More Work than Play?

[PittPanther]

I have to say that it is the little things that drive me crazy about this game.

Trying to create some sort of cyber-boxing world is often more work than fun. At least if you want things to look neat in the history portion of the fighters record.


I have tried countless ways to set up something with various fighters and I always find my always starting over.

Here are my gripes:

1. Why, when using the auto-schedular do you have to fill in a date in a venue? Let's say I want to have 350 fights scheduled in a single year. . .fine, but in every fighters history they will have fought in the same place on the same day. Rather corny. It would be better if it just gave a generic year---1905, instead of 2004-01-07.

2. Why aren't records combined by name? Ok, here is one that ruined my last expereince, let me explain. I decided that I would take on the monumental task of researching about 25 current fighters in all the divisions. By research I mean, getting their complete fight records, with dates, refs, trainers and so forth. Although my research was not complete in anyway, I did find enough to at least get started with the Heavyweights. Good enough for me! So I start maticulously scheduling and simming one fight at a time for each fighter, subbing non-exisiting boxers with low-rated ones. Every fight I have to repunch the name of the fighter into column A, even though he is a constant. That sucks. But that's not the worst thing. I wanted to use the old Holyfield, Toney, Tyson, Jones etc. ratings to build up an accurate portrait of their career. Unfortunately, unless you constantly edit those original ratings, the game won't combine your stats. Instead you get two, or in Roy and Toney's case, 3 sets of sepearte records and so forth.


This might seem minor to most, but it really is starting to drive me nutz!

Can someone please give some advice on creating a cyber-world in which the boxer's history would look somewhat realistic? Meaning that they are able to create boxer records with varying dates, venues etc., rather than having 20 auto-scheduled fights all fought at the same time and at the same place.

I really am wanting to enjoy this. . .help, please.

[PittPanther]

P.S.

Is there anyway to import actual records from Box.Rec to use?

That would be a life saver!

[Cap]

Pittpanther, I sympathize. You come up with a really good idea, but you run into road blocks. Unfortunately, I can understand that the programmers can't really make TBCB all things for all people. I think that a lot of the great plans people here come up with never entered the minds of the folks behind the game. There are just too many different ways to go with this sim.

I'm trying to think of some way you could accomplish what you want to do, but it looks like whatever it is will require a lot of work on your part. I suppose you could copy records from Box.Rec, but they're in a different format from the records in TBCB. I'm thinking that a lot of this stuff will be possible in the upcoming role-playing version of the game.

Cap

[PittPanther]

Cap--

I think you are right. Let me ask you this: How do you set up your boxing world?

Do you use multiple divisions or just one?

Historical or completely fictional?

Any advice that would help me have an idea of how others are playing would be most welcomed.

With the board game I used to run tournaments with only the best rated fighters. . .say the best 32 heavies, middies and so forth so I am really trying to stay away from that angle and would rather focus on a boxing world with 3 seperate divisions using the active database of fighters. The problem is, I'm not sure how to really get started on created an authentic, realistic boxing world.

Anyway, I do appreciate the reply.

[rastak]

Pitt, I'll give it a shot. I'm a long long time player of the board game. I bought it in the late 70's and played it to death. I also wrote several computer versions of the game for the following computers....Texas Instruments, Commodore 64 and the PC.
Anyway, a friend of mine and I have been running various boxing worlds on the computer versions I've written or purchased for years (1984 to be exact). Here's what we are doing with this excellent game:

We are only using the retired guys. I want to watch Dempsey fight, not Butterbean. We randomly drew a fighter each from every major division, ignoring CW and all the Jr's and Supers.
Our drawn fighter had to be an 8 or above. I then set all "our" fighters to not be included in the auto scheduler. I then started in the Heavy's and ran 10 fights for everyone. Then one by one we ran 10 fights for our fighters using the auto-scheduler with the option of actually doing the fight if either of us wanted to.

Okay, now all heavy's have 10 fights and rankings. I created a table for title shots on paper and rolled the dice twice for IBF, WBA and WBC. We watched the title fights except for the one I was in (IBF Champion Joe Louis!) and we actually ran my fight both controlling a fighter.

We intend to rinse and repeat for the rest of the divisions. We have HW and LH done so far. I had more but my hard drive croacked on Christmas morning and we had to start over.

Going forward, we will run an auto-schedule each week for everyone, then have 3 bouts auto-scheduled for our fighter.
We will then choose which of the 3 we will accept and run them
with us controlling the fighters. Then, I roll for challengers
for each title. We then do the title fights.

What we don't have worked out yet is....

a) A chart to determine if a champ is stripped of the title.
b) A chart to determine unification bouts.
c) A way for us to drop and pick up fighters.

This should be pretty easy, I just haven't gotten that far yet.

For what it's worth...our HW champs...

IBF Joe Loius
WBA Sammy Langford
WBC Harry Wills (Ko's Ali in a stunner)

[PittPanther]

Rastak, thank you for the suggestion.

I think that I might have found a middle of the road solution to my situation, I'll have to wait and see.

Anyway, I wanted to ask you if you could tell me more about how the performance points worked.

[rastak]

Not sure what you mean. I assume a guy gets lots of points for beating a guy better than him and loses lots for the opposite.
Frankly, I haven't really studied how many points a guy gets for winning or losing a particular fight. I just run 'em and check the rankings. (Which is a problem, the damn things are virtually identical for each org. I liked the WBC ranking before because they were different.

[Jim Trunzo]

Also, please understand that many, many of the concepts that you all would like to see should surface in the role-playing version, although it is a long time away.

As Cap accurately stated, we never intended the game to be used to create a boxing universe per sa. The product has always been touted as a simulation that would allow you to: (a) match thousands of fighters in bouts that would produce accurate results; (b) allow you to re-create historic bouts; (c) allow you to stage "What If . . ." dream fights. However, it is obvious that many of you wish to take the game down different and fascinating paths and we are going to have to address that desire.

As far as annoying little things - no argument there that we need to smooth out some of the rough edges and we will, given time.

[rastak]

Originally posted by Jim Trunzo
Also, please understand that many, many of the concepts that you all would like to see should surface in the role-playing version, although it is a long time away.



As Cap accurately stated, we never intended the game to be used to create a boxing universe per sa. The product has always been touted as a simulation that would allow you to: (a) match thousands of fighters in bouts that would produce accurate results; (b) allow you to re-create historic bouts; (c) allow you to stage "What If . . ." dream fights. However, it is obvious that many of you wish to take the game down different and fascinating paths and we are going to have to address that desire.



As far as annoying little things - no argument there that we need to smooth out some of the rough edges and we will, given time.

Hello Jim, I understand what you are saying.....but, I have never used a single product you have sold for anything but creating a boxing universe.

What fun is there in a) if there is no context in which to conduct these fights? b) gets old fast and c) is fun. but even better if you've created a framework around these fights.

Anyway, your program is flexible enough to weave a game around it unlike TF2001 which ended up in the dust bin at my house within a few hours. I really do like this game and can't wait for the role-play. PLEASE make sure the role play is multi-player, don't support just one stable....competeing against the computer alone gets old real fast.


Thanks again Jim

[Kevin]

Rastak:

My way of determining a unification bout is if both titleholders have successfully defended their repective belts at least twice, and there is no one in the composite top 10 rankings with three consecutive wins.

I haven't done anything with stripping of titles yet, but once the different organizations have more varied rankings it should be easy to come up with a formula where a unified holder loses one of his belts because the organizations have different qualified top contenders.

[dempsonny]

I believe the issue of combined records of the same fighter is being worked on so Duran as a LW and WW will be combined.
The issue would dates would probably be helped if we could edit records with dates and even fighters.

Gus

[David Myers]

PittPanther's suggestions #1 and #2 in his first post above are sensible and should be very easy for Andreas to program in a patch.

For #1, you ought to be able at least to designate a default date other than today's "actual" date. Or the autoscheduler ought at least to default to the last date you entered. It does get old having to change the date each time.

The best solution would be a randomizer. You could select a range of dates, say, 1930-01-01 to 1930-04-30, and the dates of individual bouts would be randomly assigned between those parameters. Ditto for venues. You could designate which list to choose the venues from--current or historical--and the autoscheduler would randomly choose a venue for each separate bout. Not difficult at all to program, I would imagine, and it would add immeasurably to the game's color.

For #2, you ought to be able simply to save Fighter 1--or the Select Fighters module might default to the last Fighter 1 selected. (The latter would not change the way things have to be done now. Instead of a blank screen you have to fill in, you'd have a fighter you have to change via the pull-down menu. Either way it works the same.)

Finally, I am with Rastak on the question of using TBCB to create a separate boxing universe. And I don't understand what Jim means by saying the game was never designed for that purpose. All that we who maintain these separate universes need is a little more control over the autoscheduler; a few more shortcuts that could easily be programmed into the game; some additional ways to sort the fighter lists (e.g., by debut or career stage). None of this involves "role playing," which would entail, frankly, an entirely different sort of game altogether.

[mking55]

I understand what Jim is saying about the game meant as a simulator.

However, that is not the reason the game will be successful or why it really is quite brilliant. The game is an excellent base.

What makes it stand out is what the users do with it. Some of the ideas for 'universes' and what people do with the game are outstanding.

Even if I personally don't see the point of why someone chooses to create their particular world, I respect what they do.

I have never seen a 'game' better utilize the imaginations and fantasies of it's public. It is amazing that people here are creating their own 'role-playing' game.

Who would have thought a bunch of lugs like boxing fans would have imaginations that are this creative? Not me. I apologize for my ignorance of your capabilities.

[Cap]

Pittpanther, I haven't updated it yet, but I invite you to check my webpage, alongwith those of other forum members, to get a few ideas for your own alternate universe.

Cap

Mitt Slingers

[Boxingnut]

Cap

Your website is awesome. Fantastic stuff!!

[Mark42661]

Yeah, I love Cap's website. It has a wonderful atmosphere to it.

[dempsonny]

I have one too but I'll be updating and I must say it's not as nice as Marks or Caps but I'm just learning.
Cube's sight is also great as is Raz's



http://www.geocities.com/dempsonny/wwbl.html

[LeeSkye]

A couple of questions come to mind here regarding the scheduler as I am setting up a "universe" of my own...

1. When I set up a series of fights for a particular date, say, 1930-01-01, will the scheduler only include those active fighters whose career years fall within that calender date? Fighter A has a career that runs from 1921-1931 and fighter B has a career that runs from 1931 to 1941...will only fighter A be included for that date?

If not, then I have to keep some kind a manual record of each fighter and make them active/inactive over their career years.

2.How do I make sure an active fighter [my champion, for example] is NOT included in the schedule being set up? I have been able to delete fights once the scedule is set up but I can only delete the fight listed as #1 and not fight #44...I can't seem to highlight a fight in the middle of the scheduled bouts and delete that particular one.

[David Myers]

LeeSkye,

1. Yes, a fighter who was active in 1930--whose career span includes 1930--will be scheduled by the autoscheduler, provided you've set the other parameters correctly.

What I do is to select 999 for the maximim number of bouts, and then check off "Schedule each fighter only one time." If you do that, every fighter in the game who was active in 1930 will be scheduled for <i>one</i> bout.

2. From the game's main screen, click on Fighters. Then click on your champion. At the bottom of the Fighter screen you can remove the check mark beside "Include in Autoschedules." He will <i>not</i> then be scheduled for any bouts.

[LeeSkye]

Got it now. Thanks.