PureSim Baseball 2004 v1.5 Released

SPECIAL NOTE: PureSim REQUIRES that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or Higher be installed on your machine! It does not have to be your default browser or anything, it just has to be there, since PureSim leverages IE 6.0 technology. PureSim Baseball 2004 Release v1.5 Fix/Tweak/New List ================================= Massive AI Improvements - Just about every facet of the GM AI has been improved. AI Needs and Disposition - The team home pages now list some information about what that team's GM is looking to do (e.g. "Aggressively Improve", "Get Younger", "Dump Salary" etc..) It also now lists the the top 3 aspects of their team that they are interested in improving. Non Veteran Release Rule - New rule - If you release a NON veteran you are only responsible for 75% of his salary per year for the duration of the remaining contract. Veterans are still owed 100% Almanac/HOF - Added some additional info to the grid that details player's key career stats. Deals & Moves Filter - Added a drop down filter to the Deals and Moves (Association Transactions) screen that allows the list to be filtered by: All This Year's Transactions, Promotions/Demotions, DL Moves, In-Season Free Agent Signings, Releases, Amateur Draft Signings, Trades, Initial Draft Signings, Off-Season Free Agent Signings, Contract Extensions,Rejected Contract Extensions,Expansion Draft Signings Added ability to view disabled list players from the the modify roster screen (it brings up a dialog report) Added "Do NOT draft veterans" option to the Auto Draft Parameters dialog. This can be useful when you are auto drafting say, the last 10 or 15 rounds and you don't want the AI to pick any vets. More significant AI improvements and tweaks in regards to roster and lineup decisions. It is important to realize that sometimes the AI can't be "perfect" due to restrictions around the Veteran roster rule PureSim can now import custom schedule files designed for OOTP6 (available via the options dialog). Added new 14 team 2 league configuration. This also has the nice side effect of fixing the issue where folks had 12 team 2 league associations that expanded to 14 teams 1 league, but they "lost" 1 league. Now 12 team 2 league configs will expand to the 14 team 2 league format. Tracking and displaying no-hitters under "Milesones" on Pitcher's player card (Note: total no hitters will only include no hitters achieved AFTER installing test release 11) New PSPN special report story for Walk Off Homers Now tracking and reporting on hitting streaks (PSPN Special reports will be generated at 10+ games.) The story will be included standard in every PSPN issue. Milestones now being tracked and reported on in PSPN. When players reach certain milestones a special issue will be generated noting the milestone achieved. Currently Home Runs (100 and then intervals of 50), Hits (1000 and then intervals of 500), Games (1000 and then 500 intervals), Wins (100 and then intervals of 50), K's (1000 and intervals of 500) Milestones are listed on player card. Added minor engine tweaks to account for home field advantage. This can also be tweaked in the puresim.xml file if desired (see tag "HOME_FIELD_ADVANTAGE") Added ability to edit league and division names and toggle the possibility of expansion for an association (Its on a new tab on the Configuration Options dialog which is accessible from the association home page under "Quick Links") Added ability to export and then edit and later import scheules. This way folks can create custom schedules for the game with relative ease. (Its on a new tab on the Configuration Options dialog which is accessible from the association home page under "Quick Links") Added ability to toggle DH rule for leagues via the options and utilities dialog Tweak - GM AI now more likely to put players on DL that have mid-range injuries (e.g. out 2-4 weeks) Tweak - More improvements to Trading AI, specifically in the case where AI was too careless in regards to trading away decent starting pitchers for higher rated players that were not starting pitchers, to teh point where they could really hurt their rotation. Now the AI will make sure that they have the rotation covered if they are about to trade away a SP for a non SP. Tweak - When in "dump salary" mode AI GMs were still a little too stingy about getting rid of high-priced vets in trades. Tweak - When assigning players to the minors prior to the expansion draft (denoting that they are "unprotected") the user will now be able to demote veterans during that time frame. Any veterans not snagged by the expansion teams must be moved back on to the major league roster after the expansion draft. Tweak - Decreased the likelihood that older players (in a state of steep decline) will be signed to extensions. Tweak/Optimizations (Test Release 9) - More pretty significant speed improvements to the off season free agent period. Tweak - AI was still not pinch hitting for pitchers enough. This has been significantly improved and after a fairly detailed analysis I am happy with the frequency now, especially in close and late situations. It will never be 100% because there are cases where the bench or bullpen are exhausted. Tweak - Reduced AI's affinity for signing aging veterans to multi year contracts, the AI is now a little conservative with older guys. UI Tweak - Now displaying the current date on the standings page Tweaks - More tweaks to pinch hitting AI logic, 1) There were still some cases where late in the game a pitcher would bat when his team was behind, this would happen if the bullpen was very tired. The AI is now more agressive, and will make a late inning move to pinch hit for the pitcher regardless of the condition of the pen. 2) AI is less likely to pinch hit for hitters at the top of the order (if they are pure starters -- if they are not every day players but were inserted into the lineup to give someone a rest then the AI may still aggressively pinch hit for them). Tweak - Improved smoothness of in game ball flight animation Tweak - Minor tweaks that increase the platoon advantage (Note these tweaks are applied at player-generation time, so in order to see the impact you will probably have to play a number of seasons with an established league, or start a new one) Optimizations - Lots of little speed improvements here and there... Tweak - Pinch hitting AI was sometimes a bit too aggressive, especially with 1-5 hitters. This has been toned down a bit. Tweak - Slight increase on number of foul balls Tweak - Almanac All Time team records was sorting by total wins, which was useless now that we have expansion, it sorts by Winning Pct now... Tweaks - Made some little tweaks improving the robustness of the Lahman import code for situations where folks are attempting to edit lahman in order to create custom leagues Tweak - If the AI has some cash and there are still some decent free agents hanging around at the start of the season, it is very likely that they will be signed within the first few weeks (especially if there are some "rich" teams) Tweak - More tweaks on financial model. Slight reduction on player salary demands, improved dynamic reduction for cases where a player feels he may not be able to pick up with a team Tweak - More reductions in the chance that a player can get doubled off first on a flyball when the hit and run is on. It was still happening too much even after the last tweak. Tweak - When generating fictional players, previously the game generated Veterans and assigned them all with 5 MLYears and also generated non veterans and assigned them 0 MLYears. These numbers now ae variable, meaning there can be non veterans in the initial draft with an initial MLYears in th 0 - 4 range. Tweak - Enhanced Free Agent AI and off season experience #1: Teams can sign more than the maximum allowable players during the free agent signing period (they may not always do this, but if they have a lot of cash and there are still good players out there, they will likely do this. Tweak - Enhanced Free Agent AI and off season experience #2: Teams will "wait out" players a little longer in the free agent period, attempting to take advantage of the fact that players will reduce their salary demands if they haven't been signed after each week Tweak - Enhanced Free Agent AI and off season experience #3: You can now enter sring training with a larger roster than what the maximum available in season roster is. This way you can sign some extra players (maybe some bargain guys) and then amke some tough decisions on who to release based on whether or not some guys really tear up the spring. Tweak - On the modify roster page when the user hits "Suggestion" and the AI suggests that a player be released, the player name is now hyperlinked so the player card can be opened from the suggestion dialog, making it easier to release a player. Tweak - After the end of the regular season, but before the start of the next season players who have just finished their contracts will now be listed as "Contract Expired at the end of this season" on their player card (It used to say 1 year remaining) Tweak - Similar to above. Added new "Contract Expired at the end of this season" section to the team->Contract Status report Tweak - Modify Roster Page - At the end of the regular season the "Contract" column will be reduced by 1 (for example it will show "0" for players whose contracts just expired at the end of this season) Tweak - When calculating/displaying a team's available financial resources at the end of the regular season, player's salaries whose contracts have expired as of the end of the year will no longer be included in the total salaries amount. Tweak - Too many spot starters were being generated with very low endurance ratings (25-30 range) Fix - There were still some (extremely rare) cases where the AI was demoting a veteran in a situation where this should not have been allowed due to veteran roster rule. Fix - Award Filter drop down was not visible on the Almanac->Annual Awards screen Fix - Too many PSPN issues were being archived historically (due to the Milestone stories). Milestone issues are now no longer archived, also games played milestone stories are no longer published in PSPN. Fix - Closed a loophole. User could sign a free agent to some huge 1yr contract (say for example, offering a 100% increase!) during the FA draft and then when the season started offer him an extension at a much lower demand. The player's extension demands will now reflect the premium he was signed at. Fix - The code introduced in test 11 that allowed veterans to be demoted during the protecttion phase of the expansion draft was not implemented in the build I uploaded -- it is now :) Fix - If a pitcher was pinch-hit for and then during the at-bat or on the base path the pinch-hitter is injured. The message appears that the PH needs to be replaced. If either a new pitcher or another position player are put in as the sub the replacement was not appearing in the proper slot on the lineup screen, but: The message that the original injured pinch-hitter needs to be replaced appears again. This left the user stuck in a loop on the lineup screen with no way to exit other than CTL-ALT-DEL. Fix - If a player had all walks and no official AB's his OBP was reading 000. Once he got a hit his OBP was being displayed correctly. Fix - OBP in career totals was always slightly higher than the single season total for a player with only 1 season. Fix - A player traded mid-season to a pennant winner sometimes on his player card under "Post Season History" it was attributing his post season stats as being with the team he was traded from, not the team he was traded to that ultimately made the post season. (Note: this may still be reflected incorrectly for past seasons played prior to test release 12 -- from 12 forward it will always be correct) Fix - On the team front office page if a team was using 4-man rotations, then where it listed upcoming games the starters were listed as "undecided" vs. "undecided" every 5th day. Fix - Error 9 when closing the options dialog from the main menu. Fix - Fixed "Invalid Control Array Index" crash when managing a game as the home team and clicking "Strategy" before any AB's have taken place. Fix - GMs from AI teams were sometimes going into "dump salary" mode too late (e.g after the trading deadline) Fix - Fixed rare issue where AI would do 2 defensive substitutions consecutively at the same position during the same at bat Fix - In some cases, if there were runners on first and 2nd with less than 2 outs and the ball was hit to the 3rd baseman, then the out would be properly recorded (he stepped on 3rd), but the base situation after the play would be reflected as 1st and 3rd instead of 1st and 2nd. Fix - PSPN, On Dr. Karl's injury report, if a player received a career-ending his estimated time to recovery was still being listed even though he'll never play again. Fix - In some cases after expansion or schedule import, all teams are listed with 1 run from and 1 run against of the standings page even before they played any games. Fix - The new "Walk off homers" PSPN story was causing too many unique PSPN issues to be generated. These stories will now appreal in the next regularly scheduled PSPN issue instead of being the catalyst for creating a brand new issue. Fix - TONS of changes to improve the robustness of the PureSim schedule import code. Additional changes were made to other parts of the game to improve robustness in handling "strange" schedules. Fix - Hitting streaks were being ended if a player appeared in a game but had no plate appearances. Fix - Less than 2 outs runners on 2nd and 3rd. If the infield was in and a ground ball was hit to an infielder and he threw out the runner at the plate, the batter who hit the ground ball was not appearing on first. Fix - While PureSim was correctly marking runs as unearned for a pitcher when an error is made with 2 outs, it was only marking the runners on base at the time of the error as being unearned if they scored, it should have marked ALL runs for the rest of the inning as unearned. Note: if a pitching change is made, then any baserunners that reach base and then score on the new pitcher will be charged as earned. Fix - When a computer team decides to dump salary the user was continually being notified of this, now the user will only be notified once Fix - When running unattended auto play for a large number of years (20+) Rosters were becoming extremely unbalanced and a large number of players were reducing their salary demands to $50,500. This was caused by a flaw introduced in test release 7 Fix - Some changes to save logic back in test 7 broke one situation: Relief picthers that come in the game in a non save situation and pitch "effectively" for at least 3 innings should be awarded a save. Fix - Test Release 7 introduced a bug where if a player hit a walk off homer he was only getting credited for the amt of RBIs that it took to win the game +1. Now, if a guy hits a walk off grand slam he is properly credited with 4 RBIs whereas before he was only getting credited for 2. Fix - In some cases PureSim was using the formula (AB * 3.1) to use as a minimum qualifier for the batting title and some other stat leaderboards. (Plate Appearances * 3.1) is the appropriate formula Fix - Fixed some aspects of off season free agent processing that could result in crazy processing times. Typically this was happening when folks were seeding associations with real players, but the association itself was actually larger than the corresponding MLB configuration from the seed year. Fix - When playing in real player replay mode, for some seasons (for example, 1939) there were just not enough players available, and this would lead to the off season free agent draft getting hung up. Fix - Fixed some spurious lockups that would occur in the post season free agent period. (Typically this was with real player leagues -- seeded or replay) Fix - A player becomes a veteran after 5 seasons of ML service, however, the status doesn't change until the end of the season. Therefor it was possible for a human GM to send the player to the minors before the end of the season and have veterans in the minors at the start of the following season. PureSim now notifies the user if this case occurs and forces the veterans to be placed on the major league roster. Fix - Improper Implementation of Rule 10.18.(c) - Earned Runs. If a 2 out error was made, prolonging the life of any current base runners, if any of those runners scored, they were being charged to the pitcher as earned runs, which was not correct. Fix - If the defense had the infield in with less than 2 outs and runners at first and third, if there was a ground ball and the defense nailed the runner at home, then the guy that hit the grounder was not showing up as being on first after the play. Fix - When managing a game, if human manager chose "Guard Lines" their strategy was not reflected in the PBP window. Fix - Bottom of an inning in extra innings, if a runner was on first and the batter tripled, instead of the game being over, PureSim was just showing the original base runner still on first, and the score still tied. Fix - When the human player was managing a game, sometimes the computer team would send up multiple pinch hitters for the same batter Fix - Save Rule 10.20.b was not being properly checked in a situation where a team was up by 4 runs and runners were on 2nd and 3rd, 1st and 3rd or 1st and 2nd. Rule 10.20.b reads: "A Pitcher gets credit for a save if: He enters the game, regardless of the count, with the potential tying run either on base, or at bat, or on deck (that is, the potential tying run is either already on base or is one of the first two batsmen he faces". PureSim was not peoperly looking at the on deck batter in this case in order to determine if a pitcher should get credit for a save. Fix - Intermitent Error 440 introduced in 1.5 Test release 3, usually encountered when closing a player card that was summoned when the user got a trade offer Fix - Fixed rare case on PSPN "Who's Hot - Pitchers" story where a pitcher who has not been performing very well is listed as "hot". Fix - Error 91 when attempting a Hit and run with 1 out, and a runner on 2nd Fix - In the post season PSPN issue, in the story where the champion is congratulated, PureSim was listing the team's post season record incorrectly (it was displaying the team's all-time record, not the post season record for the year just completed. Fix - When managing a game the "steal home" option was not working correctly. Fix - Error 13 on Almanac when opening player card from season leaders, offer extension - cancel. Fix - PSPN Time Machine Story - Batting stat leaders from past seasons were being listed with the team they currently play for as opposed to the team they were playing for on the year they achieved the stats Fix - PSPN Time Machine Stories (Batter and Pitcher) - For stats that require a min # of AB's, or Innings Pitched PureSim was assuming the association had a 162 game schedule instead of looking at how many games it was actually configured for. Fix - Intermittent "No Current Record" on modify roster page that could occur after the user clicked "Suggestion". Fix - Fixed strange late season roster demotions by first place teams. Fix - After a league had expanded more than once there were cosmetic errors on the expansion draft report (showing hall of fame players etc...) Fix - In 2 League, 3 divisions per league associations in the Post Season PSPN issue story that reports the world champion it was incorrectly reporting the world champ's post season record (it was leaving out the first round off the playoffs) Fix - In fictional leagues, the pre-season PSPN issue was sometimes projecting outrageous batting avgs in the "Hitters to Watch" story Fix - Fixed error when importing 1993 players from the Lahman database (Only happened if 1993 was the first season in the association) Fix - In rare cases (more frequent after the initial draft) AI was allowing veterans to be in the minors. Fix - Sometimes when a player retired after being released from a team that still had contractual obligations to him, he was still showing up "on the books" of the team that released him. Now, when a player retires he forfeits all salary. Fix - In some cases if a pitcher came into a game and the runners on base were the responsibility of the previous pitcher, if one or more of those runs scored, putting his team behind, he was incorrectly being assigned the loss (the loss should have gone to the guy that was responsible for putting them on) Fix - PureSim was not properly interpreting rule 10.20(3)(b). If a pitcher came in the game and his team was up by more than 3 runs then PureSim was not calssifying this as a save opportunity. However, if the bases are loaded (and the runners got there via another pitcher), and the pitchers team is up by exactly 4 and the tying run comes to the plate it should in fact be classified as a save situation. Fix - Some season records that require a minimum number of AB's (Batting Title, OPS etc...) were using Player Appearances when checking the minimum requirement instead of AB's. The chance of this impacting things was extremely rare, but it was possible that a guy could have won the batting title with less than the min number of AB's if he had a ton of BB's Fix - Fixed extremely rare error 91 that could happen when navigating to a team via the team dropdown from the association home page (If you tried to navigate at the te exact moment that one of the dynamic stats panes was about to update) Fix - when signing a free agent from a computer-controlled teams modify roster page, the caption was incorrectly showing the human player's team name Fix - The modify roster page on a computer-owned team was letting the human player sign free agents Install - No longer forcing uninstall before installing an update.