Gensou World Baseball

[kurzov]

"Banksy, the British artist, once spoke of the second death, when someone's name is said for the final time. With the world as connected, surveilled, and recorded as it is today, some people will never be forgotten - for better or for worse.

The same could not be said for the once feared creatures and little-believed deities of the early days of humans. Or could it?

It is said that a land, hidden behind the joint barrier of a forgotten priestess and one of these formerly feared creatures, still exists, for those left behind by the world...

This land, given the name Gensoukyou by those who lived in it, was once believed to be located in what is now Japan. It was separated from our own world in the late 1800s, and has, ever since, tantalized those who believe in the existence of magic, those who feel that they no longer have purpose in our world, and perhaps even a disgraced professor or two."

I wrote that for a different project a couple years ago, but it'll serve as a brief introduction into a(n alternative version of) the world we will be delving into with this simulation.


Touhou Project (or just "Touhou", translated as "eastern") is a video game series originally created by Japanese developer Jun'ya "ZUN" Ota in the late 1990s. It accrued somewhat of a cult following in the late 2000s and early 2010s, with a few songs being remixed and gaining internet notoriety, such as "Night of Nights", "U.N. Owen Was Her?", or "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing". The SHMUP games in particular are known as being infamously difficult to complete without using any continues.

The series centers around a dimension by the name of Gensokyo, which was separated from our world in 1885 to protect the youkai - monsters of Japanese mythology, more or less - from going "extinct" due to the rise of science and technology. Gensokyo also attracted deities, particularly deities of polytheistic religious systems like Shintoism, Buddhism, and such, as the rise of technology would metaphorically "eat away" at the amount of worship they would receive.

Gensokyo is surrounded by the Great Hakurei Barrier ("the Barrier"), which could be described as a wall keeping Gensokyo in Gensokyo and our world in our world. However, things can and do still pass through the barrier, including humans - though unless you were in the right place at the right time (or wrong, depending on your perspective), it would be considered very difficult to cross the Barrier unassisted.

(If you want to read more about Touhou, you can read the wiki. I'll get started talking about the OOTP stuff.)

This fictional simulation, which I'm tentatively titling "Gensou World Baseball", will take place in Gensokyo (and surrounding dimensions - we'll cross that bridge when we get there) and will detail several fictional baseball leagues from 1911 to "current day" (whenever that might be).

Of course, historically, baseball was introduced to Japan in the years leading up to the Barrier's formation. However my presumption would be that it would take several decades for a human-driven league in Gensokyo to form under any circumstances (a youkai-driven league would take even further, as you could guess). The Barrier would limit too many humans from entering the region at any given time, drastically reducing the amount of potential baseball players.

A warning to anyone who's already a Touhou fan: I'm going to be playing VERY fast and loose with the lore and such. You have been warned.

I've tried to make this sort of thing before (in OOTP 24), though they never simulated more than 2 decades into their respective save files, and used Japanese player nationality (and city information) as little more than a placeholder. When OOTP 25 was announced, I had the idea to remake this idea from scratch.
To assist in this simulation, I'll be throwing out the existing nation and city databases, and coding new databases to replace them.

Currently I'm about halfway finished with planning the history of the multiple leagues that this save will contain. The save will start in 1911, and currently I've planned up to 1963. Once that is finished, I'll begin coding the new nation and city databases. Once those are finalized, I'll begin assembling the savefile for testing purposes, then reassembling it for the real thing. I'm going to be hands-off with the AI whenever possible.

...Future updates to be provided when I can do so...

[kurzov]

Okay, GWB update time.

At this point, I've planned out a majority of the sim "history", as it were - up to around the mid-'90s. However, I'm still debating smaller things about the leagues, such as how the leagues should be sorted (league rep value and levels), rule changes, and so on. (DH? Salary caps? Roster size?)
Of course, given these leagues are completely fictional, I have nothing to fall back on, so these decisions have to be made on my own.

I'm unsure as to whether the sim should just straight-up halt at the end of 2001 or continue to "current day" (2024). The series lore states that at some point between 2000 and 2002, miko (shrine maiden) Reimu Hakurei introduced the Spell Card Rules.
While these rules are more of an internal lore document that only really serve as an in-world explanation for why the games play the way they do, the effect these rules would have would appear in a couple forms for the sim/save. Chiefly, it would impact the divide between humans and youkai.
This in turn would affect the logic being used by these leagues, particularly when it comes to the rules limiting youkai playing in human leagues, and vice versa. Other effects could be considered more nebulous.
However, stopping at 2001 would also limit the events of the games from impacting the sim. Some examples would include the Scarlet Devil Mansion, the Moriya Shrine, and the Palanquin Ship from appearing in Gensokyo (2002, 2007, and 2009 respectively).

Once the history is completed - whether I decide to stop the sim at 2001 or not - I can begin to work on the database entries. I'm not sure if I will be able to simply append these entries to the end of the existing nation and city databases without having unwanted side effects, or if I will need to wipe out these two databases and replace them with the custom entries entirely. There are also some other concerns that I have, particularly regarding the use of custom regions, that I'll probably only be able to answer once the custom databases are implemented.

Lastly, I'm waiting for any upcoming game updates/patches to be released before actually implementing these databases or starting the simulation, as I'm not sure of how installing updates would affect any edits made to the database files - and I would like to run the sim with as few hangups as possible.

[jksander]

Sounds like a really fun project! I'll have to keep an eye on this

[Sizeman21]

Sounds interesting! Can't wait to see what you produce!