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[Affiliate Program]
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Howzat! One Day International or HODI for short is a shareware cricket game for Window 95/98 by Geoff Willetts. HODI was inspired when Geoff a registered user of International Test Cricket wanted a one day version. HODI has gone through several versions and the latest v1.25 looks very good. HODI now looks better than ITC with a very nice screen layout that looks uncluttered. HODI has the distinct advantage here of being developed in Visual Basic so interface changes are a lot easier to make but even saying that the screen layout is very good and has developed with each new version. Whilst HODI shares a lot of common functionality and look as ITC it should be stressed that the algorithms and design are totally separate. The accuracy of results are realistic and averages and records can be saved. There are also lots of nice touches like on TV with Worm Graphs and Manhattan Charts. You can play one off games/series or play a variety of tournaments from triangular World Series popular in Australia to a full blown World Cup using the proper England '99 format. Squads for 12 countries are included - the 9 test playing countries plus Bangladesh, Kenya and Scotland (the shareware version only has Australia and New Zealand). When playing a game you have various tactics you can set. When batting you can select Team Batting Aggression to be Defensive, Normal or Aggressive. For the last 10 overs a Madness option is also available. When selecting a new batsman (although strangely not for your openers) you have the same options although Madness is available for the whole innings (this allows pinch hitters). You can also adjust these options at any time. When bowling you can select a Team Fielding Aggression of Defensive, Normal or Aggressive. To cover the fielding restrictions in the first 15 overs it can only be set to Aggressive. Individual Aggression ratings can be selected for each bowler. Selecting tactics is very easy as these all accessible all the time. Your current run rate is always shown and if you are chasing a target the required run rate is also displayed so you can judge when you need to accelerate. For each delivery a short text description and an icon are displayed. These can be scrolled through to view any previous deliveries. Notable events like 50's, 5 wickets+, dropped catches are displayed with a pop up message box. Normally a whole over is played at once. This is an excellent complimentary program to ITC. If you like ITC and want a one day version then this is what you should get. The existence of HODI has stopped me developing a 1 day game. I have registered this program myself and whilst I don't play it as much as I should due to time constraints I heartily recommend it. Reviews Review by Theodore Kamis. Howzat One Day Internationals has been well reviewed already by Daniel Thomas; I completely concur with his review. However, there are some excellent features in HODI that Dan neglected to mention in his review that enhance the game significantly. And, there are a few minor weaknesses that, having read the history of HODI, will almost certainly be corrected in the near future... Like International Test Cricket, HODI does give you the option to generate a printed file, a text file of both the match summary and the ball by ball output, or an HTML file. Unfortunately, Netscape 4.7 doesn't seem to like HODI's output; after the first team's batting statistics, it switches from a fixed Courier font to a variable font similar to Times New Roman - this does not line up columns well, making the output hard to read. I have had no problems reading HODI's HTML output in Courier in Internet Explorer 5 - it is Courier all the way through. It may be a HODI fault, as ITC does not generate a similar problem for Netscape. If it is a Netscape problem, you'll have to do a simple workaround - use Internet Explorer 5 (unless you like hand editing HTML - I don't!). (I haven't tested HODI's HTML output in earlier browsers...) And HODI has two other features well worth mentioning. First, like ITC, you can create new players and teams - either from within the game itself or by using the separate Team Editor (for registered users, downloadable from the HODI website). Using the Editor, creating a new team is straightforward, and can take as little as five minutes. And you can create a draft league by using the Player Pool utility (for registered users, downloadable from the HODI website) - try playing against a team with Lara and Cronje, with McGrath and Murilitharan bowling (of course, you've got Klusener and Warne, and Hussain and Hooper, right?) It takes no time at all, and is quite simple to use. Having said all of this, I did notice something when creating a new grounds in the database (you can do this from the Team Editor) - all you do is add the name. However, when HODI gains weather-related delays sometime in 2000, a problem will surface. Either HODI, when stating the weather conditions, uses a standard algorithm that takes no account of where a ground actually is, or only added grounds are affected by this. While not a problem now, when weather delays are introduced, it will lead to a potential unreality - after all, some grounds are more prone to rain delays than others (perhaps a simple rain percentage would be individually calculable for all grounds). Also, the author of HODI hopes to use Duckworth-Lewis scoring (knowing how well he has implemented everything else, I have no doubts that he will do it well). And finally, as all computer users know, a program is only as good as its support. Like cricketgames.com, HODI's website is very well organized, using frames (so you should already have a Netscape or MS Internet Explorer version 4 browser or higher). Downloads and patches are easy to find, and I have found the download rate to my home in Wisconsin to be quite good - barring bad infrastructure (in countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe, and the like), you should have no problem with any download from his site. When registering, you have the option of receiving the game via email or diskette (handy for bad internet areas). As for support, HODI has a well organized troubleshooting section on its website, with the option to send feedback to the author should a problem arise that he has not anticipated. He responds fairly quickly, but not instantaneously - like you and me, he does NOT receive a Microsoft Fellowship worth US$ 60 million annually, nor does he have a TARDIS ;) HODI works very well now, and, like ITC is doing for Tests, is approaching perfection for one day matches. With HODI and ITC, I don't see the need to buy an arcade cricket game - you execute the strategy of cricket much better if you don't have to worry about "Do I have to hit the A and C buttons for a six, or is that B and C - but not before E?" Downloads Howzat! One Day International from the HODI Web pages. Patches for registered users and numerous database updates are also available from the HODI Web pages. These include updates for the 2003 World Cup. Feedback Send feedback about Howzat! One Day International. Hints Cheats Links Register HODI on-line using a secure server. HODI home pages - Also has patches, utilities and new databases for registered users. Screenshots These screenshots are taken off the HODI homepage but I hope to get some full size ones soon.
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Revised:
Saturday, 16 March 2013. |
