Improved "Shuffle Rosters" for new leagues

May 28, 2016-

Basketball GM has long supported a "Shuffle Rosters" option when you start a new league from a file. However it kind of sucked, because it would randomly shuffle players on all teams along with free agents, often leaving tons of really good players as free agents.

Now, it will only shuffle players actually signed to teams, leaving free agents alone. This is possibly still not ideal -- maybe it would be better to shuffle in comparably rated free agents while not changing the overall talent distribution -- but it's a hell of a lot better than it used to be.

I tested it using this user-made NBA roster file, and the Warriors got what they deserved to balance off the universe. Their best player was Jameer Nelson and they wound up with the worst record in the league.

Game simulation performance improvements

April 12, 2016-

Performance in leagues with many seasons has long been an embarrassment to me. It should be faster. And as of today, it's at least a little better. Game simulation is now a little slower in new leagues but significantly faster in leagues with many seasons. Although it might be about 5% slower in a new league, the performance improvements are pretty big in old leagues. For example, leagues with 50 seasons are about 25% faster. And that number keeps getting bigger with more seasons.

Now I'm not claiming all performance problems are solved. It still gets slower the longer you play, and that still sucks. But the rate at which it gets slower has just been decreased a bit.

Read more...

New options in God Mode

February 6, 2016-

At the God Mode screen (accessible from the Tools menu), there are now 10 new options you can use to customize your league:

Previously these things were all impossible (or very difficult) to change.

The caveat is, the AI might not respond well if you change some of these values drastically, particularly the financial ones. But hopefully it's still better than nothing. Let me know how you like it!

Injuries can have long-term effects

January 31, 2016-

Previously, injuries in Basketball GM had no lasting effects. Once a player healed, he was good as new. In the real world, we know that's not true.

So now, in Basketball GM, serious injuries (over 25 games) can result in decreased athleticism, depending on the severity of the injury and some luck. As an example, someone who gets a 100 game injury (probably a torn ACL) will have a 50% chance of making a complete recovery, but also a 67% chance of losing between 0 and 10 points of his speed, jumping, and endurance ratings, and also a very small chance of a much larger catastrophic decrease. Each of those losses is independent, so someone might lose 1 speed, 9 jumping, and 3 endurance. Let me know if you think these numbers are too big or too small.

Two million seasons!

December 28, 2015-

Just 9 months ago, Basketball GM crossed the one million seasons played threshold. Today the two millionth season of Basketball GM was played!

Here are some interesting statistics at this milestone:

So it took 2 years for the first million, 9 months for the second million... how long for the next million?

Fixes to player positions, heights, and weights

May 21, 2015-

    As Jalen Rose likes to say, positions were just created so a novice can follow the game. For that reason, positions don't actually mean anything in Basketball GM. They give you an idea about what a player can do (PGs can handle the ball and pass, Cs are big guys who play inside, ...). But there is no rigid position system. You don't need to start exactly one PG, SG, SF, PF, and C. You just need to start guys with all the skills needed to play winning basketball.

    However, the positions setting algorithm has long been an embarrassment. That is now fixed. You should see more reasonable position labels for your players, and positions change over time as players age and their skillsets change. You can see the past positions for a player by looking in the ratings table on the overall Player Ratings page or on individual player pages.

    (One exception: if you're using a custom roster you downloaded from somewhere, player positions won't change over time, because that seems to create too much confusion if the custom roster has weird player ratings in it.)

    Similarly, the displayed heights and weights of players also don't really matter (the hgt rating does, though) and they were kind of weird as well. They should be a little less weird now.

    All of this should have very little impact on gameplay, but should make it look slightly more realistic, which is important.

    NBA Bracketology - predict the NBA playoffs and win $20! No entry fee!

    April 16, 2015-

      We're all NBA fans here, right? You might have noticed that the playoffs are starting soon. Brackets are super fun for college basketball, so why not the NBA too?

      If you want to give it a shot, join my group at NBA Bracketology. To make it interesting, I'll give $20 to the winner. No entry fee. It's free money! Come on, fill out a bracket.

      Customize random player names

      March 29, 2015-

      By default, Basketball GM uses random American names taken from the US Census. However if you’re making a custom league file designed to represent a basketball league in another country, it is annoying when the new players generated in your league all have names like "John Smith".

      Now, when creating a League File, you have the ability to define the list of names used for randomly generated players. For more info, check out the documentation.

      New feature: Multi Team Mode

      March 21, 2015-

      Today I added a new feature to Basketball GM called Multi Team Mode. Multi Team Mode lets you to control multiple teams within a league in the same way that you control one team by default. This enables a few new ways of playing Basketball GM:

      To try Multi Team Mode, create a new league or load an existing league. Enable God Mode (in the Tools menu) and then a new option called Multi Team Mode will appear in the Tools menu. Click that and it will let you select one or more teams to control.

      Read more...

      One million seasons!

      March 18, 2015-

      Today the one millionth season of Basketball GM was played! This is incredible! So far beyond what I ever imagined possible.

      Here are some interesting statistics at this milestone:

      I started tracking the number of seasons played about 2 years ago. But I don't think it will take another 2 years to get another million seasons!