PC Recommend and standardised mods

[Alberts]

A week or so ago I talked to @BigAntStudios about the idea to have a 'Planet Cricket Recommended' to go along side 'Get Best' for the Cricket Academy. Since then I'd been thinking about how mod standardization could be achieved overall for game, and having such a 'PC Recommended' option would be a great base to build off. At this point, differences in the academy can cause choas with some modding and lead to a lot of manual work for anyone who downloads them.

From here though the question comes to the assets, and methods to extend them. At this point there are issues with kits in that there are only a set number of templates, meaning that having kits for all the teams would be quite difficult to say the least. This comes to the idea of some kind of ID system, something that could be build into the academy with a system for generation of new ones. Using this for badges, kits and such could allow for a lot of more options, particularly in the creation of new teams (which could also be added to a standard 'PC Recommended'). But the method for such a system would need to be carefully done.

What I would suggest is to start off by creating IDs for all the on disc sides, then allowing people through the academy to create new ones with something like a "create new ID option", which using the online components of the academy, could make sure that any new ID is unused. In particular, new ID creation could be useful for kits, as you could have sub IDs for multiple new kits, facilitating things such as historic kits for any nation or club. Say you had Australia as 12345 as the ID, you could then have the kits have IDs such as 12345x000, 12345x001, etc. By not limiting them as well (that is, 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000 and 1x1, 10x1, 10x10, 10000x100000000 all being valid), it would allow for near infinite addition to the game.

Unique IDs, particularly for kits, could allow people to not only create their kits, but also have no clashes with other assets, again, improving the ease of modding.

In any case, I'm sure that BigAnt have something in the works, I just thought I'd share some thoughts while they're on my mind.

 

[Deleted member 9102]

Yeah I agree, some sort of system such as that would be really useful.

Hopefully quite soon we'll be able to add content to the game rather than replacing things, as well as a greater variety of things to mod - pitchads, boundary ropes, adboards etc.

Some sort of system that chooses the textures to be used based on the teams and the match type would be great too - like if you play an ENG v AUS test match in England, you get the stumps etc used in the Ashes in England, but if you play it in Australia then you get the ones used there. Likewise for ODI, T20s, competitions etc.

 

[zeustrojanstark]

Actually this is not a bug but is it possible to remove the unwanted created players from the online server for Cricket Academy because there are close to 3000 players and it is difficult to check and replace all, it will be easier if the best versions are alone released or probably if this cannot be done, an alphabetical sorting of the names will be fine i reckon.

 

[MattW]

I've attached a file of a proposed set of logo replacements - I'm fairly sure I've kept with all the changes that @Alberts made for his original logo pack, and basing other teams off what's in the academy.

I believe for a good number of these teams you won't need to make changes.

I'm in the process of building a logo pack on the basis of these, in the design of what I posted earlier.

 

[Alberts]

I've attached a file of a proposed set of logo replacements - I'm fairly sure I've kept with all the changes that @Alberts made for his original logo pack, and basing other teams off what's in the academy.

I believe for a good number of these teams you won't need to make changes.

I'm in the process of building a logo pack on the basis of these, in the design of what I posted earlier.

Interesting. We should definitely keep to a standard for these for the time being. I'll keep to these logo replacements if I'm to add these as well.

At the moment I'm trying to find a way to clean up some of the worse source files. At the moment I'm looking into a standard way to vectorise the images, and getting okay results so far. Need more practice though.

I think it'll be good to give people a choice between a pack with some after affects and some which are just clean, as they were in style. Personally I rather basic as they were style, but I've seen, particularly in the football manager community, that people like slightly stylised sets as well.

It's all about the variations and the options.

 

[FrankChickens1]

Is there a need for the developers to implement a lot of new/blank sponsors? I feel like it wont be long until I have to choose which e.g. bat or kit mods are installed

 

[Alberts]

I've attached a file of a proposed set of logo replacements - I'm fairly sure I've kept with all the changes that @Alberts made for his original logo pack, and basing other teams off what's in the academy.

I believe for a good number of these teams you won't need to make changes.

I'm in the process of building a logo pack on the basis of these, in the design of what I posted earlier.

In preparation for my extended pack, for the Caribbean Premier Legaue:

Antigua Hawkbills: Logo_30
Barbados Tridents: ll_b
Guyana Amazon: logo_27
Jamaica Tallawags: logo_48
St Lucia Zouks: ll_a
T&T Red Steel: logo_35

 

[MattW]

I had a thought regarding kit modding - I think it would be really good if kit makers could create and share a team which contains the uniforms preconfigured.

There's the 'Copy Uniform from Another Team' option when on the uniform editing screen - so if you put all of the uniforms that match the ones you've created, with the right templates and colours chosen, and then you copied from that into the respective teams, all you'd need to do after that is choose the right sponsor and set the defaults.

In the cases that people needed to rename kit files to use different ones from different users, swapping the choice of template is easier than getting all the colours correct.

A descriptive team name with your username and 'kits' would help people find it in the academy - and we could also give it a rating.