New Features on Version 16

1) SUPPORT FOR DOUBLE-DUTY PLAYERS HAS BEEN ADDED - On rare occasion a player will receive two cards for one team in Strat-O-Matic, a batting card and a pitching card. We call these players "Double-Duty" players in honor of Negro League legend Double Duty Radcliffe. Supporting a player who has two cards was a significant challenge to program. Adding this support affected code throughout the entire program including the Eligible Players Screen, the Pre-game Setup Window, the Lineup Screen, Extensive Game Play changes, Team and Player Stats packages, etc. As an example of the types of changes that were made, all batting stats for a double-duty player will now appear in their batting totals in the stats package. Previously his batting stats would have been split between his batting totals (when using his hitting card) and the generic “ALL PITCHERS” category in the batting statistics reports (when using his Pitcher’s Hitting card).

2) SOCIAL MEDIA - TWITTER AND FACEBOOK SUPPORT HAVE BEEN ADDED - Share your Strat-O-Matic Exploits with the world! You can post a Social Media message directly from the League Manager using the "File / Post to Twitter-Facebook" command. In addition, if you select the appropriate Miscellaneous Options the game will automatically generate a message at the start and/or end of each manual game that you can post.

3) UPnP SUPPORT - An option has been added to use Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), if it is available with your router. If your hardware supports UPnP it will make Netplay easier to setup.

4) SUPPORT HAS BEEN ADDED FOR A NEW SADV RELIEF PITCHER FATIGUE RULE - This rule prevents relievers from returning too soon after pitching a large number of innings. Here is the text of the rule (which is rule 27.65 in the board game)- If a reliever pitches 2 or more innings above his relief fatigue rating then he must rest one day before his next appearance. If he pitches 3 or more innings above his relief fatigue rating then he must rest two days before his next appearance. If a relief pitcher is used without this proper amount of rest, consider him fatigued for the entire relief outing.

5) BOX SCORES - Now list 2-out RBIs.

6) CHECK LEAGUE DATABASE - This new function on the League menu checks and optionally rebuilds the league database should it ever get corrupted.

7) LEAGUE LEADERS - The League Leaders report now shows traded player's current team codes instead of asterisks. For example, a traded player who is currently on Cincinnati will have "CIN" and the team code instead of "***".

8) AUTOPLAY NOW FASTER - Autoplay speed has been improved since V15.

9) CUT-OFF RULE PLAY-BY-PLAY - Improved play-by-play on the cut-off play as it relates to throwing errors when the ball was cut off.

10) COMPUTER MANAGER - The Computer Manager has been changed so that it now recalculates whether or not to hold the runners and how to position the infield defense whenever a substitution is made. This will make for more realistic strategy when the offensive manager pinch-hits or pinch runs.

11) IMPROVED GAME STORIES – The game stories on the box score have been improved -- many new phrases have been added. This will make the game stories more unique and varied.

12) SAC BUNT DESCRIPTIONS IMPROVED - Improved dialog and play-by-play text for sacrifice bunts. The text "lead runner" has been replaced with "runner trying for 2nd base" (for example) which helps avoid confusion when there is also a runner on third base.

13) MVP AWARD - The MVP Award voting has been adjusted so that it more realistically reflected the chance for a Starting Pitcher to win the award.

14) SQUEEZE PLAY IMPROVEMENTS - Reworked the Squeeze Play strategy chart when the winning run is on third base so that all plays now occur at home plate. In these situations readings of SPEED, SAC, and BAD always result in plays at the plate.

15) BOX SCORE IMPROVEMENT - The "scoresheet" heading and data is now only shown when an associated scoresheet is going to be displayed.

16) END OF GAME PLAY-BY-PLAY - Added code and play-by-play text to improve the end-of-game play-by-play presentation.

17) RARE PLAYS - Improved the play-by-play for certain rare plays to make it more situation-aware.

18) CD-ROM NO LONGER NEEDED! - The CD-ROM no longer needs to be inserted in order to Install Rosters.

19) BUGS FIXED
· If a number of manual games were played consecutively without shutting down the program there was a bug that could result in the disappearance of games off the schedule.
· Use of Auto Batch Report Creation was also resulting in the loss of games from the schedule under certain circumstances.
· Use of Auto Batch Reports was preventing more than one game from running in autoplay for some leagues.
· On occasion the eligible list of players was being overwritten before Netplay games.
· For playoff games, starting pitchers were not being selected according to the computer manager rotations.
· When restoring saved games or using the delete last play the pitcher's allowable pitch count was sometimes incorrect.
· When attempting to get a lead and a pickoff attempt was the result the play by play didn't mention that a pickoff had been attempted.
· The Export Statistics function was not exporting stats for all players.
· The Encyclopedia's Pitcher Register was only showing the data for one pitcher.
· Web Builder was not working properly for players whose name is hyphenated (the team would not display).
· The Game Story would sometimes say that a runner on 3rd stole home when in fact he scored on an error by the catcher when trying to throw out the runner on 1st stealing 2nd.
· Fixed crash that occurred when restoring saved game files.
· Fixed a problem with the cut-off rule where an error could occur after the winning run had already scored.
· Added code to prevent Game Files and Subset Files from being exported to invalid directories (they cannot be exported to the Export, Exported, or Subsets folders).
· Fixed a problem in the All Star Game creation that was leaving the top vote-getting pitcher off of the team.
· If a team played less than 162 games in real-life their actual to-date record was showing more games then they played in the League Standings report at year's end.
· If the first batter a reliever faced reached base on a Strikeout plus Wild Pitch (or Passed Ball) then you could not remove the reliever until that reliever faced another batter.
· On base runner interference (G1-RP on Super-Advanced fielding chart) the base runners on 2nd and 3rd were moving up but this was incorrect - they should stay on their base.
· Changed the Save Chat Dialog in Netplay to say "Save" instead of "Open".
· The Update Player dialog has been improved so that it doesn't exit if a player update is invalid. Instead the dialog stays open allowing you to fix the problem.
· Long install pathnames were causing crashes when restoring a league.

20) SUPPORT FOR NEW SEASONS - Support for the new 2010, Baseball Hall of Fame 2010, Baseball Heroes, 1876, 1880, 1885, and 1893 seasons has been added.

21) BALLPARK PHOTOS
· 4 New ballparks pictures - Minnesota (day and night), Seattle (day and night)
· 36 new ballpark entry pictures - Baltimore-7, Houston-1, Los Angeles(AL)-5, Minnesota-7, San Francisco-6, Seattle-3, Texas-2, Washington-5

22) ROSTER IMPROVEMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
An amazing effort by the ROSTER CORRECTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS TEAM brings you these upgraded rosters. (But I am deleting all the specifics because they really don't matter to us one bit.)

23) 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!
· All 30 teams files edited and updated for 2010 season. Note: this requires the purchase of the optional team specific play-by-play disk.