Mod Conversion Checklist

[Bigpapa42]

TEW 2016 to 2020 Database Conversion Checklist

with help from D16NJD16

 

So a similar thread was created last time and I think it helped those who are converted over mods.

 

A mod converted over from TEW 2016 to TEW 2020 is playable. The converter will look for major errors which need to be fixed and minor errors which it will mostly correct. So far, it seems to be more playable immediately after a conversion than the 2013 to 2016 conversion process was, where the changeover of broadcasters and minimum requirements meant that without any editing, a 2013 mod converted to 2016 would end up with a lot of “interesting” broadcast deals in a save.

 

So here are some things to look at that will help. Some are quite necessary and some are more “polish”. I do also have make mention that the Handbook has a ton of great information and is accessible from the Editor, so if something isn’t clear… check there first.

 

Editing - this is opinion, I guess, but I find editing on 2020 so much smoother. The bigger resolution allows more information on the main screen and switching between Sections is realy slick with the drop down list.

 

Attributes – probably the most obvious one. The game will convert over the personality settings from TEW 2016 to create Personality attributes, but there are so many more that can be added that impact various things. Creating a shared community list of these for real world workers wouldn’t be the worst idea…

 

There are different types of attributes – personality, gimmick, and Performance/Misc. Each of these can be added with the option of being Visible and of being Permanent. Obviously, some conflict and can’t be added together.

 

The conversion process will try to assign personality and gimmick attributes based on the worker info in the 2016 data. Some won’t get a personality – which just basically means they are generic. As the Handbook points out, there is nothing wrong with a generic personality and the game will function fine if every single worker has no set personality.

 

In terms of gimmick attributes, you will get positive and negative, based on the sliders. Depending on how the gimmick ratings were done for a given worker, they could have almost nothing, or a bunch of positive or negative. One thing I will probably watch for is workers who have a whole of negative gimmick attributes (“Can’t Work Brute”, etc) as having a bunch of negative ones just seems like data clutter to me, unless they are all fully accurate.

 

The Performance/Misc Attributes are unnecessary in a basic sense. I don’t think any of them will add automatically based on 2016 data converting. But they are a huge dynamic added to 2020 to really bring any game world to life, so very much worth spending some time on if you want a deep and unique mod..

 

Skills - the two “new” skills for workers are Experience and Technical. The latter is not new, but a combination of Chain, Mat, and Submissions from previously. Experience will be estimated by the Editor but it something that might need adjusting for workers.

 

Potential - is now broken down into areas, so you can have someone with great potential but only in certain ways. Great to mold how you want a particular real world worker to develop.

 

Gimmicks: they will carry over on a conversion. But while the Gimmicks list still exists in the data as a "Gimmick suggestion list", the actual gimmick data for a worker or contract is now just a box to type anything in. The existing 2016 gimmick will carry over if there was one.

 

Products – this is simplified with the selection of products available. It will still require tweaking as the conversion may not select the most accurate one for a given company based on the 2016 product information. The editor has a Product Search function on the Product page of the Companies section, which can be really helpful. And with the addition of core products, you can set two different product types for a given company - Core and Current.

 

There are other elements within the products as well, such as the women’s division settings, Match Focus, and Angle Focus.

 

Note - on some conversions, the product settings may result in the fairly generic "Classic Balanced" product, so you definitely want to look over companies.

 

Roster Size Preferences – Adam has mentioned that roster sizes have increased. Owner preferences make a big impact here. So if an owner preference was set for a bigger roster size on TEW 2016, there is a very good chance this needs to be tweaked down or the company will hire everyone. Literally EVERYONE.

Production Values and Financials - not new, obviously. And they may work exactly as set when the mod is converted. But this is something to watch for when testing. Checking on financials on soak tests is much easier now because you see the financial breakdown for each company (very yay).

 

Production values can be something to watch for when doing test sims for financial stability. If you have several companies in competition and one of them has production above-level, others will likely follow, creating a kind of production-quality arms race that can sink everyone involved. The in-game descriptions of the different Production settings are actually very clear and worth checking out when you are assigning them.

 

Training Facilities – this can potentially have a big financial impact, especially if the dojo is connected to the company. A really good dojo in 2016 will convert to a training facility that has really good Training and Facilities in 2020. But the latter makes it very costly to run on a monthly basis. And paying $650K per month to run that training facility could bankrupt a company like AJPW or Noah. So definitely something to watch for.

 

Schedules – not something that necessarily NEEDS to be adjusted but the changes leave a lot of cool options available, especially if you are recreating real company schedules.The Schedule function in the Company page of the Editor provides a lot of options, and takes away the need to generate individual touring shows as stand alone events.

 

Contracts – Written contracts in TEW 2016 will convert to Written deals in TEW 2020, but you may need to add the Iron Clad clause to lock those deals in. A worker on a Written deal without an Iron Clad clause can still leave, but simply has to provide notice.

 

Contracts now allow you to specify the worker role. This should convert, but might get messy if a worker has multiple available roles. In one test I ran, I got an error that a worker was ineligible to hold a specific title. I looked over the title settings and it didn't make any sense… until I checked their contract and they weren’t given an in-ring role. That was the reason for the ineligibility.

 

Another element to watch for is that contracts can be per month or per appearance. It seems fairly obvious to say, but someone who is expected to appear on a number of shows in a given month should probably be on a “per month” pay setup, as even a fairly-low per-appearance wage can add up. Do that across an entire roster and the costs could overwhelm the finances of a smaller company that runs regular shows (tour schedule, etc).

 

Contracts seem to be what brings up the most errors. Workers with "conflicting exclusive and non-exclusive" contracts. You may have adjust one of them to be non-exclusive, regardless of type. And since contract now have specific start dates, if that date is after the start date of the mod, it will create an error that the converter can't take care of. That can happen as the contract start date references the Job History information.

 

Broadcasters – as stated in the Developers Journal, some adjustments are required. Not just the broadcaster types (Terrestrial, Cable, and Internet) but also Minimum Requirements and coverage levels. You can also limit many shows a broadcaster will carry or companies they will work with. Coverage ranges might need to be adjusted.

 

Note - with new Internet-based broadcasters, who best to set those up might take some experimentation. For example, YouTube could be one broadcasters with worldwide range, or broken up into regional versions. Doing it the former way might result in companies on that broadcaster attaining unique and unlikely growth. As well, when researching, be aware that many channels / networks are described on Wikipedia as "free to air", but that often means "Terrestrial" in TEW terms. They are commercial broadcasters that make their money selling commercials, generally pay for content, and is available without a cable package - hence the label of free-to-air. But in TEW terms, free-to-air is something like PBS - publicly funded, no commercials, won't pay for content, and anyone can air anything locally. BBC and CBC could fall into this, but probably aren't really.

 

Broadcast Deals – the revenue split is going to be something you will have to play with. Too high and companies will be drowning in money. Too low and companies will just drown.

 

Wrestler Type – will convert over by will require tweaking

 

Titles – belt bios are pretty self-explanatory. Levels have changed too, so a world title for a small company is no longer 70+. And you can indicate a given title as an accomplishment now (Royal Rumble, etc). Current title holder is no longer a subscreen but part of the Title editor screen (its the little things)

 

Stables – same. Stables will function without much adjustment, but you may want to tweak to

 

Venues & Location - the addition of Locations is the big element, but for venues, there is now Venue Importance. That can help emulate “wrestling meccas” like Koruken Hall.

 

Job History - the auto-name function on this makes it so much faster to add employment history to a worker.

 

Matches: certain "types" of matches are longer valid / needed as they are indicated via Road Agent Note, such as Comedy match.

 

Other Shows: adding some more depth to the gameworld, these are a new addition for 2020. The Cverse, delightfully, uses real names for everything so they can be imported. If someone adds to it or comes up with a fuller set, that would be awesome but probably not a priority for most modders.

 

D16NJD16 did a similar thread already.

[D16NJD16]

Thanks, I already did one of these, feel free to grab anything we compiled from my thread and add to this

 

http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2403741#post2403741

[gazwefc83]

Would broadcasters such as Sky Sports be Cable Subscription or Cable Commercial?

[Bigpapa42]

Would broadcasters such as Sky Sports be Cable Subscription or Cable Commercial?

 

I would say Cable Subscription. Its a separate monthly fee, which is how they generate their income, rather than from commercials.

[Fleisch]

Would broadcasters such as Sky Sports be Cable Subscription or Cable Commercial?

 

I hated broadcasters in 2016... I hate them just as much in 2020.

[Texasrangers13]

Working through some thoughts on events like Best of Super Juniors/G1 Climax best to just schedule as a tournament at the event or maybe schedule as a separate one-off tour? Even like Battle of LA, 3-day tournament?

[Bigpapa42]

Working through some thoughts on events like Best of Super Juniors/G1 Climax best to just schedule as a tournament at the event or maybe schedule as a separate one-off tour? Even like Battle of LA, 3-day tournament?

 

Depends on what you want to do. You can use the Company schedule function to create a tour for the tournaments, which would be most accurate to reality. The AI won't book the tournament title that way, though, at least based on what I've seen. They will run as regular shows, and then run the tournament as a single-day event on the biggest show.

[The Celt]

I'm finding in some cases that the products simply don't convert at all and I'm having to redo quite a lof of the companies in data. There's a lot of defaulting to "classic balanced" going on.

[chinoflynn]

I super appreciate these threads as I’m not a mod maker at all but I’m really looking foreword to converting the 2016 mod I’m using now to 2020.

 

I can say I’m strictly a RW mod guy, I’ve never given the cornellverse the love it deserves.

 

I’m about 10/11 years deep into the 97 post Montreal mod game. I’ve made some tweaks and added some workers from other real world mods that weren’t there. It’s turned out nicely as I’ve played it.

 

I’m super excited to do these changes in the database and start fresh. Thank you mod makers for the mods and the help here.

[Texasrangers13]

I'm finding in some cases that the products simply don't convert at all and I'm having to redo quite a lof of the companies in data. There's a lot of defaulting to "classic balanced" going on.

 

I'm glad you pointed this out, I've spent the last day cleaning up most of my DB and adding a bunch of guys I wanted in there (primarily lower card/younger guys from EVOLVE/FIP/MLW/ROH) and was thinking cool, about ready to role... and then I looked at the promotions... I'm not too interested in tweaking EVERYTHING, but I do want to be semi-accurate. This guide as a whole has been a huge help.

[Pjs86]

Can anyone offer any help on why in my converted 1994 RW mod I’m getting 6-8 workers turn up too drunk or high to work and being sent home on every show? I’ve made sure they don’t have Heavy Drinker, Heavy Drug User etc but no improvement. I know it was the 90s and there was a lot of that going on but it’s making it unplayable having 6-8 top guys sent home every single show. Thanks in advance for the help!

[Bigpapa42]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Pjs86" data-cite="Pjs86" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="47580" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Can anyone offer any help on why in my converted 1994 RW mod I’m getting 6-8 workers turn up too drunk or high to work and being sent home on every show? I’ve made sure they don’t have Heavy Drinker, Heavy Drug User etc but no improvement. I know it was the 90s and there was a lot of that going on but it’s making it unplayable having 6-8 top guys sent home every single show. Thanks in advance for the help!</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Have you looked in the data itself? Attributes can be visible or not visible to users in the game.</p>

[Pjs86]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, went into the editor and removed hard user etc. Doesn’t even improve when I turn ‘Lifestyle Effects’ off in the editor. No idea how to solve this one. It’s still 6-8 people each show.

[Bonafide_Bluffa]

this happened to me with wwe in the 2004 mod as well, im gonna look into it now

[Bigpapa42]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, went into the editor and removed hard user etc. Doesn’t even improve when I turn ‘Lifestyle Effects’ off in the editor. No idea how to solve this one. It’s still 6-8 people each show.

 

Sounds like it be worth reporting as a bug. I mean, its probably possible that someone without drinking has a little too much fun (since the Attribute is meant to be a habit), but in volume seems very weird.

[Supermercado]

Check the dojos - some that are meant (and named to be) company owned convert to schools with no owners.

[landxx]

Strange that no one mentioned but add" other shows" .

[Bigpapa42]

Strange that no one mentioned but add" other shows" .

 

Good point. I'll add that to the list.

 

The Cverse ones all use real world names and dates so they can be easily imported.

[Supermercado]

If you're playing Australia, all the 'eastern' venues default to New South Wales so you'll have to separate the Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania locations manually.

 

Venues also need manual open/close dates if you're concerned about that.

[Supermercado]

<p>Have done a lot of editor work on converted databases over the last couple of weeks, and some of the things I've found are: (playing January - March 1986):</p><p> </p><p>

1) There's a LOT to be done with attributes. If you're converting a database you need to check these. Check how many people transfer across as 'gloomy' and consider a mass edit to remove this (then readd as appropraite) or your backstage atmosphere will be affected.</p><p> </p><p>

2) Japanese, European and to a lesser degree Mexican promotions hiring American workers on exclusive contracts is a killer for 80s mods. We need the touring contracts option back ASAP. I experimented with the attributes on workers who always get picked up but it didn't stop them.</p><p> </p><p>

3) Medium (and up) companies that start with handshake contracts get raided by smaller companies (in my example Mid South and WCCW) when they graduate to medium. It doesn't look to me like the original medium companies fight back and offer written contracts to try and hold their workers. Unless there's an editor workaround I can't see this changing so for now I'm going to push Mid South and WCCW up to medium at the start of the game - they're so close at the start it's not a huge break from reality.</p><p> </p><p>

4) Finance is up and down, some companies with one TV show were financially stable and some got slaughtered, losing up to $250k over the three months. I need to try changing some to Monthly or TV rather than Monthly Events and see if that helps.</p><p> </p><p>

The AWA had two TV shows and fared badly, dropping $350k over the quarter. I would partially put this down to having a B-Show taped on a different night to the A-Show so I'm going to put them on the same night and see what happens. I've got no problem with them losing money (after all, it is the AWA circa 1986) but don't want them out of business within six months.</p><p> </p><p>

On the other end of the scale, Mid-South made an $800k profit, Crockett $1.3 million and the WWF $6.2 million.</p><p> </p><p>

I can't get into a long term game until the full version releases so I'm going to run a few more tests with this database over the next week. Will post any interesting findings.</p>

[Teh_Showtime]

<p>I’ve noticed a lot of people seem to be converted as both Good and Bad at playing offbeat/unstable gimmicks</p><p> </p><p>

I’m not sure what leads to it but it was so bad I had to do some Access to Excel work to compile a massive list.</p>

[awesomenessofme1]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Teh_Showtime" data-cite="Teh_Showtime" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="47580" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I’ve noticed a lot of people seem to be converted as both Good and Bad at playing offbeat/unstable gimmicks<p> </p><p> I’m not sure what leads to it but it was so bad I had to do some Access to Excel work to compile a massive list.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Do you have the most recent patch? I remember this being mentioned as being fixed.</p>

[Teh_Showtime]

I do but it's much more likely the dataset I've been working with was converted before it was fixed. Cheers to that.

[Thane of Fife]

<p>A few things I've noticed from converting databases:</p><p> </p><p>

Most of the default personalities from TEW 2016 convert more or less as you might expect, but not all of them. My experience has been:</p><p> </p><p>

Balanced becomes no personality</p><p>

Class Act becomes People Person</p><p>

Company Man becomes Professional</p><p>

Egomaniac becomes Scumbag</p><p>

Free Spirit becomes People Person</p><p>

Grizzled Veteran becomes Gloomy</p><p>

Jerk becomes Scumbag</p><p>

Master Politician becomes Driven</p><p>

Normal Wrestler becomes no personality</p><p>

Party Animal becomes Class Clown</p><p>

Rookie becomes Stalwart</p><p> </p><p>

So if you're converting a database that used the default personalities, you might want to watch out for Egomaniacs (who have now become Scumbags), Grizzled Veterans (who have now become Gloomy), and Master Politicians (as Driven seems likely to be more neutral than Master Politician would have been).</p><p> </p><p>

When converting gimmick ratings, generally, it seems like the break point for "Can't Play" is somewhere between 50-55 and "Plays Well" is around 80. That said, just changing gimmick ratings doesn't seem to be enough to make someone good or bad at Mysterious/Occult gimmicks, and while it can make them bad at Offbeat/Unstable gimmicks, I haven't seen it give out a "Plays Well" attribute.</p>

[spiffyone]

Have done a lot of editor work on converted databases over the last couple of weeks, and some of the things I've found are: (playing January - March 1986):

 

2) Japanese, European and to a lesser degree Mexican promotions hiring American workers on exclusive contracts is a killer for 80s mods. We need the touring contracts option back ASAP. I experimented with the attributes on workers who always get picked up but it didn't stop them.

 

Have you suggested the part in bold in the suggestion forum?

 

Because I agree that it is absolutely vital that come back for historical mods.

 

4) Finance is up and down, some companies with one TV show were financially stable and some got slaughtered, losing up to $250k over the three months. I need to try changing some to Monthly or TV rather than Monthly Events and see if that helps.

 

The AWA had two TV shows and fared badly, dropping $350k over the quarter. I would partially put this down to having a B-Show taped on a different night to the A-Show so I'm going to put them on the same night and see what happens. I've got no problem with them losing money (after all, it is the AWA circa 1986) but don't want them out of business within six months.

 

To the part in bold: it wasn't actually until mid-year '86 that the AWA started losing a lot of money. Prior to WrestleRock '86, they were still doing relatively well actually. Losing the Road Warriors to Crockett months prior absolutely hurt, yeah, but they weren't bleeding money and were still experiencing good gates (albeit with some stinkers here and there). Hell, WrestleRock itself sold more tickets than the combined two nights of the Crockett Cup '86.

 

So...they shouldn't be losing money to that level in early '86. Especially since ESPN paid Verne for the ESPN shows out of the Showboat (when things REALLY dipped that's the only thing that kept them afloat). And, btw, they actually did start taping both AWA Championship Wrestling (the ESPN show) and AWA All-Star Wrestling (the syndicated show) on the same days by that time.