Editor for Cricket Captain 2020 (Release)

Lenix43

School Cricketer
Joined
Aug 10, 2011
Online Cricket Games Owned
Really enjoying using the editor. At the end of each season I go around the counties and give various real life prospects 10% boosts to their appropriate batting or bowling (or both for all rounders) and it's good to see them start to break into sides though it can take two or three seasons for some which shows how off the pace they are compared to the first team players, still better than them never playing until they're released which is what happens by default.

I'd love to see someone with visible attributes in the editor do a study of player development in game to seeing it actually happens.
 

weetabixharry

County Cricketer
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Location
Zurich, Switzerland
Profile Flag
England
I'd love to see someone with visible attributes in the editor do a study of player development in game to seeing it actually happens.

I assume you mean the invisible (hidden) attributes. As far as I know, only the game developers have this information. I recall them being asked several times over the past ~20 years about the nature of player development, so you may be able to find a few fragments of information if you search hard enough. I think the problem is that to describe properly how the player development works would require describing how player abilities are represented in the game (i.e. the hidden attributes), which they don't want to do.

I get the impression they would like to tell people how player development works, but they can't because they want (even more) to keep the hidden attribute system hidden.

It would be theoretically possible to go against their wishes and reverse-engineer the entire hidden attribute system, but this would take an absolutely gargantuan effort. In reality, it's fair to say this would be completely impossible (barring some kind of comic-book-style intervention by an eccentric billionaire).

Something that would be much easier (but I still have no idea how to do) would be to auto-play a few billion matches and analyze statistics gathered from those matches in order to evaluate the nature of player development. This could be done entirely using visible quantities (such as batting scores and bowling figures).
 

Lenix43

School Cricketer
Joined
Aug 10, 2011
Online Cricket Games Owned
I assume you mean the invisible (hidden) attributes. As far as I know, only the game developers have this information. I recall them being asked several times over the past ~20 years about the nature of player development, so you may be able to find a few fragments of information if you search hard enough. I think the problem is that to describe properly how the player development works would require describing how player abilities are represented in the game (i.e. the hidden attributes), which they don't want to do.

I get the impression they would like to tell people how player development works, but they can't because they want (even more) to keep the hidden attribute system hidden.

It would be theoretically possible to go against their wishes and reverse-engineer the entire hidden attribute system, but this would take an absolutely gargantuan effort. In reality, it's fair to say this would be completely impossible (barring some kind of comic-book-style intervention by an eccentric billionaire).

Something that would be much easier (but I still have no idea how to do) would be to auto-play a few billion matches and analyze statistics gathered from those matches in order to evaluate the nature of player development. This could be done entirely using visible quantities (such as batting scores and bowling figures).

Couldn't you just use the editor to check a load of players batting and bowling abilities at the start of the season, play a season and check again and so on for several seasons. If player development actually happens youd see abilities increasing organically. If it doesn't they'd not move.

My suspicion is they would creep up very slowly but never enough for the player to become a test player.

Whereas a regen would be generated with a high enough ability to go straight into your first team and not need developed.
 

weetabixharry

County Cricketer
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Location
Zurich, Switzerland
Profile Flag
England
Couldn't you just use the editor to check a load of players batting and bowling abilities at the start of the season, play a season and check again and so on for several seasons.

You could do this if you know how the hidden attributes that affect batting and bowling performance are represented within the game. As I said in my previous post, I think the only people who know this are the game developers and I think it is effectively impossible for anyone else to reverse-engineer it.

If it's not clear why I think this would be impossible, let me give an example from the world of football management games. This is a screenshot from CM Explorer, a fan-made savegame editor written 20 years ago for Championship Manager. (Of course, computer games have got a lot more complex in the 20 years since then, but with its lack of funding Cricket Captain is possibly a bit closer in complexity to the older football sims).

upload_2020-8-16_7-8-13.png

Each player has 40 visible attributes ("Playing attributes"), 13 hidden attributes ("Special" / "Mental") and two semi-hidden attributes ("Foot": in-game, you are shown their stronger foot, but not how strong their weaker foot is).

This editor was an absolute masterpiece, but it was relatively easy to make because the complete structure of the attributes (both visible and hidden) were made publicly available by the game developers. Therefore, this editor is "complete" (has no missing attributes) and could therefore be used to analyze player development in the way you suggested.

By comparison, the Cricket Captain editor is total garbage. It shows you the handful of visible attributes that are available in the game and nothing else. In the 10+ years that I have been involved in developing the editor, I believe that 4 or 5 hidden attributes have been found within the several thousands of bytes that represent each player (but we have absolutely no way of confirming if they are what we think they are because we don't even know what hidden attributes exist in Cricket Captain, how many there are, or where to find them). From what I have seen and tried, trying to do any kind of analysis based in this pathetic subset of invisible attributes is beyond pointless.
 

Lenix43

School Cricketer
Joined
Aug 10, 2011
Online Cricket Games Owned
Fair enough Harry that makes sense.

Is there a way to use the editor to make a South African into a kolpak player so that they will be visible in the uncontracted list between seasons for signing?
 

weetabixharry

County Cricketer
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Location
Zurich, Switzerland
Profile Flag
England
Is there a way to use the editor to make a South African into a kolpak player so that they will be visible in the uncontracted list between seasons for signing?

Yes, "South Aftrica (K)" should be listed as one of the available nationalities.

As well as changing their nationality, it may be necessary to change their contract length for your domestic league to 0 years. Then they should appear.
 

frefort

Club Cricketer
Joined
Jul 28, 2006
Online Cricket Games Owned
Wow this looks really good. Might just have to buy the game now.
 

weetabixharry

County Cricketer
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Location
Zurich, Switzerland
Profile Flag
England
@weetabixharry just saw the latest release 20.11 is out today.

Thanks again. This update broke the Scout (and therefore also broke the Squad Editor). I have uploaded updates for both the Editor and Scout to fix this. Please let me know if anything is still not working.

I have not had time to check the Demo version. If that's not working, I'll do another update soon.
 

CNBakes22

School Cricketer
Joined
Apr 30, 2020
@weetabixharry this is the best addition to the games in years - incredible work!

Is there scope for an 'add player' function? Something that simply creates a regen into your squad without any stats (1st or 2nd XI) so you have a clean slate when creating old/new players?
 

weetabixharry

County Cricketer
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Location
Zurich, Switzerland
Profile Flag
England
@weetabixharry this is the best addition to the games in years - incredible work!

Is there scope for an 'add player' function? Something that simply creates a regen into your squad without any stats (1st or 2nd XI) so you have a clean slate when creating old/new players?

No, this is unlikely to ever be possible. We can perhaps copy existing players and slightly edit them (including clearing their stats), but almost all of the player data structure is completely unknown, so creating from scratch is currently out of the question.
 

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