My Ultimate League

[Xix13]

Greetings OOTPers!

I've enjoyed previous versions of OOTP and am ready to get into the latest version, but have missed the period when they were partnered with somebody else. I see a lot has changed and continued to be improved.

I downloaded the manual and looked through many of the postings, but I've not seen an answer to my eternal question. So, here goes.

When I was young, pre-computer days, I played a tabletop stat game called BLM (Big League Manager). I figured out their ratings formulae and such pretty successfully and created a league of players taken from throughout the history of baseball, allowing the Sandy Koufax vs. Babe Ruth type matchups. I always had a lot of fun with this and it was one of my driving forces to getting into computers when the technology became available. But, it's always been a monumental pain to try and set up those teams again. So, here's the question:

Is there (are there) any file(s) that I can create by taking data from the Lahman database (.csv) and just saving it. That is, can I use a spreadsheet to create the team files that the game will use, then put them into leagues without having to edit players one by one into a draft, etc. I don't mind doing the work for the graphics stuf, but I'd really love to be able to just grab lines of data from the database and create the team rosters manually.

Hope I made that clear enough for an answer. I've seen a bunch of people that have made rosters and things, but I've just not found a listing of HOW to do that from scratch. Thanx much for any help.

-- Xix
"I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"

[zekester91]

you should be able to pull the players you want, copy them into a Excel spreadsheet, change thier birthdate and debut year, and then save that as the main (.csv) and then import that.

[mikev]

Nah don't like that.

[Xix13]

Sorry, Mikev? Don't like what? Or can you suggest how to do it or point me to a file format listing of main.csv?

I'm going to play around with things to see what I can do to make this league creation stuf a bit quicker. Definitely love this game, though, and will purchase OOTP8 tonite.

[mikev]

Inside joke, sorry. Carry on.

[Xix13]

OK, I've installed the game. I set up 2 16-team leagues in a fictional league setup with an inaugural draft. Now, how do I get the players that I want (from historical years) onto the teams of this league? I see only .dat files (binary) and no .csv files anywhere, except for the Lahman DB directory, which isn't used for this fictional league, apparently. It created its own set of fictional players.

So, I'm still wondering how I can populate these 32 teams with players and years selected from the Lahman database. I'll even go through the whole draft process in-game if necessary, but I'd really like to get the players out of the database, rather than going thru player by player with my BB Encyclopedia as a reference to put in all the stats for the year I want, changing each fictional player by hand into the one I want with the year I want. There has to be a way to import all this stuf into the game automagically from a subset of the Lahman DB, yes?

As an example, here's what I'd like for the New York team:

Roger Bresnahan & Wilbert Robinson -- C
Lou Gehrig -- 1B
Champ Summers -- 1B/OF
Bobby Richardson & Willie Randolph-- 2B
Derrel Thomas & Billy Rogell -- UT
Honus Wagner -- SS
John McGraw -- 3B
Hector Lopez -- 3B/OF
Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Babe Ruth, Jay Johnstone -- OF
PITCHERS: Grover Cleveland Alexander, Amos Rusie, Tommy John, Mel Stottlemyre, Joe Benz, Wild Bill Donovan, Jakie May, Hal Reniff, Ray Narleski, Sparky Lyle

And 15 others to fill out the 40 man protected roster, going into the AAA minor league team to start the season: Grover Hartley, Chris Chambliss, Phil Gagliano, Gil McDougald, Roy White, Aldolfo Phillips, Johnny Blanchard, Rick Wise, Rick Waits, Bill Stafford, Todd Stottlemyre, Jim Scott, Roy Parmelee, Dolf Luque, Mac Scarce.

Thanx for any help and sorry for the long posts.

-- Xix

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by Xix13

Definitely love this game, though, and will purchase OOTP8 tonite.

Welcome aboard, Xix! (I'm glad, though, that I don't have to pronounce your name ).

It sounds like what you want to do is Release All Players / Clear Rosters first (this is in League Setup, Functions). This dumps all the fictional players into the free agent pool from where you (as commissioner) can delete them all.

Then, you can go to Edit League Structure (also in League Setup, Functions). You see a button there to Import Hist. Team. Click that and find MASTER.CSV from where you stored the Lahman Database. Once you find that and confirm, you can enter the season and find the team on the drop down menu that you want from that year. Click Import Team, and the players and their histories are imported in the division that you selected.

You can also import individual players into the free agent pool by clicking Import Historical Player at the bottom of that screen (again, you have to be the commissioner). Same procedure for locating the MASTER.CSV file, only this time you have to select the player by typing in his historical player ID. For example, Babe Ruth is ruthba01. You can find these player ID's at www.baseball-reference.com. You look somebody up over there and it's in the player's page URL: http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/ruthba01.shtml

This sounds like a lot of work if you are going to import a lot of individual players. You may want to import a number of historical teams, Release All Players / Clear Rosters again, then delete the historical teams so that you are back to the 32 teams of your league, then Release All Players & Schedule Inaugural Draft. The players that you want should be in that draft and as commissioner, you can control the selections for each team.

This should be enough to get you started. Experiment, use trial and error. Also, Section 25.5 of the manual has more on all of this.

[Xix13]

Thanx much, 1998 Yankees! Actually, the name's quite easily pronounced. In English, an X at the beginning of a word is pronounced Z (as in xylophone). After a vowel, it's prounced CKS (as in example). So, Xix = Zicks.

I'm experimenting with some things along the lines of what you suggest. Making some master files with the players I want extracted from master.csv. Trying to figure out how to get the stats in as well is the next step, but I'll certainly refer to your explanation above as I go along and may just go with the nameID/year import as you suggested. Still a lot of leafing thru my BB Enclyclopedia, but at least I won't be going in and altering every player.

Thanx much for the help!

-- Xix

[1998 Yankees]

No problem. You're going to find that you can do a lot of customizing with this game and that includes rosters, as you have seen.

Interesting idea, if I read you correctly, to edit the Lahman Database to come up with your semi-historical teams first, then load them as if they were historical, using the procedures above. I'd be interested if you were to post here again and let me know whether you were successful.

[The Wolf]

And here I always thought that XIX was pronounced "nineteen."

[Xix13]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

And here I always thought that XIX was pronounced "nineteen."

Only if I forget to turn off caps lock.

Decided to go with the clear-all-free-agents then load player by player and do the draft. Seems the easiest way to get the players in. That web site was a wonderful pointer. Ah, this modern internet stuf. Sure makes it go a lot more quickly than the old leafing through the book method. Thank you, Al Gore! What a great invention!

However, after I've loaded the teams, I'm going to save out the rosters and see if it is, indeed, possible to load in teams the way I'd originally intended. One major problem is the leftover code in spreadsheet programs that seems to limit number of rows not to memory, but to some hard-coded number (65K). So I can't load the big file of stats into the spreadsheet program, thus probably making it impossible to do what I'd wanted without some coding of my own, which I'm too tired to attempt.

The last problem I may run into would be with ages. I hope the game adjusts the ages to match the year I choose for the player. Plan to use a starting date of 1 Apr 2011, so I hope those guys from the 1890s won't show up as over 100 years old!

-- Xix
"I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Xix13

Only if I forget to turn off caps lock.

Nah. Your screen name is pronouced "1913."

[Kelric]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Nah. Your screen name is pronouced "1913."

Yeah, you're stuck with that now.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Nah. Your screen name is pronouced "1913."

Some people view that year, just before the beginning of World War I, as the end of the Golden Era. Of course, an apocalypse ensued soon after that changed the world forever.

Originally Posted by Kelric

Yeah, you're stuck with that now.

But, I wouldn't take any of this personally, Xix, like thinking you're a bad omen or something.

[Xix13]

lol No, as a matter of fact, and being a Child of the '60s, I would look at 1913 as the year before the upheaval in baseball that brought about Benny Kauff and the Federal League. Power to the People!

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

But, I wouldn't take any of this personally, Xix, like thinking you're a bad omen or something.

1913, the Bad Omen! Run away!