresses and I update my files.

If it makes more sense to move the files to someplace easier to find, I'm happy to oblige or allow these files to be moved by those more knowledgable than I.

So, here we go.

For a background, the baseball universe I'm creating starts in 1890 on the U.S. West Coast. For a more complete description of my plan, see this thread I posted. (I'm finally getting around to starting!)

Before creating this universe, I'll be modifying the following files. Links to the subforum with those files are included, and I'll update this thread as I finish my work.

* beard_frequency_default.txt
* first_names_engllsh.txt
* names_english.txt
* nick_names_english.txt
* world_default.xml

I'll also be creating schedules to fit the specific structure of the league. To see them, see this thread.

Let me know any comments or questions you have...and wish me luck!

[Tiger Fan]

Really looking forward to seeing your files. I am a long time historical only player who has transitioned to enjoying fictional-historical more than true historical replays so I am looking forward to your files. I have tinkered with modifying smaller things like the schools, injuries and names files to make them fit with historical play but getting the correct populations in the world_default file is a little too daunting a task for me so I look forward to seeing what you create. Thanks in advances for sharing these and I look forward to following your dynasty.

[cbbl]

Thanks, Tiger Fan. I'll have some of the first name and surname files posted to the Names and Nations subforum today, and will try to follow up with other files in the coming days and weeks. It may be a little while before I actually get my league started.

I'm completely open to modifying other files too -- like that which you've mentioned, and concur that modifying populations in the world_default.xml file is a hell of a lot of work. Here's what I did on that, if it helps you.

First, because I'm starting in 1890, I wanted to exclude Alaska, Hawaii, and Oklahoma from the file. So, under Nation 206 (The United States), I simply deleted them. My logic regarding states like Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Montana, etc. is that they were territories at the time, so if someone comes from there, why not. It's not 100% likely, but its an OK compromise.

I then modified the populations of the remaining 38 states (including DC) based on the 1870 U.S. Census population data. I did not modify any city data.

I would be totally open to doing a historical update if I understood how OOTP found this data--and most importantly--added to the xml file efficiently.

[Tiger Fan]

Thanks for the suggestions. One word of caution on deleting cities or states. I am not certain but I think if you eliminate cities or states from the world default it will mess up your league if you import a modified world-default in later years with additional or fewer cities.

I am not 100% certain on this but I think it will cause changes in the city ids when you change to a different edited world-default file.

If I am right in that thinking then my plan, if I ever got to trying to modify it for early 1900 populations, is I would keep all cities and states as they are in the original world_default but edit the populations down to zero for ones I did not want appearing in the game. No idea if that would work but it was my plan to try and some point.

Just didn’t want you to get to 1920 and import a newly modified world_default only to see it messed with your player birth City history.

[cbbl]

Originally Posted by Tiger Fan

Thanks for the suggestions. One word of caution on deleting cities or states. I am not certain but I think if you eliminate cities or states from the world default it will mess up your league if you import a modified world-default in later years with additional or fewer cities. .

Thanks. I'll have to test that out. That is always my biggest fear -- that something set when the universe is created prevents a desired modification later on.

That being said, I'm not sure why the ids would be reorganized. There are a of NATION ids, for example, that are missing, but as far as I know, The United States is always 206, even though there's no 203, 204, or 205.

I wonder if some others know better than us on this.

[Tiger Fan]

I might be wrong or I might be remembering something from older versions of the world file. Thinking about it if you delete those states like Oklahoma, as long as you don’t reuse a city ID number or the state ID in your 1871 starting world file it should not affect anything if you add it back to the file in future seasons. So I may just be thinking of an old issue a number of versions back.

[joefromchicago]

This is a great project, cbbl! I look forward to more amazing stuff!

[cbbl]

UPDATE: Last names file added; link to schedule thread added.

[cbbl]

UPDATE: My population- and ethnicity-updated world_default files have been added in a new thread. See link above.

A beard frequency file thread has also been added.

[cbbl]

UPDATE: I added a new schedule file. Note that I got 2 seasons into the original league before I needed to make some changes, prompting me to start fresh. This time I started the league in 1888.

I'll continue to add relevant files as I go. Feel free to relocate them if helpful.

BTW, if anyone was interested in following the dynasty, I'm writing an offline history of the league. I think based on how I'm writing it, some of you may enjoy it. It's far more than simply talking about players and recapping games -- and isn't so droll as to drone on an on about every player, etc.

I'm holding it back until I've played sufficient seasons in the league to ensure the outcomes I'm looking for and that I've cleared any OOTP hurdles. I've already had to restart the league once. I'm in the second season of the second version now, and will not likely publish the dynasty until I as least five or six seasons in, perhaps more. There's just too much that I *think* OOTP can handle that I may learn later it can't, forcing me back to a restart with the additional knowledge in hand.

Stay tuned!