EHM The Blue Line

Here is my summary of what we know about the rosters, leagues and customisation features of OOTP Hockey Manager thus far:

Rosters and Leagues

• NHL, AHL, ECHL, QMJHL, OHL and WHL are confirmed as being included as playable leagues.
• Additional leagues (such as European leagues and lower North American leagues) will depend on the number of researchers OOTP Devs can acquire.
• All important leagues will be added to the game. If the devs are unable to complete a league (i.e. missing player research or rules) then the league will not be playable. However you will still be able to interact with non-playable teams (e.g. scouting and trading).
• Recently it was stated that the database has 40 leagues, 277 teams and over 11,000 players (no ratings had been generated yet - just the basic bio data and some career stats). Only North American leagues, teams and players had been added at that time.
• Recently it was stated that the database has approximately 90,000 cities from around the world and every existing nation/state/province.
• Unlike OOTP Baseball, it will not be possible to generate player attributes/ratings purely from stats (due to the differences between baseball and hockey). This will be down to the work of researchers instead.
• The developers are optimistic that a system for historic databases is a string possibility. It might be possible to generate historical seasons from the data in a similar way to the Lahman Database for OOTP Baseball.
• The game will feature some real player names. It will be a more or less identical system as OOTP Baseball.
• Leagues such as the NCAA will feature real team and conference names but will faked players.
• International and contentintal competitions (such as the World Championships, Olympics and Spengler Cup) might not make it into the first version of the game. It depends on time constraints and, if not possible, it will feature in either a game update or in version 2.

Customisation

• At this stage, it is uncertain whether or not an in-built data editor will be included with the game.
• The game will not have any hardcoded data at all. All league rules, leagues, player and teams are editable.
• Some examples of editable data are: Names, ratings, team market, fan interest, arena quality, league structure, salary cap, salary floor, reputation of league, and point system for standings.
• It will be easy to realign the NHL.
• Leagues will have a reputation rating in addition to a few other settings.
• Things such as OT, shootouts, all-star game format and roster limits (e.g. roster limits for regular season, OT and playoffs) will be editable rules.
• The salary cap will be editable.
• Leagues can feature automatic promotion and relgation.
• It will be possible to create your own fictional leagues and teams.
• Editable injury system (based on external file).
• The game can already import schedules from individual text files and so real schedules for every league and year is possible.

Malte has confirmed that the start date will be fully customisable!

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/w ... ost3243043

I'm already dreaming about my National Hockey Association that starts in 1946 with four teams, quickly grows to eight teams in its golden era, has its first grand expansion in 1966 to 16 teams, but goes through tumultous 70s with frequent ownership changes and relocations until a young Canadian breaks into the league in 1983 to obliterate all scoring records and leads the NHA to the promised land of money and TV exposure on the American market. The league slowly expands to 32 teams in the 2000s, but the product on the ice becomes watered down and teams fold left and right after the economic crisis of 2008. Only with a big cut before the 70th anniversary season, which sees the league reduce the number of teams to 20 and change rules to promote more scoring, can the NHA rebound and return to glory...

oh good I get to do all Canada Teams in one Division,have a Midwest one and so on.
If the Game allows for Minor League relocation and teams folding then it's getting better.
If Shared Afflaites going to be allowed?

Real names/players will be a must.

The game won't have real name/players

That's a huge flaw.

archibalduk wrote:The game will not have any hardcoded data at all. All league rules, leagues, player and teams are editable.

Real players can be edited into the game.....

Alessandro wrote:The game won't have real name/players

Well I didn't even knew that, that's a huge disappointment for me.... But at the same time, it's not worst than start an EHM game with random names.

Given the customizing/editing options OOTP projects apparently provide. and the work Archi's done producing tools to export the information from EHM into csv/excel files, I don't think there'll be much of a gap between the release of the game and having updated rosters with real player names...


EDIT
I’m admittedly unsure of any legal/permission issues regarding using roster information put together by others for EHM in an OOTP hockey release…….if the OOTP release turns out to be a good game, I would most definitely want to use my 1974 db when playing it (and my roster data is in excel)

FYI I wasn't referring to OOTP's legal/permission issues....I was talking about the legal/permission issues regarding the use of the "work for free" done by "community members" over the years to produce the UUDB, the Lidas/Manimal rosters, the 1979 rosters, the 1998 rosters, and the 1974 rosters (work in progress)

I wouldn't even dream of trying to dump data from EHM to OOTP. I expect there would certainly be legal issues there. However I don't see why researchers for rosters such as the Manimal DB couldn't use their research with the OOTP DB. Nino's 1974 DB is different in that it is entirely original research - and I'd glad help organise the collation of research data.

Besides, I expect the OOTP data may well require the simple renaming of faked players and nothing more than that.

archibalduk wrote:I don't see why researchers for rosters...couldn't use their research with the OOTP DB

I may have worded things poorly, as this is exactly what I was thinking about (that's why I mentioned user created rosters and didn't mention EHM's default rosters)

When I thought of using your created tools to “export from EHM” I was imagining it would be needed for databases like the UUDB, the 1979-80 database and the 1998-99 database…..where all of the user “research” they did is now only found only in EHM (I’m guessing they don’t have it in excel)

nino33 wrote:I may have worded things poorly, as this is exactly what I was thinking about (that's why I mentioned user created rosters and didn't mention EHM's default rosters)

Sorry, I don't think my post was very clear (I wrote it on my phone's keypad whilst sat on the train). My intention was simply to say I agree with what you say - i.e. that there is a difference between using user-researched data (= good) and original EHM data (= bad).

Here's a further update:

Rosters and Leagues

• The initial number of playable leagues will depend upon the number of researchers volunteering. At the very least, it will feature the NHL, AHL, ECHL and OHL/QMJHL/WHL.
• International tournaments are very unlikely to make it into the first version. It might be added via a subsequent patch, but it is very hard to say at this point.
• The number of namesets/ethnicities will not be limited. As of May 2012, 49 namesets were in the process of being developed.
• Players can be drafted in multiple leagues.
• The Dutch league won't feature as a playable league in the first version.
• The OOTP team are big fans of historical gameplay and features but this is unlikely to make it into the first version because they first want to perfect the standard gameplay.
• Any initial historical mode would concentrate solely on the NHL. A world-wide and Euro historical mode is unlikely to feature any time in the near/medium term future. It is unclear to what extent the non-NHL leagues would feature in an historical NHL mode because this is not something the developers are planning at the moment.
• The US National Development Team exists in the database, but it will be treated like any other USHL team for the time being.
• A family relationship between players/staff will feature in the game at some point.

Customisation

• The start date is freely adjustable.
• It is possible to make non-playable leagues playable and vice-versa.
• It will be possible to customise league/playoff schedules.
• The salary cap can be turned on/off.
• All league rules will be customisable.

I like those customisations! Do you know if we can adjust the salary cap too? That would be fun.

Yes - the salary cap can be adjusted and added/removed.

That could put alot of challenge if the game starts with all those high salary but you drop the cap alot.

The whole Lahman DB equivalent thing would be killer. The Lahman DB makes baseball sims infinitely replayable basically.

Will NCAA teams be playable? Like, could you recruit? That would be a whole new spin on things IMO, and I'd go out of my mind enjoying playing that.

International competitions are overrated in these kind of games, and I don't think people will miss them much if they have to wait a year or two. Wh do you know that plays EHM and only plays as an international GM?

I haven't seen anything regarding this, so I'll ask: Has the "expand your league as you go" thing been discussed or hinted at? That was my favorite part of PureSim Baseball and I think OOTP has it as well...

I haven't seen anything about "expand as you go". However I do know that leagues can be made playable and so you could play in the NCAA. Presumably the rosters will be scant and so you'd probably have to edit these first in order to make it worthwhile.

Great news! OOTP will release a database editor for the game!

MGSPORT will be so happy!

archibalduk wrote:Great news! OOTP will release a database editor for the game!

Awesome!

archibalduk wrote:Any initial historical mode would concentrate solely on the NHL. A world-wide and Euro historical mode is unlikely to feature any time in the near/medium term future. It is unclear to what extent the non-NHL leagues would feature in an historical NHL mode because this is not something the developers are planning at the moment.

I'm not sure what this means myself...are the developers planning non-NHL leagues for their "modern" version?
Is the initial OOTP hockey effort going to be NA only? I hope not...

To me "concentrate solely on the NHL" makes me think of of EA's NHL94...no minor pro teams, no Europe/Russia, just the NHL!

Seems to me if I can adjust the start date, and customize league/playoff schedules, and customize league rules...can't I make my own historical mode?

nino33 wrote:Is the initial OOTP hockey effort going to be NA only? I hope not...

The first version will feature the main NA leagues (I expect it will be NHL, AHL, ECHL and the three Canadian Major Junior Leagues) plus a couple of Euro leagues. I've volunteered to do the UK research (I'm already doing this research for the Manimal Rosters and so why not kill two birds with one stone!) but I haven't heard back from Malte yet.

nino33 wrote:To me "concentrate solely on the NHL" makes me think of of EA's NHL94...no minor pro teams, no Europe/Russia, just the NHL!

Seems to me if I can adjust the start date, and customize league/playoff schedules, and customize league rules...can't I make my own historical mode?

I don't know the full details - just what I've summarised in these threads (which is effectively a summary of every single post Sebastian and Malte have made in the OOTP Forums! ). But my understanding is that you can probably make your own historical rosters using the customisable start date. I wonder if the historical mode will be some sort of separate modified sim engine designed to simulate an earlier form of the NHL - and that this modified sim engine will only sim the NHL.