so very frustrated....please assist!

atomheart · 03-20-2002, 05:26 PM

Big problem here, fellas.

I've only simmed about 3 seasons so far in my solo career league, and the game has slowed down so VERY much that it's almost unplayable. I wrote to the designers for help today, but I was wondering if anyone out there can help. I'm talking about 10 min + for saving, and the off-season takes SUCH A LONG TIME (over an hour saving/loading).

Now, please don't tell me I need more RAM. I know that would help, but I exceed the system specs for this game, so while I know it's not going to be blazing fast, it shouldn't be so dang slow that I'm about to give up the game. I've disabled any start-up programms that are not used. Is there a program out there that speeds up an individual program like this? Hm?

Specifically: what can I delete to save space? How do you delete retired players? You can't do it in the HOF screen, that just removed players from the HOF, not the database.

Please, help...I love the game!

Scott Vibert · 03-20-2002, 05:45 PM

What other programs do you have running in the background... you mention you closed any start-ups that aren't used, what start ups are you leaving running. Some programs are known to slow down the game (Virus and Firewall software among others).

How many teams are in your league? And just how much RAM do you have? I have 192 MB and experience no slow down.

Have you turned off simming the minor leagues? This will improve the speed, you will still have players develop, you just won't see minor league stats.

hellfrozeover · 03-20-2002, 06:14 PM

There are also some free programs out there which can help you free the amount of RAM you are using at any given time. I use a program called FreeRam Lite.

Go to <a href="http://www.zdnet.com" target="_blank">www.zdnet.com</a> and do a search for a program that helps free system memory, resources, etc.

The program I use is hosted at this webpage:

<a href="http://www.yourwaresolutions.com" target="_blank">www.yourwaresolutions.com</a>

Hope this helps a little.

Killebrew · 03-20-2002, 07:16 PM

Check free disk space as well - this can have a huge impact on the game speed. Some of your PC specs would enable us to add more detail.

atomheart · 03-20-2002, 09:03 PM

Guys, to be honest, my knowledge of computers has been fading fast over the years...

I know it's windows 98. I know it's a Dell. It's a pentium II, with 64 meg ram. (in OOTP system spefs, all ya need is 32, 64 preferred) I know it's 200Mhz.

I'm not running ANY other programs except the big two i need.

I'll try that Freeramlite thingy.

Killebrew · 03-20-2002, 09:24 PM

It may not be a RAM issue though either - I run OOTP4 on 96 MB's RAM (Celeron 333) and do some pretty adventerous multi-tasking while I sim(never mind what I advise others to do

). I am having no speed issues or crashes in seasons that are 25+ years in the future, so it isn't always the RAM for sure.

To find out how much hard disk size you have open Windows Explorer and Right-click on your hard drive (most likely the C:\ drive) and choose Properties. That will show you used and ffree space on your computer.

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 04:31 AM

I've been doing some spring cleaning on the ol' CPU, killbrew, here are the specs:

used space: 2.06 GB
free space: 3.93 GB

that's a lot of space....right?

I tried that freeramlite thing, with no sucesss. then again, perhaps i'm not using it right, but it's pretty dummy-proof.

what now? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Killebrew · 03-21-2002, 04:44 AM

[quote]Originally posted by atomheart:
<strong>used space: 2.06 GB
free space: 3.93 GB

that's a lot of space....right?
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yup, that is plenty, so that is ruled out. Any way this could be a problem just in this league? You could find out by simming another league to compare speed. If you have not run system maintence progs in the last 2 months it would also be wise to run scan disk and disk defrag, a heavily fragmented disk could cause slowdowns but you would probably notice this in other system hungry apps you run.

Beyond that there are also some system tweaks that can have dramatic performance effects, but most would require some amount of tech knowledge and I'd be uncomfortable advising anyone do try those unless they knew what they were doing.

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 04:51 AM

yeah, i figured that was a lot of space...

I haven't tried simming another league, and while I have a feeling that it would run smoother, within a couple of "years" it would be right back to its slowness.

I understand your hesitation in offering me anything more technical. Is there somewhere I can look? This really sucks. It now takes over 10 min to sim an off-day!!!!!

Is there any other system specs that may be of usefulness to y'all?

Also, anyone know how to delete retired players? Are they transferred to a different folder??

Thanks.

Killebrew · 03-21-2002, 05:12 AM

[quote]Originally posted by atomheart:
<strong>yeah, i figured that was a lot of space...

I haven't tried simming another league, and while I have a feeling that it would run smoother, within a couple of "years" it would be right back to its slowness.

I understand your hesitation in offering me anything more technical. Is there somewhere I can look? This really sucks. It now takes over 10 min to sim an off-day!!!!!

Is there any other system specs that may be of usefulness to y'all?

Also, anyone know how to delete retired players? Are they transferred to a different folder??

Thanks.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes - here is a great link for system optimization for gaming: <a href="http://www.cdmag.com/Home/home.html?article=/articles/026/077/tuning_feature.html" target="_blank">Tuning Windows for games</a>

Retired players are stored in the retired.dat file I believe. I do not think this normally gets loaded into memory and I think will only effect the proceed to next year process or whenever you want to view all retired players.

My system is not much bigger than yours (I run a celeron 333/96 MB RAM on a slow hard drive) so there is real hope you get it simming smoothly. If I were running into the problems you were having the firts thing I'd do is probably play in a smaller league - like an old style 16 team league or even smaller. That has a huge effect on sim speed. I would also disable the minor league stats and restrict the ammy draft to maybe 3 rounds (and never press the fill minors button of course

). During the heavy processing periods (30-day FA process and proceed to next year) I'd probably watch a few commercials on TV

.

Scott Vibert · 03-21-2002, 05:14 AM

One thing with other leagues that will help is to run a smaller league (12-16 teams). A smaller league will have fewer players allowing the game to go faster (if its the RAM issue). I know when I ran OOTP3 on 64 MB RAM I had some slowdowns (even with smaller leagues, but none that bad), when I went to 192 haven't had one since.

bbo4 · 03-21-2002, 09:00 AM

I have a back up computer to hack around with. It's 200mhz, 128mb ram, 3g free space.
Game runs painfully slow. More ram will help but the processor speed makes a big difference in this game. It chews it up quite a bit.
Normally I run a 550mz with 192mb ram and 25g free space. Game runs great.

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 10:01 AM

thanks guys. I'm going to try some of the things suggested. I'll keep you posted...and I'll report what I find, just in case that there are others out there like me - and I suspect there are.

keep those suggestions coming!!

Khaos · 03-21-2002, 10:05 AM

The larger and more robust the DB, all the more need for a faster CPU.

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 02:36 PM

Killebrew suggested a site that "tunes games for windows". I went to it, and I have a question for you smart guys.

The topic in question is virtual memory. It reads:

"..click the Performance tab and the Virtual Memory button. Windows keeps a file on your hard drive it uses like memory when you run out of RAM called a swap file, and under normal conditions it adjusts the size of this file as it needs to. This takes time and slows down your system, so let's change that. Choose the button that says, "let me specify my own virtual memory settings" and type the same number into both the minimum and maximum boxes. It's a good idea to have your entire memory (RAM plus virtual memory) equal to about 512MB, so if you have 128MB of RAM, type 384 in both boxes. This will make your swap file 384MB and will prevent Windows from changing that size while your programs are running..."

Which confused the heck out of me. I'm looking to specify my own virtual memory settings, but what should I set the min. and max to? I have 200mhz, 64 mg of RAM.

An additional question : under the "file system" it's set to "none" for read ahead optimization. Is this where it should be?

Thanks, all.

Khaos · 03-21-2002, 02:48 PM

In all seriousness, don't do this. Your level of comfortablity with you PC is not high enough, and if you screw this up, you run the risk of not being able to boot. The benefits from this are more for us power gamers and PC geeks. You won't see the improvement you might expect.

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 02:55 PM

Sigh. Perhaps you're right. I am, however, a "power gamer"

I use my computer for:
Word processing
Internet
The occasional sim game like OOTP4.

That's it. When I play the game, I'm not multi-tasking. Nothing else is running. So why am I having these awful problems?

So, what do you suggest?

I appriciate the help.

BleacherBum · 03-21-2002, 03:30 PM

I'm talking about 10 min + for saving, and the off-season takes SUCH A LONG TIME (over an hour saving/loading).

Is this the only area that is slow? If so, it seems related to disk access. Doesn't appear that you do anything else disk intensive. Could be a driver problem with the hard drive. Perhaps some diagnostics would help. Could be that the OOTP files are severely fragmented - Windows offers a disk defragmenter to check this (and correct it if necessary).

Other thoughts on the disk access topic?

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 03:45 PM

I run regular maintenance, including defrag, so I don't think that's it.

As for I drive issue, I don't know. Any thoughts? The game never crashes, although once or twice I've gotten a "runtime error", whatever that is. I'm not a computer wiz by any means...however, I did get my programming start with a Texas Instruments.

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 03:58 PM

You know, I think I'm about to call it quits. It just took 10 min to sim an off-day between playoff series!

03-20-2002, 05:26 PM	#1
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	so very frustrated....please assist! Big problem here, fellas. I've only simmed about 3 seasons so far in my solo career league, and the game has slowed down so VERY much that it's almost unplayable. I wrote to the designers for help today, but I was wondering if anyone out there can help. I'm talking about 10 min + for saving, and the off-season takes SUCH A LONG TIME (over an hour saving/loading). Now, please don't tell me I need more RAM. I know that would help, but I exceed the system specs for this game, so while I know it's not going to be blazing fast, it shouldn't be so dang slow that I'm about to give up the game. I've disabled any start-up programms that are not used. Is there a program out there that speeds up an individual program like this? Hm? Specifically: what can I delete to save space? How do you delete retired players? You can't do it in the HOF screen, that just removed players from the HOF, not the database. Please, help...I love the game!

03-20-2002, 06:14 PM	#3
hellfrozeover All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago Posts: 1,130	There are also some free programs out there which can help you free the amount of RAM you are using at any given time. I use a program called FreeRam Lite. Go to <a href="http://www.zdnet.com" target="_blank">www.zdnet.com</a> and do a search for a program that helps free system memory, resources, etc. The program I use is hosted at this webpage: <a href="http://www.yourwaresolutions.com" target="_blank">www.yourwaresolutions.com</a> Hope this helps a little. __________________ FBA Chicago Syndicate Former Owner: WBL Minnesota Twins 2004 - 2007 AL Central Division Champs OOL Chicago Whales 2006, 2009 UL East Champs; 2006, 2009 United League Champs IBA Lehigh Valley Diamonds 2006 Governor's Cup Champions VSLB New York Yankees 2001, 2002 AL East Division Champs ILBL Commissioner/Chicago Cubs 2002 NL Central Division Champs; 2002 National League Champs ASBL New York Yankees 2006 AL East Division Champs

03-20-2002, 07:16 PM	#4
Killebrew Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 3,326	Check free disk space as well - this can have a huge impact on the game speed. Some of your PC specs would enable us to add more detail. __________________ FOBL Capital City Metropolitans CDL Minnesota Twins

03-20-2002, 09:24 PM	#6
Killebrew Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 3,326	It may not be a RAM issue though either - I run OOTP4 on 96 MB's RAM (Celeron 333) and do some pretty adventerous multi-tasking while I sim(never mind what I advise others to do ). I am having no speed issues or crashes in seasons that are 25+ years in the future, so it isn't always the RAM for sure. To find out how much hard disk size you have open Windows Explorer and Right-click on your hard drive (most likely the C:\ drive) and choose Properties. That will show you used and ffree space on your computer. __________________ FOBL Capital City Metropolitans CDL Minnesota Twins

03-21-2002, 04:44 AM	#8
Killebrew Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 3,326	[quote]Originally posted by atomheart: <strong>used space: 2.06 GB free space: 3.93 GB that's a lot of space....right? </strong><hr></blockquote> Yup, that is plenty, so that is ruled out. Any way this could be a problem just in this league? You could find out by simming another league to compare speed. If you have not run system maintence progs in the last 2 months it would also be wise to run scan disk and disk defrag, a heavily fragmented disk could cause slowdowns but you would probably notice this in other system hungry apps you run. Beyond that there are also some system tweaks that can have dramatic performance effects, but most would require some amount of tech knowledge and I'd be uncomfortable advising anyone do try those unless they knew what they were doing. __________________ FOBL Capital City Metropolitans CDL Minnesota Twins

03-20-2002, 05:45 PM	#2
Scott Vibert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: My Computer Posts: 8,249	What other programs do you have running in the background... you mention you closed any start-ups that aren't used, what start ups are you leaving running. Some programs are known to slow down the game (Virus and Firewall software among others). How many teams are in your league? And just how much RAM do you have? I have 192 MB and experience no slow down. Have you turned off simming the minor leagues? This will improve the speed, you will still have players develop, you just won't see minor league stats.

03-20-2002, 09:03 PM	#5
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	Guys, to be honest, my knowledge of computers has been fading fast over the years... I know it's windows 98. I know it's a Dell. It's a pentium II, with 64 meg ram. (in OOTP system spefs, all ya need is 32, 64 preferred) I know it's 200Mhz. I'm not running ANY other programs except the big two i need. I'll try that Freeramlite thingy.

03-21-2002, 04:31 AM	#7
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	I've been doing some spring cleaning on the ol' CPU, killbrew, here are the specs: used space: 2.06 GB free space: 3.93 GB that's a lot of space....right? I tried that freeramlite thing, with no sucesss. then again, perhaps i'm not using it right, but it's pretty dummy-proof. what now? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

03-21-2002, 04:51 AM	#9
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	yeah, i figured that was a lot of space... I haven't tried simming another league, and while I have a feeling that it would run smoother, within a couple of "years" it would be right back to its slowness. I understand your hesitation in offering me anything more technical. Is there somewhere I can look? This really sucks. It now takes over 10 min to sim an off-day!!!!! Is there any other system specs that may be of usefulness to y'all? Also, anyone know how to delete retired players? Are they transferred to a different folder?? Thanks.

03-21-2002, 05:12 AM	#10
Killebrew Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 3,326	[quote]Originally posted by atomheart: <strong>yeah, i figured that was a lot of space... I haven't tried simming another league, and while I have a feeling that it would run smoother, within a couple of "years" it would be right back to its slowness. I understand your hesitation in offering me anything more technical. Is there somewhere I can look? This really sucks. It now takes over 10 min to sim an off-day!!!!! Is there any other system specs that may be of usefulness to y'all? Also, anyone know how to delete retired players? Are they transferred to a different folder?? Thanks.</strong><hr></blockquote> Yes - here is a great link for system optimization for gaming: <a href="http://www.cdmag.com/Home/home.html?article=/articles/026/077/tuning_feature.html" target="_blank">Tuning Windows for games</a> Retired players are stored in the retired.dat file I believe. I do not think this normally gets loaded into memory and I think will only effect the proceed to next year process or whenever you want to view all retired players. My system is not much bigger than yours (I run a celeron 333/96 MB RAM on a slow hard drive) so there is real hope you get it simming smoothly. If I were running into the problems you were having the firts thing I'd do is probably play in a smaller league - like an old style 16 team league or even smaller. That has a huge effect on sim speed. I would also disable the minor league stats and restrict the ammy draft to maybe 3 rounds (and never press the fill minors button of course ). During the heavy processing periods (30-day FA process and proceed to next year) I'd probably watch a few commercials on TV . __________________ FOBL Capital City Metropolitans CDL Minnesota Twins

03-21-2002, 05:14 AM	#11
Scott Vibert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: My Computer Posts: 8,249	One thing with other leagues that will help is to run a smaller league (12-16 teams). A smaller league will have fewer players allowing the game to go faster (if its the RAM issue). I know when I ran OOTP3 on 64 MB RAM I had some slowdowns (even with smaller leagues, but none that bad), when I went to 192 haven't had one since.

03-21-2002, 09:00 AM	#12
bbo4 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: South of Boston, Ma Posts: 214	I have a back up computer to hack around with. It's 200mhz, 128mb ram, 3g free space. Game runs painfully slow. More ram will help but the processor speed makes a big difference in this game. It chews it up quite a bit. Normally I run a 550mz with 192mb ram and 25g free space. Game runs great. __________________ "In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the Bigs."

03-21-2002, 10:01 AM	#13
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	thanks guys. I'm going to try some of the things suggested. I'll keep you posted...and I'll report what I find, just in case that there are others out there like me - and I suspect there are. keep those suggestions coming!!

03-21-2002, 10:05 AM	#14
Khaos Major Leagues Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Canfield, OH Posts: 473	The larger and more robust the DB, all the more need for a faster CPU. __________________ squish

03-21-2002, 02:36 PM	#15
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	Killebrew suggested a site that "tunes games for windows". I went to it, and I have a question for you smart guys. The topic in question is virtual memory. It reads: "..click the Performance tab and the Virtual Memory button. Windows keeps a file on your hard drive it uses like memory when you run out of RAM called a swap file, and under normal conditions it adjusts the size of this file as it needs to. This takes time and slows down your system, so let's change that. Choose the button that says, "let me specify my own virtual memory settings" and type the same number into both the minimum and maximum boxes. It's a good idea to have your entire memory (RAM plus virtual memory) equal to about 512MB, so if you have 128MB of RAM, type 384 in both boxes. This will make your swap file 384MB and will prevent Windows from changing that size while your programs are running..." Which confused the heck out of me. I'm looking to specify my own virtual memory settings, but what should I set the min. and max to? I have 200mhz, 64 mg of RAM. An additional question : under the "file system" it's set to "none" for read ahead optimization. Is this where it should be? Thanks, all.

03-21-2002, 02:48 PM	#16
Khaos Major Leagues Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Canfield, OH Posts: 473	In all seriousness, don't do this. Your level of comfortablity with you PC is not high enough, and if you screw this up, you run the risk of not being able to boot. The benefits from this are more for us power gamers and PC geeks. You won't see the improvement you might expect. __________________ squish

03-21-2002, 02:55 PM	#17
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	Sigh. Perhaps you're right. I am, however, a "power gamer" I use my computer for: Word processing Internet The occasional sim game like OOTP4. That's it. When I play the game, I'm not multi-tasking. Nothing else is running. So why am I having these awful problems? So, what do you suggest? I appriciate the help.

03-21-2002, 03:30 PM	#18
BleacherBum All Star Reserve Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 672	I'm talking about 10 min + for saving, and the off-season takes SUCH A LONG TIME (over an hour saving/loading). Is this the only area that is slow? If so, it seems related to disk access. Doesn't appear that you do anything else disk intensive. Could be a driver problem with the hard drive. Perhaps some diagnostics would help. Could be that the OOTP files are severely fragmented - Windows offers a disk defragmenter to check this (and correct it if necessary). Other thoughts on the disk access topic? __________________ Right Field Sucks!

03-21-2002, 03:45 PM	#19
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	I run regular maintenance, including defrag, so I don't think that's it. As for I drive issue, I don't know. Any thoughts? The game never crashes, although once or twice I've gotten a "runtime error", whatever that is. I'm not a computer wiz by any means...however, I did get my programming start with a Texas Instruments.

03-21-2002, 03:58 PM	#20
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	You know, I think I'm about to call it quits. It just took 10 min to sim an off-day between playoff series!