Orcin
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2007
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I am posting this under "PC Gaming", although it could be equally correct under "Sports". Another of my life-long (off and on) hobbies is baseball simulation. I wrote a long story about this once, but I'll just put the short version here.
I played Strat-O-Matic baseball as a kid (Google it if you are not familiar with it and curious). In my early adult life, I moved up to computer-based baseball games: Earl Weaver Baseball and Tony LaRussa Baseball. All of these games were played to simulate real players and teams, not fantasy players, and used simulation to generate the results, not input from a keyboard/mouse or joystick. So this is a far more sophisticated and realistic adventure than can be achieved on a Wii.
I spent many, many, MANY hours playing these games, studying real stats to gain insight, and compiling these stats to import into the game. The latter menial task is no longer needed, thanks to the Lahman database that is used by contemporary baseball sim games to import all of the stats for every player and team in history automatically. Wow, what a feature! If you only knew how much time I spent doing this in my life...
I took a long break from these games, but I recently revived the hobby. A game developer, Shaun Sullivan, decided to release his 2007 product (PureSim Baseball) as a completely free download. This was too good to pass up, so I jumped in and became completely hooked. PureSim Baseball 2007, as a commercial product, was considered in the upper tier of simulations, along with Out Of The Park Baseball (probably the leader), Diamond Mind Baseball, and a couple of others. It has been improved as a free version with input from a small but active user community, and is being actively supported by the developer as his hobby.
If you want to take a look at this game for yourself, here is the link: PureSim Baseball free download
Anyway, this is not an advertisement for the game but a story about what I am doing with the game. I am hoping to find a few other baseball sim fans to share the experience with me. If not, at least I will enjoy writing about it.
I am posting this in parallel on the PureSim forum "Locker Room", so it may read like someone who is deep in the PureSim community wrote it. Please try to read past the jargon, but I will be happy to answer questions about it.
I hope you enjoy this story about my latest computer-generated fantasy baseball league. If you share a love for these games, please send me a PM about it. I'd like to hear your experiences.
To read the rest of the story, please move to the next blog entry, entitled "1946 St. Louis Cardinals".
I played Strat-O-Matic baseball as a kid (Google it if you are not familiar with it and curious). In my early adult life, I moved up to computer-based baseball games: Earl Weaver Baseball and Tony LaRussa Baseball. All of these games were played to simulate real players and teams, not fantasy players, and used simulation to generate the results, not input from a keyboard/mouse or joystick. So this is a far more sophisticated and realistic adventure than can be achieved on a Wii.
I spent many, many, MANY hours playing these games, studying real stats to gain insight, and compiling these stats to import into the game. The latter menial task is no longer needed, thanks to the Lahman database that is used by contemporary baseball sim games to import all of the stats for every player and team in history automatically. Wow, what a feature! If you only knew how much time I spent doing this in my life...
I took a long break from these games, but I recently revived the hobby. A game developer, Shaun Sullivan, decided to release his 2007 product (PureSim Baseball) as a completely free download. This was too good to pass up, so I jumped in and became completely hooked. PureSim Baseball 2007, as a commercial product, was considered in the upper tier of simulations, along with Out Of The Park Baseball (probably the leader), Diamond Mind Baseball, and a couple of others. It has been improved as a free version with input from a small but active user community, and is being actively supported by the developer as his hobby.
If you want to take a look at this game for yourself, here is the link: PureSim Baseball free download
Anyway, this is not an advertisement for the game but a story about what I am doing with the game. I am hoping to find a few other baseball sim fans to share the experience with me. If not, at least I will enjoy writing about it.
I am posting this in parallel on the PureSim forum "Locker Room", so it may read like someone who is deep in the PureSim community wrote it. Please try to read past the jargon, but I will be happy to answer questions about it.
I hope you enjoy this story about my latest computer-generated fantasy baseball league. If you share a love for these games, please send me a PM about it. I'd like to hear your experiences.
To read the rest of the story, please move to the next blog entry, entitled "1946 St. Louis Cardinals".
