I was going to write a long rambling post telling you how you could shorten this thing to make it both more approachable and more useful but then I realised that would be a little hypocritical of me; so instead I'll simply say that "less is more".
One thing I will say is that you don't need all those things after your bibliography and could easily have a solid document - you have the whole laws of the game in there and lots of those cover things like "how to remove debris from the pitch" which is never going to be in any sports game. Keep the things that you reference in your document, and bin the rest.
Yeah I understand what you are trying to say. Firstly I would like to quote a part of my message that I had sent to Ross.
"The first 186 pages are actual content while the others contain trivial information put in one place so it would be easier to take note if required."
And also a quote from one of my previous posts...
"And yes, could have cut, but I just thought if BigAnt wanted to add info for players who are new to cricket then let me compile them here as much as I can."
I will duly edit the first post to signify the same.
Now about the 'how to remove debris', can you please elaborate? I am not sure which section you are taking about. Although, I must say I tried my best to stay relevant to what could be achieved in a game.
First of all thanks for taking the time to send the email, secondly, I really enjoyed your ideas, and was incredibly impressed with the presentation, really fantastic.
I think that if within the next 5 iterations of DB if even 75% of these suggestions were implemented then DB would surpass any other sports game on the market!! Unfortunately I think even powerhouses like EA Sports would struggle to get all that and more into a game, and financially I think it would be impossible for BA. In an ideal world I think these suggestions, implemented correctly, and incrementally other the next few versions would be where I would like the game to be, certainly its going in the right direction.
The amount of stats, records etc is definately something I would love to see, cricket after all is heavily stats driven.
As someone who isn't a gamer, graphics are not so important to me, but as a cricket fan again your suggestions for animations are spot on. Quite how much of this could be implemented across all current platforms I don't know, I have the feeling ps3/xbox360 simply wouldn't be able to cope with the amount of code needed, and the weight of man power/hours needed to make this work would also, I believe be out of BA's reach.
However, again I reiterate that this is definately the direction I'd like cricket gaming to go, and I congratulate you on your fantastic effort, insight and presentation, well done Sibi!!
Thanks a lot

I am glad that you share the same ideas
@SibiNaayagam Awesome stuff mate, read till 20 pages...Loving it,will probably be the first book I have ever read...
Haha would love to hear what you think when you are done.
Thanks Angad
i certainly applaud the effort, and am delighted that my creation of Arosa Sri Lanka is now no longer the saddest thing anyone has done with DBC.
not read it all by any means, but skimmed a lot of it. i'd say there are some good things in there (particularly regards to differing actions/backlifts etc.), some things that i disagree with or have alternative ideas on (mostly regarding skills and the modelling of the skills - i find it VERY odd to go as deep as you have in some areas, but not for instance differentiate skills per format, batting skills vs different types of bowlers, and bowling skills with new/old ball) and some i profoundly disagree with (the amount of additional extras in the presentation section are a recipe for RSI from pressing the "skip" button; and i'm baffled by the suggestion of a long break to plan strategy during rain interruptions).
Thanks blockerdave
Now, about the depth, I was always going to try and discuss the ideas in-depth as I wanted to flesh the idea as much as possible.
The Pre-Match presentation suggestions I gave were only meant to be a substitute to the lineup card/weather forecast and other ground surfing shots which function as a cover up to the loading screen.
And finally the break, its not a long break that I suggested. What I meant was a strategy planning screen incase of a 'long break' (Long break meaning the amount of time lost in rain in game). And of course if the person is going to go with the same strategy as before, he is going to be able to skip right away.
I hope these cleared your doubts.
Also, not to be a douche, but your suggestion for commentary " similar to the ones used by websites such as
espncricinfo where they
simply explain what happened. Often that is the best form of commentary that although repeats often but never feels overused as it contains mostly terminologies and rarely adjectives." is a recipe for disaster the absolute worst commentary in any game ever.
a cricket game differs from a website (and radio) in that we can see what happened. it differs from TV in that we had an active part in what happened. commentary needs to shut up, only speak when absolutely necessary, and describe the situation contextualised as far as possible to what the human player is doing. (it's worth noting that the best TV commentators do this, and the worst ones prattle on describing every ball.)
commentary needs to step back and let the frankly wonderful ambient sounds in the game come to the fore. if they improve the variety of crowd sounds, this is only more so.
Ok commentary now. As there has not been a true benchmark for commentary, I would say everything we discuss with respect to the best possible game commentary technique is majorly theoretical.
But the concept I suggested where based on two things...
One is EA's FIFA series commentary which I personally like. It is a personal point of view.
And the other is the following conversation I had with Chief...
Post your questions about the game here! | Page 1166 - Don Bradman Cricket 14 Forum on PlanetCricket Forums
Post your questions about the game here! | Page 1166 - Don Bradman Cricket 14 Forum on PlanetCricket Forums
I am sure there will be a lot of debate on the techniques used until one of them succeeds. But at the end of day, I would be glad to be proven wrong in any of my suggestions if that meant we get a better game.