PureSim Baseball 2007 Official Release 1.72 - Release Notes

Released July 20, 2008

v1.72 Updates and Fixes

Fix - FINALLY found and fixed rare error in incorrectly attributing the losing pitcher
Fix - Another rare but annoying situation where a relief pitcher was being charged an unearned run where it should have been earned. This would happen in the following scenario: Pitcher A is pitching and Batter X reaches base on error with 2 outs. From that point on baseball rules dictate that all future runs allowed that inning by Pitcher A should be marked as unearned. However, if a reliever is brought in this is not the case, the rules state that the reliever is now responsible for earned runs on batters he allowed to reach base regardless of the fact that Pitcher A could have gotten out of the inning had it not been for the 2 out error. So for example if the reliever subsequently gave up a home run to Batter Y then the Batter Y run should have been charged as an earned run to Pitcher B it was not. This was a fun one to finally track down!
Tweak - Game log now points out the case when a reliever blew a save opportunity
New! - This patch includes all 21 awesome addins created by PureSim Community member Stephen Lucey (Crashdavis). Crash created these addins using the built in Software Development Kit (SDK) that is included with every copy of the game.

Check out the documentation and samples included in the SDK folder in your PureSim install directory. PureSim supports mods created in VB.NET, C# and VB6! All database files in the game are open, accessible and documented.

All addins can be accessed from the addins dropdown menu or by visiting the addins page in PureSim.
New! - 21 additional historically accurate MLB season schedules. Thanks again to Crashdavis!

Thanks again to Crash for the awesome work on this stuff. Visit his site for even more cool PureSim stuff at http://home.insightbb.com/~steven.lucey/crashdavis.html.

v1.71 Updates and Fixes

Tweaks - Numerous speed improvements in simulation engine and initial player generation.
Fix - Strikeouts were inflated for some real pitchers that had seen limited real-life action when they were imported into PureSim.
Tweak - Improved real player import algorithms.
Tweak - Improvements to the AI's rotation setup decisions.
New - Added new roster size option of 40. This is a nice one for playing with real players. In many of the seasons, lahman can actually have more than 35 players worth of data. So it's a nice number before 50, where typically scrubs would end up getting generated to fill the holes. Note, this is a better option for contemporary seasons as there tends to be more players available.
New - Added support for the newly released Lahman 2007 data. In order for this to work you must download and unzip the lahman database Download it here. NOTE! Be sure to download the on labeled Version 5.5 - Microsoft Access -- PureSim can only read that version. After unzipping lahman55.mdb copy it into your c:\Matrix Games\PureSim Baseball 2007 folder (or wherever you installed to). If you did this correctly then the next time you launch PureSim you will see a dialog indicating that the database will need to be processed. This will take SEVERAL minutes, so please be patient. After that, you'll be all set and PureSim will now use all the updated and tweaked data in the new Lahaman database! Have a good baseball season!

v1.70h Hot Fix

Fix - If the manager tendency for pinch hitting was set to "Never pinch hit" the AI would still sometimes pinch hit.
Tweak - The fatigue model was too generous with closers, they were recovering too easily each day.
Fix - In rare cases, the AI would hit the cut off man instead of trying to throw out the winning run at home if the runner was attempting to tag up.

v1.70g Hot Fix

Fix - Error 3011 when opening associations created with VERY old versions of PureSim 2007 (or PureSim 2005 Gold Edition).
Fix - Fixed some issues with incorrectly charging earned runs in some situations

v1.70f Hot Fix

Fix - Random error 65535 Access Violation when human was managing game and prompted to tag up on fly ball.
Fix - Error 91 in human managed game if human manager was trying to steal 3rd and there were runners on 1st and second and runner on first had a low speed rating
Tweaks - Tweaked player fatigue modeling. It was a little too harsh on older players in some cases (especially when modeling real players in situations where PureSim was simming seasons after the player had retired in real life, but he was still around in the PureSim universe)

v1.70e Hot Fix

Fix - Error 91 after the end of a managed game (only happened if the user was managing the game *and* there was more than a 1 day layoff until the next day with scheduled games!) Chalk one up for the new error detection and reporting code yes!
Fix - Recent bug introduced somewhere around 1.60 making it almost impossible for a human manager to steal in a game they were managing.
Fix - A few more errors that happend on non US-English systems. (Thanks Bernd!)
Fix - Changes to try and avoid extremely rare and difficult to reproduce error 70 that would occur sometimes when interacting with grids.
Tweaks - Some robsutness tweaks to degrade gracefully if certain graphics engine components are unable to load (I have seen this issue with 2 users out there, so it's pretty rare). Typically manifested itself as an error 429 when trying to launch the game.
Fix - Rare "Automation Error" caused by DirectX issue. only seen on a handful of very specific video card / DirectX version combinations
Fix - 3022 error that could happen at various times if using a custom imported, non 162 game schedule.
Fix - Rare "no current record" error from Front Office -> Team Transactions screen
Fix - HTML Almanac player list by letter showing duplicate entries. You will need to rebuild all almanc files 2 time after applying the patch, this will clear out the issue, if in fact you are using the HTML Almanac feature at all :)
Fix - HTML Almanac "page unavailable." This was related to the previous issue, again it will be cleared up after a rebuild of you HTML almanac.
Fix - In some league configurations for associations created with earlier versions of PureSim, on the Almanac's main screen where it shows the Leagues section underneath Teams and Players, some times years were being skipped. Again, fixed after a rebuild is run.
Fix - On some minor league player cards "[OBJECT]" would be displayed instead of a "0" in the stats summary beneath their name.

v1.70d Hot Fix

Fix - Error 3031 when using a template association created with the intial release of PS 2007
Fix - Error when clicking on "View Today's Games" when using non US-English regional settings in Windows (Found on German version initially)
Fix - Error "Parameter Expected.." in the roster expansion phase when using non US-English regional settings in Windows (Found on German version initially)
Fix - Very rare "Permission Denied" after closing the Minor League roster management dialog. (I found one case where this happened so, hopefully this is the one that was reported by 2 or 3 of you guys)
Tweak - On the "Retirements" dialog, cleaned up how a retired player's stats are displayed. They are now displayed to the right of the player's name and a line is no longer being displayed under the player. This was causing some confusion as to who the stats info actually applied to.
New - Integrated error reporting and tracking. If there are any issues with the game, (compatibility, crash, conflict etc.) PureSim will now present the user with a dialog that will allow detailed error information to be submitted to the developer. This will lead to easier diagnosis of issues, especially environmental/OS related errors.

v1.70c Hot Fix

Fix - Rare "Unable to connect" crash error at startup.

v1.70b Hot Fix

BONUS - Because I love you guys, I have included full 2007 MLB Players/Stats in the "Hot Fix." Please buy the game next year too ok? :)
Fix - Milestones were only gettign written for players if they hit the milestone exactly in a game. For example if a player hadd 199 HR before a game started and then hit 2 homers in the game (giving him) 201, then the 200 HR milestone would NOT get written for him. Note this fix will only work moving forward, it doesn't fix the case where this situation has already happened.
Fix - Fixed a *very* rare error 9 crash during September call-ups.
Fix - If a real player played 0 games in the field in a season (e.g. Frank Thomas for the Jays in '07) they were not getting imported
Tweak - Improved lineup generation AI in particular around who to make the DH
Tweak - Some minor tweaks to real player import code moeling algorithms.

v1.70a Hot Fix

Fix - If a team was ahead by 1/2 game on September 1st PureSim would crash with an error #9.

v1.70 New Features/Tweaks/Fixes

Fix - Pitchers were not getting proper rest if there were consecutive off days.
AI - The AI will now reset it's rotation to use the #1 starter in the first game after a long break (like the all star break).
Tweak - Sandbox mode now defaults to 35 man rosters instead of 60 (It can be changed to 60 of course, this is just a change to the default selection at association creation time.
Fix - When playing in Sandbox mode, and attempting to import real players, PureSim would import duplicate players regardless of what the "[x] Allow Duplicates" option was set to.
AI Tweak - Robustness improvements to the draft AI in Sandbox mode.

v1.69 (Internal Test Build - No Release Notes)

v1.68 (BETA) New Features/Tweaks/Fixes

AI - The AI is a little more conservative about using relief pitchers with nagging minor injuries.
Tweak/Fix - Fixed issues with statistical results (especially around really high numbers of K's) if using the "In Season Ratings Changes" option. This option is now fully supported and should be solid. Note, you will need to re-start any associations with this option to see the benefits of these fixes. This was much more of an issue in the past when using real players -- the fictional algorithms were already pretty solid.

v1.67 (BETA) New Features/Tweaks/Fixes

AI - Improved September call-up AI. Teams will no longer just fill the majors with 40 players, some will maybe only bring a very few players. A key factor the AI will consider here is where it is in the standings. Teams that are hopelessly out of the race will be MUCH more likely to bring 5-10 players whereas teams in the thick of a pennant race will be super judicious around call ups.
Fix - In some cases, if a hitter for a human managed team was injured in a game being managed, after the game the player would appear as fully healthy (e.g. the injury was not reflected)
Fix - If a Batter on an AI managed team incurred an injury in a game being played out live, the AI would sometimes not do the appropriate substitution.
Fix - Contract Status Report now includes players that are on the Disabled List
Fix/Cosmetic - Erroneous pbp message saying "There are no pitchers available to sub" when a human manager's pitcher was hurt and he subbed for him
Fix - In sandbox mode the AI would sometimes lock on "Evaluating GM Tendencies" after the September Roster Call-ups
Tweaks - Multiple improvements to Multiplayer/FTP robustness

v1.66 (BETA) New Features/Tweaks/Fixes

Fix - If a base runner was injured, forcing the human manager to make a lineup substitution, the replacement player was not always displayed as the new base runner, and in some cases the sub never showed up in the box score.
Optimizations - Improved game simulation speed by about 8%-9% (more noticable on slower machines)
Fix - In some cases, (even when the user was not playing in unattended auto play mode) during the off season the AI would re-shuffle a human owner's rosters.
AI - AI slightly less likely to use a player with a minor injury as a pinch hitter -- It tries a little harder to rest a guy if he didn't start and he he's a little hurt.
Fix - If user had an empty roster (in sandbox mode for example) and they went to their modify roster screen and hit "auto assign" PureSim would hang in a "Thinking..." loop
Fix - Sandbox mode was not letting the user change the "Append Year to Player Name" option
Fix - The "Import Real Players and Teams" dialog was not always respecting the "Append Real Year" option.
Fix - Error 94 when importing real players from pre-1900 that had a NULL or empty first name field in the Lahaman database.

v1.65b (BETA) New Features/Tweaks/Fixes

Fix - Crash when simming games on 1.65 when teams had demoted a pitcher

v1.65 (BETA) New Features/Tweaks/Fixes

New - When expanding the dialog to name the expansion team and select a region now allows the user to select from a dropdown of real life franchises. This is useful when you are playing with real players in player affinity mode. By choosing a real lifew franchise from the dropdown you will establish a link from the expansion team to a real life team and affinity mode will work for the expansion team moving forward. (Note: teams already represented in the association are excluded from the list of choices).
Fix - Error 94 when doing amateur draft in an association setup for player affinity mode - would only happen if the user chose to expand the association (error would happen in the first ammy draft after expansion)
Fix - Rare "Scouts Evaluating Talent" phase kicking in too often during ammy draft / import phase. This was more likely to happen in an association setup for player affinity mode, but there were cases when it was happening in other configurations
Fix - Wild Pitch stats were not getting reset after each season for pitchers, so it always would display as their career totals
Fix - Corrected SLG calculation error on almanac screen
Tweak - Improved WP ratios
Fix - When viewing post season box scores from the Almanac, the screen was clipped and some buttons were not visible.
Fix - WHIP was not being updated in game based on the current game results
Cosmetic - No longer showing "Career Stats:" with a blank line on the retirements dialog for players that retired but never played. It now simply lists their name.
AI - More solid improvements to bullpen AI usage... One notable one is how the bullpen is employed on days when the closer is not available. The AI will now be more likely to go to its best non-closer in the pen when its a save situation as opposed to stinking with an average middle reliever too long. This was not a big problem, but the AI is certainly better.
AI - AI is MUCH less likely to get itself in a situation where it needs to bring in a starter to pitch in relief. On rare ocassions the AI could exhaust its bullpen prematurely. Again, this was pretty rare but it was happening from time to time.
Fix - In associations with schedules that were not exaclty 162 games, the 40 man roster expansion phase was happening too early. In non-162 game associations, roster expansion will happen after approx 80% of the season has been played.
Tweaks - Many fine-grained simulation engine tweaks for more and more accuracy. I simmed 2006 MLB hundreds of times as well as seasons from earlier time periods and stats are better than ever!
Tweak - Due to some recent changes there were actually a bit too many Complete Games in the modern baseball era. This has been tweaked down appropriately.
NEW! - For those of you that use the speech engine feature that announces the batter when he comes to the plate, I added a new field to the edit player screen named "Text to Speech" You can fill in this field with a more phonetic spelling of the players name if you feel the speech engine is butchering the pronunciation. Since my all time favorite game growing up was Earl Weaver Baseball on the Amiga, many of you may remember it had this feature. Consider this homage to Eddie Dombrower, that game's developer. Believe it or not Eddie and I actually discussed collaborating on a baseball game not too long ago -- didn't get far into discussions but it was pretty cool given how long I had admired his work.
AI - Tweaked GM AI, in rare cases, if a team had a really weak bench they would play the regulars to the point where the entire lineup was pretty worn out. The AI will still stay with the regulars more here but it also will attempt to keep from exhausting the team.
Cosmetic - If a switch hitter was batting against a right handed pitcher the caption over his name did not relect that he was hitting from the Left side. Note this was only cosmetic, and he was showing up on the correct side on his on-field graphic.
AI - Tweaked real player retirement logic just a tiny bit, adding a little more weight to whether they were retired in the given year in real life. This impacts ironmen like Ripken in a good way, and can cause some of the below avg unsigned guys to be even more likely to hang it up if in real life they were already retired at that point.
AI - Many tweaks to roster promotion demotion AI. In an effort to better mirror real life, the AI is much more likely to "settle down" as the season progresses, meaning it will not be quite as active on this front as the roster begins to solidify.
Cosmetic - After September call ups, sometimes pitcher names were overlapping the legend on the team rotation screen. The legend is now in the top right of that screen.

v1.64

NEW! - September call-ups. After September 1st (or an earlier pro-rated date when using custom schedules) Teams can expand their major league roster to as many as 40 players (35 in an a 35-man association). Once the post season begins, teams must trim back to 25.
AI - Teams that are way out of the race late in the season will tend to do a lot more pinch hitting, running etc, especially after the September call ups
AI - Teams that have clinched the division title will be more proactive about resting marquee players and replacing them late in the game so they can rest up better for the playoffs
Fix - If the user chose to watch the first post season game then the AI would not go through it's "Preparing for the playoffs" phase leading to all kinds of issues!
Fix - In post season games that the user decided to watch as opposed to sim, position players were getting too much rest
Fix - Rare lockup when simming related to AI lineup generation code
Cosmetic - The real life stats tab on player cards now shows the column header row again is the player played enough seasons where the stats scroll to the point where the column header row was not visible on the screen.
Fix - The Real Life stats tab for real players was sometimes not calculating SLG correctly for players (note, their PureSim generated SLG was correct, just not the screen that showed their real life SLG)
Cosmetic - When playing PureSim in a Window, the window caption now includes the currently loaded association name, it is also included in the window title displayed when the user is ALT-TABBING to switch between applications in Windows.
Cosmetic - When playing PureSim in a Window, puresim no longer shows it's custom minimize and close window buttons, it was redundant, as they are already displayed on the window's title bar.
Cosmetic - Added minimize button to Game Play screen (only visible if playing PureSim in full screen mode)
Tweak - The rookie of the year eligibility has been changed. Any player that did not pitch more than 50 innings in a season or get more than 150 PAs is now eligible

v1.63

Fix - In some association configurations, pitchers were not getting any rest before the post season.
Fix - Error 3022 in amateur draft when skipping human picks in some cases.
Fix - When using the "Import players prior to their real debut" option, in the initial season the option wasn't being respected. It was working for all subsequent seasons though.
Tweak - AI Lineups featured the catcher hitting leadoff more than would be considered realistic..
Tweak - Roster AI does a better job of looking at last season's performance when making roster moves before a new season. Sometimes it was a little to influenced by ratings. This change is not too significant but I have seen some cases where a guy hit .300 one year and found himself in the minors the next season. This code forces the AI to classify players as "established" and treat them as such. After a certain point in the current season the AI will start to consider the current season's performance more heavily.
Tweak - AI Lineup is less likely to have an established power hitter in the 1 or 2 slot..

v1.62

Tweak - Integrated some of the new roster promotion/demotion AI code I was working on for PureSim 2009, AI should be improved a bit here. I figure I might as well get this code out into the wild ASAP, so it will be even better for PS 2009!
Fix - Even if an association was created with the [ ] Import Real Players before their true debut year OFF, PureSim would still sometimes treat this option as ON and start brinign in players brefore their true MLB debut year.
Fix - 'XXXXX' was appearing in place of Rookie Pitcher Award
Fix - All star selections were not being written out (Bug apparently introduced in 1.61)
Tweak - Improved lineup AI for associations using real players. Added in a small heuristic that takes into account how often the player appeared in the "real" season being simulated. Has a nice (not overly large) impact on improving playing time to be even close to what it was in real life.
Tweaks - Made some tweaks to the sim engine. Based on some detailed analysis HR's were just a tad bit inflated -- they are now slightly reduced. There should be a few more doubles and triples as well. Very small changes here, likely only noticeable by that hardest of the hard core simmers.

v1.61

Tweak(s) Significant work done on pitcher usage:
Better CG stats (especially in time periods where CG's were *MUCH* more frequent than in modern baseball.
Better closer usage. Not quite as aggressive to go to the closer espcially if the starter is in there, picthing well, not out if gas and he's not in any real trouble. The closer may still be called for, but it's not a 100% decision. Basically, the engine is accounting for the fact that managers will sometimes give their marquee guys a chance to finish the game if they are cruising. This is less likey to happen in years closer to modern baseball, but it still plays a role.
The AI is less likely to pinch hit for the starting pitcher if he has a good lead is not fatigued. The AI will tend to try and conserve it's pinch hitters more in this situation so that they might have more options is the game gets really close at some point.
Tweak - AI Team's a re a little less likely to shuffle their standard lineups if they are playing really well.
Optimization - Optimized the new pitcher fatigue code resulting in about a 15% improvement in end of day simulation processing speed. Noticeably faster than 1.60 when doing unattended autoplay.
Cosmetic - Some more minor tweaks to the Box Score layout (Centering of the numbers in the linescore)
Cosmetic - Used a larger font on the "Season Stats" tab on the player card to make better use of the screen real estate
Cosmetic - On the "Real Stats" tab of a player card for a real player, the row in real life that matches the PureSim association's current season is highlighted in yellow.
Tweak - The append year feature (e.g names like Williams'46) now defaults to OFF unless in sandbox mode, where it defaults to ON.
FIX - New fatigue modeling for pitchers added in 1.60 was doing a poor job with starter recovery in 4-man rotations. Starters in 4-man rotations now recover at a much more realistic rate (algorithms form 5-man rotations remain unchanged from v1.60.
FIX - If user created an association at a time when they had no custom photos on their computer then PureSim would default to [x] Show Player Photos option "OFF." This made it confusing for players when they subsequently added player photos and wanted to use the "Auto Assign Player Photos" feature on the options dialog (since it was disabled until the user checked the [x] Show Player Photos option back ON. Now the button is always enabled and implicitly sets the option to "ON" when a player clicks auto-assign. That was a mouthful for such a small fix.

v1.60

FIX - DirectX engine now fully operational (On Vista and XP). Even though I thought the last release was working there were still cases where it was not initializing properly. Fireworks are back now (really, I mean it this time). Hopefully I will start to exploit the deeper DirectX support with future releases.
FIX - When managing a game live, the pitcher's ERA was not being calculated correctly if he game up UNEARNED runs in the current game being managed (note is WAS being calculated correctly in his stats, it just wasn't being displayed correctly on the in-game screens.
Speed - Opimized the AI's "Evaluating GM Tendencies phase" results in a noticeable simulation speed improvement between game days.
NEW - Brand new re-vamped box score screen with many layout and information improvements.
NEW - Added navigation links to box score screen to make it easy to quickly browse all of a team's box scores.
NEW - Completely revamped pitcher fatigue and recovery modeling algorithms.
NEW - Added an estimated % of fully rested to the pitcher's player card next to the description of his current fatigue level.
FIX - If player affinity mode was on and the association was more than 3 years past where there was Lahman data then the amateur draft was taking way too long.
FIX - *Very* RARE error 3021 when building Almanac

Previous updates and patches

Tweak - Improvements to player affinity mode. Teams even more likely to choose player in the ammy draft if that player was on the team in real life.
NEW - Re-implemented DirectX support for full Vista compatibility which has allowed us to bring back (by popular demand!) the Fireworks Display that happens on field when the home team hits a home run.
NEW - Added "[x] Enable Fireworks Graphics" option to the game options for those of you that don't want to see the fireworks.
NEW - New historical normalization when importing real players improves how well the engine handles bringing players in from different time periods. For example, '27 Babe Ruth will give Barry Bonds a run for his money if he's imported into the modern era. The new normalization algorithms do a better job of looking at how players performed relative to league averages and then adjusting their stat model to refelect that based on the year they are imported into.
NEW - Sanbox mode now supports creating 2 team associations with varying season and series lengths. In combination with the new improved historical normalization algorithms this brings new life to what if? ('27 Yanks vs. '04 Red Sox!) scenarios
NEW - Standings screen now shows 1st place team's magic number when nearing the end of the season
NEW - Standings screen now shows "(Clinched)" next to the 1st place team if they have clinched ther division
Tweak - Quickstart draft is a little quicker (disabled some of the screen updates, which most likely were not important to a user creating an association using the Quickstart feature.
SDK - Added some user-created mod (addin) samples. Thanks to PureSimmer Steven (crash davis) Lucey for the nice clean VB6 addin samples! Keep these coming folks
FIX - The ammy draft was skipping the human owner's pick in some associations if the association was based on real players.
Fix - If user did "Quick load" from the main game menu and was presented with the multiplayer login dialog, and then pressed cancel - PureSim was crashing
Fix - Player right-click context menu was not being positioned properly when PureSim was running in windowed mode in a resolution greater than 1024x768
Tweak - If the user is doing a pure historical replay then PureSim will now automatically progress through the initial draft phase at high speed (since it's really just loading teams, not doing a draft) This way the user doesn't have to click "Run unil my pick..." in order to kick off the process
Fix - CE release 1 introduced a bug where the team dropdown selector on the side menu was not working (the team names were in there but you couldn't pick a team)
Fix - PureSim was not always respecting the options to enable/disable sounds
New - Added new option to disable/enable the bat crack sound effect that plays when the user moves from screen to screen. This way the user can still have in game and ambient sounds when they only wanted to disable the menu sounds.
New - Added new sample VB.NET project to the SDK\ folder that demonstrates how to read and write to PureSim association database files. This is for mod developers and is not a game "feature."
New - Removed DirectX 8.0a dependency. This gets us 100% compatibility with Windows Vista, with full support for ambient sounds, animated ball flight and UI effects. PureSim now can run on any system with DirectX 3.0 - 10.0. The only concession is I had to remove the fireworks display after a home run, but that was getting old anyway :)
New - Completely revamped initial and amateur draft interface, much more information, much more interactivity, and quite a bit more immersive.
New - "Quick Links" feature adds handy links (on every screen!) to Minor League Roster management, Major league roster management and team front office screens.
New - Added standings for the human player's team's division on the main association screen in the team summary window
New - Opened up database format. Previously, PureSim association databases were password protected. You can now open up any .PSA/.PSX file using Microsoft Access 2003 or later. This could prove useful for 3rd party mods and utilities. Please make BACKUPS of your associations before poking around. Due to time constraints I can't provide much more support than the comments you'll see in the database, so you may need to do a little trial and error in there. Hopefully at some point I can release some code that shows some simple examples of working with the database. Each association has a minimum of 2 databases with .PSA and .PSX extensions respectively. Association databases reside in the PSA\ subdirectory in whatever folder you installed PureSim to.
Fix: Error: "Assertion Failed" or "No Current Record" in CSimOne Game when autplaying/simming. (Very rare bug Introduced in 1.50, it took me 22 simmed seasons to even see it once.)
Fix: If the last remaining game to be played game on a given day was played out instead of simmed then after the game PureSim was not running through it's end of day logic.
Fix: Error 3021 when selecting team from team dropdown menu.
New: Windows Vista(tm) Compatibility As of v1.50 We have updated PureSim's installation and game files to be compatible with Windows Vista RTM (Build 6000 and later). If you are running under Vista be sure to see the compatibility information at the following web page: http://www.puresim.com/vista.html
New: PureSim now includes real players from the 2006 MLB season
New: Finalized official support for loading add-ins and expansion packs created using the .NET Framework 2.0 (For example using the freely available Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2005 and Microsoft Visual C# 2005. More updated info coming for modders/developers soon! NOTE: PureSim supports creating add-ins in VB6 and .NET 2.0. .NET 1.x is NOT a supported platform.
New: Updated GM AI. Primary changes involve the AI being much more protective of its up and coming prospects. The primary difference should be that it will be a bit more difficult to pry an organization's top prospects away unless you are really willing to offer up some top veteran talent or similarly touted prospects.
New: Multiplayer functionality now fully online with official Matrix servers. (Though the game still allows for a personal/custom FTP server, using the Matrix servers is the preferred means of play for multiplayer moving forward, as it provides a consistent, supported multiplayer experience for all)
New: Using the new aging model is an optional setting at association creation time (With existing associations, you will be prompted when upgrading to v1.50)
New: On the modify roster screen a padlock icon is now displayed next to a player's name to provide a visual cue to denote that he has been locked into the lineup or a pitching staff slot via a "Player Usage" setting. (Note Player Usage settingscan be edited by clicking the "Player Usage" button on a player's card.
New: Player career arcs (aging, improvement, decline) can now be configured to occur gradually over the year instead of just in the off season. In other words, you'll see subtle ratings changes multiple times over the season for players. So, you'll probably want to watch players more closely during the year since their skills are changing more dynamically, as opposed to previous versions of PureSim where you would pretty much look at ratings after the off season. This feature is optional.
New: Added new option to dump all players to the draft pool when doing a "Real Major League" association.
New: Now using 7z for multiplayer association compression resulting in 3x to 5x smaller file sizes resulting in greatly improved upload/download times.
New: Improved algorithm for calculating SPEED rating for imported real players.
New: Added overall range Factor (RF) to player card (Tracked for current season only).
New: Now tracking Outs Played, PO, AS, and E by defensive position for each player (Note, these numbers won't be correct until a fresh season begins in your association.)
New: Added Range Factor and FPCT breakdown by position to the defensive chart that can be summoned from the player card (Note, these numbers won't be correct until a fresh season begins using 1.50 with your association.)
New: The new "early player debut" feature recently added is now also available for PureSim Classic mode associations that are using the "Seed with real players" option.
New: Major revamping of the stats display on the in game lineup card. There are now links at the bottom of the lineup card that can toggle its display between Season Stats, Toady's stats, Season vsL/R, and Career stats. vs. the current pitcher
New: Added new optional setting to allow for importing duplicate real players. This can be handy if you are doing "What if?" type scenarios and want to have multiple versions of the same real player in your association (say from different periods of his career for example, or maybe Ruth as a pitcher and Ruth as a hitter etc...)
New: You can now create new pitchers and hitters before the start of the initial draft.
New: When auto-playing games, PureSim shows some detail about the user's team's most recent game under the running scores. The score is displayed along with info on the pitcher from the user's team that got the decision as well as any HR's that the user's team hit. Note for double-header's only the most recent game result is displayed.
New: New option when using real players to bring in players before their real life major league debut. This can be a cool option if you want to play with real players and more than 35-man rosters. Players are brought in a few years in advance based on their age at the point the debuted in the majors. Their ratings will be adjusted accordingly. This is optional (default=off) via the "[x] Import Players Prior to their Major League Debut" option on the initial "Association Customization Options" dialog that appears at Initial association creation time.
Manager AI Tweak: PureSim's AI had a tendency to over-use the top reliever (sometimes giving him as many as 100 appearances per season) This has been tweaked back a bit, especially in the case of putting him in a game 3 or more consecutive times.
Manager AI Tweak: In general if a starter had a rough first inning, the AI had a tendency to maybe yank him a bit too quickly. The AI is now a bit more patient with good starters having trouble early. This hasthe added benefit of improving rotation and reliever usage in general as well.
GM AI Tweak: In too many cases, players would have nice, long careers but spend the last season or two in the minors. The GM AI now is less likely to place an aging, proven vet in the minors. This should lead to a bit more realistic career arc for players, since this rarely happens in the real world.
Tweak: Greatly improved MVP award calculations. Previously the award was too heavily influenced by RBI totals.
Tweak: When simming multiple seasons using the "Sim until year:" field, PureSim now prompts the user if they want to build the HTML Almanac after the completion of the sim cycle.
Cosmetic: Wrapping issue on career stats page for batters that had 10 seasons or more of career stats compiled
Cosmetic: Fixed a few typos.
Installation: PureSim now installs the latest version of the Microsoft .NET Framework (2.0) (You will only see this install if your machine does not already have the Framework. Most people already do, since it is pushed out via Windows Update.)
Update: Re-integrated PureSim's add-in download feature with the PureSim server. Expect us to release add-ins and expansion packs over the next few months that you can download and install from directly within the game. * If you are a skilled developer (VB6/NET/SQL/DHTML) and would be interested in creating add-ins see the "SDK" folder under your PureSim install for some samples on how to create add-ins. Please send an email to shaun@puresim.com if you are a developer and are interested in modding the game.
Tweak: Multiple tweaks to multiplayer FTP code to improve robustness.
Cosmetic: On the player card for retired players, the summary stats (that display under the picture) was getting clipped if the player was a hitter and they had more than 1,000 RBI.
Change: Removed 70-man rosters due to some game instability issues. This may return for PS 2008. Note: If you already have a 70-man roster it will still work moving forward, but support for creating a new 70-man config is now removed.
Tweak: Added logging support for multiplayer associations. The way this works is all FTP commands sent by PureSim to the FTP server are logged in the file ftp.log in the user's [puresim install folder]\psa folder. This file can prove useful when diagnosing FTP connectivity issues in multiplayer associations.
Tweak: If a player submits roster moves while the commish is logged into PureSim, but BEFORE he has simmed a game since the last upload cycle, PureSim will now apply those roster moves right before the first game in the current cycle is simmed.
Tweak: No longer prompting the human manager for a tag up decision if a runner is on first and a fly ball is hit.
Tweak: Added some new background images (Lineup, Modify Roster, Defensive scouting report) Thanks to PanzersEast!
Tweak: User now prompted if they want to update the HTML Almanac in the off season.
Cosmetic: Added current association date to all menu screens
Cosmetic: Fixed some text wrap issues on the new in-game lineup card feature
Cosmetic: Some of the new verbiage on the lineup card showing how a player was doing in the current game found its way into the play by play window. The pbp window has been changed back to the way it always displayed this info.
Tweaks: More tweaks around fly ball distances and physics. Distances should be decent now regardless of park. Note: When making a tag up decision, the most important thing to look at is PureSim's description of the depth the ball was hit (Shallow/Medium/Deep) the distance traveled in feet matters as well, but that is taken into account by PureSim's description.
Tweak: PureSim will also now indicate if a ball was hit off the wall. It has always calculated this, but was not always letting the user know if that was the case. Build a park with short fences and 50' walls and enjoy :)
Tweak: Throttled back early/early-mid season trade activity. There was a little to much maneuvering going on in May/June.
Tweak: Improvements to ball flight distance calculations
Tweak: Human player can now call for hit and run with two outs (At their own peril!)
Tweak: Runners were not advancing for extra bases on OF errors. With v1.50 there is approx a 60% chance runners will advance an extra base on an error in CF, and a 75% chance on errors in LF and RF. Note, if a hit and run was on, then the runner will always get an extra base or two. Note, these defaults are "tweakbale" via the following new XML entries: FIELDING_ERRORS_THROW, FIELDING_ERRORS_THROW2BASE, FIELDING_ERRORS_OF_MULTIBASE The chance is also adusted based on the player's speed.
Tweak: Reduced chance of grounding into a double play on a hit and run
Tweak: Greatly reduced the chance of a runner being doubled up on a hit and run when the batter hits a fly ball to the OF. Note, on Line drives there is still a significant chance he'll get doubled up.
Fix: In rare cases if a player on a human-owned team received a career-ending injury when simming multiple games the human owner would be notified that his roster needed to be fixed and the game would then crash or freeze up on the modify roster screen.
Fix: Fixed a number of bugs in the expansion draft and the subsequent report displayed after the expansion draft, where the actual report did not properly report on the previous team in all cases.
Fix: In the expansion draft, it was possible for a team to lose a player to the draft that didn't actually sign to one of the expansion teams.
Fix: Rare case in the expansion draft where not all new expansion teams actually made picks.
Fix: Fixed floating point calculation error when importing certain pitchers with an extremely low amount of real life appearances causing them to be rated much too high (Typically "Stuff" was where the overflow was happening) This led to certain really horrible players like George Curry (1911) and Jim Cosman (1970) to end up being used way too much, while at the same time performing HORRIBLY, throwing league stats and ratings way out of whack in some cases. Since PureSim's ratings are percentile-based, this had a pervasive impact on the entire ratings curve in the league. This was even more extreme when using the "[x] Import players prior to their major league debut" option.
Fix: Rare error 91 when opening a minor league player from the minor league roster screen (only would occur if association was created with a prior version of PureSim (PureSim 2004, PureSim 2005, PureSim 2005 Gold) and then upgraded to PureSim 2007.
Fix: When a player was being edited and the secondary position was removed, PureSim was not respecting the change, so it was not possible to change a player from having 2 positions to 1.
Fix: If the "Lock on roster" hint was used on a player's "Player Usage" option, then it was not always being respected when the user selected the "Auto Assign Roster" button on the modify roster screen.
Fix: Extrememly rare lockup that could occur if a player got an extremely sever injury (e.g. 12 months recovery time or more) that was not a career-ending injury.
Fix: Fixed a number of GPF/Crash issues when uploading/downloading multiplayer associations.
Fix: Since 7z was added as the new compression method for PureSim we have discovered some installation issues on some machines. v1.50 installs all 7z compression modules required. This should fix the compression/downloading issues folks have been having with the new compression code. *** SPECIAL NOTE: By default when a PureSim association is compressed and uploaded to the FTP server the file extension is set to ".zip" However, this is not a "WinZIP" type zip file, it uses the .7z format which has a much higher compression ratio. The reason we name the file with a .zip extension is to get around issues where certain servers do not support users downloading compressed files that do not end in .zip. So, if you are manually trying to download and extract your leagues files you will have to download the .zip file, and rename it to end in .z7. Next I suggest you grab WinRar to use as a utility to extract/manage .z7 files (http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm)
Fix: Fixed a few lingering issues with importing real players into a sandbox mode association.
Fix: When doing intial draft, if human chose to do custom filters, after applying custom filters in some situations involving pitchers, but while viewing batters, a "no current record" would result.
Fix: Roubustness tweak. Previously PureSim would not start if there were *any* associations in the PureSim folder that were corrupt. It will now start in this case, however the association will not be listed in the dropdown on the "Load Association" dialog.
Fix: Rare error 9 when attempting to sign a pitcher in the ammy draft in a 30 team association.
Fix: Error 91 if running in unattended auto play, which is then canceled, followed by a message indicating that the human team'sroster is invalid and "you will now be taken to the modify roster page..." Rare, but it was possible this could occur.
Fix: Fixed an issue where certain PureSim 2005 associations would not upgrade properly to PureSim 2007.
Fix: HTML Almanac was not showing splits when generated during the first season of an association if the user attempted to build it before the season was over.
Fix: In a situation where the game is tied and home team can win in the bottom of the 9th (or later) if a runner was on third (not forced) with 1 out, and a ground ball was hit, the defense sometimes would throw to first, allowing the runner at third to score the game winning run. The defense will now come home in this situation.
Fix: Rare lockup that could occur in the postseason if the next scheduled starter was too fatigued to start and the best candidate to start in his place is too injured to play.
Fix: Error 13 (and sometimes error 9) when managing a game and changing a position player's position to "P" from the in-game lineup card.
Fix: Fixed pesky injury bug that was resulting in players healing from injuries "instantly" after a day (happened only on players NOT on the DL). Phew, this one was driving me crazy, it was a semi-random, rare issue, but has been squashed!
Fix: Fixed issue with player's with career-ending injuries healing enough to return.
Fix: Error 9 when attempting to access roster page of a team in Sandbox mode (Related to issue with incorrectly importing a player in Sandbox mode's "Import Real Player" feature.
Fix: Error 9 when trying to expand from 2 leagues, 20 teams 10 teams in division, to the next available progression (24 teams).
Fix: Error 91 on lineup card if a PH in the 9th slot did not have a position assigned yet and the user attempted to assign them a position (could get in this state sometimes when doing a double switch)
Fix: Rare Error 91 when trying to view a player card by clicking a link on a PSPN issue.
Fix: On the in-game manager screen "B[U]nt was only possible by pressing the "U" key (The user was not able to click on it).
Fix: If the user was presented with the dialog that displayed new hall of fame members just elected then clicked on a the link to view one of the newly elected hall of fame member's player card, then clicked "Stats History" followed by choosing "AAA" from the dropdown, PureSim would crash to the desktop.
Fix: Rare Error 91 when attempting to hit with a runner on second if the batter flew out.
Fix: Another rare Error 91 on the in-game lineup card (when managing a game)
Fix: Error 91 on trades dialog when switching teams if both teams were human-owned.
Fix: Rare issue with players being reported as injured in game, but not injured after.
Fix: Similarly rare issue where players were appearing to heal by miraculous amounts. What was really happening here was players were getting a new injury but it was less serious than the previous one, so it would appear to be a miraculous heal. The injury model now is much more likely to yield an aggravation to an existing injury if you play a hurt player. The only way for a player with an existing injury to get a new injury type is if the game determines the new injury is more severe than the existing one. Got that? :)
Fix: If the manager called for a Hit and Run with 2 outs and the batter struck out then PureSim would crash.
Fix: The following sequence was causing PureSim to crash: 1) open any minor league player sheet 2) hit "shop player" button 3) Hit "shop player to all teams" button 4) examine the player sheet of one or more players from other teams 5) decide you don't want to trade and start cancelling all of the windows you've opened 6) close the player sheet from the original minor league player you were trying to trade -- crash
Fix: If num-lock was on and the user presses the "2" key on the numeric key pad PureSim was interpreting it as a "b" hence a bunt would be called for instead of a steal.
Fix: In some cases, when the play by play indicated a player made a two base throwing error, the resulting error only played out as a one base error.
Fix: Rarely, fly balls would be reported as traveling 0' (in the red box) when watching a game.
Fix: Fixed error 91 while simming games.
Fix: SLG was being calculated incorrectly in some places in the HTML Almanac.
Fix: AI sometimes had a tendency to do major roster shuffles (with highly questionable moves) just before the post season.
Fix: Fixed problem introduced in v1.19 where PureSim would not properly start on Windows 98, Windows ME and some pre-SP2 versions of XP Phew! that was a killer. Thanks to VMWare for their awesome virtualization technology that let me build a clean Windows ME virtual machine installation from scratch so I could finally debug and fix the issue. It took 5 hours to finally find it, but I sure feel better.
Fix: In some pre-1920 associations the game would sometimes get caught in a loop while the GM/AI was thinking.