15% Referral Commission!
Current customers, tell your friends about Rhino Software and earn
money from products & services that they purchase. For every new
customer that you send us, we'll pay you a referral
commission
equal to 15% of the price of the item that they purchase! For
example, if you refer someone who buys a $90 software product from us, you
would earn a $13.50 referral commission. Pretty cool right? To earn a referral
commission
simply tell
your friends to jot down your name in the Promo Code box when placing
their online order (for example: "referred by Bill Smith"). When we
receive their order, we'll verify your name as being a current Rhino Software
customer and then we'll mail you a referral check. Please allow two weeks for
delivery of your referral check.
May 2007
Development work has resumed on Sword of
Severnia (TM), our computer-moderated tabletop miniatures wargame. The design
and writing of the wargame rules are progressing nicely and our team's goal is to
begin
playtesting this fall. We're very excited about this project as Rhino
Software expands its business beyond fantasy sports and into the realm of hobby
games.
April 2007
A new version of Rhino Baseball (version 6.62)
was released on Opening Day, April 2nd. This newest version incorporates the
following enhancements:
VERSION 6.62 ENHANCEMENTS -- APRIL
2007
1. Data Loader = Enhanced the ability of Data Loader to load large user-created
H2H Schedule Templates into database.
Can now load very big templates for schedules of up to 162
games.
2. Auto-Update of Rosters = New function lets you automatically update your
league's fantasy team rosters
using data that was created and saved by the live draft
tracker.
VERSION 6.6 ENHANCEMENTS -- MARCH 2007
1. Draft Central = Added ability to track SNAKE order drafts (picking order
reverses each round).
2. Draft Central = Added constraint which prevents draft deflation from falling
below -67%.
This has the effect of not skewing player Dollar Values as
much as before (when deflation could drop to -100%)
during the end-phase of the auction when most teams are out
of (or very low on) money.
3. Draft Central = Added new report which can be accessed via the T-Stats button
in Draft Central.
This new report shows Projected Fantasy Team Stats at any
point during the draft for all teams in the league.
Stat columns in report can be sorted.
4. Freeze Lists = Added "auto-retrieval" and "auto-save" features in this
screen.
March 2007
A new version of Rhino Baseball, version 6.58,
was released on March 4, 2007. Enhancements for this version included the
following:
VERSION 6.58 ENHANCEMENTS
1. 2006 AL, NL, and AL/NL Stats included.
2. 2006 Minor League Stats for over 130 top prospects included.
3. 2007 Major League Player Info updated.
4. Updated and added some new Minor League Team affiliations.
5. Player Forecasts = Minor enhancement to algorithm for calculating pitching
forecasts for young/breakthrough players.
September 2006
Over the past 2 years, development work has been
underway on 2 new products: Rhino Hockey
(fantasy hockey software) and Sword of Severnia
(a tabletop miniatures wargame). Both products are important to us, but come
midsummer 2006 we needed to make a decision on which of these products to focus
our full attention on for the next 6-9 month timeframe. Steve Severino is the lead
developer on both projects, so choosing one project for him to focus on was a
necessity because splitting time on two projects is a disaster for everyone
involved and leads to weak products. And that's something our company President
would never accept. It's excellence or nothing.
So which product did we choose to go forward with? We
chose the wargame. It was a very difficult decision. Rhino Hockey
is close to completion, having been beta-tested last season. And we've had a
batch of interested people sign-up for our mailing list, waiting for the word on
when the hockey software would be released. But huge progress has also been made
over the past 9 months on the wargame, and our 5-man design team is really
hitting its stride right now. Delaying work on the wargame to finish the hockey
software would have pushed the release of the wargame back about 1 year. That was
something we couldn't live with. Our company goal is to start moving away from
seasonal products and start producing products which can be sold all year long.
Plus, the planned product line surrounding the wargame is much larger than that
for hockey. Although there's interest in our hockey software, there just wasn't
enough buzz to sacrifice continuing work on something that makes
better business and financial sense for us.
Does this mean Rhino Hockey is kaput? No. It
just means that we have decided to wait until 2007 or even possibly later to release the fantasy hockey
software. We know this decision will disappoint some people. Frankly, it's
frustrating for us as well. It's one of the downsides of not having enough
developers to finish everything we have planned for commercial release as fast
as we would like to. Since we're delaying the Rhino Hockey software until 2007,
we've also decided not to offer our weekly NHL stats service this year. That
will return for the 2007-2008 season as well.
March 2006
An updated version of Rhino Baseball, version 6.53, is now
available for purchase from our web site. This version was released on March 30,
2006. Current customers who purchased the Rhino Baseball 6.5 Upgrade package
in 2006 will receive an email from our Customer Support Team explaining how they
can get the upgraded software files for free.
Also, an updated
MLB Player Information file (dated March 21) is now available for free download
from the Baseball Stats Center page of the
web site. This file is available to Rhino Stats
Service customers for no charge.
November 2005
At this point, we've officially decided to hold off
releasing our new Rhino Hockey 1.0 software
until the start of the 2006-2007 NHL season. Why? Several factors
contributed to Rhino Hockey taking longer to complete than
originally anticipated. Rather than rush an untested product to market,
we decided to spend extra time honing the quality of the software so that we'll
have a great product worthy of carrying the Rhino Software name next year.
Currently, chief designer Steve Severino
is using Rhino Hockey to manage his HAHA fantasy hockey league
and is making sure that the software works well. So far things are
progressing very nicely. Those people on our
mailing list will be the first to know when Rhino Hockey 1.0 becomes
available, so if you're interested in fantasy hockey,
go here to sign up for our mailing list!
September 2005
We'll be starting the hockey edition of our
Rhino Stats Service for the 2005-2006 NHL season
which enables users to download updated NHL player stats files from our web site
every Monday during the regular season.
March 2005
In mid-March we released the
2005 MLB Player Info & Stats Packet.
This packet includes updated Major League Baseball
Player Info as of March 16, 2005. If you're currently a Rhino Baseball
user, but don't plan on
upgrading to Rhino Baseball 6.5 or signing up for the 2005 MLB
Stats Service this year, then you may wish to use this data to quickly update your Rhino
Baseball database with all the off-season player moves, get updated information
to use when generating player projections, and to import
the Final 2004 player stats for
your analysis & draft prep needs.
February 2005
Rhino Baseball 6.5, the newest
edition of our popular fantasy baseball software for Windows computers, was
officially released to the public on February 22. The focus of version 6.5
is on live draft tracking functions and ease-of-use for
new users. The Home Window
has been reorganized and given a snazzy new look. The toolbar
shows Text descriptions on each button. And there's a new 16-page
Getting Started Guide
that describes all
the functions found in Rhino Baseball; it's a must-read for everyone.
The meatiest additions involve the brand new live
draft tracking features. There are new functions to help
setup your draft data, view lists of available and taken players,
track picks and inflation-adjusted dollar values during your live
draft, view team rosters and money levels, perform in-draft research,
and manage your draft strategy on the fly. You can also use these
functions to run a mock draft
just for the heck of it and to get some pre-draft practice. The new
draft tracking functions are included in both the
Deluxe and new
Draft Magic versions of Rhino Baseball 6.5. Draft Magic combines the
live draft tracking functions with everything in the
Draft Planner
version. For laptop owners, this new program is will be your secret
weapon come draft day. On the player analysis side, the pricing-algorithm used to calculate Dollar Values
has been further refined. And as always, Final 2004 player stats and updated MLB
player info has been added to the database for the 2005 season. Rhino Baseball
has been expanding since its first edition in 1997, and it keeps on getting
better & better. It's now positioned as the only 3-in-1 fantasy baseball
software on the market (forecasting & draft prep, league management, and
in-season player & trade analysis tools).
November 2004
In early-November we made the
Final
2004 MLB Player Stats available for purchase &
download from RhinoSoftware.com. This stats package consists of 8 tab-delimited Text files
in Rhino Stats
Service file format. These stat files contain final batting, pitching, and
games-by-position statistics for every player
who played in Major League Baseball during the 2004 regular season. There
are 3 AL-only stat files, 3 NL-only stat files, and 2 AL/NL Combined stat files
in this package.
April 2004
During the month of April we released two maintenance upgrades to our
Rhino Baseball fantasy baseball software.
Registered customers of Rhino Baseball 6.0
can download these free upgrades by visiting our
Downloads page. Downloading
the upgrade files requires a special Username & Password combo, which has been
provided to our customers by Rhino Software Tech Support via a separate email.
If you didn't receive the email or have accidentally misplaced it,
please contact our webmaster
for assistance.
In early-April we began offering the
Final
2003-2004 NHL Player Stats package for purchase and
download from our web site. This package consists of 2 tab-delimited Text files
(Skater Stats and Goalie Stats) that are formatted in Rhino Stats File
Service format. These files contain final statistics for every player
who played in the NHL during the 2003-2004 regular season.
March 2004
In late-March we released an updated version of the
2004 MLB Player Info & Stats Packet.
This packet includes updated Major League Baseball
Player Info as of March 26, 2004. If you're a Rhino Baseball
user, but don't plan on
upgrading to Rhino Baseball version 6.0 or signing up for the 2004 MLB
Stats Service, then you may wish to use this information to quickly update your Rhino
Baseball database with all the off-season player moves, and to import
the Final 2003 player stats for
your draft prep needs.
February 2004
In late-February we released Rhino
Baseball 6.0, the newest version of our much-loved fantasy baseball
software. We redesigned the software to look better on today's bigger PC monitors and jazzed
up the interface a little bit. We also tried to make the software easier
to learn for "newbies" by adding more on-screen tips, and improving the
organization and help sections of the Home window. And we continued to enhance
the program's functionality, adding some new draft prep reports, and refining
the stats forecasting engine and dollar valuation algorithms. As with every new
version, we also included updated MLB player info and final stats, as well as
minor league stats for a selection of top prospects. With its redesigned look &
feel, ease-of-use
improvements, and enhanced draft prep tools, this is easily the best version of Rhino Baseball we've ever
released. Do yourself a favor
and check it out!
March 2005
Signups for the Rhino Stats Service - Baseball 2005
began in mid-March. Our weekly stats file download service, which began in the
spring of 2003, has been very well received. Since the vast majority of our baseball software customers also subscribed to our stats service, we
decided to begin bundling a 1-year signup to the baseball stats service with our
Rhino Baseball Deluxe title.
March also saw the launch of our new
Database
Upgrade Service which takes a user's existing SQL
database and converts it into a newer version of that database while maintaining
all of the user's original data. For example, a Rhino Baseball 6.0 user could
use this service to convert his existing database to a structural format that's 100%
compatible with the newer Rhino Baseball 6.5 software. Database conversion
eliminates the need for a user of an old software version to setup a new
database from scratch after installing a new version of the software. This
service can save a customer several days of data-entry work in some cases. For
info regarding the Database Upgrade Service and whether or not your
database is a candidate to be upgraded,
please contact our technical support
team.
Fall 2005
Some gradual changes will be occurring to RhinoSoftware.com during
the Fall season. We'll be eliminating some extraneous pages as we update and
streamline our product line. The Ask Reggie Rhino, Sports Buzz, and Tech Talk
sections of the site will also be eliminated, and will be replaced by the new
Mad Rhinoceros Speaks blog. A
new Software Tips & Solutions section will eventually
makes it way into the site as well. Several of our products will undergo pricing
changes, with several of the Rhino Baseball products actually decreasing
in price. And we'll be updating product screen shots as well. So stay tuned!
July 2004
As we head into the hot summer season, you'll begin to notice some changes to
the RhinoSoftware.com web site. Our masthead has been updated as we've
incorporated navigational links to our most popular products & services, and
have added a graphical site navigation bar at the top of each page. Past
visitors will notice that the small number of site navigation buttons that
appeared in the left-hand border of every page have been replaced by a much
wider variety of text links. The changes to the top and left-hand navigational
bars were made to help you find what you're looking for faster, and to shorten
the time it takes to load pages on our site. We've also made a few
organizational changes to the site to streamline navigation and reduce the size
of lengthy pages.
In the coming months we're planning to beef up the
self-help sections of our web site. Although it's been long overdue, we're
finally hoping to have some written material on the
Solved Cases page. This page will contain real-life solutions to
technical issues that our software users commonly encounter. There's also a plan
to start a monthly software tips column called Ask Reggie Rhino, in
which our resident software guru Steve Severino provides tips & tricks for
various Rhino Software products.
We'll continue to tweak
the appearance and content of the site over the next few months. If you
happen to encounter any pages which are under construction, please bear with us.
We
both welcome and encourage your
feedback regarding how we can improve the RhinoSoftware.com web site.
April 2004
In April we started the Rhino Software Affiliate Program.
This sales program provides website owners with an
easy way to earn additional revenues from their websites. The basic concept is
that for each visitor
you send from your website to RhinoSoftware.com who
purchases a software product or service from us, you earn a generous 25% sales commission. We do all
of the credit card transaction processing, customer follow-up, order
fulfillment, and technical support. You simply promote our
products (via a banner ad or dedicated web page) and earn money when you help sell them. It's a low-risk way
to earn additional profits for your online business. For additional information
about our affiliate program, please visit our
Affiliates web page.
Our 4-man design team is currently going full steam
ahead on the Sword of Severnia
tabletop wargame project. Creation of the rulebook is coming along
quite nicely, and play-testing will begin fairly soon. The team will be developing 2
variations of the wargame: a traditional wargame in book format, and a computer-assisted version
for Windows PC's. Our ultimate goal is to have the paper-version (printed book
and PDF versions) of the wargame completed during the Fall of 2008. Plans
are to follow that up with an Army Points Calculator program, a Campaign
guidebook and rules supplement, and eventually our full Computer-Assisted
version of the game.
The basic wargame is played on
the tabletop with miniature soldiers and model terrain. The computer-assisted
version, which will be released later, will be
used to track the battlefield status of units, perform rule lookups, moderate
game play, and calculate
victory points. Plans for the wargame software also include features
for helping players quickly construct armies and compute army points, create maps of the battlefield prior to play,
and
manage wargame campaigns. The action takes place in the fantasy world
of Severnia, a land inspired by a mix of ancient & medieval history, classic
mythology, and heroic
fantasy novels.
Our computer-assisted game is aimed at wargamers who enjoy engaging
in moderate-sized
fantasy battles
and who would rather focus their attention on battle
strategy & tactics during a game rather than wasting time flipping through charts,
trying to memorize complex rules, and doing manual bookkeeping. By having a
referee (or game master) operate the
software on a laptop computer while the players concentrate on
commanding their armies on the tabletop, you can eliminate getting bogged down
in rules minutia, speed up game play, and focus on the fun aspects of a battle
rather than getting lost in the game mechanics. And fun is
really what a game should be all
about. There will also be a non-computer version of the game rules for those
grognards who
prefer traditional low-tech wargames, and this will actually be released first (before
the computer-assisted version).
One of the great things about this game is the fact that
it's not tied to any single manufacturer's range
of minis. This means players can use any 25mm to 30mm scale fantasy, horror, and ancient/medieval
figures from their existing collections in the game. As a result,
players will have a massive variety of figures to choose from and can easily get into the
game without having to spend a fortune on specialized minis from a single
company. Another primary goal of our game is to make it accessible to a wider range of
gamers by not requiring players to field large armies of over 100 soldiers per side
(which is often the
case in non-skirmish wargames geared towards moderate-to-large scale battles).
The figure requirements for SOS are about 60-75 soldiers per side.
You can read more about the progress of the Sultans
project by checking out the Sultans of Severnia
section of this web site. There are also a multitude of links to wargaming web
sites, free rules, miniature manufacturers, and so forth. So if you're unfamiliar with miniature wargaming and would like to
find out a little more about it, surfing through those links is a great way to
start. You should also check out the
HMGS East web site, an organization
that promotes the historical aspect of the wargaming hobby and sponsors several
game conventions each year.
Steve Severino, lead developer of the Sultans
project team, is a member of HMGS East and would be more than happy to answer
questions about our upcoming wargame for those who are interested.
What's on the mind of Steve Severino, Rhino
Software's President and Chief Software Engineer?
Check out the brand new Six
Sided Rhinoceros blog to read what Steve has to say about fantasy
sports, board games, wargames, miniatures, software development, entrepreneurs,
and anything else that strikes his fancy.
