Thank you for downloading Slam Dunk! This program is the culmination of months of work and research, in order to give serious basketball fans an exciting way to simulate basketball in a way that has never been done before.
Warning: This is NOT an arcade type game, where players are controlled by keystrokes, taking away the true responses of the way the teams play together, and the matchups at each position. The interaction is at a coaching level, where you decide who to substitute at crucial situations, or how to matchup with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, or Akeem Olajuwon. Just put the players on the floor and watch them play. In this game, position matchups are very important -- putting an ace defender on a good scorer will show results! Also, like a real game, playing someone "out of their true position" may change the game significantly, both from the defensive and rebounding standpoints.
To start a game, select "New Game" from the Game menu. It will ask you to select both the home and visiting teams (the same team can be selected for both home and visitor). I have included all teams from the 1988-89 NBA season, the year that Detroit beat the Lakers for the champioship (I'm currently working on the 1989-90 teams). As a bonus, I am also including the "Sweet 16" from the NCAA 1989-90 basketball tournament. After choosing the teams, the starters will have to be selected. By default the starters will be the starters normally used by that team, e.g. the 1988-89 Chicago Bulls will start by default the following players:
Bill Cartwright Center
Scottie Pippen Small Forward
Horace Grant Power Forward
Sam Vincent Point Guard
Michael Jordan Off Guard
You may change the starters by selecting a different player for that position in the respective Home or Visitor menu.
After picking the starters, you can change certain modes of the game. First, the game can simulate College or Pro rules. The pace of the college game is generally slower, and the bonus for foul-shooting occurs when a team has 7 fouls in a half, instead of 5 fouls in a quarter. If you choose the college, the game is divided into quarters. There is no difference in play in that respect, except you can better determine scoring trends when quarter scores are kept.
Stoppage of play will automatically default to "every 6 minutes". At this time, subsitutions can be made. To change this default, choose the "Pro/College..." item in the Mode menu and select a different stopping period. Do this before a game starts -- it will be disabled after the jump ball.
To begin the game, select "Jump Ball" from the Game menu. Subsequently, "Resume Game" must be chosen to continue play. Play by play announcing will appear in the "Play By Play" window. To make the simulation run faster, turn off the "Display Play By Play" item in the Mode menu. The score, the current quarter, and the time remaining in the quarter will be displayed in the scoreboard.
Press the space bar to stop the action to substitute players, look at statistics, change play mode, or whatever. To pause play, hold down the mouse button.
Statistics are kept each time you play a game and accumulate for each additional game. They are stored in a file "<team name>.st", residing in the same folder as the team file. To prevent a game from saving, un-check the "Save Game Statistics" item in the Mode menu. before it completes. Also, there is another file which is continually updated after each game -- it's called "SCORES", and through a text editor you can review the final scores of every game you have played.
I have almost completed another application to process the statistics (".st") files generated by this program. It's called "STARR" and will allow you to display divisional standings (with home and road records) , team statistics, individual player statistics for each team, allow you to create divisions, display league leaders within a division, the ability to generate your own teams, generate teams at random, or generate schedules. If there is enough interest in Slam Dunk!, I will also upload this application -- so keep the "stats" files for each team, so STARR will be able to process them. I will also upload more teams if enough interest is show (number of accesses).
There is NO fee for using this simulation. All I ask is that tell anyone interested in basketball about this simulation, get their reaction, and send any comments on how I can make this better.
Known limitations: There may be obscure bugs in this program. Friends of mine have done extensive testing on it, however, there is one known "glitch". -- when all of the players for a certain position have fouled out, there is no way to place a new player in that position. The game must be aborted at that time. I have gone through great care to make sure that the chance of this happening is very remote. This program has only been tested on a Mac SE and SE/30.
