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Admin

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Storm front over the northeast

March 12, 2011 at 07:17AM View BBCode

I was poking around looking at the situation for the first games. The sim actually has pretty detailed weather information and uses it in a way that creates storms and other weather conditions over geographical areas; thus, two cities near each other should have at least somewhat similar weather. (It would look bizzare for a game in Los Angeles to be 70 degrees and sunny and a game in Anaheim the same day to be 55 and stormy.)

With that said, [url=http://footballbeta.simdynasty.com/weather.jsp?lid=4&date=1962-08-12&view=1]check out the storm front over the northeast[/url] for the first preseason game; I've never seen the sim create winds that high! I'm going to look at it to see if it's a bug or just a bizzare outlier condition. Not gonna see a lot of field goals in those games.

--Chris

KLKRTR

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March 12, 2011 at 07:25AM View formatted

Whew..I want to see how that affects passing...

Admin

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March 12, 2011 at 07:47AM View BBCode

Boston is one of the windiest cities in the game (Chicago, the "Windy City", is tied for 12th based on my research). I use average November wind speeds as my "worst wind" and subtract out from there. So based on that, Boston has an average of 13 mph winds in August. Now, two thirds of the time, the wind will be below the average. That seems counter-intutive; you'd think half the time the wind would be below the average and half the time above. But there is a limit to how far below the average a wnd can be but no limit to how much above; stormy days pull the numbers up to match the average.

So with the average wind speed calculated, the sim throws some loaded dice. By "loaded" I mean they are set with a seed based on the sim date, league number, and city number so for that league, city and date, the dice will always come up the same (this allows me to "predict" the weather; at game time an unloaded modifier die will be thrown into the mix.)

The first die that's thrown is a 100 sided die that is compared against the citry's average calm percentage. Boston has the lowest calm percentage at 1%; obviously this die did not result in a calm!

So Boston's dice are seven-sided; they will come up with numbers from 0 to 6. We will throw three of them. Now we look at the weather conditions to see if there is a storm. There is, so the dice get bigger by the average (13) divided by 3, rounded down. So the dice are now 11 sided, from 0 to 10. Finally, there is a flat 20% chance for a windier than normal day; we can assume that hit, and our dice double in size to 22 sided (0-21). So the predicted wind speed of 53 falls into this range, as the maximum wind under these circumstances is 63. This isn't unheard of; the December 28, 2008 game between the Patriots and the Bills had 75 mph winds. Still, I think I'm going to reduce the "heavy wind" percentage to 15% and put the multiplier before the weather modifier so the weather modifier isn't also doubled.

--Chris

[Edited on 3-12-2011 by Admin]

KLKRTR

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March 12, 2011 at 08:02AM View BBCode

Took me a couple of reads, but I think I'm finally starting to understand the dice method you're using..thanks

Admin

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March 12, 2011 at 08:22AM View BBCode

I've re-jiggered the numbers so the absolute worst predicted wind speed should be 48, putting the absolute worst game-time wind speed at 50. Before, wind speeds of up to 75 were possible; kicking into that wind could actually make the ball go backwards.

--Chris

Admin

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March 12, 2011 at 08:35AM View BBCode

(For those looking at the link now and wondering what the fuss is, here's the weather before I change the code:

Game Temp Wind Chill Precip Wind
Chicago Bear Claws @ Boston Newballers 64° 64° 100% E 53
Anaheim Aquatic Fowl @ Oakland Invaders 58° 58° 0% 0
Los Angeles Cannons @ Kansas City Three and Out 73° 73° 10% 0
Arizona Abusers @ Cincinnati Orcas 70° 70° 10% N 7
New Orleans Big Easy @ Michigan Wolverines 58° 58° 50% SE 33
Washington Storm @ Hamilton Hamiltonians 74° 74° 0% NE 1
Montreal Blizzard @ Cleveland Brownies 65° 65° 10% N 10
Green Bay Packers @ New York Knights 68° 68° 100% N 8

--Chris

KLKRTR

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March 12, 2011 at 04:10PM View BBCode

That changed the weather to 20mph winds to the north in the Montreal-Cleveland game, thanks! We've kicked a 53-yd and a 56-yd FG when facing north (as well as one other FG made and another 50+ yarder blocked)