Yes, I am new -- Yes, I am confused.

[Peabs]

Hello all. Great game, equally great forum, very informative and friendly.

My need is rather simple, but after spending some time searching, I have not happened across a viable solution. I would like to start a new game, MLB rules/teams/logos/players -- everything as in real life.

I have downloaded, what I believe to be, the adequate material for such an endeavor...to no avail. I click on "Start New Game", I cancel as to create my own and not run through the wizard and it's there that I am lost. Nowhere do I have the option to load my database (Lahman 5.5), add rosters/teams/logos, etc. Where do I do this?

The Padresfan site is amazing; I have read the help section there, but I suppose a layman like myself needs even further assistance. If possible, and you understand what I need to do (I tried to be as plain as possible, I hope I didn't confuse anyone that really understands what they're doing, haha), I would be greatly appreciative of any help provided.

Thank you in advance.

[t_wil1]

are you trying to do a historical sim. What year do you want to start with

[OldFatGuy]

Originally Posted by Peabs

Hello all. Great game, equally great forum, very informative and friendly.

My need is rather simple, but after spending some time searching, I have not happened across a viable solution. I would like to start a new game, MLB rules/teams/logos/players -- everything as in real life.

I have downloaded, what I believe to be, the adequate material for such an endeavor...to no avail. I click on "Start New Game", I cancel as to create my own and not run through the wizard and it's there that I am lost. Nowhere do I have the option to load my database (Lahman 5.5), add rosters/teams/logos, etc. Where do I do this?

The Padresfan site is amazing; I have read the help section there, but I suppose a layman like myself needs even further assistance. If possible, and you understand what I need to do (I tried to be as plain as possible, I hope I didn't confuse anyone that really understands what they're doing, haha), I would be greatly appreciative of any help provided.

Thank you in advance.

First of all, if you're not going to use an MLB quickstart, or template, then this will indeed be a daunting task. Doable, but a bit daunting. My advice would be to find a suitable quickstart or template, but I can't help there, I haven't found one yet. But I haven't looked all that much either as I prefer to play with fictional players.

If you are interested in doing this yourself, and you've downloaded the art necessary from PadresFan site, then I'll give you a start and you can come back with more questions.

I believe the bolded part might be where your problems are starting. If it helps, perhaps you're better of thinking of it in TWO terms. ONE: Real teams with real players in a realistic universe, and TWO: Real logos, hats, uniforms, and in case you weren't aware, real ballparks. To get through this, you have to attack those two goals separately.

So, to get started, OOTP8, at the very first screen (the one after the stop watch stops spinning), click on New Major League Game, and enter a name for you're game. This is just the name of your save game directory. THen the game will go away for awhile and make things.

When its done, it will probably remind you to make a new human GM, so do that now. Save your game, and get out. Part one of those two goals is now done. It will be a game starting with real players, in a realistic league setting, with real players from the Lahman DB, dated January 2, 2007.

Now, part two is the fun part. I'll start with the team logos and cap logos. I'm not sure which of those you downloaded from that site, as there several, but if you want to make it as easy as possible on yourself look for the team and cap logos that have lots of numbers and/or letters after their name. Like this:
Logo:
Oakland_Athletics_255255255_000069000
Cap Logo:
Oakland_Athletics_000083071-252180063

Now depending on which set you downloaded, they may also include years and home/road in the name as well to let you know these were the team/cap logos for those years. Important: If there are multiple logos with years, you will need to decide which logo to use, and edit the years and home/road out of the name so that it looks like those above. Those sets of numbers after the name specify colors the program uses, and makes life easier than the logos that don't include colors. The specific numbers I put above are unimportant, as I don't know if those numbers are the best colors or not. If the colors aren't right, its ok, those can be changed once we get back in game.

Now, when you have those sets of team and cap logos, for all of your teams (and this even inludes most if not all the minor league teams as well; as PadresFan site is amazing and includes these too), you'll want to copy these into the following folders:

Team Logos:
My Documents/Out of the Park Developments/data/logos

Cap Logos:
My Documents/Out of the Park Developments/data/ballcaps

Ok, now for the uniforms. They'll look like these depending on whether they are fully finished uniforms or just the logos.

jerseys_logos_Atlanta_Braves_255255255_012041095_2 04004035
or just
jerseys_Atlanta_Braves
(Since these are compiled jerseys, no need for the color data)

There are several sets of fully compiled jersey sets there, so I will use those as an example. But, if there are only jersey logos available, they can also go in the same directory, so its ok. Again, editing out any year info in the name, you will copy these jerseys and/or jersey logos into the folder

My Documents/Out of the Park Developments/data/saved_games/NAME OF YOUR SAVE GAME/jerseys

After you've done all of this, you may need to go into each team's home page and click on Edit Team Colors and Ballparks for the changes to take affect. While there you may want to notice the city each team is assigned to and make any changes necessary.

My fingers (and mind) are tired now, and since I'm not even sure anyone's going to read this, I'll hold off on the ballparks until you request it.
Sorry for the length.