Another Corrupted League.

[wiggins]

I will start this by telling everyone how much I love this game. I have been playing sports Sim's for 46 years. Ethan Allen Spin Baseball was the first real player Sim for me in the mid 60's. I bought this game for the first time in v.6. I have been using gaming software of some kind for the last... I don't know, since they stares producing gaming software. Maybe I've just been picked out as the one, but I have never used a more temper mental unforgiving piece of software in my life. I don't think in the last 7 years I have completed more than 3 full seasons this is not an exaggeration. I try and play out every game, 162 of them which makes it all the worse. I, like many of us work long and hard preparing for a new universe. I use parks, uni's, logos everything. Just fixing the ballpark coordinates for every single stadium is sometimes overwhelming. But it's a labor of love. All of it somehow. I lie in bed at night with the lights out rework my lineups. I sit at work and think about trades. I search for the perfect park.... But one way or another I almost always crash. I've played this game now on three different computers so I know it's not the computer. Sometimes it comes from power interruptions, the other times I can never tell. Here I am again tonight after 3 more weeks of pre-work, 2 weeks into my season that I simmed for 10 years and ...DONE. I loaded the game tonight and it quit on me when "finalizing" first time it's happened there. Yes I backed up my game in the game date Nov,11th. Since then, I have had free agency, trades, the rule 5 draft etc. I don't want to have to back up my game once a week. I shouldn't have to. I don't know if I can do this anymore. I know I don't want to. I'm not going to just start over again. I don't think I can. It's been over a year since I completed a season. Is there anybody with the company willing to take my saved game file and try and figure it out this time. Don't really want to put in a ticket and wait and wait till vacation is over. I normally just sulk for 4 or 5 days and start all over. I don't think I can do that this time. I'm sorry to whine, I'm just at my wits end.

[HustlinOwl]

had this happen now twice with both leagues I have created and this is my first experience with OOTP. 20-30min to load teams at 15% losing managers in league because of frustration and losing patience. Sent in 2 tickets on the issue only to get zero response

[Dutchy]

Wiggins, I feel for you. I have had the same situation with Football Manager (I'm still not far enough with OOTP to have the same experience) and I understand how it sucks.

Perhaps Markus and Andreas need some extra voluntary manpower. I can imagine that people are having problems and I also see many people complaining about the response time on their tickets.

In a response that I read from one of them is that they have few people working on the game, then they have quite some but still not enough people helping out on the tickets voluntarily but they of course have their own jobs. I think there must be a way somehow to get more people working on this game both in the development and troubleshooting department. Or maybe hire cheap labour from cheap countries? I'm just making a suggestion...

I'd love to help but I don't know how to program yet but I'd love to learn. I'll be starting with teaching myself Python soon.

[wiggins]

Thanks Dutchy. I would wish for all that also. I'm just wondering what I do now. The wife doesn't understand how on Gods earth I could be this frustrated with a game. I think I'm sleeping in the other room tonight.

[damientheomen3]

I'm actually surprised with how stable OOTP has been with me, but almost every single other game for me is similar to your OOTP experience. My laptop is top of the line, yet I still can't get through a full season in a game like DDS: pro basketball 2 without some sort of crash. Makes me count my blessings that I've never had an OOTP crash aside from testing crazy ideas.

[Jagger]

I thought I had lost a season a few weeks back. I had a power interruption. Afterwards, the save game would not load. I ended up renaming the OOTP folder as a OOTP corrupted and then reloaded a brand new version of OOTP. Then I copied the scenario save folder from the old corrupt OOTP version into the save game folder of the new version of OOTP. It worked!!!!

The power interruption corrupted the OOTP game itself but not my saved game.

Might work for you as well.

[endgame]

wiggins, how recent is the last backup you have, i.e. pre-corruption?

[kehowey]

[QUOTE=wiggins;3182879]I will start this by telling everyone how much I love this game. I have been playing sports Sim's for 46 years. Ethan Allen Spin Baseball was the first real player Sim for me in the mid 60's. I bought this game for the first time in v.6. I have been using gaming software of some kind for the last... I don't know, since they stares producing gaming software. Maybe I've just been picked out as the one, but I have never used a more temper mental unforgiving piece of software in my life. I don't think in the last 7 years I have completed more than 3 full seasons this is not an exaggeration. I try and play out every game, 162 of them which makes it all the worse. I, like many of us work long and hard preparing for a new universe. I use parks, uni's, logos everything. Just fixing the ballpark coordinates for every single stadium is sometimes overwhelming. But it's a labor of love. All of it somehow. I lie in bed at night with the lights out rework my lineups. I sit at work and think about trades. I search for the perfect park.... But one way or another I almost always crash. I've played this game now on three different computers so I know it's not the computer. Sometimes it comes from power interruptions, the other times I can never tell. Here I am again tonight after 3 more weeks of pre-work, 2 weeks into my season that I simmed for 10 years and ...DONE. I loaded the game tonight and it quit on me when "finalizing" first time it's happened there. Yes I backed up my game in the game date Nov,11th. Since then, I have had free agency, trades, the rule 5 draft etc. I don't want to have to back up my game once a week. I shouldn't have to. I don't know if I can do this anymore. I know I don't want to. I'm not going to just start over again. I don't think I can. It's been over a year since I completed a season. Is there anybody with the company willing to take my saved game file and try and figure it out this time. Don't really want to put in a ticket and wait and wait till vacation is over. I normally just sulk for 4 or 5 days and start all over. I don't think I can do that this time. I'm sorry to


I just read your thread and wondered if Ethan Allen Spin Baseball was my first simulation too. I have been searching for my first baseball game for a long time with no luck. So I looked spin baseball up on the Internet and found Ethan Allen’s Cadaco All-Star Baseball. OMG! It was my first love. I had the 1960 version and started playing All-Star Baseball in the Spring of 1961. What a year! My Tigers (I lived in Allen Park - just south of Detroit then) and the much hated (and still hated) Yankees both won 100 games. Maris hit 61 homeruns. For me it was the perfect baseball storm. I have now been playing baseball simulations for 50 years now. I have been playing OOTP since OOTP7.

I am very sorry you are having problems with OOTP. I have not had many problems. The best I can suggest is you run OOTP12 as the administrator. Just right click on your OOTP12 desktop icon and then left click “run as administrator”. I would also suggest you do backups often.
Again Wiggins, thank you, thank you, thank you………..

[RchW]

I'm not for one minute suggesting that this frustration is not real or a big concern to those who have experienced it. I'm completely at a loss to understand what responsibility the software has for "power interruptions".

[RandyTiger]

There's any number of reasons why a game can crash, ranging from settings conflicting with each other (with all the options this complicated game has, it's going to happen every once in a while), to a user changing/modifying files or using alt-ctrl-del to cancel a game they don't like (which can corrupt a league file), to a power outage which corrupts the file. Eventually, something's going to happen - and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

I know, "the developers should make sure nothing conflicts or make it crash-proof". Easy to say... extremely hard to do, considering how complicated this game is. Sometimes, Markus and Andreas fix one bug... and as an unintended consequence, create another. It's frustrating and a never-ending cycle. (Besides, I've yet to meet a game that has NEVER crashed or had bugs...)

I suggest monthly backups (which is what I do), and the odd times I've had a corrupted file, I've been able to restore to an earlier date and play through with no problems.

Yeah, it's frustrating, but what can you do about it? Nothing. If you get frustrated, walk away for a few days, and then come back to it once you've calmed down. That helps for any problem. Yes, I know, you feel you shouldn't have to, but reality being what it is... what else can you do?

Here's an idea that might help you: after you get everything set up the way you want it, before you play any games, save the game as a template, and then sim for one or two years to make sure everything works the way it is supposed to. Once that's done, if there's no problem, then you can play it out game by game. At the very least, if a problem develops, then it'll be easier to pinpoint it.

As for customer support, some of the options someone suggested just aren't workable. OOTPD cannot afford to hire a full-time staff to handle support, even with cheap labor. (Do you really want someone from India who knows nothing about baseball or the game giving you advice based on a knowledgebase article? I sure as heck don't! I want a fan, someone who knows the game at least a little bit, trying to help.)

At last count, we have a grand total of 4, just 4, people who regularly help out with support tickets. We have no Mac techs, and I don't think have anyone who knows the ins and outs of the new online league system very well (we're still working out a bunch of bugs on that, and some of them will be addressed in the next patch).

Throw in the fact that if we don't know how to handle the presented problem... we sure aren't going to take the ticket, because that will just make things worse. Consider also that if Markus and Andreas had to handle support, they wouldn't have a whole lot of time to fix bugs and code features, and then where would the game be without the new features people demand for every version?

Guys, we're trying. As I've said before, if you don't get an answer to your ticket in 3-4 days.. politely bump it by responding to the e-mail you received when you filed it, and we'll do the best we can. We're not ignoring you on purpose - this ain't EA, after all.

[mattb_222]

I feel like this is a good thread to ask this question. I am new to this game (just bought it a few weeks ago) and I keep hearing people talk about the difficulty of backing up a game. This has me curious if I am doing it wrong. After starting a league and having it crash about 30 games in, I started a new league and I now back it up after every game is played. If you do this everyday, it only takes about 10-15 seconds. But, everywhere I read on here all I see is how long and frustrating it is to have to back up a game all the time. Am I not backing up the game correctly? I just use the "start backup" icon under the Save Game options, but if this is not really sufficient I would like to know before my game crashes again... Thanks for any help!

[Erik]

Originally Posted by mattb_222

I feel like this is a good thread to ask this question. I am new to this game (just bought it a few weeks ago) and I keep hearing people talk about the difficulty of backing up a game. This has me curious if I am doing it wrong. After starting a league and having it crash about 30 games in, I started a new league and I now back it up after every game is played. If you do this everyday, it only takes about 10-15 seconds. But, everywhere I read on here all I see is how long and frustrating it is to have to back up a game all the time. Am I not backing up the game correctly? I just use the "start backup" icon under the Save Game options, but if this is not really sufficient I would like to know before my game crashes again... Thanks for any help!

This is what I do as well, so I'd love to hear from someone more familiar with the game if this is the correct way to do it or not. Like mattb said, it only takes about 15 seconds for the game to back-up. I'm assuming it will take a lot longer the further I develop my league.

[RchW]

AFAIK you are both correct.

[kingcharlesxii]

Yep, I recommend doing a series of backups. It doesn't take any time if you set it to backup while you sleep. What I do is delete the oldest one (I usually have 3 backups of any league I care about in case I don't find corruption right away!) and set it to backup before I go to bed.

I have never lost a league because of it and it takes only seconds of my time to do.

[wiggins]

End Game- I'm not at my computer right now, but my backup was early November and I'm currently in mid April. As I mentioned I have had the rule 5 draft, Free Agency, many, many trades, (Team I took over was 61 and 101) Uni's, logos, Ballparks, factors, coordinates etc. It's just that I do this so often...

Rich- I didn't say thge software was responsible for the issues due to the power interuptions. the power interuptions are just one of the many, many ways my games have crashed. I have though in the last 30 some odd years, played many other games where a power interuption did not always cause catastrophic results as is always the case with OOTP.

Randy- If and when I go back, I will be doing monthly backups if not weekly, although the larger the file the more cumbersome and lengthy the process. I did sim 10 seasons with no problems at all. As I mentioned I try and play out every game, so sometimes I invest 6 or 7 months on a league only having it go to sh**. My games never crash during my pre-sims. I hate that I love this game so much. I'm a recovering alcoholic, 6 years. I think this OOTP dependency is worse. "Hi, my name is wiggins.....

[wiggins]

I guess I would just really appreciate it if someone from management said "Hey wiggins, send me your game file. Let's see if I can figure something out" I think I remember someone doing that with me 6 or 7 years ago during one of my early crashes. Although that may be my ever expanding imagination playing game with my very feeble mind. The good news, is I read a book last night. Haven't done that in a while...

[wiggins]

I guess I'll try a ticket. Do they help with this kind of thing, or only bugs?

[endgame]

Originally Posted by wiggins

I guess I would just really appreciate it if someone from management said "Hey wiggins, send me your game file. Let's see if I can figure something out" I think I remember someone doing that with me 6 or 7 years ago during one of my early crashes. Although that may be my ever expanding imagination playing game with my very feeble mind. The good news, is I read a book last night. Haven't done that in a while...

Well, that's kind of where I was heading, but not convinced a backup of 4 months old (game time) is going to be the best help as the corruption is not looming in the next couple of days. Maybe, if you're up to it, you may take that backup from, was it November game time?, and sim it up to the opening day (under a new league name). From there, we could determine at what point it may be helpful to zip up the .dat files or engage in a few little trials to see if the corruption can be 'created', keeping a last backup in the wings. This is the only remote chance of beginning to narrow down where the problem is occuring, IF it is indeed occuring with your league file proper.

[wiggins]

Thanks Guys. I'll sim it along. When I come back to the game. still reading books