Lehigh Football Nation
May 15th, 2006, 09:59 AM
For those who don't know, I've been on a crusade for the last few days to find out a way for I-AA fans to play with their favorite teams in a computer and/or console game. After a weekend of research, here's what I found out. (Warning on long post)
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On the console, the choice was between NCAA 2001 (which has create-a-team and playoffs) and NCAA 2005 (good gameplay and uni design, but no playoffs). Ultimately I chose NCAA 2005 for my console project since the different types of data you can store are so vast and so extensive. Also, I had doubts (confirmed later - see below) that 2001 would not have near the space I would require for team creation.
On the computer, there is a game from Solecismic Software called Front Office Football: The College Years (http://www.solecismic.com/tcy/index.php). It's a I-A simulation without graphics, but it's (somewhat) customizable. Best of all, it has a playoff structure built in. I took the step of writing the guy who wrote the code. Here's what he said about his plans for adding I-AA teams:
The game has never supported I-AA. The only reason is simply memory requirements. Keeping the extra 122 teams in memory would either slow down the game tremendously or keep it from running on older computers.
There is a spare conference, the Solecismic Eight (you can see this in the free demo) that can be moved into any state (though all eight teams have to be in the same state). All team names can be changed. I suppose it would be a tremendous amount of work, but something remotely resembling a I-AA setup could be created as long as the location of the schools isn't important and conference structure isn't critical. It wouldn't be close to complete, though. The demo, though it doesn't support saved games, contains enough of the feature set so you can see if that works for you.
Moral of the story - this simulation, theoretically, is possible, but at the possible cost of losing some realism in school locations and/or conference championships. I will download the trial version and see what is involved.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I emptied out my pockets and forked over the $5 for NCAA 2005 for the PS/2 to attempt my experiment for creating a I-AA version of this game. After a weekend of playing with it I've learned a lot.
First of all, it's a real shame that EA Sports didn't choose to pursue some very minor enhancements (e.g., playoffs, Walter Payton award, more diverse stadium styles) that would have made this game the ultimate I-AA experience.
After putting in customized team after customized team, I discovered that there are a maximum of 12 created teams you can import into a dynasty. That means that I had to make a lot of cuts involving teams that I wanted to add. For me, the Patriot League teams were an absolute must, which left 5 teams to add. I chose to add:
Coastal Carolina
Northern Colorado (now a Big Sky member)
Cal Poly
UC-Davis
Austin Peay (now an OVC member)
Then, I had to figure out which conferences I could import into the game. This was a huge challenge. First, if you take a I-A team out of a conference, you can't (say) re-import them back in as an independent. That meant, I can't take Marshall out of the MAC (remember this is 2005) and plop them into, say, where I was importing the SoCon. That made for some strange bedfellows with extremely tenuous I-AA connections, but I did manage to get it to work. Here's my sample conferences:
* ACC (11) = MEAC (9) + Georgia Tech + Clemson (two schools with tenuous SoCon links)
* Big 10 (11) = Big Sky (8) + NoCo + Cal Poly + UCD
* Big 12 (12) = A-10 (12)
* Big East (7) = Patriot (7)
* C-USA (11) = Gateway (8) + Louisville + Memphis + Houston (all former MVC teams)
* MAC (15) = MAC (all former I-AA's)
* Mountain West (8) = Ivy (8)
* Pac 10 (10) = OVC (9) + Austin Peay
* SEC (12) = SoCon (8) + Coastal + South Carolina + Kentucky + Gerogia (more tenuous SoCon links)
* Sun Belt (9) = Southland (6) + UL-Laff + UL-Monroe + Ark St (all fairly recent I-AA's)
* WAC (10) = SWAC (10)
Now that I have a *workable* conference structure, I can now start the mammoth task of putting in team data. I am tossed as to how to do this.
Do I attempt to update every roster with players that kinda/sorta mesh with today's rosters, or do I attempt to create a 2005 roster for each created team and "age" each dynasty by 2 years? I started by doing the former, but I'm thinking more about doing the latter just to save time and sanity. I can make up for some deficiencies with created players, but I'm sure there will be a limit. At least if I start with 2005 and try to age the rosters, it should be close.
Another issue is the poor rankings of the I-AA teams in general. I don't want to make them I-A teams -- I purposely want them to be a step behind the USCs and Texas-es -- but frankly they are ranked so badly that something has to be done. I want to pump up some of the players - for example, UD's Omar Cuff is pretty darned good, so I'd like to pump up his rankings somewhat.
What is becoming abundantly clear is that I can't do this alone. One conference would be tough enough, though I could do it. Ten conferences is too many. I'd love volunteers to help, somehow, with this.
---------------------------------------------------------
Back to the PC game, what would be very interesting is the possibility of modifying this game to have mostly or all I-AA teams. Since it's computer-based, the possibility of transferring files around would make a team of people doing the customizing easier. But, I would need to find out if it's possible and/or desireable (and, I need to find out if we all should be forking over the money to this guy for his software.).
That's what I've learned. Comments/suggestions/volunteers for help would be most appreciated.
-----------------------------------------------------------
On the console, the choice was between NCAA 2001 (which has create-a-team and playoffs) and NCAA 2005 (good gameplay and uni design, but no playoffs). Ultimately I chose NCAA 2005 for my console project since the different types of data you can store are so vast and so extensive. Also, I had doubts (confirmed later - see below) that 2001 would not have near the space I would require for team creation.
On the computer, there is a game from Solecismic Software called Front Office Football: The College Years (http://www.solecismic.com/tcy/index.php). It's a I-A simulation without graphics, but it's (somewhat) customizable. Best of all, it has a playoff structure built in. I took the step of writing the guy who wrote the code. Here's what he said about his plans for adding I-AA teams:
The game has never supported I-AA. The only reason is simply memory requirements. Keeping the extra 122 teams in memory would either slow down the game tremendously or keep it from running on older computers.
There is a spare conference, the Solecismic Eight (you can see this in the free demo) that can be moved into any state (though all eight teams have to be in the same state). All team names can be changed. I suppose it would be a tremendous amount of work, but something remotely resembling a I-AA setup could be created as long as the location of the schools isn't important and conference structure isn't critical. It wouldn't be close to complete, though. The demo, though it doesn't support saved games, contains enough of the feature set so you can see if that works for you.
Moral of the story - this simulation, theoretically, is possible, but at the possible cost of losing some realism in school locations and/or conference championships. I will download the trial version and see what is involved.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I emptied out my pockets and forked over the $5 for NCAA 2005 for the PS/2 to attempt my experiment for creating a I-AA version of this game. After a weekend of playing with it I've learned a lot.
First of all, it's a real shame that EA Sports didn't choose to pursue some very minor enhancements (e.g., playoffs, Walter Payton award, more diverse stadium styles) that would have made this game the ultimate I-AA experience.
After putting in customized team after customized team, I discovered that there are a maximum of 12 created teams you can import into a dynasty. That means that I had to make a lot of cuts involving teams that I wanted to add. For me, the Patriot League teams were an absolute must, which left 5 teams to add. I chose to add:
Coastal Carolina
Northern Colorado (now a Big Sky member)
Cal Poly
UC-Davis
Austin Peay (now an OVC member)
Then, I had to figure out which conferences I could import into the game. This was a huge challenge. First, if you take a I-A team out of a conference, you can't (say) re-import them back in as an independent. That meant, I can't take Marshall out of the MAC (remember this is 2005) and plop them into, say, where I was importing the SoCon. That made for some strange bedfellows with extremely tenuous I-AA connections, but I did manage to get it to work. Here's my sample conferences:
* ACC (11) = MEAC (9) + Georgia Tech + Clemson (two schools with tenuous SoCon links)
* Big 10 (11) = Big Sky (8) + NoCo + Cal Poly + UCD
* Big 12 (12) = A-10 (12)
* Big East (7) = Patriot (7)
* C-USA (11) = Gateway (8) + Louisville + Memphis + Houston (all former MVC teams)
* MAC (15) = MAC (all former I-AA's)
* Mountain West (8) = Ivy (8)
* Pac 10 (10) = OVC (9) + Austin Peay
* SEC (12) = SoCon (8) + Coastal + South Carolina + Kentucky + Gerogia (more tenuous SoCon links)
* Sun Belt (9) = Southland (6) + UL-Laff + UL-Monroe + Ark St (all fairly recent I-AA's)
* WAC (10) = SWAC (10)
Now that I have a *workable* conference structure, I can now start the mammoth task of putting in team data. I am tossed as to how to do this.
Do I attempt to update every roster with players that kinda/sorta mesh with today's rosters, or do I attempt to create a 2005 roster for each created team and "age" each dynasty by 2 years? I started by doing the former, but I'm thinking more about doing the latter just to save time and sanity. I can make up for some deficiencies with created players, but I'm sure there will be a limit. At least if I start with 2005 and try to age the rosters, it should be close.
Another issue is the poor rankings of the I-AA teams in general. I don't want to make them I-A teams -- I purposely want them to be a step behind the USCs and Texas-es -- but frankly they are ranked so badly that something has to be done. I want to pump up some of the players - for example, UD's Omar Cuff is pretty darned good, so I'd like to pump up his rankings somewhat.
What is becoming abundantly clear is that I can't do this alone. One conference would be tough enough, though I could do it. Ten conferences is too many. I'd love volunteers to help, somehow, with this.
---------------------------------------------------------
Back to the PC game, what would be very interesting is the possibility of modifying this game to have mostly or all I-AA teams. Since it's computer-based, the possibility of transferring files around would make a team of people doing the customizing easier. But, I would need to find out if it's possible and/or desireable (and, I need to find out if we all should be forking over the money to this guy for his software.).
That's what I've learned. Comments/suggestions/volunteers for help would be most appreciated.