Chris

Hey Jeff, great having you here.. Feel free to post your mod , and we'll look into a downloads area for you in the future... Chris

http://www.gmgames.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=30:updated-features-for-websimhockey&Itemid=183 June 27, 2011 - Updated Features from WebSimHockey.com (As per WebSimHockey.com - Press Release) Many new features Since last fall, many new features were added to our site: - Improved user interface - Player types - Trophies (individual and team) - New “card” mode for to make it easy to view attributes - New lineup page - New strategy/practice module - Multiple minor upgrades These changes were requested by our community and have had a positive impact on our game as a whole. The continuous development of our simulator is one of our strengths and we are dedicated to this constant improvement. We know that we can count on you to suggest new ideas, as proven by the extensive list of suggestions you have already provided. More new features to come! In order to offer you a 2.0 version of Web Sim Hockey, the most wanted development according to our community members, we need to prepare the infrastructure of our site to make it ready for the latest technologies in web applications. We have already started this process, and although it is a work in progress, we are able to confirm major additions in the coming year, including: #1 - Community/GM Ranking Module This module will allow GMs to manage all their teams using a central dashboard. You will have access to all the important team information in one place, with links redirecting you to wherever action needs to be taken. A global messaging system and alerts will also be available for simplified management of your teams. Obviously, the community aspects will be greatly enhanced with the ability to add friends, post comments on their pages, track the progress of their team, and much more. Above all, this module will keep track of your activity. Primarily, you will see your achievements (trophies, various achievements, etc.), but also your weaker moments (expulsion of a league, voluntary replacements, etc.) Other community members will then be able to assess the quality of your work. And finally, there will be global standings using GM ranking points that you accumulate throughout your seasons. Will you be the best Web Sim Hockey GM? #2 - Tournament Module This module will allow potential members to try Web Sim Hockey with a simplified, free version. What is most interesting for you is that you will be able to play any of your teams in a global tournament. These tournaments will take place during the course of the regular season. Challenge the other GMs and beat the champions to become the ultimate Web Sim Hockey champion! There will be tournaments of all kinds with different entry criteria: entry cost, minimum/maximum strength of a team, minimum GM ranking points, etc. Private, fully-customizable tournaments will also be available. The possibilities are endless! #3 - Other new features Big modules are fun, but taking care of the little details makes the difference. As has always been the case, since we are online, we will continue to improve the site by regularly implementing small but important updates. 250 leagues, 6,000 teams! We are thrilled that 95% of our leagues and users are based in Quebec, Canada. It is now time for our English friends to discover our game and spread the word. Imagine where we will be when our Quebec members’ excitement reaches the other provinces and countries! We are very aware and appreciative of the faith you place in us and we will continue to earn that faith by giving you the best we have to offer so that you can continue to enjoy the best online simulated hockey game on the market.

http://www.gmgames.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=28:ootp12-now-released&Itemid=175 June 20, 2011 - OOTP Developments have confirmed the latest release of Out of the Park Baseball Version 12 for their customer pre-orders. This has been confirmed by Brad Cook, head of PR for OOTP Dev on their Twitter. @ootpbaseball OOTP Baseball - Emails with download links have gone out to pre-order customers! Everyone else will be able to buy in two days. Thanks! #OOTP 12. #mlb And by designer Markus Heinsohn on the Out of the Park Development 12 Forum. GM Games will be reviewing OOTP12 inside and out but here is a sample preview that has been created by OOTP Developments and any opinionative commentary belew does not represent GMGames.org. Lineup Improvements in OOTP 12 PC Gamer called OOTP 11 "a no-doubt, walk-off home run no-brainer to become a part of your game collection," and OOTP 12 is no different. Our All-Star lineup of features gets better every year, and we've again improved many of them during this off-season. 2011 Major League Rosters Here's a treat: the best roster set we've ever included, from the big leagues' top stars to the guys making their debuts in rookie leagues. Our roster sets only exist thanks to the hard work of our rosters editing team, so we'd like to take a moment and tip our caps to them. Thanks, guys. All players are individually rated with updated statistics and realistic contract data. Last year's top draft picks are included too. Could Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg, with the veteran leadership of newly-acquired All-Star Jayson Werth, help propel the Washington Nationals to the top of the National League East in coming seasons? Revamped Financial System The Philadelphia Phillies shook the baseball world this winter when they signed top-flight free agent pitcher Cliff Lee, despite expectations that he would opt for the highest bidder. Now you can do the same with OOTP's recoded player contract negotiations, which are more realistic and fun. You can even try to talk your owner into expanding the available budget, letting you squeeze in another All-Star contract. Don't forget to stay on top of the latest free agent signings and other news in the new off-season center, and keep your finger on the pulse of your team's finances with an improved view. *The new (optional) player development budget is another wise way to spend your hard-earned cash. Contract possibilities are now more realistic, including vesting options, buyouts, minor league split contracts, signing bonuses and more performance bonus options. * Recoded International Scouting We have completely recoded the international scouting in OOTP 12. Instead of just setting a budget, you can now send your scouts to the countries you select! But spend your money wisely: high-profile baseball countries are much more expensive to scout than obscure ones. Will you discover the next living legend? Online Leagues We're proud to support Official OOTP Online Leagues with a full-featured interface inside OOTP 12. With just one click, you can join a team, and creating a league is just as easy. Commissioners can make their leagues public and advertise open teams, with the ability to accept or deny requests from would-be GMs. Online leagues offer several key advantages: League files are patches rather than full-size files, saving plenty of up- and download time. Reports can be saved in MySQL databases, increasing their upload speed. Forget about FTP: team data exports and imports work through the database. That results in improved compatibility and security for the league web site server. An export tracker. The promise of more great features to come, including online drafts and trades. Greater Immersion and Realism Historical leagues benefit from improved AI and real life transactions and as-played lineups as optional features. Thanks to OOTP's sophisticated game engine, you'll be able to enjoy the most realistic historical simulation results possible. In addition, storylines have been expanded and news presentations have also been revamped, making you feel like you're part of the hectic 24-hour "better stay on top of this" news cycle that dominates today's sports reporting. In-Game and Core Engine Changes Like a manager constantly seeking ways to get the most out of his lineup, we're always tinkering under OOTP's hood. Here's what you can look forward to this year: Recoded parts of the in-game AI, making it the most challenging ever in an OOTP game. Improved in-game sound, adding better quality sound files and more variation. Improved player evaluation AI, resulting in more realistic AI roster moves. Recoded parts of the trading AI. Recoded parts of the main scouting engine. Improved injury and recovery system. * Added complete history for all coaches. * Added the ability to save a game in progress and resume it later. * Added optional confirmation questions after substitutions in-game, preventing mistakes. * Added the ability to lock a player to a certain minor league level when the AI is in control of your minor league system. * Added a new player development screen, including an organizational depth chart presentation. * Added the option to have established international free agents enter the market during the offseason. Added WAR (Wins Above Replacement) as a statistic. Added a playoff roster for more realistic team transactions. Greatly enhanced the world database structure, resulting in more realistic fictional league and player creation. Added a simulation module, allowing you to match up two teams from the same league for a set number of games and see the simulation results. This is great for research purposes or just for toying around. For example, how would the 1927 Yankees fare against the 2004 Red Sox?

As per Twitter: @ootpbaseball OOTP Baseball - Emails with download links have gone out to pre-order customers! Everyone else will be able to buy in two days. Thanks! #OOTP 12. #mlb Link to Forum: "Ok it's on its way" by Markus Heinsohn http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/ootp-12-general-discussions/209866-ok-its-its-way.html

Interesting point. When Risto completed his two versions of EHM with SI Games and SEGA Sports, they had an army of researches and volunteers from community websites.. It would be a shame to see something that has gone to the extent you mention just put on the shelf. Perhaps you can refer him here and we can bring that fire in him Cheers and thanks for elaborating

http://www.gmgames.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=27:wwcf-makes-major-changes&Itemid=192 June 19, 2011 - The WWCF will be making a few conference changes starting in 2005! Along with the conference changes also comes a new logo and website to complete the facelift. The ultimate goal was to get a conference championship game for all BCS conferences and most mid-majors. The first change is eliminating the Independents. Notre Dame will join the Big Ten and take it to twelve teams allowing for a championship. Army and Navy will join Conference USA to fill the spots left by Marshall and East Carolina who are joining the Big East. This move will allow C-USA to retain its championship game. Previously independent Temple will move to the Sun Belt filling the spot vacated by North Texas who moved to the Mountian West. Boise State will also make the move to the Mountain West putting the MWC, WAC, and Sun Belt at 8 teams and the only conferences without a championship game. Along with Marshall and ECU, the Big East adds Texas Christian and Troy to bring it to 12 teams and create a conference championship game. The PAC-10 will become the PAC-12 by adding Utah and BYU also creating a championship game. The ACC, Big 12, MAC, and SEC all remain unchanged and retain their conference championship games. A complete layout of the new conference structure can be found here: http://wwcf.us/newconf.html While some of these moves may be similar or like real life, these changes were all made for the with the WWCF in mind. We did not intend to follow real life as we would like to make our own history, and these changes are where the first 5 years have taken us. The forums are very active and we are always looking for new coaches. Check out the coaches page for openings here: http://wwcf.us/coaches.php And you can join here: http://wwcf.us/join.php

June 17th, 2011 From Markus (Maker of OOTP) below: Hey guys, so, the last bugs have been killed (and hopefully do not reappear over the weekend ) and the last features have been finalised. During the past couple of weeks I was able to squeeze a few small features into the game that some of you will enjoy. 1) League finances projection : In the past it was pretty tough to set up a fictional league and change the financial settings (i.e. player salaries, average media contract etc.) while maintaining financial balance in the league. You had to simulate multiple test seasons in order to find out if your financial settings work. This is now obsolete, on the league setup (financial settings tab) screen you will find a projection of team average revenue, payroll, other expenses and overall profit/loss. This makes it very easy to set up the finances of your league the way you want to 2) Automatically calculate league total modifiers so that the stats output match the league totals : Sounds complicated, but isn't. Imagine you want your league to match 1984 MLB, both in terms of strategy, finances and simulation results. The former two could already be attained in OOTP 11, but the stats output was again trial and error. Now I have added a function which lets you enter your desired league totals (= output), hit a button, and the game quick-simulates the season while adjusting the league total modifiers. The result is that your league will spit out league total stats that are within +/- 2% of the real stats. Oh by the way, this funtion is utilized for historical leagues automatically, resulting in the best historical simulation accuracy ever! 3) Player Development Screen : This screen shows you the current player development budget (optional), the top prospects and the positional depth chart of your organization. You can select wether you want to display just prospects or all players of your team, and base the ranking on current ability or potential. See here for a screenshot: 4) League Newspaper : This is the new place where you can check all the new & highlight of your league. Besides covering all the news you'll discover a few interesting articles, like leaderboards, historical info, team power rankings etc. We're sure this will improve immersion quite a bit! There are more small features & tweaks that we haven't mentioned yet, but you'll discover these yourself sooner or later Cheers, Markus http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/ootp-12-general-discussions/209702-06-17-update-couple-surprises.html

Do you need to own the game?

Tell us more about this, you will get a bunch of us salivating!

Welcome Tran, you can always register 'Tran' again too for a personal account (should be available) if you ever need that for community profile/articles etc.. Cheers

A hockey game with OOTP's interfacing and attention to detail? That would be very interesting indeed.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL UNVEILS PLAYOFF FORMAT CREATED BY COMPUTER GAME DESIGNER MLB Commissioner Bud Selig Announces That 2012 Season Will Feature Two New Wild Card Teams, Based On Several Years Of Research And Computer Simulation NEW YORK, NY – June 16, 2011 – Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig expects the playoffs to expand from eight teams to 10 teams, for the upcoming 2012 season. Selig went public last fall with his support for expanded playoffs, and the matter is subject to collective bargaining with the players' association. "I would say we're moving to expand the playoffs, but there's a myriad of details to work out," Selig said Thursday in New York at his annual meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors. "Ten is a fair number." Selig said scheduling is the major issue of discussion, including how many games the new wild-card round would be. The two wild-card teams in each league would meet, and the winners would advance to the following round against division winners. "The more we've talked about it, I think we're moving inexorably to that," he said. The plan preferred by owners, dubbed "Wild Card Sudden Death" by some, was created by Clay Dreslough, a computer game designer who has been writing baseball simulations since his childhood in the 1970s. In a 1999 article entitled "Fixing The Wild Card", Mr. Dreslough proposed adding a 2nd wild card team in each league, with the wild card teams facing each other in a one-game playoff to decide which team advances to meet one of the division winners. Some advantages of the new system: 1) Division races gain importance. Because each wild card might get knocked out in the one-game playoff, teams will fight to win their division, even after they have secured a playoff spot. 2) "Home field" races (such as between the 2007 American League division winners) gain added importance. There would now be a big difference between being the #1 seed and the #2 seed. Having the best record means that you get to face a team that probably just used their best available pitcher in a one-game playoff. 3) This corrects the current problem that the wild card team has as good a shot (or better) at making it to the World Series. No team wants to face a 1-game elimination playoff, no matter how good their best pitcher is. 4) This one-game playoff creates instant "Game 7" excitement, without significantly lengthening the playoffs. We don't have to worry about playing November games. Dreslough and his company, Sports Mogul Inc., organized a letter-writing campaign among baseball fans to bring this improvement to the league that they loved. Surprisingly, the league embraced the proposal with open arms. Mr. Dreslough had used the Baseball Mogul computer game to simulate thousands of seasons, using both the current and newly proposed playoff format. This proved that the new format made the playoff races more exciting. By creating two tiers of playoff teams, it turned many meaningless regular-season games into nail-biting contests. "The fact that we have over 10 years of baseball simulations to back up our decision gives us great confidence that this format will make both the regular baseball season and the post-season even more exciting for all of our fans," said Ethan Katz at MLB Advanced Media. "All the data shows that this format never makes September less interesting, and almost always makes it much more compelling." Baseball fans curious about the new playoff format can use the free version of Baseball Mogul to simulate a season. (After starting a new 'Modern' game, choose 'League Editor' from the League Menu, and change 'Wild Card Teams' from '1' to '2') http://www.sportsmogul.com/baseball/BaseballMogul2012DEMOSetup.exe For Baseball Mogul 2012: http://www.sportsmogul.com/games/baseball2k12.html. About Sports Mogul Inc. Sports Mogul Inc. is an electronic entertainment company that designs and develops computer-based sports simulations. The company's product line includes Baseball Mogul 2012, the 14th version of "the most realistic baseball simulation you can buy" (PC Gamer). The Mogul series of games has received numerous accolades, including "Sports Game Of The Year" from Computer Gaming World magazine. Clay Dreslough, President, can be reached at [email protected]. About MLBAM Established in June 2000, MLB Advanced Media LP (MLBAM) is the interactive media and internet company of Major League Baseball. MLBAM manages the official league site, http://www.MLB.com,and each of the 30 individual Club sites to create the most comprehensive Major League Baseball resource on the Internet, and offers more live events on the Internet than any other website in the world.

Good on Thomas, I think theres always room for new ways to measure performance.. Some people just take these long time measurements (goals, assists) thats it for what they are instead of getting even further in-depth

Since the community is new in general, I thought I would share my story... Bottom line is I love sports and I love these games. I find arcade and how to hammer buttons faster than another person does not show the beauty of what interactive sports can offer. Sports strategy games offer much more than that. Sports IQ is a thing all on its own and knowing how to build a 'team' with the right chemistry, parts and run a successful organization/business is tons of fun when game developers put you in the environment where you can do this. As of for myself, I feel this website was a long time coming. I remember wanting to do this for a while when I was in my teens (and now 30). I didn't have the means to the end to get something like this together. Right now I work in business but I have never lost the passion for these games, or competing with other GM's in online leagues. Things have changed and I can finally put together a site that incorporates all games, all discussion, and hopefully all the end-users who enjoy it with me. No more searching 20 websites to get news about every development in this genre. Let's get this going, sign up, spread the message of this website and inspire even better games because we support and discuss them. Cheers, Chris in Toronto, Canada

James, I placed a notice on the SI Games FM Fan Sites thread about our area too

Shadow, it'll be great examining the new versions of Football Manager, and building a useful resource people can use... We would like to add tactics, training, mods downloads as well for FM

banners fixed, dutch has 2 divisions you can play..

I love using the 2nd Division Dutch clubs and building from there with no limit on foreigners. Made it easy to sign guys without contract who could play and get things rolling.

Interview with Eric Bergeron, VP of WebSimHockey.com

iOOTP Review by GMGames.org (Courtesy of Drew St. Louis)

Website: http://www.bluechipbulletin.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/BluechipHockey Intense prospect analysis site created by former scout, hockey writer and friend to GMGames.org