My First Baseball Game

I've always loved baseball. I always loved the feeling and the culture of the game. There is just something magical about baseball. If you're reading this you probably know what I am talking about. In Little League I played 2nd base and batted clean up. Once I got a grand slam and 30 years later I am still a little high from that day. I was a Mets fan back when Willie Mays was playing his final years. I am a national league fan and will always hate the wimpy DH and the league that embraces it.

When I got into games I thought about making a baseball video game but my forte was never sports. If I was ever going to make a baseball game it had to be unusual since I couldn't really compete with the serious sports games producers. My first shot was in a Sega Saturn game called 3 Dirty Dwarves. The character you see here is Greg, the leader of the Dwarves. His weapon of choice was a baseball bat and a sack of balls. To take out evil Orcs that have taken over the Bronx, Greg would undulate to pop a ball up into the air then smack it with the bat. It was a really fun play mechanic. This game did well in Japan but the Saturn tanked in the USA so most people didn't get to play it.

I found some 3DD footage on Youtube:



About half way through this video shows a level that takes place in yankee stadium. Greg has to take out the evil American League Orcs with line drives. GREAT fun!

Note: No pitbulls were hurt during the creation of this game!

Splash From the Past

I was going through my old SmallBall folders and found a few splash screens we used for the loader images.

This is one showing the 1st league champ at the time. The screen shot is of the actual team playing a ProLeague game during the Legacy of Chaos's winning season. The date on the image is March 03, 2002. Chaos was started in June of 2001 and went on to win the first league 6 times! The team is now retired at 10 stars.

For a few seasons I used the first league winners as splash art, but then I got creative.

I remember this one, it was a lot of fun. Right after Sept 11th I was interested in facial recognition and read a lot of articles about it. There was one company working on trying to match up different facial expressions to the same person. So they used thousands of face images like these to test their software. I was inspired so I used some of the faces in this splash art. There is only one guy who appears 3 times (I think.) Can your facial recognition software find him? The other memory of this splash screen was that many people wrote to ask if that was us at AndNow...

Some were silly but all were fun to make and use for a season or two. I like this one a lot:

I made it for a holiday that occured during a season back in 2002. Can you guess the holiday that inspired this splash art?


Below was one of my favorites. This pinball game was made back in the 20's. I couldn't resist adding the SmallBall logo into the image, see it on the upper left? It remided me of SmallBall, little guys playing simulated baseball. I'd like to get my hands on one of these one day.


Unfortunately I don't have all the splash images from the past. I wish I was more diligent in keeping them. I have a few more that I didn't post yet... maybe I will in future entries. I wonder if any of the SmallBall old timers remember some splash images they liked?

Finding my Pitcher, Again

I started a new team: Commish's New Team, ID 615012, and could not remember the best way to find the pitcher. I knew it was smart to find him while all the skills of all the players were underdeveloped. So I swallowed my pride and posted on the Beginner's forum: How to find your pitcher? I got a lot of good advice but one in particular from bobjones83 was especially helpful. He said:

well since your new is ST right now I am assuming that is how you are going to train then I would follow Mike's ST guide.

Reading Mike's ST guide really reminded me what I loved so much about SmallBall. Thanks Mike and Bob! :)

BTW, I think I found him, but only time will tell.

Problems

SmallBall has never lacked problems. There has always been stuff to fix, tune, and adjust.

Here is where were we are on the most significant problems:

Mall Problems - there are none. We see 100% of the tickets being sent almost instantly after the orders. Lately spam filters seem to be less of a problem too. If anyone does not get their tickets they should WRITE us an email and include the PayPal transaction ID. With our new Customer Care system we can respond quickly and get the tickets resent. Much faster than the paypal refunds of the past. Anyone that feels they were "ripped off," please contact us ASAP. All SmallBall emails are working but the new one is smallball.cc AT gmail.com

Vista Problems - Getting a handle on problems related to running the Deluxe Trainer on Vista IS challenging. It doesn't seem to be just a single problem. We have the DT running on a Vista machine with NO problems which is irritating. We are going to recompile the DT with new graphic libraries and hope we see significant improvements. However a move like this may cause MORE problems so we will need a lot of testing. Its never easy.


This AWESOME post by SuperBallz has some suggestions of solutions:

http://www.smallball.org/showthread.php?t=2155

Commish, the Mall, and Vista

Hey everybody! What a refreshing sight to see this updated! So good to see everybody so excited over Christmas and all the holidays, as well as the return of Commissioner!

Is he back for real this time? I've seen him come, only to disappear again. I truly believe that he's back this time. He's been pretty active on the forums and he's been giving out a few rare parks. How exciting! He's even started a new team. I guess not even the creator of the game can resist the itch.

Several people say that until the mall is fixed and people reimbursed for their lost money that they won't be satisfied. Right on! I think it's important that the issues be resolved as soon as possible.

Another big issue is Vista. I know that hurts a lot of people. Losing $20 isn't fun at all. Not being able to play Smallball is an absolute torture.

I think those issues will be solved sooner than later. I know an Ocean Park freebie doesn't fix things but I think the fixes are coming. Commish is working on getting a Vista PC. Commish has given an email(smallball.cc AT gmail.com) for mall issues. It's pretty frustrating for people who have been "ripped-off." It's not happening overnight but a lot of progress has been made just this week. I'm sure we'll get more info of his absence later BUT he IS here. He's active. I don't know what the future holds for Smallball but I am very excited. Waiting and patience is still needed but I think we're seeing a new era in Smallball. :)
Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!

~UNC Man~

Comments? Complaints? Suggestions? Let me hear them!

Back from the DEAD

The SBCT is back. If you want to be a contributing member email me at:



smallball.cc AT gmail.com

Back!!

I'm back after all this time.