Strat-O-Matic Baseball 2012 New Features

Strat-O-Matic Baseball 2012
New Computer Baseball is Ace of the Staff
 
By Glenn Guzzo

Like a great pitcher, the forthcoming improvements to Strat-O-Matic’s computer baseball game will deliver speed, movement and control to gamers.

More than a dozen features recommended by gamers are in the new Strat-O-Matic Baseball 2012, allowing gamers to play more swiftly, more actively and with more control over how the program is used.

SPEED: One click – on the scoreboard inning – now gets you to the in-game boxscore … In a jam? The Help File has been revamped to make it easier to find what you need. It is more readable, has cleaner formatting, has more keywords, and has been edited to eliminate outdated information … Best of all, the exciting new Game Notes feature speeds your pre-game preparation for league games with a detailed report showing records, standings, starting pitchers, statistical streaks, injuries, ballpark info, weather info and more. Perfect for anticipating strategy, announcing your games and doing post-game write-ups.

MOVEMENT: New in-game editing (via a simple dialogue box) allows you to re-align flight-of the-ball animation to coincide with your monitor and custom ballparks you have created or imported … No need to wait to share the action – you can now post a Social Media message during the 7th Inning Stretch so that your friends can keep up-to-date with your game while you play.

CONTROL: All the Strat-O control freaks will master their destinies in numerous new ways. Keep your league screen more orderly by hiding all the Pitcher’s Hitting "99" seasons … The computer manager will do a better job when you command it to Fully Control Overusage … Now you can tell Draft-O-Matic to create teams with different strengths – power, pitching/defense, on-base/speed or balanced. Choose a drafting strategy for each team or have Draft-O-Matic randomly assign the strategies … Limit all injuries to current-game only with a new optional max rule. Ideal for draft leagues and replays that already have limits based on a player’s real-life use … Strat-O-Matic Baseball 2012 also supports MLB’s new 7-day disabled list … Leagues wanting more security now can use the Lock League function to prevent use of the Update Game Rules function.
Players who have both batting and pitching cards now are better controlled. These “Double Duty” players are displayed counted as single players in the Eligible Players screen; they are rested/promoted/demoted in tandem using the 40/25 method to control minor leaguers, and they are accounted for when using the "Reset eligibles/minor leaguers" checkbox on the Restart League function.

MORE: New Encyclopedia support for Windows 7 will automatically convert your old files … League Standings now show runs scored for and against each team … The program now supports those rare high-inning pitchers of old who walked more than 255 men in a season … A thorough, updated document file shows all the Board Game Rules.
Most of our new features were suggested to us by game players like you. If you have a suggestion or feature you would like to have added to Strat-O-Matic Baseball, please e-mail us.

LIST OF NEW FEATURES AND IMPROVEMENTS IN STRAT-O-MATIC BASEBALL 2012

1) Game Notes – The Game Notes feature is an exciting new feature that displays a report just before the game launches with notes about your current game. This optional report (activated via a checkbox in the Options/Miscellaneous dialog) is a great one-page overview, chock-full of interesting things about your game. You’ll find such goodies as:
  •  Records and Standings – Each teams overall record, place in the standings, road record for the visiting team, home record for the home team, record vs. lefties or righties (as applies to this game).
  •  Starting pitchers seasonal stat totals.
  • A list of the scheduled games in the current series (and the results of these games, if they have already been played).
  • Ballpark and Weather information.
  • A list of current hitting streaks on these two teams (5 games or more).
  • A Who’s Hot / Who’s Not report featuring only players on the teams playing this game.
  • An injury report for these teams.
  • NOTE: This feature is only available for scheduled league games, and it is not available during Netplay.
 
2) One-Click Access to Boxscore! – Click on the bottom of the scoreboard (where the current inning and number of outs are shown) and the boxscore will appear immediately. In previous versions you had to use the menu item to get to the Check Information box and then select the Boxscore from a dropdown menu.
 
3) Edit Ballpark Locations for Flight of the Ball – A new editing capability is now built into the program to edit the ballpark locations and information used by the Flight of the Ball animation. This can be used to adjust those locations to your monitor and to create new ballparks from your own pictures!
 
4) Social Media Improvements – Share your Strat-O-Matic Exploits with the world!
  •  Tumblr support has been added to go along with our existing Twitter and Facebook support. 
  • You can now post a Social Media message during the 7th Inning Stretch so that your friends can keep up-to-date with your game while you play.
 
5) Support for the 7-Day Disabled List – The Injury System has been upgraded to support the 7-Day Disabled List injury that was introduced with the 2011 Major League season to deal with concussions.
 
6) Encyclopedia Support for Windows 7(tm) – In order to support Windows 7(tm) the Encyclopedia code has been converted to use a SQL database which no longer requires DAO to access it. All functionality of the encyclopedia has been retained. The first time you load the encyclopedia feature using the new game it will search out all existing databases and encyclopedias and convert them to the new format. Note that the older format data files are saved in an Archive folder within the MDB folder in case you ever need them (perhaps if you want to view them with an older version of the program).
 
7) Computer Player Usage Logic – The logic for the Fully Control Overusage computer manager setting has been improved. IMPORTANT NOTE: USING THIS OPTION WILL OVERRIDE CERTAIN SETTINGS IN Super Hal, SO WE DO NOT RECOMMEND MIXING AND MATCHING THESE TWO FEATURES.  
 
8) Draft-O-Matic Improvements – Draft-O-Matic has been improved to add Drafting Strategies. You can now select from one of the following drafting strategies for each team: 
  • Balanced Strategy
  • Favor Pitching and Defense
  • Emphasize Power
  • Look for On-Base and Speed
In addition, you can have Draft-O-Matic randomly assign drafting strategies for each team.
 
9) Limit All Injuries to Current Game Only – This optional Maximum Rule allows you to force all injuries to be for the remainder of the current game only. This option has been requested by some draft leagues that would prefer not to have injuries carry over from one game to the next. It might also be useful for certain replay projects where you want to control the starting lineups yourself, yet you still want the possibility for an injury to occur in the simulation.
 
10) Scale of animated Batter/Pitcher changed – In previous versions the animated batter and pitcher that is shown with the Flight of the Ball option were scaled up as you stretched the ballpark image. On larger monitors this resulted in batter and pitchers that were unrealistically big. The game will no longer stretch those images, which results in a more realistic presentation. NOTE: If you created your own ballpark images you will need to fine tune the location of the batters and pitchers to account for this change.
 
11) Pitcher High Walk Totals – Support for pitchers who allowed more than 255 walks has been added to the game. Previously pitchers like Amos Rusie (who once allowed 289 walks in a season) were not fully supported.
 
12) League Standings – Runs Scored for and against each team have been added to the League Standings report.
 
13) Hide Pitcher’s Hitting "99" Leagues – Our game includes Pitcher’s Hitting "99" leagues for many seasons. Most times you will never need to access these leagues directly, as the pitcher’s hitting card will display within the game as needed. Since there are so many seasons that include these "99" leagues they tend to clutter up the list of leagues in the League Manager. You can use the checkbox on the Miscellaneous Options screen to hide or unhide these "99" leagues to help reduce the clutter.
 
14) Double-Duty Improvements – A number of improvements have been made to support Double-Duty Players:
  • The Eligible Players screen now displays the number of double-duty players who are eligible and calculates and displays the actual number of eligible players (taking into account double-duty players).
  •  Better support for Double Duty players has been added when you use the 40/25 Method to control minor leaguers.
  • The "Reset eligibles/minor leaguers" checkbox on the Restart League function now takes into account Double-Duty players when determining the default eligible players list.
 
15) Lock League – The Lock League function now prevents the use of the Update Game Rules function when the league is locked. A number of leagues have requested this as an additional security feature.
 
16) Help File – The Help File has been revamped and reformatted for easier use. The Help File is now more readable, has cleaner formatting, has more keywords, and has been edited to eliminate outdated information.
 
17) Baseball Rules & Baseball Features by Season PDF Files – A PDF copy of the current Strat-O-Matic board game rules are now included for your convenience. In addition, a PDF that lists the features all of the season we offer is also included.
18) Team Play-By-Play File Included – The team play-by-play files, a previously optional feature, is now included with the game!

19) Bugs Fixed
  • The box score had a glitch with the DH rule. When a batter pinch-hit for another DH, the box score showed him as "PH" instead of "PH,DH", even if he batted several times.  
  • Exporting the computer manager immediately after updating it would sometimes crash the program.
  • Color ballparks created by the user community were sometimes crashing the game.
  • When declining to stretch a triple to an inside-the-park homerun the max rules would sometimes alter the triple to a double, which didn’t make sense. That will no longer happen.
  • Robinson Cano’s 2010 e-rating of 3 at second base was not displaying properly on the SADV Fielding Chart.
  • The Backup League function was not backing up the ".PO*" subsets for playoff leagues. 
  • The pre-game Eligibles screen was not showing recommended rest for players.
  •  A crash that sometimes occurred in the Generate Schedule code has been fixed.
  • If a catcher’s interference occurred immediately after bringing in a reliever the game was not recognizing that it would be valid to bring in another reliever at that point.
  • A rare bug that was causing "Error 44" to appear in autoplay when it shouldn’t has been corrected. "Error 44" should only appear when the computer manager has completely run out of possible replacements, an extremely rare circumstance.
  • Combined no-hitters were sometimes being described as perfect games in the Game Story.
  • The Animated X-Chart display was displaying the wrong dice roll for the error column.
  • The Team Stats report would sometimes crash when the Multi-Team players were selected.
  • A bug on delayed steals of home with 2 outs was fixed – now the computer manager will always throw for the runner going to 2nd if his safe chance is lower (instead of cutting the ball off).
 
20) New Seasons – Support for the new 2011, 1958 (Deluxe Super-Advanced), 1881, 1884, and 1892 seasons has been added. Support for eleven 19th century post-season series has been added.
 
21) Ballpark Photos 
  • 7 new ballparks pictures – Arizona dome, Colorado (day and night) , Oakland (day), San Diego (day and night)
  • 33 new ballpark entry pictures – Arizona-5, Chicago-NL-4, Cincinnati-4, Colorado-2, Detroit-4, Houston-1, Oakland-1, Pittsburgh-4, San Diego-3, St.Louis-4, Texas-1
 
22) Roster Improvements and Corrections   
 An amazing effort by the ROSTER CORRECTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS TEAM brings you these upgraded rosters. Continued improvements include Computer Manager, Pitcher Hitting, and Play-by-Play tweaks. Not only that, but they also have provided an enormous service to the Strat community by making available Actual Pitcher Batting Cards for all seasons. Each season had changes as described in this list:
 All of the 20th century sets listed below have had player names standardized according to the Retrosheet player naming convention. (See Credits / Other Statistics.) This project will continue with subsequent Game releases until all of the U season sets have been edited for player name conformity.
 Some of these sets include a Read file which may be found inside the roster’s zip file.
  • 1885 Corrected CHN Krieg, SLN Baker and Boyle field ratings; Adds 21 PHC
  • 1890 Corrected NYN Hornung field ratings; NYN Rusie stat line
  • 1911 Removed extraneous roster file
  • 1912 Fixed trn file
  • 1918 Improved Team CM settings; Improved lup, trn, schpit, and PBP; Removed redundant and added missing fielding positions; Adds 25 PHC
  • 1919 Improved Team CM settings; Improved lup and PBP; Adds 18 PHC
  • 1920 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 30 PHC
  • 1921 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 11 PHC
  • 1922 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 17 PHC
  • 1923 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 3 PHC
  • 1924 Improved Team CM settings
  • 1925 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 31 PHC
  • 1926 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 5 PHC
  • 1927 Improved Team CM settings
  • 1928 Improved Team CM settings
  • 1929 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 12 PHC
  • 1935 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 73 PHC
  • 1952 Adds lup, trn, and schpit; Improved Team CM settings; Adds full PHC set
  • 1960 Adds 7 PHC
  • 1961 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 10 PHC
  • 1962 Improved Team CM settings; Corrected PIN Mazeroski; Adds 23 PHC
  • 1963 Adds 17 PHC
  • 1964 Adds 21 PHC; Removed extraneous roster file
  • 1965 Adds 28 PHC
  • 1966 Adds 16 PHC
  • 1967 Corrected AL lup; Adds 20 PHC
  • 1968 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 19 PHC
  • 1969 Improved Team CM settings; Corrected KCA Fiore, Keough, NYA Hall, OAA Jackson field ratings; Replaced SFN Burda; Adds 22 PHC
  • 1970 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 26 PHC; Adds recs
  • 1971 Adds 36 PHC
  • 1972 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 17 PHC
  • 1973 Adds 11 PHC; Adds AL rec; Removed extraneous roster file
  • 1974 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 7 PHC
  • 1975 Adds 10 PHC
  • 1976 Improved Team CM settings; Improved AL trn; Adds 14 PHC; Adds recs
  • 1977 (Names)
  • 1978 Adds 13 PHC; Adds recs
  • 1979 Improved Team CM settings; Corrected CAA Miller and CIN Geronimo field ratings; Corrected AL lup; Adds recs
  • 1980 Improved Team CM settings; Corrected NL schpit; Adds 5 PHC
  • 1981 (Names)
  • 1982 Improved Team CM settings; Corrected E-0 field ratings; Adds MNA Davis close rating; Corrected AL schpit; Adds 12 PHC
  • 1983 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 6 PHC
  • 1984 Adds 7 PHC
  • 1985 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 11 PHC
  • 1986 Improved Team CM settings; Corrected TOA Johnson E-rating; Adds 4 PHC
  • 1987 Adds 8 PHC
  • 1988 Adds 4 PHC
  • 1989 Adds 8 PHC
  • 1990 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 1 PHC
  • 1991 Improved Team CM settings; Corrected CHA Hemond field rating; Improved PBP; Adds 44 PHC
  • 1992 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 41 PHC
  • 1993 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 49 PHC
  • 1994 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 18 PHC
  • 1995 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 14 PHC
  • 1996 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 19 PHC
  • 1997 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 20 PHC
  • 1998 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 21 PHC
  • 1999 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Corrected schpit; Adds 7 PHC
  • 2000 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 24 PHC
  • 2001 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 23 PHC
  • 2002 Improved Team CM settings; Improved PBP; Adds 35 PHC
  • 2003 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 39 PHC
  • 2004 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 36 PHC
  • 2005 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 16 PHC
  • 2006 Improved Team CM settings; Adds 30 PHC
  • 2007 Improved Team CM settings
  • 2008 Improved Team CM settings
  • 2009 Improved Team CM settings; Removed extraneous roster file
  • 2010 Debuts Multi-card AP set; Corrected lup and trn

22) Play-by-play Improvements
  • The nickname file has been expanded yet again by our nickname guru Ren Petrie — there are over 600 new player specific play-by-plays that mention player’s nicknames, including the Negro League players’ nicknames!
  • The Userpbp.fil has been improved by our play-by-play expert Scott Nichols.
  • All 30 team play-by–play files have been edited and updated for 2011 season.