When I first began building this game, one of my goals was to allow different card sets to be used during any given summer. For example, you could play a summer in 1980 and collect cards of Jim Palmer, George Brett and Rickey Henderson. Your next game you could choose the summer of 2014 and collect Clayton Kershaw, Miguel Cabrera and Derek Jeter cards.
I realized with this system in place, that there were two big benefits:
- Not only could you recreate the big leagues in any given year, but you could create AAA ball, little league or a totally fictional league!
- I won't be able to deliver this game with actual Major League Baseball teams and players as part of the package without fear of an MLB lawyer telling me to report to a courtroom. So this game will be delivered with a fictional league. The mod community can then create and freely share configuration files with each other that recreate any league (included the majors).
The configuration files are simple text files that are dropped into a game folder. Here is a portion of a team file named "teams_1980.txt":
Team ID|Location|Name|Base Color|Primary Color|Secondary Color
ATL|Atlanta|Braves|gray|blue|red
BAL|Baltimore|Orioles|white|orange|black
BOS|Boston|Red Sox|white|red|darkblue
The colors determine how the cards are rendered, including the player's uniform and the card overlay graphics.
Here is a portion of a batters file named "batters_1980.txt":
Team|Last Name|First Name|Position|G|AB|R|H|2B|3B|HR|RBI|AVG|Size|Skin Tone|Bats
DET|Parrish|Lance|C|143|493|65|136|26|3|19|65|.276|||R
DET|Thompson|Jason|1B|145|492|58|121|16|1|20|79|.246|||L
DET|Whitaker|Lou|2B|127|423|75|121|14|8|3|42|.286||black|L
As you can see there are typical stats here along with a few other settings that determine how the card is rendered: Size, Skin Tone and Bats. These fields are not required to be supplied, but if you are recreating a real life league, this adds to the feeling of authenticity of the cards. Because let's face it, you don't want to collect a Ted Williams card that shows him swinging right.
And finally, here is a portion of a pitchers file named "pitchers_1980.txt":
Team|Last Name|First Name|Position|G|IP|W|L|R|ER|SO|BB|ERA|Size|Skin Tone|Throws
CHC|Krukow|Mike|P|28|164|9|9|84|77|119|81|4.21|||R
CHC|Holtzman|Ken|P|23|117|6|9|70|60|44|53|4.59|||L
CHC|Sutter|Bruce|P|62|101|6|6|29|25|110|32|2.22|||R
So that is a quick insight on how you can easily add in the teams and players to the game so that a card set for a given year can be created.
A big thanks to baseball-reference.com for making the player data easily available. Head on over there if you need to know ANYTHING about baseball stats.
