Total College Basketball Demo

[ThunderingHERD]

Originally Posted by ThunderingHERD

Has anyone else noticed a lack of substantial upsets?

During the season. I watch the top 25 when simming--it seemed like the top 25 teams were always beating the unranked teams by 30+. Playing as Duke I never had an unranked team come within 20. I didn't look into it a whole lot, just seemed off.

[Ben E Lou]

I just sent the following comments to Gary. Can anyone help with the questions I have? (Highlighted in red).

• On association setup screen, there needs to be the ability to overwrite an association, rather than forcing the user to start over when he uses a name already used.
• I love the coach attribute setting screen. Nice.
• STRONG BUDGET SUGGESTION: There *needs* to be a "After coaching salaries, you have $31,000 left. We suggest that you spend $x on scouting reports, $y on summer travel, and save $(31000-x-y) for recruiting" in that budget e-mail. The first time I played the demo, I ran out of money to recruit pretty early on, (played with Kennesaw State) due to overspending on scouting reports and summer travel, I think. This is my third go at the demo, and I still really have no idea how much I need to keep around for recruiting.
• E-mails need to be easily printable without having to copy and paste to Notepad.
• Good help/explanation on the hire/fire coaches screen. One issue here, though, is that we really shouldn't have to pay salaries for assistant coaches that first year. I'd STRONGLY prefer to start with an empty slate, and let me hire my coaches without penalty in Season 1.
• An *are you sure* button on advancing would be nice. I meant to advance from one recruit to the next, and hit the arrow up above instead and went to the next week just a moment ago.
• A "delete all" button needs to be added to e-mails, or at least the option to move to the next one when deleting. As it stands now, it is a pain-in-the-butt clickfest to delete multiple camp or scouting report e-mails.
• A note each week during recruiting with rating changes would be nice: "From watching further game film of Charles Guy this week, I am more impressed than before with his outside shooting, but am less impressed with his ball handling."
• Ummmm...I somehow lost money each week. Is there some action that I need to get rid of for a player? It doesn't look that way. It looks as if each action is week-independent. This needs to be better explained if so.
• Is there any advantage in player development or budget to playing tougher competition (like say Kennesaw plays at UGA and gets a big paycheck, and its players improve a little from playing good competition)?
• Mouseover help is needed in the Team Roster screen, and several others. I don't know what "DRFL" means off the top of my head, for example.
• When the bracket view is enabled during a sim, it sure would be nice to have the winners' names get filled in as we go along.
• Conference Award Winners need to be hyperlinked to the player cards.
• It appears that one of my recruits signed with me in the final signing period. I need to get an e-mail making me aware of that fact.

[Ben E Lou]

Oh, and after another season with the demo, this one is moving closer to "buy-and-play-upon-release" for me, especially if he adds HTML output soon. With the slow sim speeds of BBCF, I found that I can pretty much play both at the same time, one on the desktop, and the other on the laptop, dealing with one while the other is simming. Nice.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

a pain-in-the-butt clickfest

I love this phrase and will try my best to incorporate it into my conversations today.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I just sent the following comments to Gary. Can anyone help with the questions I have? (Highlighted in red).
[*]STRONG BUDGET SUGGESTION: There *needs* to be a "After coaching salaries, you have $31,000 left. We suggest that you spend $x on scouting reports, $y on summer travel, and save $(31000-x-y) for recruiting" in that budget e-mail. The first time I played the demo, I ran out of money to recruit pretty early on, (played with Kennesaw State) due to overspending on scouting reports and summer travel, I think. This is my third go at the demo, and I still really have no idea how much I need to keep around for recruiting.

I believe that the "Team Info" screen will tell you how much money you have left after coaching salaries. As for the rest, I think that can vary so wildly depending on the number of scholarships needed and your strategy to find your target(s) that it might be impossible to even suggest. If you have 3 scholarships as a small school you may need to stay in state(even in the same region, out of state is quite a bit more expensive to visit than in state IIRC), but if you only have one you might have a couple of choices about how much you spend on scouting, perhaps going after someone in region instead of in state.

[*]Ummmm...I somehow lost money each week. Is there some action that I need to get rid of for a player? It doesn't look that way. It looks as if each action is week-independent. This needs to be better explained if so.

EDIT: Sorry, said this wrong at first. Call list is $5/week/player, watch list is free. Take people off your call list if you decide you have no shot/interest in further pursuing them to save a little cash.


I'm not sure on the other question.

[Radii]

dola, some of the guys on the beta team have been helping out with a recruiting FAQ:

http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum...ead.php?t=9747


Keeping someone on the call list is $5 per week per player. The watch list is free.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

[*]Is there any advantage in player development or budget to playing tougher competition (like say Kennesaw plays at UGA and gets a big paycheck, and its players improve a little from playing good competition)?

No, the only advantage of playing tougher competition is that your RPI will be higher which could be of help come tournament time. For a Kennesaw State it won't matter for the NCAA tournament but if you had a really good season and a decent RPI it might be enough to sneak into the NIT

The rest are good comments and I will do my best to implement as many as I can prior to the release. The only thing about the recruiting budget suggestion is that its really hard to suggest what is the right thing to do but here's some tips that might help. For a small school like Kennesaw State I would purchase only the basic report for your region - with a school that small you're not going to be recruiting out of the region for sure and maybe not even out of state. The basic report will give you a great starting point as to who has interest in your school so you can spend your limited budget pursuing those guys. In terms of attending camps with a small school the only one I would consider is the regional camp - there's no point attending a national camp or one outside the region because you aren't going to be recruiting those players anyways. Attending the regional camp will at least let you get ratings on some of the players in your region and you might have a shot at one or two of those guys.

One other note with the budget is to make sure you use it all or at least as much as possible. It will take a little practice to be able to portion the money out for its best use but if you do not spend your budget the board will never grant your requests for an increased budget.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

[*]Mouseover help is needed in the Team Roster screen, and several others. I don't know what "DRFL" means off the top of my head, for example.

dola

When viewing the ratings page you should be able to click the tip button on the right side and get an explanation for the ratings - eg DRFL = Draw Foul. There should also be tips on the stats screens on the roster pages too to show what those abbreviations stand for

[BuffaloHuskey]

Originally Posted by ThunderingHERD

During the season. I watch the top 25 when simming--it seemed like the top 25 teams were always beating the unranked teams by 30+. Playing as Duke I never had an unranked team come within 20. I didn't look into it a whole lot, just seemed off.

Look at UConn and Duke this year and they have thrashed all of the unranked teams they have played

[Joe Canadian]

Well this sucks... I can't install the demo. When I run the install file it gets to the part where it copies the fonts and then the program freezes up.

[ScottVib]

For my recruiting in my last game I'm playing as Central Connecticut State. I had only 49,000 to spend on recruiting and much to my dismay 5 scholarship seniors leaving. (Well a good and a bad thing... I have an experienced team and am doing ok and get to remake the team in my image quicker, but I don't exactly have a ton of money)

The first thing I did is opt not to buy ANY scouting reports, nor attend any camps, I have to instead judge my quality by the scrub coaches I have, and the national/regional rankings, but it saved significant cash.

The second thing I did was to focus on instate recruits. I'm in January and have signed 4 of my 5 recruits all of whom were CT residents. It meant I've had enough money to try and fill my 5th rather then leaving it open and taking a Walk On and pushing a scholarship further down to a class with fewer players. It also meant that when some of my targets for that "extra" scholarship seemed to be waivering or losing interest (meaning UConn or some other major program came calling); I was able to expand my search window slightly to pursue other regional players. Of course now I need to hang on for another 4 months to get this new guy to commit and then sign with me.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by ThunderingHERD

During the season. I watch the top 25 when simming--it seemed like the top 25 teams were always beating the unranked teams by 30+. Playing as Duke I never had an unranked team come within 20. I didn't look into it a whole lot, just seemed off.

That's been my only beef with FBCB. There are too many times when a pasty blows out a powerhouse. It does happen every once in a while, so there has to be a happy medium somewhere in there.

[ScottVib]

Originally Posted by Joe Canadian

Well this sucks... I can't install the demo. When I run the install file it gets to the part where it copies the fonts and then the program freezes up.

Make sure you have no other programs running prior to running the install. Is there a particular font that is causing the issue?

[Icy]

Ok, i have teamed up with Outlaw77 at GDS forums to release the NCAA pack for TCB. We have released:

- The real teams and conferences database 0.3, with the real names, nicknames, arena names etc. (Thanks to Frosty8311 for your help on that).

- The conferences and teams logo pack on yahoo style as the old ones released for FBCB. I have added some missing ones and edited all them to fit in the TCB interface.


Here are some samples for the logos:

http://www.prodeportes.com/tcb/logosample2.jpg
http://www.prodeportes.com/tcb/logosample1.jpg
http://www.prodeportes.com/tcb/logosample3.jpg

- The courts with the team logos like this sample:
http://www.prodeportes.com/tcb/ALB.jpg

All them have been uploaded to Outlaw's site, in the downloads section (no registration needed)
http://www.totalsportssimulations.com

We will keep updating the files if something is wrong. I'm going also to try to setup an autoinstaller for all the packs instead of having to download all the files one by one.

[MizzouRah]

Icy,

You and Outlaw have done an excellent job with BBCF and now TCB.

Thanks!!

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

For a small school like Kennesaw State I would purchase only the basic report for your region - with a school that small you're not going to be recruiting out of the region for sure and maybe not even out of state.

Just out of curiosity, I took a look at their current real-life roster for the KSU Owls.

14 players:
6 from Georgia
3 from Utah* (* 2 of these are brothers & are sons of the head coach)
2 from Michigan
1 from Puerto Rico
1 from Kentucky
1 from Alabama

But even with the 2 coaches' sons not counting normally, still only about half the roster is from Georgia & nearly 1/3rd of the roster is from outside the Southeast region.

KSU is a new D1 program, so I'm thinking maybe that skews their initial roster, so I decide to check Savannah State:

13 players:
7 from Georgia
2 from Florida
1 each from D.C., Maryland, Illinois, and New York

Again, nearly half the roster from outside the state & 1/3 from outside the region.

Anecdotal to be sure, but it makes me wonder about the "conventional wisdom" of small school rosters versus the modern reality of them.

Just .02 from the peanut gallery.

edit to add: I really started wondering a little more about this, so I checked a couple of others off the top of my head

Morgan State: 6 of 15 players from Maryland, 2 from VA, 1 from DC (so 9 of 15 from their geographic region), 1 each from CT, IN, NJ, NY, KY, Canada, (so 40% from outside their geographic region).

Charleston Southern: 6 of 16 players from SC, 3 each from GA & NC (so 12 of 16 from the region), 1 each from FL,NY, CT, and Lithuania (4 of 16 - 25% from outside their region)

Idaho State: 4 of 16 players from ID, 2 each from TX, NY, and CA, 1 each from MN, IN, AK, OR, UT, and NV so at least 6 of 16 or 38% from outside their geographic region.

Long Island U: 3 of 13 players from NY, 3 from Texas, 2 each from Canada & FL, 1 each from Finland, Lithuania, and RI. So at least 7 of 13 (54%) from outside their geographic region.

Stetson U: 9 of 14 players from FL, 3 from GA, 1 each from NY & CT, so 14% from outside their geographic region.
------------
Damn, the more schools I look at (and yes, I know it's a small sample but it's pretty consistent so far) the more I wonder about the conventional wisdom that text sims/gamers apply to recruiting for small schools. Looks very different than "you're not going to be recruiting out of the region for sure and maybe not even out of state."

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Just out of curiosity, I took a look at their current real-life roster for the KSU Owls.

14 players:
6 from Georgia
3 from Utah* (* 2 of these are brothers & are sons of the head coach)
2 from Michigan
1 from Puerto Rico
1 from Kentucky
1 from Alabama

But even with the 2 coaches' sons not counting normally, still only about half the roster is from Georgia & nearly 1/3rd of the roster is from outside the Southeast region.

KSU is a new D1 program, so I'm thinking maybe that skews their initial roster, so I decide to check Savannah State:

13 players:
7 from Georgia
2 from Florida
1 each from D.C., Maryland, Illinois, and New York

Again, nearly half the roster from outside the state & 1/3 from outside the region.

Anecdotal to be sure, but it makes me wonder about the "conventional wisdom" of small school rosters versus the modern reality of them.

Just .02 from the peanut gallery.

edit to add: I really started wondering a little more about this, so I checked a couple of others off the top of my head

Morgan State: 6 of 15 players from Maryland, 2 from VA, 1 from DC (so 9 of 15 from their geographic region), 1 each from CT, IN, NJ, NY, KY, Canada, (so 40% from outside their geographic region).

Charleston Southern: 6 of 16 players from SC, 3 each from GA & NC (so 12 of 16 from the region), 1 each from FL,NY, CT, and Lithuania (4 of 16 - 25% from outside their region)

I went and spoke with an actual D1 coach regarding this and he told me that schools that have small recruiting budgets recruit strictly in state except for opportunities where they can see large groups of players playing at once (ie summer camps, aau tournaments etc) or unless the player has expressed a real interest in coming to their school.

That is basically what I am recreating with TCB - it costs Savannah State the same to make a phone call to a recruit as it does Duke but the difference is Duke can afford to bring the kid in and go out and visit him hoping to spark some interest in him whereas Savannah State doesn't have the budget to be going out of state/region unless they have a legit reason. Small schools in TCB certainly can get out of state/region players but if you're spending the precious few recruiting dollars you have on guys you hope might be interested then you're going to come home broke and without any recruits.

In TCB the Dukes and UNCs have such a large amount of funds they can recruit anyone, anywhere regardless of how they stand initially - sometimes those will be wasted dollars and sometimes it will pay off for them and they will get in the thick of things. The schools with small budgets cannot do that nor do they try to IRL.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

That is basically what I am recreating with TCB - it costs Savannah State the same to make a phone call to a recruit as it does Duke but the difference is Duke can afford to bring the kid in and go out and visit him hoping to spark some interest in him whereas Savannah State doesn't have the budget to be going out of state/region unless they have a legit reason. Small schools in TCB certainly can get out of state/region players but if you're spending the precious few recruiting dollars you have on guys you hope might be interested then you're going to come home broke and without any recruits.

In TCB the Dukes and UNCs have such a large amount of funds they can recruit anyone, anywhere regardless of how they stand initially - sometimes those will be wasted dollars and sometimes it will pay off for them and they will get in the thick of things. The schools with small budgets cannot do that nor do they try to IRL.

Okay, so I suppose the real question is (or might be) whether the interest level for players from out of state/out of region accurately models the reality (whatever that reality is)?

Based on the combination of roster composition (again, very limited sample I know) and the input of that D1 coach, it appears that maybe there's an extremely high rate of success for recruiting out-of-region players IRL ... because the schools are generally only making that investment when the player is a virtually sure thing. That would allow for the coach's statement to be accurate and yet still explain the diverse geographical makeup of the sampled rosters.

In other words, I'm following where you're coming from about overall recruiting & geography, but the game model only holds up to reality if the interested players are also modelling reality. i.e. if there's 25-40% of best prospects available AND most interested (ultimately combining into "most likely to accept scholarships") in a small school are from outside their region then there's a match.

At very very very first blush, I'm left to wonder a bit about that in TCB right now, as the starting roster for KSU in my game is entirely made up of Georgia players. Ditto for Morgan State/MD, Long Island/NY, Stetson/FL.
And that appears to be one a heck of a long way from reality.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

In other words, I'm following where you're coming from about overall recruiting & geography, but the game model only holds up to reality if the interested players are also modelling reality. i.e. if there's 25-40% of best prospects available AND most interested (ultimately combining into "most likely to accept scholarships") in a small school are from outside their region then there's a match.

At very very very first blush, I'm left to wonder a bit about that in TCB right now, as the starting roster for KSU in my game is entirely made up of Georgia players. Ditto for Morgan State/MD, Long Island/NY, Stetson/FL.
And that appears to be one a heck of a long way from reality.

Well you have to take into account the fact that there is a difference in initial interest and final signing. At the start you may find very few players out of the region to have any initial interest in a small school out of their home region - but eventually the big schools fill their scholarships and then those out of region players become more open to hearing from a small school.

Also the initial rosters generated are generated having little regard for this (which can easily be changed FWIW if its a big deal)

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

Also the initial rosters generated are generated having little regard for this (which can easily be changed FWIW if its a big deal)

All that really seems to be a big deal, IMO, is whether the end result reasonably relfects reality. After all, isn't that sort of the general goal of most things text-sim; that there's a reasonable facsimle of a "real" universe?

This was really something that I first looked at only because your comment (to SD) about out of state/out of region sort of ran contrary to what I thought the rosters generally looked like. So I took a look at one ... and then another ... and another. To be honest, the results of those few checks surprised me, the out-of-region was a good bit higher than I expected (if you had made me guess, I would have said 15% or so, basically 1 or 2 per roster), about double what I expected.

From that surprise and at least equally from a desire to avoid a boatload of unpleasant work crap I ought to be doing, I pondered the subject & posted about it.

Whether it's a big deal, a little deal, or no deal at all is really up to the consumer base, not up to me. Personally, now that I know a little more, yeah it would probably bother me every time I looked at my roster/a small school roster. It just seems to me like the sort of thing that ultimately comes down to research & algorithm adjusting, and those are the kinds of things that seem to me that ought to be doable. And if something is readily doable AND creates a more accurate model, then it probably ought to be done. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but done nonetheless.

So there's about four cents worth on top of the original two cents

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

From that surprise and at least equally from a desire to avoid a boatload of unpleasant work crap I ought to be doing,

Don't ever bother sending me a resume you lazy bastard.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

Don't ever bother sending me a resume you lazy bastard.

I figure if I slack too much, I'll just suspend myself with pay for two weeks while I evaluate myself

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I figure if I slack too much, I'll just suspend myself with pay for two weeks while I evaluate myself

2 weeks? Softy. Indefinite would be the way to go.

[rjolley]

Another thing to look at is how many of those players are transfers, whether they be from jucos, D-II, D-III, or other D-I schools. Often players will move on to another school for playing time, to be closer to home, to be close to girlfriend/friends, etc. That may account for part of the real life rosters being from out of state compared to the game rosters.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

All that really seems to be a big deal, IMO, is whether the end result reasonably relfects reality. After all, isn't that sort of the general goal of most things text-sim; that there's a reasonable facsimle of a "real" universe?

Whether it's a big deal, a little deal, or no deal at all is really up to the consumer base, not up to me. Personally, now that I know a little more, yeah it would probably bother me every time I looked at my roster/a small school roster. It just seems to me like the sort of thing that ultimately comes down to research & algorithm adjusting, and those are the kinds of things that seem to me that ought to be doable. And if something is readily doable AND creates a more accurate model, then it probably ought to be done. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but done nonetheless.

In terms of adjusting the original rosters all I would have to do is change the formula of how the home state is chosen. The level of player created has nothing to do with his home state. And for the small schools rosters I think it really varies on the situation - I quickly looked up two of the smaller programs in Michigan - Oakland and Detroit - and both have 1-2 out of state players it seems but there are also alot of good high school players and teams in the state so there's enough talent to go around to take care of the seven D1 teams in the state - some states don't have nearly as much talent yet have more D1 teams in them like a Maryland (9 teams - Morgan St being one of them) and there are states that do generally have a talented base of home grown talent yet have too many schools in them like New York (21 D1 teams) so a team like Long Island will have to look outside of NY for players.

In TCB you're going to see small schools picking up guys from out of state/region at the very least because the distribution of recruits is not equal to each state. Looking at a file from a 2019 season I see the following...

Savannah St - 3 players from outside of GA (IL, LA, MS)
Morgan St - 6 players from outside of MD (WV, VA, NC, RI, NJ, VT)
Kennesaw St - 3 players from outside of GA (AL, FL, LA)
Idaho St - 10 players from outside of ID (UT, AK, NV, UT, NV, CA, WA, NM, WY, NM)
Long Island - 9 players from outside of NY (RI, VA, NJ, PA, NC, VT, GA, NC, VA)
Oakland - 1 player from outside of MI (OH)
Detroit - 3 players from outside of MI (MN, MN, IL)

So it definitely shakes out to be like real life. FWIW the recruits available in the 2019 season
Michigan - 47
Georgia - 42
New York - 41
Maryland - 34
Idaho - 26

Hopefully that helps ease concerns over whether or not the recruiting and roster breakdown is close to reality.

[Gary Gorski]

Someone asked me a question about how much impact they can have as a coach with the play calling and the like so I thought I would paste a couple of quotes from the GDS forums to answer it for anyone else who is interested in that.

"This game has fixed basically everything that frustrated me about TDCB. While it was a groundbreaking game, I was constantly irritated by the inability to determine what, if any, impact that my changes were having on the game. However, in TCB, the experience has been entirely different. The first game that I played was deeply rewarding in winning the game through adjustments. My 1-2-1-1 press was entirely ineffective in the first half since my team is quite unfamiliar with the press (the old coach used a 2-2-1). However, by switching to a 1/2 ct. 1-3-1 I stymied my opponent in the second half, enabling me to pull away. TCB is the first text-based sim to offer a truly compelling in game experince. "

"Cal had no problem breaking down my 1-3-1 zone with crisp passes along the baseline where there is only one defender. There first 4 buckets were slam dunks by their two big men causing me to make an adjustment of course."

[dl5175]

Originally Posted by Icy

Ok, i have teamed up with Outlaw77 at GDS forums to release the NCAA pack for TCB. We have released:

- The real teams and conferences database 0.3, with the real names, nicknames, arena names etc. (Thanks to Frosty8311 for your help on that).

- The conferences and teams logo pack on yahoo style as the old ones released for FBCB. I have added some missing ones and edited all them to fit in the TCB interface.


Here are some samples for the logos:

http://www.prodeportes.com/tcb/logosample2.jpg
http://www.prodeportes.com/tcb/logosample1.jpg
http://www.prodeportes.com/tcb/logosample3.jpg

- The courts with the team logos like this sample:
http://www.prodeportes.com/tcb/ALB.jpg

All them have been uploaded to Outlaw's site, in the downloads section (no registration needed)
http://www.totalsportssimulations.com

We will keep updating the files if something is wrong. I'm going also to try to setup an autoinstaller for all the packs instead of having to download all the files one by one.

Great work. San Diego has Toreres instead of Toreros at the end of the court.
I like the logo but was wondering if you could make the paint area with no paint?

[rexallllsc]

When is the \full version slated to come out? I want to play it!

[Zippo]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I just sent the following comments to Gary. Can anyone help with the questions I have? (Highlighted in red).

• Mouseover help is needed in the Team Roster screen, and several others. I don't know what "DRFL" means off the top of my head, for example.

There is a "tip" button on the right hand side that might help you at least on some parts of the roster screen.

[DaddyTorgo]

spent the other nite on recruiting and tinkering. just actually sat through my first game a minute ago. and DAMM gary!

[DaddyTorgo]

can't seem to get the "sim to" button to work properly. if you click it when you're on the day you want to go to it sends you back to the current day and then you have to scroll forward and can't sim. if you click it on the current day and scroll forward you can't sim.

[DaddyTorgo]

dola

any way that "game options" (speed, auto-subs...pause at all stops) could be saved so i didn't have to click them every game? not a huge deal, but might be enjoyable.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

can't seem to get the "sim to" button to work properly. if you click it when you're on the day you want to go to it sends you back to the current day and then you have to scroll forward and can't sim. if you click it on the current day and scroll forward you can't sim.

Ok, this might be a tad confusing but the game will only sim from the current day - so any time the page is moved off the current day it disables the play/sim button (this was necessary based on how the code is setup)...anyhow when you choose the sim to option it sends you back to the current day but it is ready to sim to the date you chose (if you notice the box still will say "sim to" in it and not "sim current day") - just click the play/sim button after you get sent back and it will sim to the day you chose.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

Ok, this might be a tad confusing but the game will only sim from the current day - so any time the page is moved off the current day it disables the play/sim button (this was necessary based on how the code is setup)...anyhow when you choose the sim to option it sends you back to the current day but it is ready to sim to the date you chose (if you notice the box still will say "sim to" in it and not "sim current day") - just click the play/sim button after you get sent back and it will sim to the day you chose.

that's cool. so then after i sim that one day can i then do a "sim to date" and move forward and sim to it? just a little weird, but i'm sure you'll get that question a bunch come to think of it

[Gary Gorski]

you need to go ahead to the date you want to sim to, then chose the sim to date option (which will send you back to the current day) and then click play/sim

[DaddyTorgo]

oh i see! gotit! that's a little odd. does that little popup box explain that, or are you going to be explaining it a million times?

oh yeah and this is definately a "day of release" purchase for me Gary!

[ThunderingHERD]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Oh, and after another season with the demo, this one is moving closer to "buy-and-play-upon-release" for me, especially if he adds HTML output soon. With the slow sim speeds of BBCF, I found that I can pretty much play both at the same time, one on the desktop, and the other on the laptop, dealing with one while the other is simming. Nice.

Sim speed is a very pleasant surprise. TPB could definately bog down so I was prepared for the worst--but not only do the games sim quicker but there is also welcome lack of post-sim grinding.

[Galaril]

I posted this over at GDS's board and thought it would be of use to post it here as well.

"I know a fair amount about basketball and know the basic difference between the a 2-3 zone and a 3-2 zone but the diifernce between a 1-2-2 press and a 2-2-1 press is aliitle beyond me. I am foggy on alot of the offensive and defensive paly strategies. I am not complaining it really feels like basic. However, I don't know what the maual is going to contain but a FAQ or tutorial with a detailed explanation about all the strategies, needs to be put together one way or another.Since I might not be the only one that is not sure what is the best strategy to use on offense or defense this would be a big help. I can certainly see Gary has taken alot of care to make a very deep game from the looks of the demo. But, without some type of explanation/guide on this part of the game it could be slightly inaccessable to more casual B-ball fans. Thanks ahead of time for agreat effort on this game Gary."

[Gary Gorski]

If you go to your team roster and choose the team strategy option from the drop down box near the bottom you will see the screen where you can set how often your team runs each play etc... on the left side of that screen are two areas where you can select an offense or defense and get a short description of what it is.

[Gary Gorski]

Is anyone here running the demo on Win 2k? A few guys are having trouble getting it to install with Win 2k so if anyone has successfully installed it with Win 2k I would appreciate hearing from you. Thanks

[Galaril]

I posted this on GDS board a small quibble/suggestion for a great looking game sofar:

"I think it would be great to get away to know when a new week is starting without having to calculate the next seven days. In another words it is hard to know when the next week is to fill out the weekly practice plans for your team. What days should it be done for sunday ? when is sunday? Or should it be filled out on x day x month. I also, noticed this coming into play when trying to get an idea of the weekly stuff in the game related to recruiting. For example, I use up all my watch film game film or all my scout a recruit at a game and have to wait until next week for more allocation of these recruiting slots/points. So, how do I know when the week begins and I have been given more of these to start recruiting actions again.But, by far the most confusing is the weekly practice plan. Maybe an email to tell us what date to do the game plan on."

[Barkeep49]

To be a bit of a downer:

I think the underlying game is quite good. However, I find the interace unusable. It takes me way too many clicks to do my basic recruiting actions. It quickly sucked the fun out of things for me. I think if Gary ever gets around to doing a pro game I'm going to fall in love with it, but TCB simply will not be my cup of tea.

[TazFTW]

Total Pro Basketball is not pro enough?

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

To be a bit of a downer:

I think the underlying game is quite good. However, I find the interace unusable. It takes me way too many clicks to do my basic recruiting actions. It quickly sucked the fun out of things for me. I think if Gary ever gets around to doing a pro game I'm going to fall in love with it, but TCB simply will not be my cup of tea.

You mean a pro game other than TPB which he has already done? That one is indeed a great game.

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by TazFTW

Total Pro Basketball is not pro enough?

No fair, you clicked submit reply a mere second before I did.


Or you're on a faster connection.

[Barkeep49]

I don't recall TPB having the depth that TCBD has. Am I wrong? Do I need to give it another look?

[Axxon]

I have one small bit of constructive criticism for Greydog btw.

I wish there was mroe uniformity in their products. I don't mean the exact same interface or anything but some stuff should be standard across their games.

For example, what made me think of it was filtering recruits. I wanted to filter recruits by interest and stars like I can in BBCF but I can't in TCB. If these products were from different companies I'd wish it had the same functionality but would understand. Since they're both put out by the same company it just seems logical that they'd work the same way and it seems sloppy. Not a fault or a problem but sloppy.

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

I don't recall TPB having the depth that TCBD has. Am I wrong? Do I need to give it another look?

I'm not the pro on the game but IMHO it was a lot better and it certainly wasn't worse. I'd say it's worth a look, at least the demo.

[Axxon]

Dola, I like college basketball better than the pro product and I will still stand by my comments. Now, FBCB is still the bomb...

[Barkeep49]

I've been playing FBCB again lately, even before the demo came out, and perhaps its the comparison of the two products that has soured me on TCBD.