Midas' Altered DB: A Lidas-inspired creation

[MXD]

The salary cap I think is removable if you just put "0" in that file in the db. If not I'll just max it out as high as it can go.

Sorry if sounding dumb...but...which file?

[foxlockbox]

Were you able to remove the max 4 foreign players in the SM-league rule? If so, could it be changed to max 4. non-eu like its irl? (For Lidas DBs, not yours). Btw. the whole scandinavian league thing sounds fun!

[Manimal]

The salary cap I think is removable if you just put "0" in that file in the db. If not I'll just max it out as high as it can go.

Sorry if sounding dumb...but...which file?

transfer_rules_config

[Midas]

So I edited a bunch more leagues. I tried to add as many as I could, but a few will inevitably get left out , at the moment likely either the French and/or Dutch leagues. The process has been very frustrating and I am a bit concerned the game might bug out or something... it does not seem to react well (in some leagues) to changing teams around. Some necessitate moving a pre-existing database team into the new league or it will crash. Others it's the exact opposite. Some require you to still have the existing teams playable in another league (I used a 'filler' league for this) but then you can add as many teams as you want to it. Others you have to invalidate them all and insert new teams.

Anyway, after much painstaking testing, I've created (so far):

NHL
AHL
ECHL > East Asian Hockey League (teams from Japan, South Korea and Republic of China)
CHL > English Hockey League (English teams only)
UHL > Oceanic Hockey League (Australia and New Zealand)
EIHL > Celtic Hockey League (Scotland, Wales and Ireland)
Swedish Elitserien/Allsvenskan > German League (includes several formerly German cities)
Finnish SM-Liiga/Mestis/Suomi > Scandinavian-Baltic Superliga (teams from all Nordic and Baltic countries, including Iceland!)
Czech Elite League > Balkan Hockey League (teams from the Balkans including Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, excluding Romania)
Norwegian League > Hungarian Hockey League (Hungarian teams only)
Slovakian League > Polish Hockey League (Polish teams only)
Russian Superliga > Kontinental Hockey League (teams from Russia and former Soviet Union; Vysshaya League has more teams from former-Soviet countries such as Central Asia, Moldova, etc. as well as a team from Mongolia [I know it wasn't part of the USSR])
Slovenian League > Israeli Hockey League (8 teams from Israel, including Gaza and the West Bank)
Austrian League > Arab Hockey League (5 teams from United Arab Emirates, 1 team from each of Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait)

At the moment, the only playable league left untouched is the English Premier League. This has some bad scheduling, no relegation but does have 12 teams. I'm considering using it for either a South Africa, South American, Dutch or French league- the latter two already have programmed in-game leagues that aren't playable so I dunno. Once this is done I still have to make a few cosmetic tweaks to some teams, figure out a way to change budgets (some teams you can change in the editor but it won't change in game =\), tweak the Junior leagues for some of these newer leagues (I plan on making a few changes to the CHL as well) and beef up a few more of the leagues. Once that's done I can finally start editing players! Which will take forever .

So no end in sight, but I'm slowly getting there

[joneboy2000]

This project of yours sounds interesting.... Keep up the good work!

[Midas]

So have been doing some manual testing of the db. So far so good no crashes 5 years in. I have some major balancing to do with some of the players I added, but that shouldn't be too big of a problem. One of the coolest things I've noticed is the Euro Challenge includes all European teams- including the ones in like, the CHL and stuff. There are some obvious issue in terms of rosters with some of the Japanese and Korean teams (they simply have no one to sign on who's from that country) but as I edit, I hope to create a fully functioning Japanese/Chinese feeder league. Nothing to post (no alpha versions yet) and it's coming down to term-paper and exam season for me, so updates are slow. I am working on it though. I also went through a major virus scare a few days ago when some Russian hackers somehow got a hold of our router. I managed to save most of my files, but had to safe restore my registry to several weeks ago- so I lost a bit of stuff.

I'll post some more pictures later. I'm quite proud of many of the logos I've made (most of which are simply rehashed from other sports). If any of you have any suggestions feel free to toss them in here. The thing I am most regretting at the moment is the inability to make the Dutch, French and Swiss leagues playable. Unfortunately, unless Riz ever comes back to give us the ability to make some of these non-playable leagues playable it probably won't happen in this db. I could add them and replace them later on once I have the db more stable if anyone really wants to play them- but for now they're going to be on the peripheral. I do however plan on making Britain, France, Switzerland and Germany major hockey players so hopefully as I finish more of the db there'll be more French players in the NHL .

[Manimal]

So have been doing some manual testing of the db. So far so good no crashes 5 years in. I have some major balancing to do with some of the players I added, but that shouldn't be too big of a problem. One of the coolest things I've noticed is the Euro Challenge includes all European teams- including the ones in like, the CHL and stuff. There are some obvious issue in terms of rosters with some of the Japanese and Korean teams (they simply have no one to sign on who's from that country) but as I edit, I hope to create a fully functioning Japanese/Chinese feeder league.

You should also create some Japanese/Chinese player that retire the first day in game. That way you'd get better regens sooner

[Midas]

Great idea, thanks!

You should also create some Japanese/Chinese player that retire the first day in game. That way you'd get better regens sooner

I'm actually quite enjoying some of the things I put in so far. Seeing players from the United Arab Emirates, Japan and Israel is very cool- if only because when you sort by birth nation you get to see some flags you've never seen before .

[foxlockbox]

http://www.icehockeyindia.com/

Maybe you should add an Indian team to the Asian Hockey League? I mean it doesn't seem more far fetched than hockey in the Arab Emirates

[Midas]

Haha yeah, I am actually half-Indian so it would be fun to play. I'll fit them in playable or not- I've been drafting some ideas for player changes and I plan on making a few cosmetic tweaks (adding in more visible minority Canadian groups- namely Chinese and Indian). I was really surprised to find out that hockey was played as far away as Nepal and Kashmir-Jammu, and that it was gaining in popularity in the UAE. There's a team called the Dubai Mighty Camels, what a great a concept .

**EDIT: So I went and added in an Indian (teams from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal) and a South African league (South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zaire). Both will be low-rep leagues but hopefully I can get them to produce a few NHL-calibre players once I readjust player nationalities to conform with all my new leagues.

[Midas]

Ugh what a waste today. Game kept crashing after I tweaked something in the English Premier League (aka. Indian Premier League ). After taking a break I renamed one of the teams from the Lahore Lions > Lahore Leopards, and then the game started working again. I don't know what it has against Lions.

Today and tomorrow I'm totally swamped but I'm hoping to do some more testing over the weekend, as well as to finally 'nationalize' some of these teams. A lot of them I just changed the name and if I had time, the colors, but I'll give them all players and hopefully put up some feeder leagues.. then test to see how they work.

[Midas]

So I've gone MIA with it being exam period and all but have found little bits to work on this. I anticipate, once exams are done, it will take me a good 2-3 days to 'fake' the database and fictionalize the teams. It'll probably also take me another 2-3 days to create all the new players for teams in new regions, as well as their junior teams and arenas/colors whatnot. Of course, I'm not going to spend a week programming EHM all day (I'm not that dedicated ) but I'll try and do a bit each day, so hopefully by June I'll have a decent version out. However, I might be able to post up an "alpha" version for anyone interesting in f'ing around in it in mid May after I've faked and fictionalized some of the players. That'll also open it up to a bit more criticism of some of the ratings as well as suggestions, etc. that would be helpful. You'd also get to see some of the logos I made. But again, I'm happy playing my Alphas and if no one likes it at least I do .

I also got carried away last weekend with changing around some of the teams though. A study came out a week ago by someone not qualified to really do that kind of study- but whatever, it said Canada could support 12 NHL teams. Course that's all fantasy (even if we could we'd never get that many). But that's why we have fantasy games like EHM! So I added some more Canadian teams to the league up until it reached 12. I took out Saskatchewan and the Maritime teams and added one each to Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver as well as placing one in Hamilton. I'll update the league structure I have now as well as the new logos. Unfortunately it's long so if you don't care just skip it, it's all just mythos and hype kinda thing. Since it's a fictional database I sort sketched out a rough history in my head (on the can infact ) which I'll intersperse into the whole thing:

Prince of Wales Conference


O'Brien Division

• Boston Bruins
• Montreal Canadiens
• New York Rangers
• Quebec Nordiques
• Ottawa Senators

Norris Division

• Chicago Blackhawks
• Detroit Red Wings
• Minnesota North Stars
• St. Louis Blues
• Toronto Maple Leafs

Turner Division

• Calgary Flames
• Colorado Rockies
• Portland Cougars
• Los Angeles Kings
• Vancouver Lions

Sutherland Conference

Dutton Division

• Montreal Wanderers
• New York Americans
• Philadelphia Flyers
• Hamilton Tigers
• Washington Capitals

Hewitt Division

• Buffalo Sabres
• Cleveland Barons
• Milwaukee Bocks
• Pittsburgh Penguins
• Toronto St. Patricks

Patrick Division

• Edmonton Oilers
• San Jose Sharks
• Seattle Thunderbirds
• Vancouver Canucks
• Winnipeg Jets

In-game I doubt this text will show . Unless I figure out a way to corrupt another language file (which I think is legal as it's a db file not the .exe) and replace it with the English language file =\ which I read Lazion once did but he either forgot or is uninterested in trying again (might've only been in Swedish too iirc). Whatever, well here's what they would be if I had them. You can see there's two opposed Conferences done NFL/AFL, NL/AL style as opposed to the 'geographical' one currently (which is really just Eastern Time Zone vs. Everything else). Each conference has an "Eastern", "Mid-Western" and "Pacific" division aprox. with similar structures and comparable cities in size and industry (and history). Each conference has 6 Canadian teams and 9 American teams though they fit unevenly into divisions. The two conferences themselves are named after the fictional 'trophies' in this league- the Prince of Wales Trophy (given to the winner of the eponymous conference) and the James T. Sutherland Memorial Trophy (likewise). Each division is named after a person in the NHL Hall of Fame 'Builders' category (Ambrose O'Brien, James E. Norris, Lloyd Turner; Red Dutton, Foster Hewitt, Lester Patrick)- you can wiki them if you really care, but basically they all contributed to the development of the NHL today. James Sutherland is like, the father of hockey and pionereed alot of the rules we use today (and was a big part in forming the IIHF and developing Canada in hockey), so I decided to name the second conference's trophy after him.

The "in-league" history- without getting too detailed, essentially changes during WWII (hence the current fictionalized database!) In that time, the franchise owner of the New York Americans, Red Dutton, briefly suspended the Americans franchise because most of his players had gone off to the war. He was President of the NHL at the time so all was fine and dandy, but he eventually resigned and gave Campbell the position. He intended to go back to GMing his team the Amerks and had a gentleman's agreement with the league to receive them back once the war was over, but when he made the call in 1946 the league rejected him. That led to a famous curse being declared on the Rangers that wasn't broken until after died . Anyway, for this database I just made up that rather than pout and fly off to Canada, Red decides to focus his energies into founding a new league to compete with the NHL. The NHL was always reluctant to expand (they were the last major league to) so it works out that they would just ignore this league for the first 10 years of its existence until it started cutting into their profits. This leads to an "Original Six" vs. "the Other Six" when Cleveland (a very successfully minor league team), Philadelphia (tried multiple times in the '50s to get a team), Pittsburgh (same deal), Montreal (a revived Maroons franchise), Toronto (a few other owners wanting another franchise) and New York (Dutton's Amerks) form the CHL (Continental Hockey League). Up until the '70s there's two co-existing leagues, with Dutton donating a trophy to the CHL and naming it after Sutherland. At first the NHL's indifferent, then by the early 60's a massive competition for expansion spots begin. They criss-cross cities- as you can tell by the way the conferences are set-up (LA/SJ in dif. conferences, two Vancouvers, etc.) This is jokingly called the "Cold War".

In 1971 a third league (WHA) emerges and by 1975 rising player salaries have almost killed professional hockey. With several teams in both leagues bankrupt and franchises duplicated in many places, Clarence Campbell and Red Dutton agree to hold talks on a potential merger or at least coordination of competition. After several summits, both eventually agree to a merger of both leagues. CHL teams will enter under their own conference, with several (but not all) to be dissoluded (the ones in NHL markets) and the CHL teams will help pay off some of the debt the league incurred. This causes the collapse of the WHA- of which three teams (Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets) all survived and joined the NHL confernece.

Fast-forward and we now have the current structure of the league! There's been some expansion, but I doubt any of you care and I don't know which teams expanded recently or not. That's just what I came up with, as I said, on the can tired after my exam. Here's the new logos:

Hamilton Tigers


Montreal Wanderers (quite proud of this one; borrowed the M from another guy on puckdrawn who'd done it originally as a retro Minnesota jersey. Has the colors of the original Wanderers and the Maroons as well as a W/M- the predecessors to this reincarnation of both (though named the Wanderers). In addition, it could also stand for West Montreal, which could refer to the West Island on Montreal where a lot of the teams fans would probably come from).


Toronto St. Patricks


Vancouver Lions


Also, I touched up the San Jose logo a bit. Found on hfboards.com a guy who juxtaposed the old and new Sharks logos, and with a bit of recoloring and shading I got this beaut:



And lastly (for today anyway) the Milwaukee Bocks:


Incase you're confused as to What the Dickens a Bock is, well it's this. A very clever reference to culture and brewing in Milwaukee (which no one probably cares about ). And it gave me an excuse to use one of my favourite logos- this is actually from the Quebec Citadelles, which were an AHL franchise that was meh, but the regiment within the Citadelle actually has a goat mascot. It was pretty cool symbolism but the Nordiques logo is way cooler imo. But I found a way to incorporate this one :' )

If you're wondering "What the Dickens, I don't want to play as 12 Canadian teams" I'd be happy to, if I ever actually get to finishing it, release a version with only 3 Canadian teams, 6 or my original 10 (or even 0 if you're a patriotic American who wants revenge for us always clamouring for me ). It doesn't take that long to fiddle with, but I'm not going to bother until the db is completely done. For interests sake, the Montreal Wanderers were the team the Maroons were built to replace and drew on Quebec's anglophone minority. In this fictional league I'm going to give them a low-ish market value in the db, but they draw mostly off of federalists, anglophones, bilinguals and new immigrants (they're much smaller in $ and market than the Canadiens still). The second Toronto team plays in downtown and just tends to drawn an assortment of fans who converted when they moved. The second Vancouver team was placed in the 'fictional league history' during the late '60s by the NHL. Like in real life, the NHL initially blocked attempts by Vancouver fans to enter into the NHL (which in real life led to a boycott and our eventual inclusion). However the CHL gladly gave a franchise to them (and so the Canucks were born!) The NHL decided the next year to hastily put together a Vancouver team, the Lions. The two franchises base their fanbases on opposite sides of the city- with the Canucks drawing mostly from the 'burbs, the Frasier Valley and the rest of B.C. while the Lions draw mostly from West Vancouver, North Vancouver and the Island (if you're familiar at all with Vancouver geography ).

Wish that was there main. Anyway I think that's fine for now. Next update hopefully I have less fluff and bs and more substance and testable things you guys can actually care about (though making up history is fun for me!)

[foxlockbox]

Cool stuff.

[Midas]

Wow, so I was just f'iddling around with EHM a few minutes ago and casually tried swapping nations (French Guyana > Quebec) just for kicks and I managed to do it, keep it stick and so far it hasn't crashed. I'll look more into it later since I'm going out but I might actually be able to swap out some nations after all.

[Saapas]

This sound really interesting! Looking forward to try this all new database, will there be Finnish leagues?

[Midas]

Yes, though I merged it with all the other Nordic countries to create a sort of 'Super Scandinavian league'. It still has a lot of teams though -shrug-.

*So no nation swapping is still completely unviable, but swapping French Guyana for Quebec has yielded interesting results. It's still considered part of "North America" for some reason so they have all those continental bonuses, and I suppose after I release a full version it'd be interesting to see whether or not a Quebec team could qualify for the Olympics (hehe). They'd all still have to be Canadian with Quebec as their declared nationality, but that's a potential pet project for the future. It would be fun to see, in the EHM world, how some Quebec-born players might perform if on a team against Canada and the U.S.

[Midas]

Yay exams are done, and my Canucks did not choke! I've started creating the NHL players for the league using a fun randomization system I made. Unfortunately since no one's come out with a custom generator I'll have to do it by hand- though honestly, mind numbing but fairly easy work is something I could use right now. There's a lot of NHL players so it'll take me some time but I anticipate something like a week.

I'll probably do a few tests and then hopefully release an alpha with all the logos and such.

[Valkoon]

Yay exams are done, and my Canucks did not choke! I've started creating the NHL players for the league using a fun randomization system I made. Unfortunately since no one's come out with a custom generator I'll have to do it by hand- though honestly, mind numbing but fairly easy work is something I could use right now. There's a lot of NHL players so it'll take me some time but I anticipate something like a week.

I'll probably do a few tests and then hopefully release an alpha with all the logos and such.

I love fantasy drafts, I can't wait for this.

[Valkoon]

Any update Midas?

[Midas]

Heh, been sloooooooooow. I thought I'd have more time but life just keeps tossing more things at me, and I admit, adding 700 custom players is boring. It's the long weekend coming up and after my test tomorrow I hope to sit down and least churn out another 30-40, but I'm hesitant also if someone can just create a fantasy tool to do it for me. I wish I could just chug players into a spreadsheet and have it all work out, but alas such is not the case.

[Valkoon]

Heh, been sloooooooooow. I thought I'd have more time but life just keeps tossing more things at me, and I admit, adding 700 custom players is boring. It's the long weekend coming up and after my test tomorrow I hope to sit down and least churn out another 30-40, but I'm hesitant also if someone can just create a fantasy tool to do it for me. I wish I could just chug players into a spreadsheet and have it all work out, but alas such is not the case.

Haha I understand it is a daunting task & yes a tool would be much easier. Thanks for giving it a try though. Now if we only could get someone to make the tool...

[patrickgirard11]

Wow .... amazing Job .

I just Succesfuly enterd The Jets but i got problems when its time too put back em on the right divisions with the oilers and the flames . I just change the division with the editor but when i start the game that is not accepting my changes and its crashed and when i put back em in the Southwest the system is workink well.

Wath do i have to do ?

[Midas]

This is probably better suited for the Editor thread, but I'l bite. It sounds like what might've happened is that you first moved your 'Jets' into the Northwest without moving another team in the Southeast, or that you moved them into the Northwest, moved say Colorado to the Pacific or something and forgot to move another team to the Southeast. At any rate: all divisions are hard-coded and require the exact same make-up as their 2006-07 RL season counterparts. Therefore, if you move the Jets out of the Southeast make sure you're moving a team out a well from whatever division you're putting them into (i.e. some team from the Northwest moving to the Southeast). It has to be a 1:1 exchange or else the game will crash, play out improperly or corrupt.

[patrickgirard11]

It is Right !! Now i Tried Too change The Dallas Stars but this time it is not working .... seems like somethink hard code refered as Dallas Stars

[foxlockbox]

So hows the progression?