Creating a fictional nation

[Phillies_WFC_2008]

After reading that thread about making fictional leagues unique, I have decided that my next league will be in a fictional modern nation.

But I have absolutely no idea how to go about bringing this nation into OOTP. Are there any tutorials available? If not would any of you who have done this care to explain what files need to be changed to make it work right?
Also, are there any good free map making programs that are mac compatible?

Thanks



P.S. I posted this in the general discussion forum since it is more active but if the moderators feel the need to move this to the mod forum please do.

[albatross11]

OOTP Baseball Manual - Customizing OOTP

[Dreifort]

Originally Posted by Phillies_WFC_2008

After reading that thread about making fictional leagues unique, I have decided that my next league will be in a fictional modern nation.

But I have absolutely no idea how to go about bringing this nation into OOTP. Are there any tutorials available? If not would any of you who have done this care to explain what files need to be changed to make it work right?
Also, are there any good free map making programs that are mac compatible?

Thanks



P.S. I posted this in the general discussion forum since it is more active but if the moderators feel the need to move this to the mod forum please do.

Before even getting in OOTP... draw out the map of your nation on paper...and add Longitude and Lattitude lines (use a real globe for reference if need be).

Then plan out how many cities you want in your nation. Keep in mind that nation stats never change once your league starts. So if you start in 1900 and plan on playing til 2000.... if you have cities with population of 12,000 in 1900 -- in the yr 2000, that city will still only have 12,000. And if you want to start with 20 cities and expand to 200 cities over time... you have to start with 200, because your nation won't grow in OOTP.

Set your city pops to modern day sizes -- don't worry, OOTP still sets attendance accordingly to historical yrs, so 1905 team won't have sell outs every game for the 2,500 seat stadium.

Draw your cities on your drawn out map (doesn't have to be perfect). When you follow the Manual about adding cities, you will need Lat and Long locations. To some effect, this will affect players when wanting to play closer to home, etc.

Hope this helps...I'll be glad to try and help you further as I have just spent time in the past doing what you are about to do. Pre-planning will save you a lot of headaches in your OOTP fictional nation setup.

[ukhotstove]

I think the main thing you need to do before starting is decide on how big your world will be, will you be inventing multiple countries or just one country. How many cities, towns, villages etc will be in your fictional country/countries.

As Dreifort states you need to think about long/lat, I have 3,000 cities/towns in my Skelphland country which I split between 10 counties (states) so I just did 10 seperate long/lat rather than have 3,000 different ones so players will think about staying in a county rather than a specific town.

Anyway there are alot of OOTPers who work on fictional worlds who will be more than glad to help, just keep posting your questions and thoughts and someone will have an answer for you.

[ukhotstove]

ps

Another tip is keep a note book handy for jotting down ideas about your world, been many times I've thought of something to add to my world only to not be able to jot it down and then forget about it that's why my iPod is never far away.

Oh another thing be prepared to get lost in your world

[Phillies_WFC_2008]

Originally Posted by albatross11

OOTP Baseball Manual - Customizing OOTP

Oops, the one place I failed to look for help was the manual...




Anyone have some recommendations on free map making software for mac? I have googled for them but the pickings seem slim. I would like the map drawing to be as easy as possible, of course. I could do it by hand, but would like to make it easier on me.

[ukhotstove]

Originally Posted by Phillies_WFC_2008

Oops, the one place I failed to look for help was the manual...




Anyone have some recommendations on free map making software for mac? I have googled for them but the pickings seem slim. I would like the map drawing to be as easy as possible, of course. I could do it by hand, but would like to make it easier on me.

Theres Greenfish but I know nothing about macs so maybe someone can offer more for you, I usually just mess about in paint by downloading a countries map specially one that as the states seperate and then just merge a few states together. I've actually been thinking about getting a graphics drawing pad, I'm useless at the graphics part of OOTP but not to bad at drawing free hand so it's a route I may look into in the future.

[Dreifort]

I found an image of a flat earth map on google and used photoshop to just draw my map on top of the flat earth map on the area I wanted it (to get realistic lat and long lines).

Lat and Longitude lines actually curve with the earth, so having straight lines on a flat map is a bit wrong.... but it's not enough of a diff to affect anything big.

I was able to use this old map to get lat and long lines so I could have an idea how big (or small) I wanted my country of Legend to be. I wanted it bigger than England, but not take up half the Atlantic Ocean. (FYI the map below shows modern US (light blue colored) & map of how the old world (tan colored) thought the US looked like...I liked the map for the easy Lat and Long lines.)

[Dreifort]

Here is another map I used to get a feel for the size of my country...

[DreamTeams]

An easy way to get long/lat for your fictional cities is to use a nation you're familiar with and use it's cities (or a portion of them) to get the long/lat for your fictional cities. For example, I used part of the U.S. as a pattern for my fictional cities. So, Rivermount is as far away from Gotham as Houston is from New York because I used those real cities long/lat (Rivermount = Houston / Gotham = New York) for my fictional l cities.

All you're basically using long/lat for is to determine distance between your cities. In fact, OOTP uses it to determine distance between a given big league city and a player's birth city which can affect FA signing if a player wants to play closer to home. Using real cities to determine this makes it a snap as all you do is look up the long/lat on the web and plug it into the game.

[Phillies_WFC_2008]

I guess its easy to add colleges and high schools for this fictional land as well? I really do not like messing with feeders although I may do that if I have to.

[Phillies_WFC_2008]

I found a program called Ortelius, but it is only a demo and I am not sure I will have the time nor the inkling to learn the program.

Also, I do like the easy Photoshop method, although my limited PS skills are rusty. I think I'll be able to muster something up.

BTW, I am thinking of maybe turning this into a dynasty report to keep me entertained and also to hopefully get me out of my writers block..

[stevebydac]

I'm in the midst of building the same, and I'd be glad to help.

Here's a great free map-making program, the Greenfish Relief Map Generator: Greenfish Corporation

Screenshots of it: "greenfish relief map generator" - Google Search

Note that you can make the map without city names, or use a database of names. You can make it whatever size you want, and vary the amount of ocean shown, etc. Just keep regenerating the screen and choose a map you like.

I built mine 1200 pixels wide by 800 pixels high so that it fits most of my screen. I'm imagining it to be 480 miles wide by 320 miles high, roughly the size of England or the Northeastern US with a population of 50 million.

[Chicagofan76]

With my EBL league which I am killing myself to get up and ready by Monday since i got an External Drive for my b-day, so all my info is saved now, I matched all of my nations and cities up with real nations and Cities.
Endor = USA Endor City = Chicago same population long and lat.
Coruscant = England Imperial Center = London
and so forth
I created a new Nation and Cities.txt and I would add my Nations and cities based on the proper rules to follow. Cities much be in alphabetical order and nations go at the bottom.
So when i finish the City.txt I will cut and paste them into the real cties.txt since I am using all real cities also since my EBL goes up against MLB.
I have approx 1500 cities on 9 planets/nations.

[Dreifort]

Originally Posted by Phillies_WFC_2008

I guess its easy to add colleges and high schools for this fictional land as well? I really do not like messing with feeders although I may do that if I have to.

OOTP randomly says if amatuer players are from HS or College in draft (doesn't use any school names)... I have not yet seen an option to have a database of college names to use in player bios. That would be a cool feature.

[ry1220]

Originally Posted by Dreifort

OOTP randomly says if amatuer players are from HS or College in draft (doesn't use any school names)... I have not yet seen an option to have a database of college names to use in player bios. That would be a cool feature.

You can modify the schools through a text file prior to beginning a new game: ...Documents\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP Baseball 11\database\schools.txt

[Dreifort]

Originally Posted by ry1220

You can modify the schools through a text file prior to beginning a new game: ...Documents\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP Baseball 11\database\schools.txt

thanks! learned something news. never even went down this road... now something new to hog all my free time.



so basically Phillies_WFC_2008... adding schools is just like adding cities.

[Chicagofan76]

Originally Posted by ry1220

You can modify the schools through a text file prior to beginning a new game: ...Documents\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP Baseball 11\database\schools.txt

but u cant change the school someone went to...that that it matters after the draft...but i created aplayer 22 yr old who was orig 17 and the game had him coming out of HS still. he was from indonesia yet he went to HS in Texas.

[Charlie Hough]

I have some questions for those of you who have created fictional nations. Do you actually create an accompanying database of many cities so that players are generated from a wide variety of places in your fictional world? Do you create other nations as points of origins for players, or do you simply create a fictional country that somehow exists in the world as we know it?

It's one thing to create a nation and enough cities to populate a league, but to truly produce a fictional world of breadth and depth, it would seem like a lot of additional work might be required.

[Chicagofan76]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

It's one thing to create a nation and enough cities to populate a league, but to truly produce a fictional world of breadth and depth, it would seem like a lot of additional work might be required.

I have been working on the expanded Endor Baseball League universe since i bought the game in july, granted i have done so at a very leisurely pace.
Endor has 1500 cities approx. the other 10 planets/nations have no more then 25 a piece.
Plus since this league already took place 2003-3038...I am doing a baseball registry of every player that i have records for (which isnt every player) of what their rookie season was. Plus I am doing the Endor NCAA teams so those will show up since I also manage at teh college level for 1 sn plus 2 sns as a HS coach of Earth for 2 sns and 3 sns in HS on Endor, but i will just create feeder leagues when i get to those yrs and then probably delete those after i am done with them.
I have 95% of my uniforms for the 38 teams that have played in the 35 sns done. I have 500 cities done with still trying to add the other 1500 for Endor alone (all cities get matched up with a real city, pop/long/lat/weather to save time)
Anyone know if I should edit the Weather.txt?