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Cricket from www.random-games.com ... welcome to Critical Cricket ... version 1 ... A free cricket game from www.random-games.com

The game Critical Cricket is in essence: an algorithm. A turing machine, that tests the player's understanding of the game of cricket. It is primarily a game of strategy. The main aim for version 1 has been to create a logical platform that accurately results in a correct cricket score. This is something most other cricket games miss, and in the few that have got this right, the player has very little effect on the game.

Thus, version 1 of Critical Cricket, a totally free cricket game, is a turn based strategy game, in 24-bit color (16.7 million colors), that revolves primarily around several key concepts that need to be taken in to account in order to play the game effectively. But its easy enough to just play without instructions, if you don't mind losing.
Artificial intelligence in a cricket game... A ... Artificial Intelligence:

Your coach is the instigator, telling the bowlers what to bowl, when to bowl, deciding what fields to set, and most importantly, when the batsmen should defend, attack or move in 'cruise mode' for those with good enough ability. Your batting and bowling coach may be chosen from the various nationalities. You may at any time choose to let the batsmen or bowler follow the coaches orders, or you may intervene to play each ball yourself.

Or you can simply select the coaches and the team structure and come back later to see your results. A great way of playing a game while doing something else. You can check in on the score from time to time, intervening when it suits you or the game situation.
Pitch conditions intelligence in a cricket game... B ... Pitch Conditions

Bounce, grass, dryness, and hardness are the 4 factors that make up a pitch.

I) Hardness aids the batsmen with high skills to play strokes.
II) Dryness makes life difficult for the batsmen especially with spin bowling.
III) Grass aids seam bowling, but can result in quick scoring.
IV) Bounce is the result of what remains, this is good for confident batting, but batsmen with low confidence will struggle.

The ball also ages and eventually loses its seam and bounce. When the ball is new, the weather may effect the swing, being overcast it swings more.

Player skills in a cricket game... C ... Skills & General Overview ... Tips on how to play cricket ...

Each player has an ability score between 0 and 7 for bowling. For fielding and batting the ability score is 0 to 5. The maximum for any team varies according to the tournament level. Setting up the teams in the nets is vital, but quick start just gets into the swing of things straight away.

The Bowlers skill shows the type of bowler and his ability. Skill 1 is medium pace, skill 2 is an off spinner, skill 3 is a seamer, and so on. Depending on Bowler skill, a variety of types of deliveries are on offer. There are at least 30 types of deliveries starting at type 0: medium pace, type 1: medium-fast, type 2: off-spin, as well as bouncers, off cutters, leg-cutters, seaming away swingers, googlies and doosras to name but a few.

The bowler must improve his mood to open up the trickier deliveries for use. His mood increases by bowling maidens and taking wickets. It gets worse if hit for 11 or more runs an over, or if his fatigue levels go over 100%. Mood is depicted by the colored symbols :-) for mood good, and :-| for mood normal, and :'{ for a bowler that has been hit to the boundary a few too many times. Pay attention to the fatigue bar under the bowlers name, especially for fast bowling.

The Batting skill gives Power Options, that are color coded. Their are 12 power options to choose from, starting at green for calm batting, to dark gray for desperate. Above skill level 0, the batsmen can also use the power options for stealing singles and avoiding them, either rotating or keeping the strike. Highly skilled and in-form batsmen can also creatively innovate and develop unique and inventive shots to add to their shot selection.

Some of the power options have a shot selection list which asks questions like: Short a length on the off side?
To which the correct answer is: Cover drive, front foot.
Resulting in 4 runs if you can beat the field setting. Purple Power mode will mostly hit it for 6.

The shot selection is optional, so you can jump into the game and try and improve the batsmen's shot selection, or let the artificial intelligence do it for you. or just stick to the basic colors to avoid the shot selection.

A free cricket game from www.random-games.com

A key concept for the batsmen is Batting confidence or Batting Eye, expressed as a percentage. Once over 50% your chances of survival improve greatly, and once over 100% your attacking play becomes more prolific. Some bowlers may sledge or bowl bouncers to try permanently decrease the batsmen's confidence. A Player with a low confidence (or eye) goes out easier to a good ball. Good balls are mostly determined by the bounce of the wicket (see point IV in pitch conditions, above). There are many things a batsmen can do to improve his confidence, like building partnerships and reaching milestones, or hitting tricky deliveries to the boundary.

Confidence can be countered by the bowlers Con-Factor. A 'Googly' has a high Con-Factor, as does the 'Express Delivery', sometimes.

There are 20 types of shots to choose as a batsman, and 49 field placings as well as 49 places for the ball to be pitched from 30 typed of deliveries bowled. Everything works on this precise grid, allowing for example that:

The majority of shots pitched short of a length on the off side are hit into the covers with a cover drive off the front foot.

Field placing and bowling line thus play a big role. The bowler must select his width or length, or the coach can use his artificial intelligence to do it for you.

Another fun feature is the random name generator. Some names are of cricketing origin and some are simply random letters. Coincidences happen, so if your player by chance has a name like: 'Sir A Dimwit', then click it before starting the game and it will change into a new random name. As I really enjoy the random name generator and there is no viable way of eliminating rude words from randomly appearing, I must apologize for any silly names in advance. But you can enter your own name over any other name.

A free cricket game from www.random-games.com

...To conclude the game summary...

I have not made it to easy to get the shot selection right, and as a game player, I refuse to add a list of which shots do what. That is for the player to figure out.

But the shot selection is an exact formula that is fairly logical to decipher given a few games. There is randomness in the game, but the shot selection is not random, so your chances will improve over time. But at this point, I can only guess how difficult it will be for the average player. I am also interested to see if the experts of the professional game of cricket agree with my algorithm. All criticism is appreciated as I see this project as more than a mere computer game. As you may have noticed, the mathematics of psychology, like bowler's mood and batting confidence play a large role in the success of the cricketer.

At this stage the limit is to a 50 over game, following standard rules for field placing inside 15 overs.

The test version of Critical Cricket will be version 3.

If you wish to encourage versions 2 and 3, and/or wish to invest in the project, give ideas add graphics, sounds etc, contact :-Jon
Critical Cricket Introduction Notes:
Version 1.884, September 2007.
Click here for more screen shots of the game. In 24-bit color, nogal.
cricket game download: Critical Cricket from the Random Computer Game Company
This game is in production @
The Random Computer Game Company:
www.random-games.com

As a point of commentary on the game of cricket itself and traditional values which have been eroded by antipodean louts, and the way the modern one day game is played:

One day rules and the one day game are great. The non-white clown costumes are mostly horrific. Please please please get rid of them. The poor players must feel like a freak show. Its undignified for them. They must cringe in shame each time they get given a new clown's costume.
The white uniforms, are however said to clash with the white ball. But, a white ball eventually goes gray and muddy. A bright red ball would be easier to see, especially against white spotlights...!

For that matter, if you play at night, why not use a luminescent orange-red, or even bright yellow-green ball. But please, please can we have whites for uniforms please? After all, if we wanted a circus, we would go to one. And get rid of the music on the loudspeaker. A live band is one thing, but those jingles are a disaster.

And racist spectators should have to face a dozen balls in the nets ... without pads... and without a bat... and especially... without a box.

And the power play is lost to the television audience as we cannot see the field settings anyway. Why not a clever computer graphic of how the field is set?

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programmer drone: Jon Bain
2007 A.D. Christ