Here is a little background on BBW. There were several langiages that it was written in, converted from/to: Pascal, C+, Borland just to name a few. I don't believe that Visual Basic actually was one, but a fore-runner to it could have been. In 1984 the DOS game, along with StatMaster was written for IBM machines. (An Apple product was created in 1985, although it didn't last long.) This program was an almost exact duplicate of the Master Game boards. There were somethings that were slightly different because they could not be exactly programmed the same way....really not that important to discuss. StatMaster and the game alreally had some limitations. The game did not capture all of the same data that StatMaster could use (it got the stuff that Roswell could think of, but over time, new types of Bill James' stats were created and not included because they were not thought of by Roswell.) Enter, various patched to make it work. Patches were sometimes written in different languages which further complicated things. Next came the program that Bill Staffa attributes Miller Associates with selling the farm....Wizard. Wizard created a pretty good card. Good enough to make the game work. The first version of Wizard was "probably" created as a means for getting back at the soured relationship that MA had with APBA, but who knows for sure. It was a good program. Next came a chapter that few even know about....CSN, Computer Sprts Network. It was an on-line gaming center that used a revamped MA version of the game and formed leagues that people signed up, and played in. While the player would handle his team's home games, it was not a two-player game. The visiting team would send in written instructions to the home team as to how he should handle the opponents players. It was pretty neat. What it added were, basically, all of your AIM rules that you have today. What killed CSN was money. People would drop out of the league when their team fell too far behind; others would cheat their way to championships; still others failed to follow the written rules of their opponent and fights (protests) would erupt. CSN ultimately folded but, in doing so, it begat two new programs. First was MicroManager..the program that was going to end the problems about cheating; and (pat on the back to me here, I convinced Kenneth Miller that the CSN version (with AIM, etc.) could be sold as a stand-alone version of the game. I break-away from APBA, a new game, completely. Many new games (graphics) were coming out at that time and Kenneth was worried that he would lose too much money if he didn't follow suit with the other games. MicroManager was one of the neatest programs ever created. But, it was too smart for all of us dummies. MicroManager game you a glimpse, not only of your manager, but of Kenneth's own mind. Nice program but, way too hard for the common man. The stand alone version of the game to almost a year to create/convert to a program that was now called BBW. It converted everything from DOS to Windows and, with a few more patches attempted to blend all f the programs into one. At the same time, MA's employee Colby Duerk was working on the encyclopedia. Wow! When completed (another language, I think) it worked with Wizard to create a whole data disk with just a few key strokes in a manner of minutes. This was great, and horrible at the same time. MA could, in effect, ruin sales of season disks but selling this product. It sold for a few years. Colby ultimately quit, and went on his way....and the demise of MA's was on its way. With every new version of BBW the game inched further away from the original Master Game version. (Sometimes it was leaps and bounds, not inches.) Financial problems continued. Fans weren't buying all of the updates (or updates were coming too fast for fans to spend money on all of the updates) and things were changing. Finally, a law suit against the owners of 6 baseball games filed by the player's union for use of names. The suit sapped the wind out of Kenneth and and the game, and the rest of the history you already know. As far as the game is concerned, numerous programs were used; numerous patches were created; numerous programs were converted. Somehow, it works. It was still limited to what it could do (i.e. changing the batting characteristics to the + and - system required a whole new re-write) but it was do-able. Creating Version 6 just may have been easier to re-write the whole thing. I'm not sure and I don't have any inside knowledge. But, if ever completed, it will be an admirable feat. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Back in the DOS Daze it was primarily Borland's Turbo Pascal with Turbo Vision. With the advent of Windows, Turbo Pascal morphed into Delphi. BBW 5.5 was written with Delphi 1.0. At the start of the update for BBW 5.5 Delphi was still alive (version 10) as part of Borland Developer Studio (BDS) 2006. The biggest change was from Delphi 1.0 to 2.0 which went from Win 3.1 to Win32 (aka Windows 95) programming. Visual Basic also underwent major changes at the same time for the same reasons. To get from BBW 5.5 to 6.0 they have to clear out a lot of old DOS code that was still in fashion lo those many years ago. They have to deal with the changes in language features such as the ForEach function (Roster^.ForEach(@DoPlayerOnTeam) e.g.) that became obsolete after Delphi 1.0. There are also issues with some of the data files that use real numbers of 48 bits (deprecated under Delphi .Net). They had to understand the code as written before they could update or rewrite. An update in the same language, Pascal, would be quicker than a rewrite if for no other reason than the differences in structure between languages. Another plus to an update rather than a rewrite is that they will be able to use the updated Delphi code to create .net assemblies (.dll files) that can be used in the future with any other .net capable languages such as C#, BASIC, VB, C++, and even Fortran (if they're that crazy). They could start a rewrite with VB and use some or all of the Delphi created .net assemblies to create future updates without having to rewrite the entire suite of programs that make up BBW. Getting 6.0 done is the key. Once released, we should see updates and fixes on a regular basis.