Game time/Time zone

[Hendu Style]

Anyone else notice game times being at 10:00 pm PST? I'm guessing it's meant to be 10:00 pm EST. I feel sorry for all those folks on the east coast watching an Angels-Rangers game at 1:00 am!

[DCG12]

On your manager screen go to manager options and make sure your local time zone is set correctly. If it isn't this may be causing problems. Otherwise I got nothing.

[Hendu Style]

Originally Posted by DCG12

On your manager screen go to manager options and make sure your local time zone is set correctly. If it isn't this may be causing problems. Otherwise I got nothing.

Just checked... manager is pacific time. I am stumped.

[bwburke94]

You're using a pre-OOTP13 schedule file that set game times by Eastern time instead of local time. OOTP13 thinks that "2200" refers to 10:00 local time instead of 10:00 Eastern time.

[hefalumps]

Yeah, just noticing this myself. Looks like all of the historical schedules prior to 2012 were done with game times in Eastern instead of local, which makes sense since OOTP didn't use to support timezone data. But it means that anyone who plays historical will have whacked out game start times if you use those historical schedules.

And adjusting the manager's time zone settings doesn't change anything, because the problem lies with the start time in the schedule and the timezone data in the team's location. Basically, if you're using a historical schedule prior to 2012, games in EST will always start on time, games in CST will always start an hour late, games in MST two hours late, and games in PST three hours late.

I haven't searched yet, but I wonder if anyone has started going back and editing the historical schedules. In order to ensure accuracy, they'd have to be hand-edited, or someone would have to write a script that knew the team IDs and could take the home team's timezone into account when adjusting times. Sounds like a lot of work.

I wonder if Markus could somehw add support for "EST schedule files" into the schedule import process. I agree local time by default makes sense with the direction OOTP is going, but by not supporting schedules with Eastern times, it makes OOTP13 not terribly friendly with historical schedules, especially with its real-time features. If I'm doing a RTS using a historical schedule, I don't want to wait until 1:05 am to watch the west coast games!

Hoping to see this option in a patch. Or a way to edit the timezone data for the major league cities to put them all back on the same timezone.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by bwburke94

You're using a pre-OOTP13 schedule file that set game times by Eastern time instead of local time. OOTP13 thinks that "2200" refers to 10:00 local time instead of 10:00 Eastern time.

22:00 does refer to 10PM local time - no matter where you are. It is not specific to EST.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by hefalumps

I haven't searched yet, but I wonder if anyone has started going back and editing the historical schedules. In order to ensure accuracy, they'd have to be hand-edited, or someone would have to write a script that knew the team IDs and could take the home team's timezone into account when adjusting times. Sounds like a lot of work.

I thought they had been converted. But perhaps that got overlooked due to more pressing matters during the beta.

In any case, the starting times, outside of the most recent years, are largely fictional anyway since I don't know of any database that records the actual game starting times. The first instance, as far as I'm aware, of a newspaper carrying the starting time for all scheduled MLB games, as opposed to just the city's own team, was the Chicago Tribune in 1964. The New York Times didn't start listing the starting time for all MLB games until the latter part of the 1970s, if I recall correctly.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

22:00 does refer to 10PM local time - no matter where you are. It is not specific to EST.

But game starting times were set to Eastern Time values in prior historical league schedules. So a game that was starting at 19:00 hours (7 p.m.) in LA would be listed as starting at 22:00 hours (10:00 p.m.) in the schedule file, since that's the Eastern Time equivalent oo that L.A. starting time. OOTP 13 has added support for time zones, which means such time zone correction of starting times no longer has to be done in the schedule file itself. Thus schedule files can now just use local time values, which is actually a good thing (and is something I've long wished for).

[hefalumps]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I thought they had been converted. But perhaps that got overlooked due to more pressing matters during the beta.

In any case, the starting times, outside of the most recent years, are largely fictional anyway since I don't know of any database that records the actual game starting times. The first instance, as far as I'm aware, of a newspaper carrying the starting time for all scheduled MLB games, as opposed to just the city's own team, was the Chicago Tribune in 1964. The New York Times didn't start listing the starting time for all MLB games until the latter part of the 1970s, if I recall correctly.

Thanks LGO.

I was looking through the "schedules" folder at the major_league schedule files - there are at least two for every year - one with "ap" at the end of the filename and one without. I can only assume the "ap" stands for "as played" and moves rainouts, etc. to their makeup dates, while the other schedule file contains the original season schedule. All the "non-ap" schedule files I checked (prior to the 2012 schedule file) still had "2205" game times for west coast games.

I checked a few different "ap" schedules, and all of their game times appear to be 14:05 or 19:35, so I guess if you play historical and don't want to see your west coast games starting three hours late, you could use the "ap" schedule files. All games are going to start at either 2:05 PM local or 7:35 PM local, which obviously isn't historically accurate, but like you said - game start time data doesn't seem to be tracked. Even baseball-reference didn't list the game start times as far as I could tell, just the time of game.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by hefalumps

I was looking through the "schedules" folder at the major_league schedule files - there are at least two for every year - one with "ap" at the end of the filename and one without. I can only assume the "ap" stands for "as played" and moves rainouts, etc. to their makeup dates ...

That's right. The as played schedule files are based on the Retrosheet game logs, with the main difference being that tie games and tiebreaking playoff games have been removed from the OOTP schedule file version.

Originally Posted by hefalumps

All games are going to start at either 2:05 PM local or 7:35 PM local, which obviously isn't historically accurate, but like you said - game start time data doesn't seem to be tracked. Even baseball-reference didn't list the game start times as far as I could tell, just the time of game.

The only way to get starting time data for earlier years when the data for all games was listed is to go day-by-day through a newspaper—which I've actually done for some seasons. For years before newspapers listed the start time for all games, one would need access to the newspaper for each major league city. I only had access to The New York Times, so all I have are the start times for the three clubs based in the city, and even then only for some years. But it is enough to make some reasonable estimates of typical start times.

At some point I want to go back through the historical schedule files and update both the original and as played versions with more historically authentic game starting times. (Another project on my list of many I want to work on.)

One little twist to consider is that over the years the boundaries of the time zones have changed (and probably the list of locales observing daylight saving time has changed too). I've not as yet found any online reference which lists how time zone boundaries have changed over the years.



In regards to how long a ball game lasts, with the addition of the Real-Time Simulation mode to the game, I sent Markus length-of-game data drawn from the Retrosheet game logs. It lists, for each season Retrosheet had data for, the average length in minutes of a normal (8½-9 innings, 51-54 outs) major league game. Since, for example, in 1940 the average game lasted 124 minutes; in 1975, 145 minutes; and 2010, 171 minutes, the idea was that in a historical league the typical length of a game should reflect these real-world time length differences.

This data was supposed to be incorporated into the game, though I'm not sure if it actually made it in due to the need to code other features and bug fixes.

Below is a graph showing the change in game length over the years:

[Raidergoo]

I was having a cynical thought. Game length should correlate in some manner to media revenue.

[PSUColonel]

Has this been fixed? This is a pain for all-time, as west coast games are being played well into the wee hours of the morning. (4am) Is there any way to fix this?

[hefalumps]

Hi PSUColonel,

I had been putting off importing from 12 to 13 because of this. I finally gave in and just switched to the "as played" schedule. It takes a little getting used to, as you end up with double headers for no reason because there was a rainout in real life. But I'm too lazy to edit all the non-as-played schedules to make them work.

Hopefully all of 14's historical schedules will be compatible.

[PSUColonel]

What I am seeing though, is games on the west coast scheduled for 1 am. Why is this? Does it think it's 1 pm? Is this even the same issue? I started my game with OOTP 13.

[hefalumps]

The issue is this: the historical schedules prior to OOTP13 had all times relative to Eastern Time. OOTP13 introduced timezones, and in doing so, imported schedules started getting interpreted differently. So prior to 13, if a schedule file listed a a Dodgers home game with a game time of 22:05, OOTP would import it as a 10:05 PM eastern game (7:05 PM pacific). However, when 13 sees this schedule file, it sees the game time as 22:05, interprets it as *local* time for the home team, and so schedules the game for 10:05 PM *pacific*. Assuming your team is on east coast time, it will show up in your schedule as 1:05 AM eastern.

So that's the problem. The "as played" schedules I've encountered all seem to be done with local times.

Hope that helps.