Need help with CommishJoe Exporter/OOTPHistory

[bigjas]

I need some help getting this setup. Even though I'm computer savvy, I'm having trouble with these instructions. Could someone give me step by step directions to get the Exporter set up for my league, then to get OOTP History set up?

[ZouDave]

I assume what you're asking for is how to edit the exporter.bat, park.bat and possibly even career_exporter.bat files? That really is the hardest part, but the good news is once you get it once you'll never have to change it.

Find the exporter.bat file in whatever folder you've extracted the Exporter Utility (I put these files in the "C:\Program Files\OOTP History" folder that OOTP History wants to install to by default, which means I also let OOTP History install to its default folder. Anyway, find the exporter.bat file, right click on it and choose EDIT.

You'll see:

player.exe "c:\temp" "c:\temp"
teams.exe "c:\temp" "c:\temp"
schedule.exe "c:\temp" "c:\temp"
pause

The first directory on each line references where the .dat files are that you want to export, which is the .lg folder in OOTP. The second directory on eac line references where you want the exporter to put the .csv files it creates. You need to change the values in those lines to matchup with your league. So here's what I did to make it easy on me.

First thing's first, in OOTP go to the LEAGUE menu, choose ONLINE LEAGUE SETUP and click on GENERATE REPORT to have OOTP create the HTML files for the league. Then make a note of what date opening day was (like 4/1) and what date the final regular season game was on (like 10/7). You will need these dates later. After you've done this, save your league and exit out of OOTP. For simplicity sake, let's assume the report was generated to the default folder of C:\LEAGUESITE.

Create a folder on you C drive called "History". Inside the "History" folder, create another folder that matches the name of your league, for example your league is called APBL so you should have a folder called "c:\history\apbl". Open the OOTP History program, click on the FILE menu and choose NEW. Point the program to C:\History\APBL and save a new database there called APBL. Minimize the OOTP History program, as we'll be getting back to it soon.

Now, assuming you installed OOTP to its default directory, the path to your league would be "C:\Program Files\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP5\APBL.lg". Edit the lines in the exporter.bat file to this:

player.exe "C:\Program Files\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP5\APBL.lg" "c:\history\apbl\data"
teams.exe "C:\Program Files\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP5\APBL.lg" "c:\history\apbl\data"
schedule.exe "C:\Program Files\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP5\APBL.lg" "c:\history\apbl\data"
pause

Take care to not that the second directory in each line is set to "c:\history\apbl\DATA" so that the .csv files will go into the correct folder for OOTP to look for them. Once you've got the exporter.bat file edited to the correct directories, click on FILE and choose SAVE and close it. You will want to edit park.bat and possibly career_exporter.bat to have the same directories. Once these .bat files have been edited correctly, double-click on them to run them. You should see a DOS screen appear with text of what command it has executed. If there is an error, you will something like "I cannot find this file at this location" or something like that which means the folder paths are incorrect. If you don't see any errors, you'll just see a prompt saying "Press any key to continue". Press any key, the window will close, and the files have been exported. Run exporter.bat for sure, and if it's the first time you're doing this for your league or you've changed any stadium info during the season you'll want to run park.bat as well. The only time you ever need to use career_exporter.bat is if you've been running your league for awhile and there are already career stats but you're just now starting to use OOTP History. If this is the first year of your league, ignore that file.

Now bring back up the OOTP History program you minimized earlier. Click on FILE and choose OPTIONS and you'll see a list of directories and things. The League Name, Data Directory, and Hard Drive Directory should be correct by default. The Game HTML Files defaults to c:\leaguesite, which is what OOTP defaults to. I leave that alone as well, because leaving things on their default setting is just a good idea. Then you come to the League Directory folder, which you need to change to match whatever league you're doing. Basically, the path needs to be "C:\Program Files\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP5\APBL.lg". You can then choose to enter your actual email address if you like, and leave the file extension line alone.

You may also want to click through each tab to change the names of the Awards to be what you want them to be, and also change any options in the OUTPUT tab such as whether or not you want to include photos on teach player and/or team page, ratings of players, career splits, etc. Using the career splits option will make your webpage increase EXPONENTIALLY in size, as well as effectively doubling the time it takes to create them, but if you want to have them they are really cool. Once the options are set to your liking, click OK.

If the exporting of the files was successful earlier and OOTP History has been setup properly, you're ready to go! Click on Import Stats and watch it go. Eventually it will ask for the first and last dates of the regular season games, so enter those when prompted (and be glad you wrote them down earlier).

After all the data is imported, the Edit Team Abbreviation screen will appear. More often than not, you'll just need to click EXIT here. Only change the information on this screen if you KNOW YOU NEED TO!

When the import process is complete, you'll be back at the main OOTP History screen. Click the ENTER/EDIT TEAM INFO button. This will open a screen showing the details for each team. You can edit the data here, if necessary. The PrevTeam field is used to track franchise moves. For example, if in year 2 Montreal (MON) moves to Charlotte (CHA), then the PrevTeam field for Charlotte would be MON. If, in the future, Charlotte moves to Jacksonville (JAC), then Jacksonville's PrevTeam field would be CHA. This creates a chain of franchise information back through time. If a different franchise moves back to Montreal, a different, unique abbreviation MUST be used (like MTL). If not, franchise histories will be incorrect. Click EXIT when finished.

Click ENTER/EDIT ALL-STARS. This will open a screen where you can either import the All-Stars OOTP selected (highly recommended) or you can enter them manually. Click the IMPORT ALL-STARS button and the all-stars will import from OOTP. You may not see them listed immediately, but don't worry. Just click back and forth between pitching and batting stats a couple of times and they'll be there. For whatever reason, the screen doesn't always refresh itself but the data impoted. You also don't need to import for each league; clicking IMPORT ALL-STARS imports for both leagues. Click EXIT to continue.

Click ENTER/EDIT AWARDS. Same basic instructions as All-Stars. Click import, then exit. Simple. If you would like to, however, you can have more awards than OOTP does...like reliever of the year and manager of the year. You will need to enter those manually, should you choose to use them. If not, just leave them blank.

Click ENTER/EDIT HALL OF FAME. If any player needs to be added to the Hall, you will need to do it manually. Any player selected for the HoF in OOTP does not import into the database, so you will have to do this yourself. Click Exit when done.

That's it. It's much easier than the instructions lead you to believe, because after doing this once or twice it will seem a very simple routine. This program is really, really well-done and does 95% of the work for you. You're ready now to CREATE HTML FILES, but you could also take this opportunity to backup the database just in case. Not a terrible idea, but totally up to you. When you're ready, click on CREATE HTML FILES and sit back and relax. Depending on league size and options, I've seen this step take 5-30 minutes. When it's done, go to C:\History\APBL\Website and double-click on INDEX.HTML. Your website is born!

GOOD LUCK!

ZD

[Killebrew]

Whoa - nice response ZouDave.

[bigjas]

Alright man, I got everything set up. Thank you a thousand times!!

This thing is SSSWWWEEETTTTTT!!!

[ZouDave]

glad I could help...however, you might want to check my steps (or better yet, Killebrew--did I miss anything) because I'm getting an abnormal output now and I can't figure out why.

Doing the steps as I described them above, I get absolutely perfect results in year 1 and year 2. Twice now in year 3, however, when I get to the import All-Stars and Awards section it is importing the All-Stars and Award Winners from year 2. Then when the HTML creation process is done on the webpage it lists the year 2 league champions (including World Series) instead of year 3. No clue what I'm doing wrong.

Am I supposed to be deleting any files between seasons, should I be using a different directory for seasons, etc? Killebrew, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[thevat]

I was going to post the same question, but have learned on this message board to search thoroughly first as someone else has likely encountered the same problem.
So thanks from me too ZouDave!! Looking forward to figuring this out when I get home tonight!!

Shane

[mpsquid]

Thank you, this was a tremendous help.