Brendan's 1973 Topps inspired OOTP Cards (now including awards cards)
 

I have finally finished my recreation of the 1973 Topps set for OOTP. This is my most ambitious project yet and I am so excited to share it with you all.


Download: Main Mirror 1 Mirror 2

And now some images of the base set:
Attachment 735252Attachment 735253Attachment 735254Attachment 735255Attachment 735256

Here are some examples of the award cards:
Attachment 735257 Attachment 735258
Attachment 735259 Attachment 735260 Attachment 735261

These are just lovely. Great job. Really nice that you made award cards, too. Love the backs, well, all of it for sure.

Just wanted to thank you for doing these and sharing your hard work. Like these way better than the template I was using.

Attachment 735278

Thanks Zappa1.

I am already scouting for 1974, the 1973 cards took so long I now need to finish 1974 before I can continue playing my main save.

Here are my two favorite fun facts:
Attachment 735304 Attachment 735305
Both images are from the wonderful Trading Card Database, without which I don't know what I would do.

I have saved 65 card backs for their fun facts and am now narrowing them down to the ten I want to recreate in Inkscape.

Don't worry about how long it takes. You did much more work on this last one so of course it will take time. Remember, haste makes waste. Awesome work. Good luck on your next project.

I'm excited because after '74 comes '75...and that's one of my favorite Topps sets ever.

Really glad they used that as the base for the 1970s PT cards this year.

Anyway, your '72 set was good, your '73 set was REALLY good - can't wait to see what you have in store next.

Please say you'll add the teddy bear fact.

The plan has been to include those two facts since I saw them.


I'm trying to brainstorm a way where I can have some facts appear less frequently, as rare facts, without having to make 100 fun fact images. I have only figured out how to add random images if there are 10^n images for the random number generator to draw from.

Good job on these so far! Looking forward to the '74 set, since that's the oldest complete set of baseball cards I actually own.

1974 Update!
 

I completed the background for the 1974 card last night, I have some video I might put together later showing the process. The bright red and green will be swapped out for team colors using the XML.

Attachment 735734

Next up the All-Star card template. This one is going to take some innovation since the 1974 All-Star card is horizontal with both the AL and NL selections for the position but cards with more than one player are not possible in OOTP. Time to get creative.

Attachment 735735
From TCDB

If you can pull off that 1974 all-star card with the 2 players I would think you could just about do anything with cards. I've seen a card with 2 pics of the same player on it (1983 topps), but this is different. Good luck. Hope you can get it to work.



Also the 1974 template I'm using now has the players top of their heads cropped off. No doubt yours will be much better.

I have four options for the All Star cards since it is simply not possible to have facegens or stats from two different players on the same card.


One
Attachment 736074


Two
Attachment 736076


Three
Attachment 736075
I use this base with two facegens of the same player (It would essentially be the exact same picture twice as facegens do not vary much in zoom or angle)


Four
I can use the same image as 3 but place a league or team logo in the frame for the second player.
I would love to get people's opinions on these.


My first choice would be to use 1 and 2 and have the game use one based on the sub-league but due to the text placement that is not possible.

I think I like maybe the 3rd one. It looks closer to the real thing. The '83 template was the same way like you said about the 2 pics not being very different from each other. If not using league or team logo, maybe the players stats when he was awarded an all-star. Average, Homeruns, RBI's for batters. Wins, Loss, E.R.A. for pitchers. Just my thoughts. Whichever way you go I'm sure will be fine.

All of your work in this regard is fine indeed my talented friend.

Can I ask a series of really dumb questions please?

Are these able to actually be used in game for any and all players? (I think the answer here is YES)
If so, for fictional leagues as well as historical? (again, YES)
If so, do they show the player's in-game stats? (hmmm, YES?)
If so, how / where do I put these files if on a Mac?

I apologise for my utter noobiness and thank you in advance for any replies.

These are not dumb questions. The card templates are able to be used in game for all players fictional and historical. They pull in-game stats and information and create a player facegen image. Let me do some research and get back to you on the Mac question. there is a separate folder for mac templates but I don't know what makes them different so I have not prepared files for it right now.

Thanks for indulging me Brendan, and if you could let me know how to use them I will do them proud! Got a new website just about ready to unveil in which your templates would figure prominently and look incredible!

Thanks bud

G

Oh, one more question. I'm presuming these are templates, so you can have multiple ones going at the same time and just pick them from the list to use at will, is that how it works?

In a player's profile under baseball cards there is an card creation wizard where you can manually create a card from any template you have installed.

If auto creation of baseball cards is on then the game will use the template named for that specific year and card type first, if that's not available it will use one named for the type of card and decade, and if that is not available it will use the default card template for the type of card. So for example in 1973 when creating an all star card the game will first check for all_star_1973.xml if that does not exist it will try all_star_197.xml (for the 1970's decade) and if it cannot find that card either it will use the all_star.xml. There's more on this on page 20 of this guide by BMW.

I see, thanks for the info.

There doesn't seem to be any direct reference on the cards apart from the stats, but are these only appropriate for use in the year of their design? In other words, what will happen if my save is in 2020 and I try to apply your 1971 Topps template?

If you want the Topps 1971 XML to work in 2020 automatically you will need to rename default_1971.xml to default_2020.xml (if you want it to work for just that year), default_202.XML (if you want it to replace the default for the entire decade 2020-2029), or default.XML (if you want it to be the default template for all years, if you do this save a copy of the default first just incase).