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Where have you been Shaun?

Well, it's been a while since I made a blog post (I have been posting on the message boards all along, but I think I am going to just stick with the blog for these types of updates) and a LOT has happened!

First, the shareware experiment of 2004 worked out very well. It really increased the game's exposure and let me focus on responding to some great community feedback. Ultimately it led to PureSim being signed by a pretty high profile publisher, Matrix Games. I added a ton of new features to the PureSim 2005 version, and released a new version under the Matrix Games line "PureSim Baseball 2005 - Gold Edition". The great folks at Matrix even allowed me to make the gold edition free for any folks who had purchased the 2005 version which really was cool of them.

All in all it has been great to sign with an indie publisher. From their work on packaging, box art, the manual as well as the great support they have for me being in complete creative control of the game.

How about PureSim 2006?

Work on the next Matrix release PureSim 2006 is well under way. I have some very clear cut goals for this edition:

• Add support for a comprehensive, browsable alamanac much like what is provided at www.baseballreference.com.
• Add support for multiple levels of minors
• Add new game styles and configuration options
• Improve the in-game manager experience
• Even more deeper stats presentation. PureSim has always tracked the result of every pitch to every batter so I have lots of data to play with!
• Improvements to various parts of the user interface
• More PSPN new reporting options and configurations
• Improved modding/skinning support
• Many engine and AI tweaks

I am shooting for a release some time in the second quarter, but my time is pretty limited by my real job and family obligations. Things are coming together well though.

Sneak Peek - The Browsable Almanac

Those of you that are stats and history nuts are going to love this feature. PureSim 2006 will generate an amazingly detailed HTML almanac with screens and links to almost every stat and report imaginable. The alamanc gets generated after each season, but you also have the option to generate one on the fly. All files and images are generated to a clean folder structure which makes it easy to browse from withing PureSim's integrated browser, or any standard web browser. This could be a great feature for those of you playing multiplayer leagues or running dynasties on the web, since you'll be able to upload the files to a web site for others to browse. here are a couple of early teases:

Screen Shot 1
Screen Shot 2
Screen Shot 3
Screen Shot 4
Screen Shot 5

Multiple levels of Minors in PureSim 2006

PureSim 2006 adds A, AA and AAA minor league levels to the game. I struggled with the implementation here for a while, as I wanted to provide addtional challenge and player development features while at the same time avoiding excessive micro-management. I think I have a great balance. Even PureSim 2005 could become a burden with it's one level of minors that forced you to manage the lineup and rotation.

The way it works is you have the 3 levels to manage but you do NOT have to worry about setting lineups. Player stats are simulated as the days pass which will give you a good read on player progression. Be careful not to rush a prospect, and at the same time be careful not to stagnate their development by letting them rot in the minors. You will also have to be careful how you distribute players. Don't expect to put 6 Shortstops in AA and have them get decent playing time, it would be spread too thin. The game now has options for 60, 65 and 70 man organizational roster sizes as well. There is a nice simple user interface to manage the minors as well.

Beta will be soon!

That's enough for now, I'll post an update soon as things progress. I am looking at doing a wide-open beta so head over to the message board and post if you will be interested in participating. The only constraint is I will probably limit it to folks that pre-order the game.

Welcome to The PureSim Developer's Corner

Well it was just a matter of time until I started blogging. Of course I love interacting with PureSim players over on the message board so this is not a replacement for that but rather a place where I can hopefully provide some insight on what it is like to develop and self publish a game.

Some history

Ever since I was a small boy I had an amazing passion for Baseball. Baseball cards, baseball board games, playing baseball, watching baseball... Now, I grew up in Massachusetts and I'm sure many of you are aware of how passionate we are about our Red Sox, so there was no escaping baseball mania.

Discovering the PC

When I was about 10, my dad, who was a teacher, brought home an Atari 400 from his school. I was hooked. Right away I dove into BASIC and was thrilled when I actually could move a dot around the screen. Well, I kept after dad and soon he caved and bought me a Commodore 64. What a machine that was for its time. Suddenly I had all sorts of power at my disposal. I mastered BASIC and the add-on Simon's BASIC and moved on to teach myself 6502 assembly language. Soon I was submitting games to Compute! magaizne and becoming an avid gamer myself. The sort of interesting part about all this is I was involved heavily in athletics, playing Hockey, Baseball and the Swimming team. Well, I felt a little self concious about my geeky side so I largely kept that secret :)

Microleague

So the beginning of "the end" for me was the day dad and I picked up Microleague Baseball. Do any of you guys remember that one? I couldn't believe the detail, graphics, everything. I pretty much decided that I wanted to create something like that and I immediately began poking around in the data files, making changes, seeing what would happen, crashing a lot etc.. What a classic.

Earl Weaver Baseball

Forget about it, Earl took over my (and my dad's) life. A few years had passed and we picked up an Amiga along with Earl Weaver Baseball. When we got it all hooked up our jaws hit the floor. To this day I have never had another "out of the box" experience like that. So here we were with this Baseball game that not only had amazing graphics but it even spoke the players names! And I could type in my name and it would speak that too! That summer (86 or 87 I think) dad and I played hundreds of games. I fondly remember hauling the Amiga into the one room in our house that was air conditioned and just playing for hours on end. We had stats posted on the fridge, we ran fantasy drafts, we argued -- it was great.

So I had to become a geek

Not surprisingly I went to college to get a computer science degree, though I'm pretty sure I was the only comp sci major who was also on the Ice Hockey team! I actually made a lot of beer money writing BASIC programming assignments for just about everyone in my dorm, so I was finally "out in the open" showing my true geek colors. Oh and I even made it through college in 4 years. I'm sure you can guess what my senior programming project was. {Ahem} a Baseball sim...Surprise!

Front Page Sports Football and Baseball

A few years later after getting a programming job I started to get heavy into Dynamix's Front Page Sports Football. So much so that I completely reverse-engineered the data files and put together an editor that would allow folks to view and edit "hidden" potential ratings for players. On a whim I posted it to Compuserve and then something amazing happened. Hundreds, then thousands of people began to download it. The program was shareware ($15 I think) and frankly I never expected to see a dime. Boy was I wrong! Now, you have to realize I was 21 or 22 just married making very little money, so when the first $15 showed up I was incredibly gratified. Each day more would show up in my mailbox to the point where I'd get maybe 20 people a a day sending me floppy disks and $15 so I could copy the program on to the disk and send it back to them. This lasted for a while and then one day I get a call. "Hi Shaun, this is Pat Cook. I'm the designer of Front Page Sports Football. We love what you have done and were wondering if you'd like to join our beta team?" So I'm thinking to myself, this is *the* Pat Cook? I basically idolized the guy and now he was calling me. It ended up being a wonderful experience working with the Dynamix guys and I continued to do so on Front Page Sports Football Pro. Unfortunately at some point somebody at Dynamix felt I was taking advantage of my beta testing status to further the editor so they shut me down and encrypted the files! I was pretty bummed, but I did what any self respecting programmer would do -- I figured out the encryption algorithm :) It took weeks. I'm sure there were some angry people at Dynamix when FPEdit (My editor) showed up in working form!

The silver lining on this one is we patched up our differences and I again became a key tester for Front Page Sports Baseball. The designer of that game Doug Johnson, taught me an amazing amount of stuff. He was such a visionary. I remember being awestruck when he talked me through how to customize the game's simulation engine and AI via a text file (pb.ini) what a blast. That stuck with me and I made a promise to myself that when my game came out it would have the same level of customization fidelity. Doug, whereever you are thanks!

PureSim Circa 98 A Naive Programmer Learns a Valuable Lesson

PureSim wasn't released until April of 2002 but I was already designing and coding in late 1998. Having a full time programming job and a few young children was pretty taxing so it took "some time". I began posting to news groups, releasing screen shots etc. I then learned a valuable lesson. Don't go public with a release date until you are sure. I remember confidently stating the game would be ready by 1999! I think I missed that by a little. The good news is I've never missed a release date since then.

More later....

I just realized how long and boring this is getting so I'll pick up from here in a future post!