[Cricket Career V2] Introduction, News and Updates

[sohum]

What is it?
Cricket Career V2 is a web-based cricket career game that I began work on about a year or more back. It has gone through a half iteration and I have now began with a fresh codebase as I realized the original version was not very extensible.

The basic structure of Cricket Career is as follows. You start out as a club cricketer for some state/county/domestic team. Each such team will have 8 Division I club teams and 8 Division II club teams. Thus these club teams will be vying for the opportunity to win their domestic club competitions. Good performance may result in a call-up to the domestic team, where a contract may be awarded to represent the domestic team in the local domestic competitions (for example the Ranji Trophy and other domestic competitions in India).

International competitions will be taking place concurrently, and players can also be selected for junior-level international tournaments, A and B teams, etc. The ultimate goal is to get selected to the national team and earn a contract.

The game will feature items ranging from bats to protective equipment. Money can be earned by completing different scenarios or by getting lucky. Match fees are also paid for games where players are selected. Extended good performances can also result in sponsorship offers from different companies which can also involve items (such as bat sponsorships).

Scenarios will involve things mundane things such as scoring a certain number of runs or taking a certain number of wickets to get items or money, and also more exciting and dangerous things such as fixing a match or taking drugs to speed up recovery from injuries. Speaking of injuries, there will also be an in-built training system which allows users to select training activities and intensity levels. Over-intensity causes injuries but under-intensity may cause skills to deteriorate.

Simulation Engines
There will be three simulation engines: Unlimited Overs, Limited overs and Twenty20. Unlimited overs simulation engine will be used to simulate first class and Test matches. Limited overs will be used to simulate 40 and 50 over games and Twenty20 engine will be used to simulate Twenty20 games.

The unlimited overs simulation will simulate one day at a time so that users will be able to analyze their performance on a day-by-day basis and adjust their aggression accordingly. There will unfortunately not be a live-adjustment and the simulation will be completely algorithmic, with some initial user input.

The limited overs and Twenty20 engines will simulate those games. The dynamics will be much more different.

The simulation engine will be much more specific this time around and will include also include extras. The facility will also be allowed to add commentary easily. If I have time, I am planning to work on an intelligent commentary system that will attempt to algorithmically construct commentary sentences that sound human. This requires quite a bit of research, though.

Statisics/Records
Every performance by every player is stored and there will be an interface to view statistics for different players. I plan to make the statistics interface very StatsGuru like (Cricinfo) so that users can drill down on their statistics very specifically.

There will be a record-viewing interface as well so that one can view the top performers in all forms of the game.

This sounds kind of like Indian Cricket Career...
Cricket Career V2 is a complete revamp of Indian Cricket Career, threads for which you may have seen around in this forum. You may have even participated in the initial pre-beta test that was offered to members on the forum who had a chance to test-drive the game and it's many flaws. I have taken many of the suggestions brought by users and hope to implement them more extensively in this version, where I have began coding from scratch.

Questions/Comments?
If you have any questions or comments, please include them in this thread. I will be enquiring about the possibility of having a dedicated forum to this game, but I presume that will be subject to how much progress I can make over the next couple of months. Everyone who helped with data collection in Indian Cricket Career shouldn't be unhappy because I will be using much of the same data in this game. There are more skill parameters, though, so I will be randomly assigning these values.

Also, since I will probably again concentrate on the Indian aspect to start with, please do go on ahead to http://www.cricketcareer.net/ where I am still accepting names for clubs.

 

[ZoraxDoom]

Yay, its back...sort of...

How is it going to be different?

 

[sohum]

Yay, its back...sort of...

How is it going to be different?

That's a good question. I hope the biggest difference will be that the project will be completed. Secondly, I'm programming it much more abstractly so that I won't get tied down to a design that cannot be extended internationally.

However, much of the difference will be in the inner workings of the game. It's much more flexible. I was writing a lot of code multiple times in the previous one--this is not the case as much.

I'm also redesigning the front-end completely. So the actual interface will be completely different. The simulation engine also was quite buggy in that it didn't really simulate cricket as much as it just looked at probabilities. I'm hoping to rectify this.

 

[Allrounder18]

Great looking forward to it .

 

[Left_Hander]

Sounds interesting. Good luck!

 

[sohum]

I've worked extensively on the UnlimitedOversEngine today, after a long time. This is one of the bigger changes of this project--it is completely different from the engine used in Indian Cricket Career. It's not even 20% complete at the moment, but the end product will allow matches to be simulated one day at a time.

This is how the simulation works:

1. The bowler decides a place to bowl the ball (depending on the batsman) and chooses to bowl a certain type of delivery. The ball is "delivered to the batsman" with a few parameters (such as speed, spin, swing, etc.).

2. The batsman plays a shot against the ball. The batsman essentially chooses a type of shot (front foot/back foot) and an area to hit it. He can also control the power. The shot is given a timing depending on several factors (for example, batsman confidence).

3. The ball is "played". This is where the hardest part of the system arises--how to decide what happens when the ball is played. Essentially, I am planning to use "strategies" to decide this. Strategy is basically like Attacking, or Defensive. There'll also be complex strategies like Chasing total, Avoiding follow on, Preventing lead, etc. Depending on the strategy there will be field placings and depending on the generated power and timing of the shot, and the above strategies, the runs will be scored.

This is a much more ambitious effort at simulating the game of cricket compared to the last one which basically generated a random number based on a probability which was based on differences in the skillsets of the batsman and bowler. I'm hoping this version will be more accurate. It is also quite a programming challenge!

The UnlimitedOversEngine should be the hardest, since it needs to be quite abstract and support many strategies. On the other hand, the OneDay and Twenty20 engines should be much more straightforward.

 

[svijay]

This is a much more ambitious effort at simulating the game of cricket compared to the last one which basically generated a random number based on a probability which was based on differences in the skillsets of the batsman and bowler. I'm hoping this version will be more accurate. It is also quite a programming challenge!

The UnlimitedOversEngine should be the hardest, since it needs to be quite abstract and support many strategies. On the other hand, the OneDay and Twenty20 engines should be much more straightforward.

I guess you're trying to make a nuanced case for the outcome for every ball, but it seems to me that at the end of the day, what you have is "just" a probability distribution based on some (user-specified?) level of aggression and the current state of the game. As long as your random number generation takes those factors into account in addition to the difference in the skill-levels of the batsman and the bowler, it should hold up well. (I assume you are not working with a static skill-level, but a mean and standard deviation for the batsman as well as the bowler.)

Since this is essentially a management game (even if it is managing yourself), wouldn't it be better to focus on getting a ready-to-go version first, and save up embellishments (such as the more sophisticated strategies) for later? My personal experience with programming is that a bottom-up approach tends to bog one down in irrelevancies and distract from the big picture (in your case, the mural). Just a suggestion; you know best

 

[Cricketman]

Sweet, you've started this up again!
I will be certain to sign up

 

[The Spin]

Looking forward to this very much

 

[freddiw]

when will this be playable?

 

[sohum]

when will this be playable?

Good question. Not for a while. I'm hoping before the coming summer, though. I just need some time (about a week or two) where I have nothing else to do but dedicate myself to the game. That's when I get the most development done.

Why the banner in the sig, you may ask? Well, since PC admin have pushed the Cricket Game Development Project forum almost all the way down to the end of the page, I knew interest for the game would definitely not be created/maintained without something in-your-face.

 

[freddiw]

no its a good banner i like it

great work and cant wait for the game to start

is their any wa to play the origional indian career or Cricekt career V1???

 

[sohum]

Nah. It never reached completion. I still get the odd person signing up, though.

 

[freddiw]

ok sweet good luck and cannot wait for this

 

[Jaztheman]

It was really good last time, I enjoyed it, think I was Afridi?

Anyhow, looking forward to this Sohum. Was thinking about this the other day in fact.