Making my own basketball statistics program

[dwayne2005]

-

From the best I know, everything is functional enough with regards to player analysis going back to about 1984 or 1985. I have added splits for years (seasons, ie. 2018 equals 2017-18 not 2018... should change that, I guess) for multi-season operations, which introduced another YYC compiler issue I had to figure out (the inability for it to convert string copies to real in one operation). You should be able to much around with custom formulas (doesn't save; no real time change, one way to trigger a change without doing a new search I think is to switch to per minute and back to per game; no custom labels) from the interface by right clicking next to the range boxes.

Oh, the some of the sort operations are still broken or kind of broken. I have yet to figure out why. I don't think player names sort on multiple players at all, while ON and OFF and possibly DIF and +/- values seem to sort correctly except for values starting with 0.

Video explaining some features:

phpBB [video]

I encountered an apparent issue when making this video. I couldn't get the team mates combined using the right click method for the Westbrook analysis for some reason so had to manually add one team mate in using the + method. Maybe I clicked on the wrong thing or done something wrong because it should have been no different than the Kyrie Irving/Kevin Love/LeBron James analysis. It looks like an issue I have with following the chain, not destroying enough variables to get data to reset that I thought I fixed. I'm sure it's a rookie mistake, losing track of variables. But that is all, for player stats. I have fixed up a lot of stuff.

The infinite loops where caused by having two valid while loops inside one another. I can see no reason why it was happening, just that there must be a glitch with the YYC compiler in Gamemaker. Now I have it with a repeat loop that has a break command instead and it works fine.

Currently, much of the team statistics stuff is broken. I want to make it more functional on repeat searches before I get to all that. Maybe take another break.

[dwayne2005]

http://www.mediafire.com/file/tw5f5y5t5 ... tatsDA.zip
EDIT: Fixed some of the things mentioned below, but more needs to be done.

Identified and fixed the issue with second players not adding to the entries on TMM/OPP searches (it was a mistype of 2 variables).

It occurred to me that the invert button might produce some unusual results when adding and removing players through right click or filtering data through right click. And it was. The invert operation for instances allows you to remove specific data instead of filter it. For instance, do a full career search on a player and remove a specific team from the results. I have now integrated it, but it is not working 100% for some reason. For example, it seems to be working with data you can't otherwise invert in the program (teams, opponents, seasons) but not data in which you do have other options (home, away, wins and losses). I have no idea why yet. I have disabled the invert operation from TMM and OPP searches, but now I know I need to add it back just put special conditions on it.

I have changed the plus minus per minute (on/off) stats to represent 48 minutes not the custom minutes a player sets in the per minute calculations. Why? The on entry is right beneath the diff entry. This allows very helpful juxtaposition: you can see how well the team done over roughly 48 minutes (some extra time for overtimes) with dif and you can see how they may have theoretically done if the player had played the full 48 minutes and relate the dif and on values almost 1:1. I could make it reflect overtimes, but then it would lose cross referencability with other players so it seems like it is ideal to cap it off at 48 minutes. So it is mostly relatable.

The on rating, as mentioned, is his plus minus (now) per 48 minutes. This is based on baseline of 0 points. The off rating adjusts the baseline up or down depending on how well his team done when he was off the court. The off value shows how much better or worse he was than when the team was playing without him. So if a player has a +5 on rating, but a +6 off rating, this means when he was benched the rest of the team were -1 points if they had played 48 minutes. I found this awfully confusing yesterday because a lot of comparisons get into -- territory and it's easy to lose track of what it is saying. For example, say the on value was -10.3 and the off value was -12.6. What does this mean? It means he was -2.3 points worse than the bench. Why don't I just show this value instead? Because the player value is more meaningfull. In fact, it is far more valuable than the on value, it doesn't penalize him for being on a bad team and it shows you his true worth on a team: how much he has improved the plus/minus for that team.

I decided to add a random game ranking formula to the custom formulas replacing the weird one named TEST. I decided to add GMSC, as I was offline and that was all I had at hand. Doing this introduced a new issue I didn't realize was an issue. All of the formulas up until this point were self-contained ratios. For example, if you work out shooting percentage by FGM/FGA it would be the same for a game as it would be for a season. But if you try to introduce a game ranking formula, what it does is it treats the entire season as one giant, long game. Whereas the GMSC value may average 20 per game, on the totals splits it was showing over 1,000+! This was not an issue for any other formulation I had been working with, but I needed to introduce an option to force it to divide custom formulas by the average game or minute. So now there is an extra option to set in the .ini for each formulation should this need arise.

I was getting random errors when right clicking on the season splits to filter that data. I believe I tracked it back down to the same issue I was having before with YYC compiler not working when combining real(string_copy... commands. In order to get it to identify when the seasons change, I need to take the game ID which consists of YYMMDDHTMATM plus 1 extra character. It is a text string, even though the first 6 values are numbers. The important ones are 3 and 4, the month ID, where I can tell it if it is the NBA off season (assumed September or 9) it signifies the start of a new season. (I can't just add a new column into the grid to identify the season as the grid gets built, which would be preferable, because that would mean changing an enormous number of values.) So I need to copy that string then convert it into a number where I can apply a greater than or less than sign to it. Doing this in one operation works in the standard Gamemaker builds, but it breaks when using YYC builds. So it looks like it is working since I build and test mostly in Gamemaker as it is a lot faster until it dawns on me that it isn't.

Last time, I fixed it by splitting the operation into two lines. But it looked like there was more issues. And after I fixed those issues, I decided to run a search of every instance of real(string_copy and found dozens of entries which took a really long time to fix up. None of which I had associated with any error. But there was that possibility the program had a great many unidenfitied bugs from it that are now fixed, or it was something else that was triggering this malfunction.

[dwayne2005]

I am getting some odd numbers. Read an article saying that Isaiah averaged -15.8 +/- for the Cavs. My numbers were way off, but this was because I forgot to change the switch from 36 minutes to 48 minutes elsewhere in the program. However, the numbers are still off: it is reporting he was -15.6. This might be due to their calculations being based on rounded to the tenth decimal values whereas I use exact seconds, I'm not sure yet.

When I split the values up into smaller sections of 5 games, I see the average of the plus-minuses per 48 does not correspond to the totals my program is producing. I have yet to figure out the logic as to why. They're way off. But over the longer stretch, it is 15.6 to 15.8. Not sure if the data is breaking will smaller pools of games or not. It could just be the way the numbers are, I've yet to wrap my head around the logic of it all. That you can't just average out those games even though each is stretched to 48 minutes. I need to investigate that. I am not the smartest person, so it'll take some time and some calmness to comprehend.

Thirdly, when using TMM or OPP searches and applying the custom splits, if the columns are in descending order and the player selected twice (maybe once as well) it is producing really weird results in the top superfluous values for the bottom-most bracket. The numbers should be the same calculating for the player twice but they differ only in the bottom bracket. I'll have to look into that.

I spent a long time trying to fix the team searches yesterday, and can't for the life of me figure out what is happening that is triggering it to eat up all the ram almost instantly with ALL searches over a full seasons worth of data, It works when I halve the size of the ds grids. I've rewritten code, pondered it closely, but nothing... It makes no sense. There is nothing there, unless one of the loops is becoming infinite due to some kind of glitch like the one I encountered before of loops within loops.

EDIT: My program is correctly averaging the amount of court time Isaiah received in his 15 games Cavs stretch at 27:03. Basketball Reference says this is 27.1 minutes or 27:06. This is because it is being rounded up from 27:03.47 to the nearest decimal. (27.1/27.05)*15.6 equals 15.63 so it isn't good enough to make sense of things. The mean average of the 15 per 48 minute values for plus/minus equals 15.253. The means are based on values accurate to the tenth of a decimal, so it should be accurate to the 10th of a decimal. Isolated a 24:00 game and a +/- of 1 extrapolates correctly to 2.0 per 48 minutes on both the game and the averages.

[dwayne2005]

The team stuff is working, and better than ever before. I am opening up a number of splits I disabled for players: if a player played for multiple teams, you could also find their splits for each team at home, away and for wins and losses. I disabled this for being superfluous. But at least the home and away ones are very valuable if I get around to allowing you to create predictive formulas. For example, you might guess that a team may have x rebounds on any given night by taking their total and taking their opponents average concessions and dividing them by two. But with the home and away splits, you can now factor into account home and away. It gives additional tools for trying to create the ultimate formula for predicting game results. I hope to finesse it in the next day. I have to create a system that allows for 3 things: partial formulas that only determine the point spread, like SRS; full formulas that predict each statistic in a game, such as rebounds; and game score formulas which assign weightings to each statistic to produce game scores for predicting results. I see no reason why all 3 can't be accomodated simultaneously with flexibility.

I am reasonably confident my software is not in error with the plus/minus scores, but ESPN was: should have been 15.6 or possibly 15.7 if it is rounded down from 15.65 or something with the slight adjustment measured for appriximating minutes played, not 15.8.

[dwayne2005]

Most up to date version: http://www.mediafire.com/file/lchjat23c ... tatsDA.zip

When processing as team stats, the assists formulations messes things up because it negates the players field goals (determines the percentage of assists a player made to every player on a team discounting his shots). When it processed the team version, it treats player values as team values. So it tells it to work out the assist percent from 0 field goals (either made or attempts, I can't remember which I use right now) + turnovers, creating a result that throws things a bit out of balance. I'll look into accomodating formulas like that.

I've also made explicit mention that the program doesn't support 'order of operation', so you should be generous with use of brackets. For example, it doesn't know how to process this very well: PLFTM + PLFGM * 2 + PL3PM * 3. Order of operation rules specify you use the multiplication and division first, multiplying PL3PM by 3 and PLFGM by 2. Then it processes from left to right. Without doing those first, the results can come out incorrectly especially as the expression becomes more complex. It does process parenthesis first, so instead you need to be generous with brackets which forces them to be done first PLFTM + (PLFGM * 2) + (PL3PM * 3). It is low priority to fix up as I imagine it might be high stress to figure out how to add the new stuff into the mess I done up (I had to come up with my own conception for converting strings into formulas). I didn't really notice it was a problem before adding GMSC recently.

The value of assists to rebounds from a team stats perspective. I had to hand type out these numbers, I think my next goal will be to create a custom copy to clipboard option. Especially as my eyes weren't in a state that could see very well (slime coming out of them after an eye trauma; may also be from lack of sleep, my eyes tend to want to go slimy when I don't sleep).

Since offensive rebounds often corresponds to negative team shooting performance, I've isolated defensive rebounds.

This is the first time that I've examined it seriously on a team level (using the "ALL" search after processing out a full season to generate game stats with ""). I thought there might be some difference in valuation to player numbers but it appears more or less the same. The numbers are from the 2016-17 regular season.

I've grouped each bracket into a similar number of games between them. I started at the first bracket where the numbers had enough games to stabilize.

AST 36 (37.6): 31-3 (91.18%) +21.8 FG:54.21% DFG:44.54%
...means it is for 36 or more team assists in a game for an average of 37.6 team assists, corresponding with 31 wins and 3 losses -- 2.8% of all games -- and (win%) and a 21.8 points average winning marin. Then it shows the FG and DFG% which is self-explanatory. Assists inflates the FG% while defensive rebounds corresponds with lower opponent FG%. The league wide average FG% for that season was 45.72%.

It is clear assists are more valuable than defensive rebounds are (and even more so total rebounds due to their negative correlation with team performance). The idea of having two great passers (eg. Chris Paul and James Harden) or numerous good passers on the same team may be vastly beneficial in this way.

AST 36 (37.6): 31-3 (91.18%) +21.8 FG:54.21% DFG:44.54%
DRB 46 (47.6): 31-6 (83.78%) +15.6 FG:44.95% DFG:37.77%

AST 35 (36.9): 43-4 (91.49%) +20.1 FG:54.03% DFG:45.17%
DRB 45 (46.8): 44-9 (83.02%) +13.8 FG:44.57% DFG:38.03%

AST 34 (36.2): 55-6 (90.16%) +19.5 FG:53.86% DFG:45.27%
DRB 44 (46.1): 56-13 (81.16%) +13.1 FG:44.70% DFG:38.39%

AST 33 (35.3): 75-9 (89.29%) +17.2 FG:53.26% DFG:45.03%
AST 32 (34.3): 103-17 (85.83%) +15.2 FG:52.32% DFG:45.31%
DRB 43 (45.1): 83-20 (80.58%) +11.8 FG:44.57% DFG:38.78%

AST 31 (33.4): 145-23 (86.31%) +14.0 FG:51.79% DFG:45.42%
DRB 42 (44.1): 120-29 (80.54%) +10.8 FG:44.74% DFG:38.97%

AST 30 (32.5): 186-44 (80.87%) +12.1 FG:51.35% DFG:45.71%
DRB 41 (43.3): 163-45 (78.37%) +9.8 FG:44.80% DFG:39.42%

AST 29 (31.4): 252-74 (77.30%) +10.2 FG:50.72% DFG:45.86%
DRB 40 (42.2): 235-69 (77.30%) +9.2 FG:45.19% DFG:40.11%

AST 28 (30.7): 315-103 (75.36%) +9.7 FG:50.15% DFG:45.63%
DRB 39 (41.4): 306-104 (74.63%) +8.9 FG:45.62% DFG:40.68%

[dwayne2005]

It is custom formatting output for the 3 modes and the 2 types of stats for 2 of those 3 modes, so 5 of 6 overall. It is probably further than 83% complete though as that remaining one only requires a bit of research and tweaks to get working. What the custom formatting can't do at present is output team stats unless the team search is done. I've not committed those stats to a grid or an array, they just get processed as they go and at the moment can't be referenced after processing, and I am reluctant to increase the RAM usage by doing so unless over time I am persuaded it is needed. I am probably even less likely to devise a formula to pull it from the broader text output of the program. But you can get it to process out the custom results, so you could simply type in (OPFGM/OPFGA)*100 for the field below minutes for instance and format a custom output with |C02 to include the opposing teams shooting percent in the custom output.

I think I am getting faster and more efficient at programming. The idea is that eventually when you click on games, it'll bring up the game stats and from there there will be a button to coach a game where I'll implement my ideas for that. But I may look into other projects before I get there such as creating a customizable rogue game. I have actually no idea what the first thing I should do when approaching game management is. Got a feeling I should get straight into the clocks and have them work over the top of one another and then insert various things and then overlap them with your inputs. I propose a shout meter when you can shot instructions at players, for instance to shoot, and the player will respond. So you can influence the game to a degree beyond simply subbing players in and out and eventually choosing a fantasy line up.

[dwayne2005]

Latest version with customizable output (shift key):

http://www.mediafire.com/file/t20eknjle ... tatsDA.zip

For example, say I wanted to copy to clipboard the players name + the game in brackets plus PTS, REBS and ASTS for every game, I'd do this:

|CAP (|GAM): |PTS PTS, |TRB REBS, |AST ASTS

With CAP meaning it converts the players name to capital letters (the |NAM code does proper format).

This code differs depending on whether you are exporting the main game output or the splits input, and depending on whether you are doing the player search, the team search or the multi-player TMM or OPP searches. For instance, here the codes are 3 characters long. For the non-general player searches, the codes are 5 characters long, adding either TM or OP to the start of the code for team searches or a more complex P0, T1 or O1 for the multi-player searches.

For example, here's Jordan's triple doubles with assists, rebounds and points:

Code: Select all

MICHAEL JORDAN (850114CHIDENH): 35 PTS, 14 REBS, 15 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (850301CHINYKH): 21 PTS, 10 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (850317CHIMILH): 32 PTS, 11 REBS, 16 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (880102CHINJNH): 25 PTS, 10 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (880116CHIDETH): 36 PTS, 10 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890103CHILACH): 41 PTS, 10 REBS, 11 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890113CHIDENH): 38 PTS, 12 REBS, 11 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890131CHIDETH): 21 PTS, 12 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890313CHIINDH): 21 PTS, 14 REBS, 14 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890325SEACHIA): 21 PTS, 12 REBS, 12 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890328CHIGSWH): 33 PTS, 12 REBS, 11 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890329MILCHIA): 32 PTS, 10 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890331CHICLEH): 37 PTS, 10 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890402CHINJNH): 27 PTS, 14 REBS, 12 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890404CHICHHH): 33 PTS, 10 REBS, 12 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890406DETCHIA): 31 PTS, 13 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890409ATLCHIA): 40 PTS, 10 REBS, 12 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890413INDCHIA): 47 PTS, 11 REBS, 13 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890414NJNCHIA): 29 PTS, 10 REBS, 12 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890421CHIWSBH): 34 PTS, 14 REBS, 11 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (890509NYKCHIA): 34 PTS, 10 REBS, 12 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (900223CHIPORH): 35 PTS, 10 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (911206CHICHHH): 19 PTS, 11 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (920221ATLCHIA): 33 PTS, 10 REBS, 14 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (921209CHICLEH): 28 PTS, 11 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (921219CHIPHIH): 23 PTS, 10 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (921229CHHCHIA): 28 PTS, 12 REBS, 11 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (930115CHIGSWH): 26 PTS, 12 REBS, 10 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (930602NYKCHIA): 29 PTS, 10 REBS, 14 ASTS
MICHAEL JORDAN (970414CHITORH): 30 PTS, 11 REBS, 10 ASTS

I think I have also fixed in program customizable formulas (activated by right clicking the side of the range boxes). When you program in async operations, the program doesn't tell you what the variables need to be initialized as. I think it is -1. Seems to work this way.

If I wanted to post what the rebound counts were for the Cavs in games Isaiah Thomas played in, and how it corresponded to his number of misses, I'd need to enter custom formulas to pull the team stats as it isn't currently stored in memory. So if I right click on the MINS label to the left of the range boxes, I enter TMTRB and enter it twice and select 1 to force it to average in the splits tab. I then right click on the FGM button and set that custom formula to OPTRB and set it to 1. I then right click on FGA and set it PLFGA-PLFGM and set it to 1 also. These three custom formulas correspond to C02, C03 and C04 (C00 and C01 are the per minute plus minus scores and I haven't properly made them customizable yet). The data needs to be reprocessed and I haven't implemented an ideal way of doing this yet so just click P/G to set it to per minute stats and back again.

I then enter this code:
|CAP (|GAM): |DIF |C02-|C03 REBS |C04 MISSES

I copy it to notepad and add in a few spaces to balance things out and voila:

Code: Select all

ISAIAH THOMAS (180102CLEPORH):   17   40-43 REBS   6 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180106ORLCLEA):    4   45-46 REBS   6 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180108MINCLEA):  -28   37-56 REBS   8 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180111TORCLEA):  -34   35-63 REBS  13 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180115CLEGSWH):  -10   43-48 REBS  13 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180118CLEORLH):    1   46-42 REBS   9 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180120CLEOKCH):  -24   28-52 REBS   6 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180123SASCLEA):  -12   41-45 REBS   6 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180126CLEINDH):    7   44-37 REBS   8 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180128CLEDETH):   17   45-43 REBS   7 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180130DETCLEA):  -11   41-47 REBS   7 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180131CLEMIAH):    2   45-52 REBS  13 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180203CLEHOUH):  -32   47-53 REBS   8 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180206ORLCLEA):  -18   36-50 REBS  10 MISSES
ISAIAH THOMAS (180207CLEMINH):    2   41-35 REBS   4 MISSES

It is clear that in several blow outs the issue was Cleveland's rebounding, and it didn't always rise in relation to the number of misses Isaiah was getting.

I noticed that I was getting it to check the wrong location to see whether or not it should extract the archives, this slowed down non-initial searches. That is fixed now.

My old monitor died and now I'm experimenting around with enlarging text on the display, the programs interface looks even more nightmarish as it stretches everything and makes the numbers huge. I'll address that by giving a customizable shrink value for the .ini in the future.

[dwayne2005]

I had to take it down to a few bugs.

In the last day, I've found a few slow down oversights but have gotten a massive speed increase by redistributing the load. For example, when I first generate a players stats for his 70/80 games in a single season, the program calculates the game stats and saves them to a file. In order to do this, I need to loop between all the files for every game for every player. On subsequent searches of this same data, it just pulls the stats from file to speed things up and this surplus of information is not needed. But I kept it anyway because it fed into the TMM and OPP searches: they need the team mate and opponent stats. I also didn't think it would help that much.

But I have hopes to implement the ability to compare what a player is averaging around his rivals games probably with a customizable days between date so you can see how the averages may differ. In order to do this, I needed a new operation to import data, and that's what I worked on.

And what did I get? I may just be delusional, but it seemed like I was processing 20 seasons of Michael Jordan in 30 seconds on my slow laptop using the 60% as fast as YYC Gamemaker compiler! I observed it twice. Maybe it was on the same load as a previous full search and something I done was just getting it to pull the data, I will find out in a few hours but I'm under the impression after the initial search searches are now about 1/6th where they were. Indeed, the loading searches took 2 seconds as opposed to 8 seconds prior. Some of this was also a result of an oversight with the extraction of the archives.

On the other hand, TMM and OPP searches have now been made slower. There are things I can do to speed them up still.

I've fixed a lot of recent days, and also implemented a TMS search to flip between a player and his team stats (already provided on the display, but the team stats search allows ranges and custom splits based on that data).

[dwayne2005]

The career output is down from 123 seconds on the second past to 13 or 14 seconds (the two times I tested it at on fresh boots). Such an amazing improvement means I won't be going back. Single season searches are down from 8 seconds to 2 seconds. If I pregenerated all game output in the program, those are the times you'd expect. That said, the TMM and OPP searches are completely broken for careers. It doesn't just quadruple the time, before it was generated a TMM search in about 3 minutes and I left it for about 45 minutes and it still hadn't been done. There must be something I've done wrong.

BEFORE

Full single season player output: 12 seconds (first pass which generates game data from player data) / 8 seconds (second pass)
Team mate output, one season (1 game requirement): 2 seconds
Opponent output, one season (1 game requirement): 53 seconds
All season output: 137 seconds (first pass) / 102 seconds (second pass)
Michael Jordan, full career output including playoffs: 151 seconds (first pass) / 123 seconds (second pass)
Michael Jordan, full career team mate output (1 game requirement): 183 seconds
Michael Jordan, full career opponent output (20 game requirement): 331 seconds
Michael Jordan, full career opponent output (10 game requirement): 1185 seconds
Michael Jordan, full career opponent output (1 game requirement): 2.5 hours (loops over the data many, many times)

NOW

Full single season player output: 9 seconds (first pass which generates game data from player data) / 2 seconds (second pass)
Team mate output, one season (1 game requirement): 9 seconds
Opponent output, one season (1 game requirement): 57 seconds
All season output: 171 seconds (first pass) / 141 seconds (second pass)
Michael Jordan, full career output including playoffs: 133 seconds (first pass) / 14 seconds (second pass)
Michael Jordan, full career team mate output (1 game requirement): ?
Michael Jordan, full career opponent output (20 game requirement): -
Michael Jordan, full career opponent output (10 game requirement): -
Michael Jordan, full career opponent output (1 game requirement): -

[dwayne2005]

I've integrated all the rest of the seasons and made the main program work the basic stats for players before 1985. Still some formatting issues and getting it to work with other operations, but I think I am going to take that break soon. I found the last several month long break really good. I learn more when I pull away from it.

I have begun trying to get randomization for a rogue-like game. This game will be more rogue than rogue-like, traditional rogue not just any game that has randomized features and permadeath. Since I am not a digital artist, I'm just going to make it out of ASCII and if I ever get it near finalized I'll add icons.

I am going to mix a bit of everything, and it is going to be unique. You will start off in a modern city. You will be able to venture the randomized world. You will be able to move between city and suburbia. I will create a flexible and fully customizable random generation of rooms and buildings that will also allow for placing buildings in blocks. You will be able to comit crime a little, so in that respect it will be like Grand Theft Auto.

For instance, to start with I imagine you on a city foot path with citizens going by. It will mix real turn with turn based. People will move around you in real time and the only ones who will be turn based are the ones who are in combat. If you walk into pedestrians, you will pass through. If you arm your fists or another weapon and walking into pedestrians, you will start a turn based fight. Cops may be called, especially if the violence is more extreme. Cars will still move by in real time, maybe slow to take a look. You will be able to comit store robberies.

I have never seen a rogue game set in modern times, GTA style. Organized crime is possible. But there is going to be more, lots more. Time travel will be possible. Altering the future will be possible. Let's say I create an alternate future event in World War 2: assassinate Hitler. Then you travel forward in time. My theory is not the rosey future most people see. Most people imagine killing Hitler would have ended untold suffering. But for me, this gives me a chance to create a post apocalyptic future for when you return. You see, if we had never learnt any lesson (at least for a time) from the suffering in World War 2, we might have delayed such a lesson until a decade or 3 later. My theory is we'd still develop nuclear weapons. Without the lessons of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we might have entered a nuclear war.

But I don't know... Would we still have the Cold War without WW2? Even if Hitler were defeated, Japan would probably still have continued in the Pacific. It may depend on timing. September 27, 1940 is when they signed the Tripartite Pact, maybe in theory Japan wouldn't have been as emboldened to continue the same scale of warfare that followed if it had ended before then. Anyway, it's just a game. It will be fully customizable so users can create their own alternate time lines and trigger events.

I fully plan on it being far more ancient than that. I want to be able to cross through all time and deal with mythological and real adversaries like a common rogue game. I am trying to learn a fair bit about history and view it as something enriching getting intimate with the past and past beliefs even if the game fails. Imagine pulling back ancient artifacts and selling them to fund your organized crime ring in the future. Imagine an alternate future with zombies. I will be doing it all. And I will be trying to get rather more closer to rogue games than rogue-likes in terms of actions and inventories.

I want to make the user control parties, but in a rogue-like way. For instance, I imagine controlling a party with a single icon, but also being able to detach people from this party. In order to encapsulate it in a single icon, the icon must grow relative everything else or everything else must shrink relative it. You will be limited as to how many people can accompany you depending of if you're exploring buildings or dungeons, for instance. The party system will be the level up. You won't become godlike to adversaries, you become godlike because your party becomes stronger. Some individual level upping will occur. There will be loss of limbs and bleeding out.

It will honor time travel fiction. I imagine the time travel machine being a telephone box like Bill and Ted's or Doctor Who. (That's what makes time travel impossible today; no telephone boxes!) I imagine something that may expand interiors like a Tardis, but not necessarily in the telephone box.

I do have a drive here. Now that I mentioned it, people will probably steal my ideas.

[dwayne2005]

I did go on to make a game, just a generic numbers and anagram type game based on the contest show, mostly known for its British version Countdown. Never finished that because I had to amass the credits for all the public domain pictures and music I used and just go too lazy. It did help me isolate and perfect my mathematical side to my program, but I have gotten lazy and haven't updated it in over 6 months. Am learning Untiy and have taken my first steps towards learning C#.

I am still very motivated, it's just I'm motivated in many things and will find the time to do things eventually.

[dwayne2005]

If I do make a rogue-like game, the ideas evolved when I had my initial flirtation with it and I think 100% real time is the only way forward. It is not only better, but easier. I had many ideas. It isn't about executing all those ideas, it is about dreaming and inventing. Not everything will find a place, but see where the dreaming takes you. I have other dreams right now in the gaming area, including a very customizable historical basketball similation.

By very flexible, I mean being able to transform basketball into various forms ranging from netball to basketball. Completely changing the rules. Having caged basketball. Violent (foulless) basketball. Etc. Something that may work with the numbers, and later graphically. And then maybe evolve into a proper game. Not something I can ever execute (I have no artistic abilities to create player models, and to this date I have zero experience in programming AI), but something I can dream about executing, something to motivate me that may never see the light of day. I find it very different to be motivated due to mental cruelties in my environment (and for the last 20 years of my life) so I keep the silly stuff alive.

Learning at this point in my life is like quicksand, and having these silly ideas is a branch. It's not a huge incentive, it is just to give me a fighting chance.

[dwayne2005]

Actually, dreaming of having a basketball game that can range from netball to fantasy basketball including violence is the best way to learn about AI, I think. It may seem strange, since I have to have an AI that adapts to any number of customizable rules and must play very differently, but it tells you how to create the AI. Every option has it's own AI. For example, starting with original basketball where the boundaries were probably walls and there was probably no out of bounds and change it to where out of bounds equals a violation: create a singular AI that does one thing: tells it that stepping out of bounds is bad. Then build upon that. Saving the ball is good if out of bounds goes to the team who didn't knock it out of bounds. Believe it or not, the original rules due to a lack of rules awarded the ball to the first player who could grab it whether or not they hit it out of bounds. AI will need to be set for that.

Don't think of a complex singular AI for a singular game, but think of many different simple AI for many different rules and then have that AI converge into one. I must admit I know nothing about netball and korfball and they have little interest visually to me, but if I ever do stuff I will put time into researching it. I have a extremely good title for the game but you're not stealing it from me. You may steal my ideas, but you will not steal my title! It's obvious. It's simple. It's perfect.

Even if it is too ambitious and I fail, I learn all about creating AI for other pursuits and I learn about the history of basketball. So it's win-win.

Yes, this is part of the reason why I am entertaining the notion volleyball may have been derived from an aspect of the way the original game may have been played. We assume we know how basketball was played because we have netball. We assume from that that there was no slapping passes. We know the second rule involved just that, but we assume they're talking about shot blocking. It would be tough to assume there was volleying in basketball as it would have been too slow for a pass and too inaccurate for a shot, but even the original volleyball wasn't even named that. Volleying wasn't always seen as the defining aspect of that sport. We assume that batting the ball about with the hands is wrong for basketball because basketballs weight a lot more than volleyballs, but again that is an assumption and an incorrect assumption that basketballs were heavy balls when basketball was invented: they weren't, they were late 19th century soccer balls. We ASSUME. That's all it is: assumptions. Basketball served as inspiration for volleyball and I suspect the assumptions are wrong that basketball had no role in how the sport is played. I am evaluating it, it won't necessarily make it into my dream project, but it is one possibility. It could be that a natural extension will be to have a volleyball/basketball hybrid.

EDIT: One type of basketball that I miss from recesses at school was being violently thrust into the wall which also served as the backboard and the metal nets that encircled the courts. I miss all on all 21 where you could have 15 players all playing one on one on one on one ... against one another.