automatic historic roster creation program

[puja21]

wow this was new to me:
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeekp5y/id15.html

Quote:

Though the season creation and update to the roster is automatic, it takes anywhere from 20-40 minutes for the program to update a roster through Finn’s editor, depending on the speed of your computer. You may want to walk away from your computer for that time—but make sure you turn off your email announcements and screen savers. Anything popping on top of the program may cause it to stop.

Quote:

--Create a full historic season with just a few clicks --Automatically create a schedule for any past NFL season --A print-friendly starting lineup form (including kick returners) is created for each season, making it easy to adjust the lineup to how it was actually played --Attributes for each player are automatically calculated from actual NFL statistics

i havent been home in a couple wks to get on my xbox...... anyone mess around w/ this yet???










didnt wanna bump my own thread so i'll just edit... according to the readme in the program's download, here's how the scheduling works w/ the apparent conflict that many of the expansion teams didn't exist for most seasons since 1960:

Quote:

The file will be saved with the file extension ‘.nfl2k5’. If it detects any problems with the schedule, it will report them in a message box. For the years that there were less than 32 teams, it will schedule the other teams to play against each other (this is done because if a team has no games, it is undefeated and automatically makes the playoffs), but it will schedule fewer than 16 games for those teams.

[LDX97]

wow! wtf is this?? lol. I do not have time to open the download yet and I read it quickly, but this has got me very excited just by what I've read fast. As excited as a much hyped new game release like madden 08 or apf2k8 and this is a surprize.
I will be checking this out later today.

[capa]

How is this even possible with the name/editing restrictions in Finn's editor and the game limitations itself?

C

[puja21]

Even though I'm not at my comp. w/ Finn's editor or any gamesaves, I DL'ed the bundle & checked out the readmes & datasets a little bit.

The creator (BAD_AL) admits that since he was dealing w/ anywhere from 21 to 32 teams depending on the year & ~53 players per team, there might be some errors as he had to record data for skin color, jersey #, college, stats, etc. It looked pretty good at first glance, however. The "years experience" field appears to always be set to the total years played but no big deal (e.g. Bruce Smith will have 19 years of experience whether it's 1995 or 1988). It's great that the existing historic datasets themselves can be easily amended/corrected, so they can be improved by the user/community over time (esp things that are obviously hard for the creator to nail like face/skin or equipment).

Player ratings are apparently calculated based on stats so I'm not sure how this would impact the offensive line, & obviously people will have different opinions on ANY stat-based formulas to determine ratings. Maybe the formulas can be adjusted by the user.. I don't know.

The thing that excites me about this is that it's the first effort I've seen that might allow us to import large amounts of data INCLUDING personal info from an easily changeable dataset (spreadsheet/notepad/CSV file) automatically back into Finn's editor. To me this means it has huge potential to be used for all kinds of roster-making, not just historic.

Hopefully, the program functions okay right now (seems to be the first or at least an early release) & that the creator continues to work on improving it as he hints at in his readme files.

[puja21]

Quote: Originally Posted by capa

How is this even possible with the name/editing restrictions in Finn's editor and the game limitations itself? C

none the stuff ive read really addresses freezing at all-- I just kinda assume it's for single-season or exhibition only (because there is no DOB in the datasets to determine player ages) but I won't know until I get to try it.

In the meantime, I can't imagine AaronDe would host/feature it on his site if the tool didn't work reasonably well. He is pretty reliable when it comes to file integrity & that sort of thing

[capa]

I started it...used a revised roster set you did as the base file. Getting red first and last names in the editor after the program does its thing. Maybe you have to use a default "came with the game" roster file? Or maybe it won't matter as far as gameplay goes but I think it causes lock ups in the game.

Anyway, looks very very cool...lots of potential as you said...

C

[puja21]

Quote: Originally Posted by capa

I started it...used a revised roster set you did as the base file. Getting red first and last names in the editor after the program does its thing. Maybe you have to use a default "came with the game" roster file? Or maybe it won't matter as far as gameplay goes but I think it causes lock ups in the game. Anyway, looks very very cool...lots of potential as you said... C

yeah that was one of the first things i read in the documentation-- use a default roster if you have troubleshooting issues. it also said make sure every team has around 52 players (not sure why 52 as opposed to 53 or 54).

in general, red names in the editor don't mean anything significant-- it is just a mouse-over indicator telling you that more than one player is linked to that name-slot. i can't speak for what happened after you ran this program but that's what a red font typically indicates for finn's editor. if you used one of my old rosters (esp one based off OSDCR) there were already a bunch of red names for this very reason

[puja21]

Quote: Originally Posted by dophin26

I couldn't get it to work right. I followed the directions step by step and I am a fairly intelligent person, but I received an error message no matter what I did. I generated the data files fine, but wouldn't do the inputing.

that sucks, but it's not surprising if there are bugs. i wont be home to give it a look for a while. i shot finn an email... who knows, maybe it will stir his creative ambitions