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ShareWare OnLine 2
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ShareWare OnLine Volume 2 (CMS Software)(1993).iso
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README.TXT
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1992-11-30
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Notes for the 1992 NFL data provided for use with Front Page
Sports: Football.
Front Page Sports: Football in a very short time has already
become the mark by which all other computer football simulations
will be judged. It is an amazing program and the creators
deserve all the praise we can heap on them for pulling off so
much that other developers claimed to be impossible with today's
technology. That said, like other all other programs FPSF is
not perfect. One item that is missing in FPSF is actual NFL
data though much of what is included is based on that same data.
There are those who argue that FPSF was not designed as an NFL
simulator but as a pure football simulator (designers and buyers
included) but I don't think that's representing 100% of the
situation. Any simulation you create must be based on some
model and where football is concerned that model is obviously
the NFL. The basis for this argument is found in FPSF as all
the NFL cities, among much other data, are included in the
shipping version.
I'm not here to argue what factors went into the design, I'm
here to provide what I, and many others like me thought FPSF was
missing, simulated NFL data. Basically I have taken the time
(and quite a bit of it) to go in and rearrange the data so that
much of the NFL is recreated. Certain limitations have arisen
due to factors beyond by control. For instance, it seems that
though most of the included data for the teams in FPSF is based
on actual NFL players, there are still 8-10 players on every
team that are purely fictional. Almost all of those are deep
bench players, but they're there. I've made every attempt to
reduce their role in this NFL data and when they do play simply
try and think of them as the rookies that come and go each and
every year.
Also, through all of my work I've uncovered a few interesting
things about the way FPSF works. For instance, FPSF does not
work on a Starter, Backup basis by position. Instead it appears
that it actually evaluates each player at each position and then
makes a determination as to who should start. This
determination is based on the 8 rating values Dynamix has chosen
for player replication. The problem is that the first 6 of
these ratings are biased towards younger players. They're
ratings like speed and agility which almost all younger players
have an edge over older players. The final two ratings
basically represent all those years of experience a true veteran
acquires. A human coach can look at Dan Marino, slow as he may
be on his feet, but realize that he's a Hall-of-Famer for his
experience and that he's a "winner". FPSF takes all 8 ratings
and gives them equal weighting. The end result is that rookie
QB's (and other positions as well) almost always start over
veterans. In one season I just finished testing Dan Marino
never once started a single game for Miami. Obviously an
oversight.
To address this I've taken two steps the second of which I'll
explain a little further on down the line. The obvious thing
was to bring the rookie back down to earth by trimming his stats
a bit. Basically I reduced their last two ratings so that they
truly became what they are, students of the game still learning
the ropes. This fixes most of the rookie/veteran mishaps, at
least at the QB position where it was most notable. One funny
note about this. Matt Bahr, the kicker for the NY Giants
recently was the team hero for the Giants in a test season I
just ran. He carried them far into the playoffs. Did he kick
a lot of field goals? Nothing more than average, but he did
lead the team as their starting QB for the entire season. He's
listed as the emergency QB for the Giants on their team roster.
Not only that but he had GREAT full season stats. I've
addressed this but here's another one for Dynamix to dig into
further.
The final hurdle appeared after all the work I did getting as
much of the data as close to right as I could get it. I started
a season and after having fixed the veteran/rookie problem I
noticed a new problem, and I noticed again in Miami. I thought
I had defeated the computer AI by making it realize that Dan
Marino was the right choice, at least I thought I had. It
fought back. The artificial intelligence looked over the
situation and said "Dan Marino? He stinks, we can't win with
this bonehead at QB" and so the computer manager traded a player
to Philadephia and obtained Jim McMahon to play OVER Dan Marino.
Obviously this had to be addressed. You can't achieve any kind
of accurate simulation if players are being traded all over the
place throwing off the balance that was sought in the first
place. FPSF could make things much easier for us in this regard
if we could just click a button removing trading as an option
for computer owners but until that happens the only option is to
make each team human owned. The drawback to this is that each
week you'll need to go into the Schedule portion of the league
and move the highlight from PLAY to SIMULATE for every game that
week. Not a big deal but more than should be necessary. By the
way, this is also the second way I'm hoping to force the
Dolphins to use Dan Marino. Maybe this guy should stick with
selling gloves on TV as this might be some sort of omen. Oh,
yeah, human owned teams need passwords to make changes to data.
The password for every team is just an ENTER key.
All-in-all the results of my testing are near what I was looking
for. Real players are doing 95% of the playing and giving
rather realistic results though somewhat different each time
through. I'd like to get as much input back about this data
with the hopes of continuing to make it as real as it can be.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I am.
Rich Heimlich
President
Top Star Computer Services, Inc.
CIS: 70670,2517