Notes on Slam Dunk!: (12/8/90) ****** SHAREWARE ($5.00 FEE) ******
Thank you for downloading Slam Dunk! and welcome to the most realistic basketball simulator available! I sincerely appreciate your support.
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.
CHANGES SINCE v1.1:
• Improved team selection dialog (New Game). It now allows you to replay 2 teams without selecting them again.
• Mirrored substitute dialog, so smaller mouse movements are made when substituting.
• Added function to File Menu, "Most Effective Player". A rating system is used to evaluate the top 5 players, by overall performance per minute. This can be brought up during any break in play. Same rating system as the one used in league leaders display.
• Added "Show Scores" to StatsProcessor Menu. This will allow you to view and print a schedule and scores of all games played in that folder (to date). Note: this will not work on older "SCORES" files unless they have a file creator of 'SdNk'.
• Added "Delay" feature for those with fast CPUs. You can delay each possession for up to 5 seconds (0 seconds is the default). This will aid if you wish to read the play-by-play in real-time.
• Added message to alert when player is 1 foul away from fouling out.
• Optimized some code, fixed some smaller anomolies, more robust now.
TEAMS INCLUDED:
• All 27 teams from the 1989-90 NBA Regular Season, including the expansion teams, Minnesota Timberwolves and the Orlando Magic.
• The "Sweet Sixteen" teams from the 1990 NCAA tournament.
• 4 All-Star teams from the 1989-90 NBA season.
• Various division files for the teams above, to save you the trouble of creating them.
Note: This version IS compatible with team files from version 1.1. Look for a separate teams file in this software library that includes all teams placed in older versions, as well as a few other new teams.
CHOOSING STARTERS AND SUBSTITUTING:
To start a game, select "New Game" from the File menu. Click on the basketballs to select each team. 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 1989-90 Chicago Bulls will start by default the following players (refer to the Matchup Window):
C - Bill Cartwright Center
F - Scottie Pippen Small Forward
F - Horace Grant Power Forward
G - John Paxson Point Guard
G - Michael Jordan Off Guard
NOTE: The forward positions may or may NOT be interchangeable -- the first forward listed in the Matchup Window is always the small forward and the 2nd is always the power forward. This will explain why some power forwards cannot play small forward and vice-versa. The guard positions are interchangeable. The reason this was done was to distinguish the differences in playing power and small forward positions. There is a level of rebounding & defensive heirarchy associated with this (from best to worst):
Center -> Power Forward -> Small Forward -> Guards
That is, it will be more difficult to rebound (and play defense) from the center position than it is at the guard position (assuming the player CAN play both center and guard!). Moving players "up" the position heirarchy will generally decrease rebounding/defensive abilities. Moving players "down" will increase those same abilities. Quickness and agility also play a factor when moving
players up and down.
You may change the starters by clicking the mouse on a player's name in the Matchup Window (below the scoreboard). This will be the method for all player substitution. After clicking, you will get a substitute dialog.
To substitute, double click on the player in the substitute list. The "ACTIVE" players are already playing another position and must be substituted before putting them in this position. They are listed to show who is CAPABLE of playing that position. After a player fouls out, they will not appear in the list.
MODES OF PLAY (Mode 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. Pro ruleswill be the default. Stoppage of play will automatically default to "every 6 minutes". At this time, subsitutions can be made and statistics observed. 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.
Note: Playing teams at different levels (e.g. Lakers_90 vs UNLV_90) will not necessarily cause a rout. The teams will play according to how they have played at their respective level (UNLV_90 will challenge them). In playing these teams, also note that the college players are shooting three-pointers from 19 feet 9 inches, and the pros at 23 feet, 9 inches. Quite an advantage!
You can also disable the play-by-play commentary. This will speed up the game considerably. This can be turned on and off throughout the game. You can also disable showing the team statistics at each break.
To SLOW the play-by-play down, I have added a delay feature. Select "Delay..." from the Mode Menu and select the amount of time you wish to delay between possessions (defaults to 0).
BEGINNING THE GAME:
To begin the game, select "Jump Ball" (cmd-J) from the Game menu. Subsequently, "Resume Game" (cmd-R) must be chosen to continue play. Play by play commentary will appear in the "Play By Play" window. 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 tha game has completed. Also, there is another file which is continually updated after each game -- it's called "SCORES", and through any text editor you can review the final scores of every game you have played.
OTHER FEATURES:
Doubleteaming (Home and Visitor Menus) - now you can doubleteam the superstars or the streak shooter. Watch out for the man left open!
Offensive and defensive modes. Can now place offensive in either fastbreak, perimeter, power, or normal modes and defense in pressing/trap, tight man (to stop perimeter), sagging (to stop post people and power game), or normal. Fastbreak will generate points in a hurry, or it may cause more turnovers. Pressing/trap defense will cause the offense to turn the ball over more, or it will cause excessive fouling. This is where coaches can gamble at the end of a game. In a two-player game, is suggested that the modes are not revealed to the opponent. Let them figure it out!
Fatigue. After a player has played 6 minutes more than his average (5 for college), the player will get fatigued and quickly decrease in ability. Note: A fatigued Michael Jordan is still better than a rested John Paxson.
STATS PROCESSING:
As games are played, statistics for each team accumulate in their respective stat (".st") files (in the same folder as the team files). These stat files can then be assembled in division files and statistical reports can be generated on a division or on a single team. All of these features are assembled in a menu "StatsProcessor" and can be used either at startup or after a game has been completed.
Here, you will be able to view statistics in several formats. To view individual player/team statistics, choose "Player Statistics". "Get Team Info" will give you some basic data about any team. To use "Team Statistics", "Division Leaders", or "Division Standings", you first need to create a division file. I have supplied a few division files to save you some time. NOTE: these will only work if you have played a game for each of the teams included in the division file (an error message will inform you). You can view the division file from any text editor, just to make sure. If you change the name of a team, please change any existing divisions (by making new ones) that referenced this team, or an error message will appear.
Important Note: when creating a division file, all stat (.st) files must be in the same folder. Make a new folder and copy all the teams you like into it, if you must integrate teams. The stats processor will NOT remember what team was in what folder.
FEES:
This program is now shareware. The reason for the change is that I now feel the total effort made towards this simulation is worth something. I'm not asking a lot -- just $5 if you enjoy and frequently use this program. Your response will dictate the amount of maintenance done on future versions. Yes, I do have a lot of ideas for future updates, including color, animated graphics, a player/team creator, and much more. If you like this program, please encourage me to write similar exceptional programs by sending the $5 fee. Thank you!
LIMITATIONS:
There shouldn't be any "show stopping" bugs in this program. If there is, I apologize -- please tell me what went wrong. However, there is one known limitation -- 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 been tested on a Mac SE, SE/30, and IIsi with system 6.0 and up. I feel confident it will work on other systems, though - let me know if it doesn't.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Thanks to SYMANTEC™ for the fantastic programming environment (THINK C™), to PlayMaker Football™ (an excellent football simulator) for giving me the idea for the team selection dialog, to Bob Grasso for testing this program and to everyone who had suggestions or applauded my efforts. And special thanks goes out to everyone who downloaded this file. I hope you enjoy it!
