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Text File | 1994-02-26 | 15.1 KB | 356 lines

ARF Enterprises Presents Dream Baseball Fantasy or Rotisserie Baseball League Management Software System version 2.0 (c) 1994 Arf Enterprises -=page two=- PURPOSE: To provide a flexible program to ease the burdon of managing a Fantasy or Rotisserie Baseball League. This Document will provide the user with a general overview of this product and a list of functions. This program was designed with the casual computer user in mind who doesn't have the desire or resources to subscribe to on-line stat services. FEATURES: Multiple league capabilities. This software will easily handle several leagues with different configurations of number of players and statistics that are graded. No set limit on the number of teams. The only limitation is the amount of memory and drive space your computer has. Up to 99 pitchers and 99 offensive players per league. Again, way more than necessary. Up to 11 Offensive stats and 10 pitching stats considered. The league can be set up to use all, some or none of these stats. Data integrity. Program will make backup data files as a menu selection item. More importantly the program was engineered so that no data file was left open for more than a couple of seconds. This is why when the program is being run off of a floppy drive it appears to be "running" quite a lot. This means that in the event of a power failure or similar system crash it is unlikely that you lost any data INDIVIDUAL TEAM OWNER PROGRAMS! This is the real driving force of this program. The commisioner's program, titled BBALL.EXE, will create disks for any or all team owners that they may use to track their teams stats. The team owners are not allowed to change their teams configuration, however they can change any players name or stat. At whatever time the league decides, the data files from those disks can be downloaded into the commisioners program. This negates the need for the commisioner to manually enter any stats. Reports printed to the screen or printer. You can view the final stats and standings on the screen or send it to the printer, whichever you prefer. -=page three=- WHATS IN THIS PACKAGE: The following files should accompany this program BBALL.EXE -> This is the commissioners program TEAM.EXE -> This is the team owners program, however it is NOT functional until an owners disk is created using the commissioners program TITLEVGA.PCX } { If you have a VGA monitor and run this TITL2VGA.PCX } -> { program from a hard drive, these graphic LOGO.PCX } { files will be displayed. BBALL.ASC* } { These contain data that the program SHELP.ASC } -> { needs to display messages, help and ERROR.ASC } { error screens. * This program will not run without BBALL.ASC. It will run with some of the other data files missing, though certain functions will be disabled and system crashes will be possible. TBBALL.ASC } { Data files the team owners program THELP.ASC } -> { uses. The program will not operate TERROR.ASC } { without TBBALL.ASC HOW TO USE: The File Screen: The file selection screen is the first, functional screen that you will encounter. This screen displays all of the files that are in the same directory as your program with the extension ".FBL". There are actually three files that this program uses for each league, the other two are not displayed here. If this is the first time you have used this program, chances are there will be no files displayed here, though there may be some directories. You can change directories either by highlighting one of them and pressing enter (or clicking the mouse on them) or use the Drive button at the bottom of the screen. Our recom- endation is to just leave the data files in the same directory as the BBALL.EXE program, this will avoid the problem of losing files. -=page four=- ABOUT BUTTONS Throughout the program you will encounter several "buttons" usually found at the bottom of the screen. These activate various functions. They can be activated by using tab or arrow keys to highlight them, or use the Alt key on your keyboard and at the same time press the first letter of the name of the button. You can't highlight the button in all screens by tabbing over to it but you can always use the alt-key combination to do so. You can also use the mouse to press a button. If this is the first time you have used the program, select the "New" button either by highlighting the button, using Alt-N or pressing the button with the left mouse button. The New Screen: In this screen you will initially see a listing of various offensive and defensive stats. You can use the arrow keys or the mouse (with the left button held down or pressed with the cursor over an item) to select the stats that you want scored. A stat is selected when a checkmark appears in the box on the left side of the stat. You can also select AL or NL league play. The play really isn't any different. The reason we did this is that some leagues play with players in specified positions, i.e. a player who is a catcher can be the only catcher on that team, and some leagues don't care what the defensive position of a batter is. This program lists player positions on the left side of the first nine batters. The ninth player is the DH if AL play was selected, and UT (utility player) if NL play was selected. If you select less than nine batters you won't even see this. Players exceeding nine are listed E1, E2, E3... If you don't play with specified positions, this is meaningless and just ignore this part of the program, it won't get in your way. After all of your stats are selected hit enter. You will be prompted to see if those are the stats you want to use. Answer yes to proceed or no to cancel. If you just want out of the program altogether, just hit the ESC key and this will take you right back to the file menu. If you selected yes you will be asked for the name of the team. Don't worry about adding a file extension, in fact you won't be allowed to. -=page five=- You will also be asked for the number of offensive players as well as pitchers. The last thing that you will be asked is the number of unrestricted moves. At the present time, this is meaningless but as we proceed onto future versions (for which registered owners of the software license will receive one free!) we are expecting to add features that will keep track of some of those small details. This way when a new version is released you would be able to use your old data files. You'll be asked again to confirm your selections and, if you do, you will be returned to the files screen. The name of the league you just created now appears. You can either jump right in or escape out of the program, the league file will be there when you return. The Desk Top: After selecting a file from the file screen you are taken to the desktop. You will see a row of pull down menu items from the top and another row of buttons on the bottom. Go ahead and play around with those, if you push something that will cause something bad to happen you'll get a warning first. You can't do anything with a league until you enter owners. You'll note the various owners functions under the Owners menu selection. As you highlight various menu functions, press F1 for on-line help and a description of each function. The functions themselves are very user friendly. ABOUT SCORING: The scoring is calculated on a point scale which is determined by the number of teams in a league. You may have noticed that you are never asked to tell the program how many teams are sanctioned. This is because the program doesn't care. You can keep adding teams until your computer locks up due to insufficient memory or drive space. Don't worry, it would take quite a few to get there. The points awarded on any particular stat category equals the number assigned to the position that stat bears to the other teams stats. I know you didn't understand that, the best way to explain is to illustrate. Lets say there are ten teams in the league. This means that the best stat score would equal ten points, the next best (which would be the ninth position) would equal nine points on down till the worst stat is reached, which would be equal to one point. What -=page six=- happens if there is a tie? The positions where the ties occur are added together and divided by the number of teams tied. Each team is assigned that many points. For example, assuming again a ten team league, the best stat stands alone in a category. That team is assigned ten points for that category. However, there are three teams that have the same stat result and this result is the next best stat. These teams occupy the ninth, eigth, and seventh positions. Nine plus eight plus seven equals twenty four, which is divided by three. Each of those teams receives eight points. The points are added together and the team with the most points leads the league. You can display totals by either showing them on the screen or sending it to a printer. See the Statistics menu selections on the desk top. THE RULES: Other than what has already been noted, there are no rules. The rules are whatever you want them to be. We didn't set out to tell you how to play, we just wanted to make your life a little easier. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: This program has been tested on 286's, 386's and 486's. It should theoretically work on older machines but it has not been tested on them. A color monitor is required, though it doesn't have to be VGA or EGA, an old CGA monitor will work just fine. There are some VGA graphics that display when the program is booted from a hard disk, but if you don't have a VGA they'll just be skipped. This program works just fine off of a floppy drive, which makes it real handy for office leagues. Creating an owners disk and downloading stats are not a problem when the program is run off of a floppy drive, provided there is either another floppy or hard disk in the machine which the program can swap files to. This program ran just fine on MSDOS 3.3, PCDOS 5.0, MSDOS 6.0 and MSDOS 6.2. There are mouse routines built in but the absence of a mouse should not be an impedement to use. WHAT HAVE I BOUGHT: This is a shareware product. This means that the authors (us) have granted the public at large a license to evaluate this product for a period not exceeding 30 days. Evaluation means that you can start the program, run it, test all of its functions, enter dummy data in creating a dummy league, and just use it as you EXCEPT you don't have a license to actually use this program to manage a working league. If -=page seven=- you sent money to a shareware publishing house, you probably paid $5.00 or so for this program. You didn't pay anything for the program itself, you only paid that publisher for their services in providing the disk, handling and mailing of that program to you. We DO NOT GET A SINGLE DIME from those transactions. Not one red cent! We are completely dependant upon you to do the right thing (legally and morally) and pay the reasonable registration fee (see program for details). If you think, "hey there are hundreds of people sending in money, I don't need to", your thinking is twisted. The number of people who send us money is irrelevant. One of the authors first shareware projects was released with no restrictions on use simply relying upon peoples honesty. Despite the fact that program was widely distributed and numerous sources inquired about attaining it, not a single person to this date has registered it. This is why there are reminder messages and very limited restrictions of use built into this program. I guess Descartes trudges on in his quest. CONCLUSION: The program contains all the information you need on how to contact us. It will also print out a registration form for your use. We accept bug reports from any source, no questions asked. We pledge to provide top flight support to our registered customers, who will be promptly sent a registered version of this program as soon as the check or money order arrives. Please specify disk size, if none we will use 720K 3.5". Please freely distribute this product to your freinds, neighbors, countrymen and BBS even if you have no use for it. We also welcome any suggestions for improvements, criticism, etc. Your feedback is important to us. We thank you for giving us this opportunity to share the fruits of our labor with you. (c) ARF Enterprises