Play by play!

[tysok]

Sort of an unofficial blog I guess. The pbp was a massive task to undertake, anyone who played out games in last years version knows there were little idiosynchrosies, bad plays, strange plays, way too many words, and looked like it had never be actually read in beta. It read choppy, you stumbled over reading some plays that should have rolled off the tongue, names were everywhere and sometimes they made no sense.... it wasn't the fault of anyone on the text team though, as I understand it most of the work last year was done blind, without being able to see the results in the game.

This is an unofficial blog for two reasons, seems there's no holds barred now on what I can say so I will, and a lot of the bugs in the pbp were fixed not long ago... I wasn't about to create a blog when the pbp was in the shape it was in, and I still think it could and shuld have taken some further steps in this version. But it's pretty darn good now so an unofficial blog will be okay.

Anyhow, all of that was 2006. This is 2007, and from just after the first beta build was released until last night (when they locked the xml file until release) I've been logging bugs, doing a complete edit of the entire pbp, and tweaking categories. There's been help from several sources throughout the process of course, but the ones who've spent a heap of time in this section and deserve some recognition for their efforts is Pstrickert and Cork55 who have read through countless games and continually find problems that I dig in and try to get solved. With the pbp getting the kind of attention it did, they deserve a lot of credit for continuing to do a great job when build after build they'd just end up bringing up the same old bugs and getting told "Yeah, TT still open". Without them the pbp wouldn't be as far as it is I don't think.

I don't want to go to in depth here. We've managed to get the way the pbp (or all text actually) is called. When text exists to celebrate a specific condition (or to denounce it in some cases) or just make it a little more lively chances are good that it'll come up. That's probably step number 1, and a nice big one at that.
Second, we've got most of the first names and nicknames out of the pbp. Shouldn't see very many annoying "John the machine Guzman makes an outstanding catch". Nor should you see the worse call "the machine makes an outstanding catch". They still creep in here and there, but it's rare.
Third, the pbp will seem to know that it's already mentioned the guys name. I went through and mapped every category. We've attempted too craft them so that one category will cal the name, and the possible categories afterwards won't... another huge pet peeve of mine. It should flow better now.
Fourth, things should be toned down more. In 2006 you saw a slew of outstanding plays every game. Things look a little more realistic now.

Fifth, offset because it's one of the more interesting things that's been done I think, the pbp now has some sense of situations. Waninski in particular should like that. Here's some of the things and situations it may say.

If the bases are loaded with no outs your pitcher is in a pickle... this line could show up:
"Chance for a big inning here, no outs with the bases loaded."

If there's a man on third with no outs that guy better score or heads will roll... this line could show up:
"Man on third with no outs. There's no excuse if Boston doesn't get a run here."

How about if the pitcher walks in a run? The pbp in 2006 may or may not have come up saying anything about it, but for 2006 there wasn't such a situation even there. Now this line is there... and it or one like it should come up:
"ball four! Johnson will stroll in to score. You have to get the ball over the plate there and make them earn it."

There's a host of others like these. Waninski complained the loudest and most about a dropped third strike... well we've fixed that. It won't say the catcher tags the batter for the strikeout unless it was necessary to do so... and if the bases are loaded at the time with two outs... this line might come up:
"swing and a miss! But Jackson can't handle the fastball in the dirt, it rolls away... he quickly gathers it and steps on home plate for the out."

Nothing is perfect, and there's still a glitch in the selection process at this point. It's all done on counters. For example, say you have 3 objects in a category.
The game randomizes them, and for the example it randomly puts them in order. Object 1 and 2 have no condition, object 3 is conditioned for the bases loaded.
The game calls this category, bases aren't loaded so it uses object 1 and sets the counter for object 1 to 1.
Now the game wants to call this category again, the bases are loaded. It should select object 3, but since object 2 has a counter of 0 and it's next in line it might use object 2 instead. But it does set object 2's counter to 1.
Next time the game wants to use the category the bases aren't loaded so it skips 3 and uses 1. Now object 1 has a counter of 2, object 2 has a counter of 1, object 3 has a counter of 0.
Now the game wants to use this category and the bases are loaded. Since object 3's counter is 0 it uses it.
Of course, with few exceptions, every category has 10 to (sometimes) 100 objects.

Every time the game is closed the counters reset. So it's not perfect yet, but it's a huge step. Hopefully this is interesting for a few people.
Reading through a game should be a little better this time, there's countless hours put into it this year and I sure hope it shows.

[Gastric ReFlux]

Look forward to seeing the results.

Sounds like it's been a lot of work.

[bp_]

I don't play games out but I am glad to read that if I did it would be something I would want to read.

[battists]

The amount of work tysok and the other guys he mentioned put into the PbP has been nothing short of staggering. It's hard to imagine how complicated it is to make what is essentially a series of completely random events link together in a reasonably seamless, yet non-repetitive way.

I don't think the PbP for 2007 is perfect. We (the beta team) can already see ways in which it can be improved in patches or in 2008. Most likely, buyers of the game will play out more complete PbP games in the first weeks of sales than we were able to thoroughly review in all of our beta time, so there's no question there will still be some room for improvement.

However, it's definitely WAY better than 2006, and we even had one beta tester mention in passing that it was approaching or possibly surpassing DMB's quality, which appears to be the gold standard in this arena.

I'll be very interested to hear the public feedback from those who like to play out games.

[Simmo13]

Tysok et al, thanks for all the work you've obviously put in. I play out all my teams games so the quality of the PBP does make a difference. Look forward to the new version.

[TheDROCK]

i play one-pitch mode and during my preview i thought the PBP was WAAAAAAAY better than in 2006. In an earlier post, I said I thought the PBP in the 2006 version was tedious. It's been streamlined in 07 and more importantly, there's still plenty there to capture the excitement of a baseball game without going overboard. Best of all, no GREAT defensive plays on every ball hit.

[briantheiceberg]

Originally Posted by tysok

There's a host of others like these. Waninski complained the loudest and most about a dropped third strike... well we've fixed that. It won't say the catcher tags the batter for the strikeout unless it was necessary to do so... and if the bases are loaded at the time... this line might come up:
"swing and a miss! But Jackson can't handle the fastball in the dirt, it rolls away... he quickly gathers it and steps on home plate for the out."

that would only come up with two outs, btw. You can only steal first base on a dropped ball if first base is open - so there'd be no force at home - unless there are two outs, then first can either be open or occupied. So the only way that situation would come up is if the bases were loaded with two outs.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by briantheiceberg

that would only come up with two outs, btw. You can only steal first base on a dropped ball if first base is open - so there'd be no force at home - unless there are two outs, then first can either be open or occupied. So the only way that situation would come up is if the bases were loaded with two outs.

Yeah, missed putting that in. It's right... my fingers just got ahead of me. I edited the actual text above too.

[The Professor]

Well done, text team!

I look forward to seeing the improvements.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Yeah, tysok and the guys did a tremendous job

[novamustangs]

Does the PBP actually mean anything?

For example, there is 1 out, man on 2nd. Batter hits a single to RF and you need to decide whether to send the runner home.

One PBP could say...

"Line drive to right center, Guerrero cuts it off to hold Casey to a single, Granderson rounds third..."

and another PBP could say....

"Grounder through the hole into RF, Guerrero charges and scoops it up, Granderson rounds third..."

Now in situation #1 you're much more likely to send Granderson knowing Guerrero had to run a bit into right center and probably back handed the ball. Knowing he'd have to stop, reposition himself then throw home, you're more likely to send the runner.

However, in situation #2, Guerrero charged the ball and would probably gun down any runner by 10 feet, so you most likely wouldn't send the runner.

Both equate to a single with a decision making prompt. But is there really a difference between the two potential outcomes based upon where the PBP says the ball is hit?

I know of another text based baseball game that is absolutely terrible at situations like this. I've had situations where there were 2 outs and the right fielder falls down trying to make a play, the batter gets a single and a guy trying to score from 2nd gets gunned at the plate. Even Cecil Fielder and Gary Carter could score on that!

[RonCo]

tysok should post a game's pbp.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by novamustangs

Does the PBP actually mean anything?

The pbp just relates to you what has happened on the field.

In OOTP when you play out a game you're acting as the manager.
In reality the manager isn't standing out in the 3rd base coaching box and making the decision to take an extra base to third... you don't have the choice in OOTP either. You control all aspects of what a real manager controls.
In reality the manager can decide he wants to be more aggressive and tell his third base coach to be aggressive... in OOTP you do that by changing the strategy sliders.

So in your example the pbp doesn't "mean" anything because there's nothing to really "mean".

[zekester91]

Originally Posted by tysok

The pbp just relates to you what has happened on the field.

In OOTP when you play out a game you're acting as the manager.
In reality the manager isn't standing out in the 3rd base coaching box and making the decision to take an extra base to third... you don't have the choice in OOTP either. You control all aspects of what a real manager controls.
In reality the manager can decide he wants to be more aggressive and tell his third base coach to be aggressive... in OOTP you do that by changing the strategy sliders.

So in your example the pbp doesn't "mean" anything because there's nothing to really "mean".

This is a shame, I miss the days of 6.5 when you could make that choice on the fly, instead of pre-game, a lot of the time you want to go a diffrent route durring a game than what you set up in pre-game (in 2006 there was only what like 6 option Early game, mid game, late or extra innings, trailing by 1-3, blowout, or tied I belive) granted you could then set the same for each individual player but sometimes those choices don't work out how you think they would durring game time.

Edit: Plus who is this mithical 3rd base coach, I don't remember seeing him on my staff

[Curtis]

Ditto this.