One of the biggest side effects of EA's insistence of releasing its NCAA Football games more than a month ahead of the start of the season is that its rosters tend to be out of date. First off, no real names can be used due to NCAA rules, but EA provides a handy roster-share feature that allows fans to upload named rosters to share with other players. I usually get my roster from Operation Sports. But the great guys at Operation Sports can only do so much. Updating the rosters for big-name schools like Alabama, Florida, and LSU is pretty easy. The little schools are a bit more of a problem. So I've taken it upon myself to make some corrections to Operation Sports' rosters for my alma mater, UNLV.

First and foremost, I went through each position and made sure that the players listed match what is on the most up-to-date versions of the team's depth chart and roster. This required moving a few players around, since they've changed positions. Other players were renamed and completely revised since those players have since left the team. I also took the liberty of making spelling corrections on some players' names (such as Maika Mataele and Ron Scoggins), updating redshirt statuses that were incorrect, updating the High School and Home State of most players (using the names of the closest town whenever I couldn't find a match), and also updating the faces and equipment of starters.

Earlier today, I published my first real mod for Sid Meier's Civilization V. As you may recall, I had previously uploaded a mod as an April Fools joke. But this new one is for real!

The mod is titled "Code of Laws (Version A)(v. 1)".

As the title indicates, this mod's primary function is to add a new technology to the game, called "Code of Law", and to move the Courthouse building into that technology.

My primary purpose for doing this was to deepen the Classical Era of the tech tree. As it stands, the Classical Era of the game's tech tree is only one technology deep. This means that era goes by exceedingly fast! I've seen players and AI tech to the Medieval Era as early as 1000 B.C. in some games.

UPDATE (August 8, 2012): Mod no longer available

This mod is no longer available since Civilization V has switched to using the Steam Workshop for mods. I plan to eventually upload an updated version of this mod, and will update this post if/when that happens.

UPDATE (October 15, 2012): Updated Code of Law mod now available on Steam Workshop

A new version of this mod designed for Gods & Kings was just released on the Steam Workshop. This version is only compatible with the Gods & Kings expansion, and does not work on the base Civilization V game. I apologize for the inconvenience.

UPDATE (October 18, 2012): Update to Vanilla version now on Steam Workshop

Due to a request by Steam user The Octopus Creating New Worlds, I went ahead and published an update to the original version of the mod (for the base game) onto the Steam Workshop.

Excited by the end of the NFL lockout, I just couldn't wait to get back to video game football. I purchased NCAA Football 12 last week, but haven't had much time to play it yet. But before I begin a Dynasty, I wanted to make sure that the rosters for my alma mater UNLV was as correct as I could make it.

I started with the rosters provided by Operation Sports user GamingTailgate. The guys at Operation Sports and Pasta Padre do a fantastic job with their rosters every year, and my hat's off to those guys for the tremendous work they do making sure that NCAA Football fans have accurate rosters for the new games as soon as possible. However, I noticed that they had made some glaring (but understandable) errors with the rosters for the UNLV Running Rebels.

UNLV isn't exactly a top-tier team. In fact, UNLV is a bottom-tier team. They only had two wins last year. So I'm sure that neither EA Sports nor Operation Sports cares too much about making sure the rosters are as up-to-date as possible for such a team. But I care, so I opened up the UNLV spring 2011 prospectus for reference.

This post is a continuation of the post Anything and Everything - Upgrades for Civ V (Part I), in which I listed upgrades/changes I would like to see in the turn-based strategy game, Civilization V.

The list on the original post was a compilation of forum posts that I had made in Kevik's Civilization V forum topic: Anything and Everything We Can Add to Civ V

Earlier today, I published my first actual Civilization V mod!

This mod is titled: "A Better Civ Experience", and is described as:

"This mod allows players to transform their Civ experience, providing greater depth, balance, and realism."

The mod can be found by searching for its title in the Civilization V Mod Browser. Download, install, and then enable the mod (as shown below) in order to play it.

UPDATE (August 8, 2012): Mod no longer available

This mod is no longer available since Civilization V has switched to using the Steam Workshop for mods. Since this mod was originally an April Fool's joke, and doesn't add anything of any worth to the game, I have no plans to update the mod to be accessible through the Steam Workshop.