[Nukester]

Originally Posted by RJolley

Nukester, did you release this program?

No I havent. As I said above, it works great, but there is still some cutting and pasting and stuff in the game that needs to be done before it will work. I was not going to put it out there as is because it is still alittle crude, and I didnt really want to go through the hassle of supporting it, and Im the only one that ever used it, so it really hasnt been tested outside of my use. If your interested in it though, I could get it to you somehow. Once I get home, I can check my laptop to see how big the file is and see about emailing it or something. Somewhere around here Sandman wrote a random utility also, but Ive never used it so I cant comment on it or the way it works

Here is a readme I started for my utility, just so you can see whats involved in getting it to work in the game

Random Debut Generator for Lahman Database by Keith Newcomb

This program will give a random debut year for all players in the Lahman database (or equivelant modified databases). I have not attemped to normalize anything in this go around. This program only changes debut years, batting years, pitching years, fielding years, and birthyears accordingly.

The program is currently designed to create a new random debut year between 1900 and 2006 for all players. Idealy your league should begin in 1903 but I suppose you could start in any season from 1903 on. I choose 1903 because of the stability of the Major Leagues as far as team relocations. Thats just my personal preference. In the future I may modify the program to allow the user to choose the starting and ending date of the new random debuts.

The way OOTP works, only players already assigned to teams that exist in your league for the year of creation (ie: 1903) become part of the draft pool for an inaugural draft, after "releasing all". Also if too many players are assigned to a team, not all of them will show for an inaugural draft. The game seems to take players from each team by alphabetical order. Most of the time this is not a problem, but if you have 200 players assigned to a team, chances are they will not all show up. For this reason, all players are assigned to a team that has been around since 1903 (currently Cincinnati, Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Detroit) when getting their new debut years. Because of this, your league should start with an inaugural draft in order to work correctly. Players will not be on their correct teams after importing. Delete all career stats and league stats after releasing all players for the inaugural draft.

In the original Lahman database, most players debuting in the 1800's have a different format for the debut year than players debuting in the 1900's (yyyy-mm-dd as opposed to mm/dd/yyyy). This program will modify all players to have the same format debut field, so players from the 1800's will be used by your league.

The program contains the .csv version of the Lahman database found here http://www.baseball1.com/ but you should be able to use any modified database, as long as the debut field is in the same format as the original Lahman database.

To start a league using this program:

1) Unzip the files to your C: drive. This should create a directory called "C:\RandomDebutApp" with subdirectories "original" (where the original .csv files are), "results" (where the new modified files are placed), and "tables" (used by the program to modify the database), along with the .exe file and a few other necessary files.

2) Run the randomlahman.exe file

3) Press the "Create Database" button

4) When the new database is created, click OK

5) Press the "Export" button

6) When the files are exported, click OK

7) Go to the C:\RandomDebutApp\Results directory and copy all files to whatever directory your OOTP game uses for importing into a new historical league (the program only modifies the master, batting, pitching, fielding, and fieldingOF files, but all files are needed for import into the game)

8) Start OOTP

9) Start a new historical league. Do check the "hold inaugural draft" option (you can check the option after the league is created too, but before doing anything else). Also make sure you allow foriegn players in your league.

10) Erase ALL career stats of all players (this should erase minor league player stats too)

11) Erase entire league history

12) Release all players to the free agent pool. If you have minor leagues enabled, you must release the players from the minor leagues also.

13) Run inaugural draft (the number of players eligible for the draft should match the number of players shown in the game\database info screen under "number of players"

I hope this works for you and you have fun with it !