DWJukebox

The jukebox work I am doing right now is not very interesting; it’s all debugging work so it’s not worth blogging about.  So I thought I’d take a moment and talk about a completely unrelated project that I’ve been involved in for over five years, nearly as long as I’ve worked on the jukebox.  That project is Sim Dynasty.

Sim Dynasty is a fantasy baseball simulation.  Unlike traditional fantasty baseball, where you form teams based on the performance of real Major Leaguers, in Sim Dynasty you draft from a set of completely generated players, set your lineups and management strategies, and the Artificial Baseball Engine (We call it “Abe”) drive the simulation plays out the games three times a day (more often in the paid Private or Speed leagues).  You can watch the games play out play-by-play similar to an ESPN GameCast.  The single season leagues are completely free to play; the pay multi-season Dynasty leagues, however, are where the game gets really interesting, because you draft new young talent every year, decide who to put development resources on, and try to work your way into multi-season league dominance.

I discovered Sim Dynasty when it was first being developed, before it even went into beta test.  I have to admit the first time I ever saw “fantasy baseball” I thought a game where the games are actually played out would be much more fun, but after a while I decided that it just wouldn’t fly.  Well, there I was seeing someone else give it a go.  So I spoke to the creator, Tyson Lowery, and he let me in for the earliest beta tests.  To be honest, I was surprised; I told him right up front he was creating the game I’d always dreamed of creating, and I’m sure part of him was wondering if I was there to steal all his ideas.

So I started out with testing, discussing some ideas and working out some concepts, doing some artwork, and then finally my biggest contribution to the site: the play-by-play DynastyVision display.  I’m personally pretty proud of this bit of code,  so I feel a bit justified in showing it off. 

DynastyVision is easily the most complicated bit of DHTML I’ve ever written, partially because when it first came out there was no “data” to work with so it actually had to parse the text of the play-by play code.

You can click this link to watch a game played out in DynastyVision if you like; this link goes to a beta version so some of the text colors are a bit off. 

If you have any interest in baseball, please give Sim Dynasty a try.  The season has already started, so you’ll join a “short-season” league at this point (seasons start every two months). Again, it’s completely free to play for single seasons.  If you do give it a shot, post a comment here and let us know what league you end up in.

We now return you to your regular jukebox development blog, already in progress.

Filed under: Development Blog