Month: July 2006

My online league will begin to switch over to Out of the Park Baseball 2006 next week. I’ll keep you posted. We decided to contract from 32 teams to 28 in order to get rid of some of the dead wood. The owners that remain are a pretty hardcore lot who have been with the league for many years. We are currently advertising for an opening in our league. I’ve had a few nibbles, but nothing on the hook yet. I think it’s very important to select good, active owners for a league and over the years I’ve been able to tell who fits the bill. If interested, drop me a line.

Our transition is complicated by a contraction draft, but otherwise there don’t seem to be too many issues with the online portion of the game. We’re still looking at things like how OOTPB 2006 handles team finances, but I don’t think we’ll have too many problems to adjust to.

However, stay tuned….

I downloaded the 45 MB Total Pro Golf demo with no expectations about the game. The idea that a 2D text-based golf game could be interesting was a bit of a stretch as far as I was concerned. But after playing the demo, I can see how this just might be the beginning of a nice text franchise. I’d like more detail about the career portion of the game, but it seems players start in a golf minor leagues of some sort and work their way up by earning sponsorships.

Be warned – TPG isn’t an action game. Clubs are chosen and type of swing is selected, then a button is clicked. In some ways I like this better than worrying about swing angles with my mouse. TPG just might capture everything I liked in Sierra’s old Front Page Sports Golf. I enoyed the large AI fields and tournaments that had a purpose in FPS Golf.

There’s a pre-order available, but I think I’ll wait and see what the full release version brings.

For you city slickers out there, this is the sort of thing that makes front page news out here in Central, Texas.

To answer a couple of questions, no I have not played NCAA 2007. I do not see the game in my future. A PC version would have slightly increased the probability to say, 3%, but right now there is zero chance I’ll get the game. My Xbox and PlayStation 2 sit in my family room as monuments to days gone by when I was forced to review games on consoles.

Besides, that’s what Jonathan is here for!

While Jonathan deals with real life issues, check out The Blog for the Sports Gamer as they show a classic clinical case of ADD by dropping OOTPB 2006 and picking up NCAA 2007 without missing a beat. If they like it, then it must be OK with the twitch crowd.

I was quite shocked to read that Harold Reynolds was fired by ESPN. A good summary of the rumors can be found here. He was one of the baseball analysts I enjoyed listening to over the years.

Just when you think you’ve seen it all in the gaming world, EA Sports decides to shock you once again. Please let this die a horrible and unprofitable death. All of you Madden lemmings out there, please fight the impulse to order this for the good of the greater gaming world.

Ok, at the risk of upsetting a significant segment of the baseball text-gaming world, I have to ask a question. If you are a fan of historical baseball re-creation, why are you playing Out of the Park Baseball 2006? I am obviously showing my bias against historical sims because (a) I think they are boring and (b) I think they are boring, but if I did decided to be bored, there are other nice options available.

PureSim 2007 seems like a nice fit for historical simmers. It offers a great deal of customization and can import historical databases t’ill the cows come home. If I did decide to be bored, I certainly would be falling asleep in front of PureSim 2007 while it simmed the 1935 World Series.

If I wanted historical accuracy, I would be yawning in front of Diamond Mind Baseball. Again, seems a perfect fit for historical simmers who want statistical replay and results.

The last game I would want is OOTPB 2006. It isn’t designed as an historical replay game. It is prospective baseball software that really shines as a fictional league product. Historical simmers and people like me are not looking for the same types of baseball games. If I wanted more “what if” in my historical games, I’d be playing PureSim 2007. If I want more “this is how it happened” in my baseball game, I’d be playing Diamond Mind Baseball.

But what do I know? I had to drink a cup of coffee to stay awake to type this up!

Sports Interactive released the final version of their 1.0.2 patch a day early.

Apparently there is a major glitch in the running game, which pretty much makes this a null and void purchase for me. One of the main joys I get from NCAA Football is establishing a fine-tuned running game, especially focusing on run first offenses (option, wishbone, etc). I have read that the game makes you down where contact is first initiated, instead of where your knees touch the ground. This would seem like a major, major oversight on the part of EA. I am going to have to take a pass on this one until an updated game or patch is released.

I have not been around much lately because there has been so much going on around me. Work always seems overly important – like this weekend’s major project that we have been digging out of the ditch since last Friday. Important? Not so much.

Two weeks ago Tonya’s doctor told us that Tonya had a 50-50 chance of miscarriage. Needless to say, we have been extremely stressed, but prayer and faith pulled us through. Today the doctor told Tonya she was out of the miscarriage danger zone, but my joy was tempered after learning that a friend and colleague’s wife had a miscarriage just before Tonya’s appointment. Life is so fragile. Prayers of healing go out to this person, his wife, and family; while prayers of thanks go out for my wife and “Calvert No. 3” � for those wondering, Tonya is 12-weeks pregnant.

My dad, Ollie, is pretty sick – he has been fighting the good fight against lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) for six or so years now – I am really not sure how much fight he has left in him. While we have never been close (my parents split up when I was very young), we have grown closer as I have grown older. Talking about sports and the grandkids always helps.

Last March dad was in the hospital, and things were not looking very bright, so I made the 12+ hour car trip from Columbus to Little Rock because I wanted to see my dad one last time (you just never know). Dad did recovered enough to leave the hospital, but the best I can tell is that he never feels very well � good days and bad; I cannot imagine what it like to fight this terrible stuff. When I spoke to him last Sunday, he seemed like he was hanging in there, but then he spent the rest of the week in the hospital. He gets to go home this weekend, but his immunity system is not so good, which means no visitors. Tough stuff all around, but I am proud (if that is the right word) that he is putting up a hell of a fight. Please pray that he has it in him to recover once again.

Count your blessings, and be grateful for the time you have with your loved ones, because life is also so very short and fragile. Life is sweet.

I finally finished my 30 season sim. I noticed that during the 2047 season, teams had ticket prices of $10, $11, or $12.10. I have no idea how these prices were set by the owners because good teams, bad teams, teams with big markets, teams with small markets, any of them could have these ticket prices.

This will make online teams a bit more difficult to manage. Setting ticket prices was a strategy for revenue generation that is now no longer in the human GM’s control. Given that promotion days are also gone, market/fan strategies are also in the toilet. Online GMs are very much slaves to their won/loss records in OOTPB 2006.

Unless I am missing something, the salary cap doesn’t seem to be working. I will have to search through the game guide, but I set the cap at $90 million. The Jacksonville Sharks’ payroll was at a low of $58 million to a high of $116 million, with plenty of payrolls over $90 million. Now, I am not sure if the salary cap is just an opening day cap. If so, that might explain the amounts over the cap.

Otherwise, something else is going on here.

If you haven’t played OOTB 2006 using patch 12260, then please shut up about the problems in the game. Please. Go ahead and complain that version 12260 should have been the release version, or that rain outs no longer occur, or that you (still) don’t like the interface.

Otherwise, be quiet. Stop posting nonsense in various forums. And enjoy the game.

I did a quick check of the player development before starting an additional ten year sim and a second round pitcher was in the top five in ERA in 2037. There were still a majority high first rounders, but one low first rounder was in the top five. Hitters were all over the place. A sixth round pick was in the top five in average.

So before you take into account the various moans and groans, be sure to find out whether the person who seems so insightful about OOTPB 2006 is playing patch 12260. I don’t know yet if the game is 100% perfect, but it is much closer today than it was yesterday.

A new OOTPB 2006 patch has been released that addresses the pinch hitter, crashes, and other issues. Very nice work Sports Interactive!

My 20 year sim is complete and the stats are much, much better. Al batting averages ranged from a low of .261 to a high of .284. The most frequent league average over the course of the sim was in the middle .270s. AL ERAs. ranged from 4.19 to 5.31, but the most consistent ERAs were in the mid to upper 4.00s.

Individual stats produce only one weird result. A player hit .410 to set a new average record. A new HR record was also established during the sim as a player hit 81 Hrs. Most individual HR leaders were in the lower to middle 50s at the top, with high 40s starting at the number 3 and below ont he leader boards. Pitcher ERAs were consistent with OOTP 6.5 on the leaderboards.

So no more major complaints about the stats at this point.

At some point today I’ll look at player development and see if there is more variability in success. Might try and sim another 10 seasons just to make sure I am getting OOTPB 2006 produced prospects as major league players. If player development looks good, we’re in business.

There are reports about a pinch hit bug caused by the new patch. I haven’t seen it, nor do I know if it impacts simulated games. Some folks are also complaining about new crashes. Fortunately a new (and final) patch is due on Tuesday.