PureSim Acquires Lahman License
 

Hi guys, more good news on the PureSim front.

PureSim 2006 will be licensing the Lahaman database and will integrate it directly into the shipping game. This should make it a lot easier for certain users to jump right in with real players. That along with the ability to save and create association templates, and the inclusion of most of the real schedules from Baseball history might make it a lot easier to build and trade roster sets.

I will also be looking at ways to augment the Lahaman data to add even more improvements to historical accuracy of over time.

The digital download release of PureSim 2006 looks to be on track for this month. I'm currently in the final 2-3 days of beta and we're looking good. So, barring any quality issues (I won't ship it if its not ready) you could see it as soon as next week -- though the week after may be the most likely scenario.

oh that's hot shaun!

can we get a "hot or not" poll for PureSim licensing the Lahman DB so it is included right in the game?

dola

don't mind me. apparently i'm in a weird mood. that is awesome news though. hopefully the $'s wasn't too bad, but it will make it nice and easy to jump in with real players, which is always a nice feature. there's something comforting about real players.

so much for Baseball Mogul 's exclusive rights! :D

Good news Shaun!

The difficulty beginning a Puresim game mirroring real MLB is the one thing that kept me from purchasing in the past. If this will allow for that to be an easy process, it is definitely good news. With the new OOTP coming out soon as well, I may just buy both.

That's just how I was hoping people would feel about it. I think Mogul, PureSim and OOTP are all excellent games and each is diffent enough that it can be a nice variety for Baseball fans. I purchased the latest Mogul and I think it has a lot of great stuff, and we all know OOTP 2006 looks to be awesome.

From my perspective it's a great time to be a Baseball sim fan, and with the amount of enjoyment I get out of a $20-$30 purchase, I never hesitate to buy all of the above.

Of course I think I have bought every Baseball sim ever released on every major platform all the way back into the 80's starting with Microleague and Weaver, so I may be a bit of an outlier if we were to look at the typical "fan" :)

Shaun

Personally, I've been disappointed with Mogul a couple of times and don't see myself purchasing it unless it was proclaimed by all as the new standard in baseball text simming.

Now, don't mean to rush you or anything Shaun... :)

But I need a baseball game. I've rented the console ones, but they haven't really done it for me.

Could you give a short walkthrough on how it will work? For example, if I wanted to start in 1975, I assume I'd make that selection in setup and get actual rosters for that year. But the following year you'd need to bring in rookies. Do those rookies come out of the minors or would there be a draft of players who first appeared in 1976? And is the game able to make realistic projections for these rookies?

It would be a big selling point for me if you could run a historical league very simply and realistically. I tried to do this with OOTP but it couldn't deliver.

Yeah, I get 'em all, too. Hell, I still get a set of Strat-O-Matic cards to look at while I play the CPU version :)

Yep that's right.


There is an ammy draft that features the folks that debuted in that season. They are then modeled quite well by looking at future performance by "peeking ahead" and setting potential ratings appropriately.

Just FYI... this Lahman Database feature is damned cool.

I started in 1974 (year I was born). Was able to draft Nolan Ryan in the initial draft.

Finished the season last in my division... but next season was able to pick up Dennis Eckersly in the rookie draft. :D

Oh... and Ryan led the league in strikeouts for me in '74. :D

i need a demo of this game like i need air to breathe!

Shaun - I can't wait to get my hands on the game - but I don't understand the lack of a web presence.

Your site is still all about 2005 and the Matrix site says 2007 and has only limited information. Is there information out there that I am just not seeing?

Its coming, we're just in the final stages of beta and that is getting all my focus right now.

Oh and the game has been re-titled "PureSim Baseball 2007." Once I deliver the final Gold Master to Matrix (This weekend) you'll start to see a lot more info -- and I'll update my web site!

Maybe better "PureSim Baseball 2007" :)

Can't wait for more info on this game. Looks interesting so far.

Thanks, fixed the typo. That's what 20 testing/tweaking sessions 4 days before the end of beta will do to a guy. I'm pretty spent.

P.S.

Given this place's history, I was very afraid of typing the "deliver the final gold Mater to Matrix" sentence above...

:)

{ducking}

I think once folks see the demo, the Matrix bias will probably be a non-issue.

I am SO in for this game. Now all I have to do is figure out what year I'll start my league.

Early 1900s? Be nice..some great players in there that I'd miss out on otherwise. Cobb, Lajoie, Walter Johnson, Hornsby.

1920s? Get some of Ruth's career, and Gehrig to boot.

1930s? Guys like Mel Ott, Hack Wilson, Left Grove

Too much to think about....I just bought Gal Civ 2...I really don't have time for this.

All I can say is that I hope they're better at handling 'maters than they are at handling masters.

Time will tell.

For me, I really can't imagine there's anything that could be produced that would be worth the disgust I'd feel for putting a single dime into the pockets of the assholes at Matrix.

My fondest hope (for the game) would be that Shaun and PureSim will eventually find themselves freed of that relationship so that I could consider future releases.

I'd like to see a sim using historical rosters where you draft future players three years before their major league debut or at age 18, whichever comes last. (exceptions for people like Nuxhall will be needed, of course)

With the Lahman database support, can we set up the game so that the new players that come into the league each year are the same players that would have come into the league historically?

If so, is there a way to set an x-factor, like in FOF, where the star players are likely, but not predestined, to be stars in the game world?

Also, if the new version of PureSim doesn't support expansion, is it even possible to run a semi-historical simulation of baseball through the 20th century?

EDIT: I see that the first question has been answered above. Wondering now only about the second two questions.

That's the ONE thing keeping me from really wanting to get Puresim this year. I would love to start from say, 1901 and go from there.. but without historical expansion/contraction, I'd still only have 8 teams as the league expanded....

Might be extremely hard to program.. but this would put the game over the top for historical buffs - and I've really started to want to get into something like this.

It was my understanding the game did support expansion, just that you don't control the number of teams and which divisions they go to. Hopefully, we'll get some manual control of expansion in a sports sim soon.

I completely agree. They eventually gave my friend, Gary, his refund for Maximum Shi... Football. However, they left a bad taste in his mouth to where he has sworn he will never buy another Matrix product. He's been my best friend since grade school, so I've made the same pledge with him, and I won't go back on my promise to my friend.

The difference is - this isn't the first version of Puresim, and some of us were smart enough to wait for impressions on the football game's first version.

Yes... I'm doing that with the beta test now. I started in 1974... had an initial draft where I picked up established guys like Nolan Ryan and Hank Aaron... then in 1975, I was able to draft Dennis Eckersly as a rookie. The X-factor is that the players have a "potential" rating that should equate to the sort of success they had in real life, but there's no guarantee.

There was expansion in the early builds of the game, but it's been disabled for now. No word yet on whether it will be reserved for a future patch or release, but the bottom line was that the expansion process was a bit too random and didn't have enough player control involved. So, unfortunately, you'd have to start your historical league with as many teams as you want to live with for the duration...

I think I'll wait until next year's version, PureSim Baseball 2010.

This is why I'd likely start the game in the 50s or 60s. I'd have enough teams to work with, but not too many. I like smallish associations as compared to the current league size.

I wonder how hard it would be to take some of the oldies like Gehrig, Ruth, and Walter Johnson and inserting them into more modern day draft files? I'm now dreaming of my old Earl Weaver league team where my lineup went Al Simmons, Paul Waner, Lou Gehrig, Al Rosen, and then Willie McCovey. My buddies and I played out 162 game seasons with our "all-time" teams, and had a blast.

That might work, though. The appeal for me here isn't the teams, but the players. I'm more inclined to play with fictional players with text-sims, but it might be fun to try this as a change of pace. I wonder to what degree the human player would have an advantage, though, because he /she knows baseball history and the computer AI doesn't.

If I started with a 30-team league in 1901 but wanted to use the Lahman database, how does the game make up for the paucity of historical players in the annual draft? Does it generate fictional players?

Also, I noticed that Shaun talked about a new player development system with this version. How does that work with the Lahman database? Would the career peak value be randomly assigned to historical players?

So many questions...

Yes, the game generates additional players to fill in for the lack of historical players... no problem there.

I haven't played long enough with the Lahman database to judge how the player development works... suffice it to say, it will probably deviate somewhat from what has happened in real life. For example - Eck is a starting pitcher on my team now as a rookie... I doubt he'd end up as a closer as time goes by... but we'll see.

Is there any chance you could set up a test league whereby you start in a past season, say 1975, and auto-sim for 25 years to see how accurate the stats are for the players we're familiar with, within reason?

P.S. Shaun, if you're reading, I'd be more than willing to run all sorts of test like this if they'd provide any value to your development process

P.P.S. Yes, I'm being a beta-test whore :)

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I'll set one up later, and let it run overnight. I'll just make it the standard current MLB size (although that might skew the statistics a bit...), and I'll post some output from the almanac when it's done.

Sounds like something one of the beta testers keeps saying....

Hey Sabotai,

Maybe 2010 will be when you actually finish the sim you've been telling us all you have been working on for the last 4 years :)

Here's the crux of it... Buyer walks into Wal Mart and sees "XYZ Baseball 2007" and "PureSim Baseball 2006." Which one do you think he or she immediately assumes is the newer one?

In this case there are already Baseball games with the "2007" moniker, so I think this is the right move. Additionally, in PureSim's case a retail release might be a significant amount of time after the digital download release, which makes it even more important to have a name that communicates that it's a new title.

Interesting cheap shot or perhaps I'm the only one who reads it that way.

omg

Aw come on! Sab can hang, just having a little fun. You guys are really protective ;)

Shaun,
Any thoughts on doing local promotion, say with the riverdogs? I know some people with some ins at the games.

That is why I asked. I may have been just WAY oversensitive after a situation at work that really pissed me off.

on lahman database, what happens for players that limited action in there career? Will they get super ratings?

In ootp you adjust hitters and pitchers for players with limit action on the lahman datbase by setting the miniumum at bats and inning pitch for relievers and starters. This way a player that went 3 for 5 in his career, dont come out being a superstar.

Will ratings be based on there whole career or the year they debut?
On ootp we can set it to remaining career, whole career, or peak seasons.

Lahman database don't have left/right splits. Will puresim generate realistic splits stats? In ootp we have a choice if we want to or not.

Field ratings going to be based on whole career or that imported season? In ootp we have a choice.

Somebody needs a hug.

He a doctor, for all we know, it's Monday to him. :)

I'm a scrubs fan. In the last episode, J.D. described himself as a sensy (sensitive guy), which leads to many hugs from him.

No, I just need a change of job. All things in good time..

Anyway, sorry for dragging this into this thread.

The problem I have is that in this case I like the developer of the game. In a normal case, I wouldn't think of a Matrix purchase and would disregard the game. In this case, I can't see myself punishing Shaun because of my feelings for Matrix.

I will purchase this game and this game alone from Matrix. (that includes future versions if I continue to like it) I really hate situations like this. But I'm going to put my like for Shaun and PureSim above my hatred for Matrix. (as I did with FM and digital river)

what % of the sale price does Matrix take? or is that information confidential?

PureSim uses a pretty complex algorithm that includes the player's average performance in a window surtrounding the year as well as his perf that year, so no you don't see supermen just because they had a statistically insignificant amount of AB's. Also, you won't see a star perform horribly just because they missed most of a season (perfect example: Bonds 2005)

PureSim applies an algorithm that models lefty-righty splits for Lahman players. There are a number of heuristics looked at when determining how extreme to go (playing time, contact hitters v. power etc..)