Disclaimer
This Webapp is work in progress, the code is very messy and unstable, with a lot of hardcoded paths, messy designs, etc. It’s possible for one to run it right now, but it requires overcoming a bunch of obstacles. I will list out the things that I have to figure out at the bottom.
I hope to release it someday but it will probably be a long time before that can happen, even if I have a lot of freetime.
If a mod feels like this should belong in another sub-forum because of the difficulty of the release, as well as its unknown timeline, feel free to do it.
Overview of App
This webapp is intended to be a companion app of NBA 2k14 and is also indirectly integrated with NBA 2k14 if one uses the RED MC to import csv files generated by this app into the in-game rosters.
This app’s database consists of NBA players from 1977 onwards, as well as some FIBA players.
One part of the app allows users to browse these players + teams that are rendered as NBA 2k16 Cards.
Another part of the app includes various sandbox modes that allow the user to pretty much take any team or player from the player database and form teams that can be used in game.
A third part of the game is a very basic myteam mode for NBA 2k14. All of the MyTeam experience will be in the webapp, but the actual games that the user play will be played in NBA 2k14.
More Detailed Breakdown Of App
Database Browsing
- I have imported the main NBA teams + USA teams + all star teams of UBR season rosters from 1977 up to 2016(2016 is fan created).
- I have imported Med’s FIBA rosters(2014-2016) into the app.
- This database contains all NBA teams, FIBA teams from Med’s rosters, as well as some teams that I created myself.
View Player
For each player, a user can look at the ratings of his entire career in “Card Mode”, which is rendered in NBA 2k16 next gen style. Or a user can look at the player in “Table Mode”, where ratings for all versions of that player are displayed in a table.
(View Lebron in "Table Mode")
(View Lebron in Card Mode)
(View Kobe in Card Mode)
View All Players
This allows the user to look at all the players in the database in a table. Features include various filters and sorting queries. For example, one can sort by a player’s overall rating, or various other attributes, or filter by team, etc. My design of this page is heavily influenced by 2kmtcentral.
(View Players)
(View All Bulls Players)
(View All Bulls Players Continued)
(View All Bulls Players Sorted by Speed)
(View All Unique Bulls Players Sorted by Speed)
View Team
For each team, a user can look at its players rendered as cards.
(View 02 Lakers)
(View 06 Lakers)
(View 13 Lakers)
View Franchise
A user can view all teams over the years for this franchise.
(View Lakers)
(View All NBA Teams)
Random Mode
This intends to simulate a random pickup game between basketball players. One can randomize his team, as well as his opponent’s team using various filters. I expect to add more advanced filters on top of the date and skill levels. One can also handpick players from the database for each team.
(Select or Randomize Players on your team)
(Play these games in NBA 2k14)
Head2Head
This is for a user to quickly pick two teams that he wants to play with. A user can select any team in the database, as well as custom teams that he created before in random mode.
Generate Roster
This is if a user wants to create a whole roster of teams that he wants to use. Once again, a user can pick any team from the database.
(Use your generated in-game)
Future Ideas
- A conquest mode that is basically similar to playing civilization, but with NBA players. This is inspired by Jaosming’s street domination mod that he released a while ago, as well as the conquest mode from the Sony NBA games. If I get to work on this, I hope to create a mode that has more depth and features than the conquest modes from the Sony NBA Games.
- Create a Team Mode. Not much needs to be done because this is essentially what is being done in Random Mode. However, it will be much better if one can select courts + jerseys + coaches for his team.
- Replay Every Game from every NBA season. The code is in place to do this because I have all the seasons imported. However, in order to be accurate, I will need to get data for the rosters for every game, which will require some work.
- Challenge Mode
- Association Compatibility. This is not on top of my list right now as I don’t play the association mode that much. But it will be cool to make the generated rosters playable in association.
- Import more rosters and more players. I intend to import all the main rosters right now in the community. The UR roster, anime rosters, hero rosters and Med’s current NBA rosters will be good choices.
Credit
Vl@d Zola Jr for his RED MC that pretty much allowed all of this to happen
Hawk23 for his UBR Roster Files + the portrait files that he sent me a while ago that got me started
Medevenx for his FIBA rosters
Basketball reference, NBA.com and a bunch of other sites for data
2khead, 2kMtcentral for inspiration as well as media files + data
Background
This project started off with my frustration back when NBA 2k14 next gen first got the MyTeam mode. At that point, the abundance of mods pretty much meant I will be staying with NBA 2k14 PC for a while. But with the MyTeam mode being so interesting, I really wanted to play it on the PC. I knew I could made my own mini-game/app, but I always wanted to be able to play the actual games in 2k. It wasn’t until the summer of 2016 that I thought about utilizing the importing/exporting feature of RED MC. Realizing the enormous potential of this, I decided to jump on it and spent a few months in the summer of 2016 to hack this out. Recently, I built a new computer and my old RED MC license stopped working. So it suddenly occurred to me that it doesn’t hurt to share my work with the community.
Help needed from the community
In the future, I see countless ways in which the community can help out, though I think most have moved on to the next gen games already. Regardless, it will be very helpful that existing modders can kindly send me any of these, or basically any NBA related art files. It is preferable that they are organized.
1. Portraits of Players
Hawk23 has sent me a rar of the UBR portraits up to 2014, so I pretty don’t have portraits after that.
2. Full Body portrait of Players(Next Gen)
As you guys can see, the rendering of cards utilizes the full body portrait of players taken from NBA 2k16. I don’t have full body portraits for NBA 2k17 and I was wondering if anyone has them.
3. Team Logos
4. In-game jerseys previews
5. In-game court previews
6. Any NBA Pictures(preferably organized in any way)
Technologies
Python 2.7 + Django
I was torn between making a local app or a webapp. Ultimately a webapp will be easier because it’s easier for me to create the UI that I want. There are definitely drawbacks to this, but I’m going to stick with that due to simplicity of development. The webapp is written using the Python Django framework and Python 2.7 was used. Since it’s rare for one to package a django app properly with all of the dependencies, I see this as the main difficulty of being able to release this to the public.
RED MC
This requires a paid RED MC license to work completely. If one has a free license, you will be able to still use all the features, but every change to the roster will be on players. In other words, team names, jerseys and other components that require a license won’t be changed by this companion app. Only players will be changed.
Things needed to be done before release
1. Database Creation
- Right now I imported all of the rosters myself into the database. However, it won’t be ethical for me to release the database that I created because essentially I will be rereleasing other people’s work. I need to figure out a way to allow a user to easily create this database. This will be a pretty challenging task if I want it to be completely automated, and a pain for the user to gather all the roster files as well. Currently it is automated but I needed to do manual tweaks every now and then.
2. Artfiles(Portraits, logos, jerseys, etc)
My database uses NBA 2k14 artfiles that I’ve collected from all sorts of places over the years. For many of them, I honestly have no idea of their origins. Once again, if I just released all the art files, a user can plug and play. But this once again violates the community rules.
3. Format of the release
For anyone who knows about how webapps work, they are ran as servers, as opposed to traditional packaged programs like RED MC or NBA 2k14. If I release the code as it is, a user will need some programming background to get it running. This includes installing all the libraries used by my webapp, and also launching the app from command line. Another solution is for me to package the app as an “exe” file. I have never done this before and while this has been done, I think this will be quite challenging.
4. Integration with RED MC
Currently, for the webapp to work completely, one will need a paid RED MC license for NBA 2k14. Although users with free licenses will still have a partially working solution, I honestly prefer if this can be done without a paid RED MC. I don’t know what I need to do in order to do this. I think rewriting RED MC will be insanely hard cause I have no experience with parsing roster files whatsoever, and repetitive because Vlad has already dedicated a few years of life to create an existing application. I have talked to Vlad a while ago for the possibility of integration. However, since he’s working for 2k, I don’t think this will be possible.
5. Cleaning up the code
As I’ve said, this is pretty much my own hackathon for the summer. I developed at a pretty fast pace and didn’t care too much about portability. As a result, a lot of the stuff is harcoded(in other words, can only be used if I placed certain files in certain locations), unstructured, and not well designed etc.
