OOTP schedules

Maximus · 10-15-2005, 12:49 AM

I have been using stickware for my custom schedules but I have since learned that there is a bug using custom schedules (which can be read here: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...4&postcount=38 ).

What is the problem with using the default schedules? By problem I don't mean bugs, ect - I mean realism, ect.

Also, would it be possible to rename the regular season box scores so that they are not over-written so that they still can be viewed and kept in the leagues history? Thanks for any help in advance.

edit: I run a 36 team league.

Dan Theman · 10-15-2005, 12:58 AM

Some people like to have schedules with certain setups, including double headers, etc.. I don't use stickware, myself, but to each their own.

As far as the box scores go, tehre are several batch editors available that should solve that problem for you (try looking at cnet or tucows). However, once you rename them, I'd create a new folder to hold them in and then do a cut & paste (I believe, although I'm not certain, that the folder gets emptied after each season). When you rename the files, I suggest using some "key" at the beginning to indicate what season they belong to. That way they can be more easily organized in Windows explorer.

As a final option (because I know some people don't like wrestling with it), I also think that Catobase builds a repository for you.

gmo · 10-15-2005, 01:14 AM

I have seen this happen continually in my 12-team league in which I have played dozens of seasons, yet in a 24-team league in which I have completed only 2 seasons one time it did not do that overwriting the initial boxscores (the startup season, but indeed using a custom schedule) yet the other season it did (again using a custom schedule). It does that overwriting regularly, but I do not think that it is necessarily just something that arises when using custom schedules.

I have taken to assuming it will just happen. Even though I save box scores, I do not bother with trying to fix this. There can be a workaround, but it could be rather involved. Before postseason games (or even one-game playoffs for postseason slots) begin, save somewhere else the early-numbered box scores that might get overwritten. You will have to figure out the number for which to do this, as it will be the number of possible after-regular season games if all the postseason series went the full distance (plus perhaps any one-game playoffs). For MLB with the 5-7-7 I think that would be 41 (plus), so it is not that many. You could save them by doing an export from the online league screen or just copying the files from the League_News_Box folder to somewhere else. Then after the postseason you could rename the playoff game boxscores to numbers coming after the regular season. That would not be too tedious I suppose, but you would probably have to make changes to the "box.html" file in the Almanac after the season to point the postseason games to the proper files as the original links should still go to those early numbers the game will overwrite.

Again, I have not done this. I do not see why it would not work just, but I cannot guarantee it. Plus it is some work. If anyone could find a system to when this overwriting happens and when it does not, that might be useful.

Comedian2004 · 10-15-2005, 01:50 AM

One of the main reasons people use custom schedules is for interleague play, the other would be they have more realistic schedules, where not every team plays everyday. So, at the end of the day a team could be 1/2 game out, where with the normal schedules, at the end of each day, everyone plays the same amount of games.

Trouble with the work around, is it really won't work unless you put TONS of work into it. Sure, you copy over the early games, then after the playoffs, you copy them back, well, you then lose the playoff games. Now, you could move the playoff games out of the folder, or rename them with higher unused numbers, but still, inside the html file, it shows it as GAME #1, GAME #2. So, you would have to modify those also.

Now, let's say you did this BEFORE you hit the proceed to the next season button. Well, who knows what is going to happen. If you do not make any of the above mentioned changes, it archives the box scores (if turned on), saving it the way it is, with the playoff games starting at game 1.

No big deal if you can survive with the missing box scores, but 3rd party programs like mine will not like that. I go through the box scores in a lot of my routines to pull out information.

Bottom line is, I will not use custom schedules anymore. It is a shame that a program has options like this, but by using them, you may screw other things up.

It may be a problem with the custom schedule itself, but I think it is something in the program that is looking for somewhere else for that information. (Like possibly the last game of the season). Maybe when you generate the schedule, it writes the last day of the season in some dat file, whereas an import does not get that information.

Malleus Dei · 10-16-2005, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Comedian2004

Bottom line is, I will not use custom schedules anymore.

I'm with you on this.

gmo · 10-22-2005, 07:25 PM

Do custom schedules in OOTP6 cause the postseason box scores to beginning numbering at 1, thus overwriting early regular season box scores, rather than being ordered numerically after the regular season box scores?

(Tentative) Conclusion: Yes, to the extent of CSV-format schedules imported at the beginning of a season will cause the box score numbering to start over at #1 for any postseason (or even postseason spot determining one-game playoff) games for that season in which the import occurred. However, in subsequent seasons if the schedule is not alterred structurally the box score numbering works properly, plus there are methods to avoid this numbering problem even for that first season.

For some time I have noticed this box score numbering problem but never cared too much about it because it neither affected anything important to me like CatoBase nor bothered me losing some regular season box scores. Finally I decided to investigate the issue to see if indeed, as hypothesized, CSV-format imported schedules were to blame. I tested with an 8-team league (with two 4-team subleagues) playing 86-game seasons. As a quick review, the problem is that after the full compliment of regular season games (in my testing case 86*8/2=344) rather than postseason (or, if necessary, one-game playoff) games being numbered after the regular season games (in my testing case starting with 345), they start over numbering the box score & game log files with 1 and so on thus overwriting the first regular season games' box scores & game logs.

I took the test league and gave it season schedules in various ways.

The following methods did not show the box score numbering error:
*OOTP-generated schedules
*Stickware-generated schedules (copying .dat file into .lg folder)
*Any schedule (including originally imported CSV) in future seasons

The cases where I observed the box score numbering error all involved seasons where at the beginning of that year the schedule in CSV format was imported into the league. If you import a CSV format schedule in the preseason of a year, in the postseason of that year the box score numbering error will occur. However, with the same schedule used in the following season the error will not occur. Furthermore, I found other methods that could allow one to avoid the error.

The following two processes resulted in the box score numbering error not occurring:

***Import the CSV format schedule before proceeding to the next season.
EDIT: This method has its own problems, specifically it causes the box scores and game logs to not be saved at all in the Almanac for that season while the league goes through the "Proceeding" process. See the notes in post #8 below.
Rather than waiting until the preseason of the year for which you want the schedule, go ahead and perform the import after the postseason and everything else is completed in the previous year and just before pressing the "Proceed" button. This obviously requires some planning ahead and a league that is not just beginning. There was one test season case where though the postseason box score numbering error did not occur, another error did occur where the box scores of one day were overwritten by the box scores of the following day. It is uncertain why that happened, but perhaps it had something to do the the All-Star Game date from the previous schedule. Thus the possibility of some kind of an error with this method may make the following method more preferable overall even though it is a bit more work.

***Create a dummy league into which to import the CSV format schedule, then after having generating a schedule in the preseason of the real league, copy over the "schedule.dat" file from the dummy league into the real league's .lg folder. This may seem complicated, however the actual process is fairly brief. In the preseason of the year for which you want to import a schedule, go ahead and use the in-game schedule generator to create a momentary placeholder schedule for the league, leaving off an All-Star Game for the time being but going ahead and specifying the number of games the CSV format schedule to be used has. Then create the custom "dummy" league. This dummy league should be the same configuration (specifically the same number of teams) as the real league, and it must be created with the initial season year the same as the year of the current season in the real league (very important so that the year shown in the schedule matches the year of the league). There is no need to make the team names the same (any random cities will work), and the league does not even need players, but just to be safe set the number of games per team to be the same as what is in the CSV format schedule to be used. After the league is generated, simply go straight to the Edit Schedule page under League Setup and import the CSV format schedule into the dummy league. No need to yet fiddle with the All-Star Game date and Year Starts On day as those can be set in the real league. Now from the .lg folder of the dummy league, copy its "schedule.dat" file into the .lg folder of the real league thus overwriting its "schedule.dat" file. Then open the real league in the game (after that the dummy league is done and may be deleted). On the Edit Schedule screen set the All-Star Game and Year Starts On information, then check the Report to see if everything appears as it should.

Simply importing a CSV format schedule into OOTP6 is apparently what opens the door to the box score numbering error. A season rolling over into the next, seems to "fix" the schedule. Copying over "schedule.dat" files does not raise this issue. That is how Stickware works, and the same applies when using the dummy league method described above. Key to both though is copying the "schedule.dat" file into a league not already having this error embedded. Thus in the dummy method the step of having the game generate a schedule first is added. Generating a schedule in-game is necessary before importing a schedule with a different number of games than the league had previously so the league knows the right number of games in the season at least for magic number calculation, and it is probably just a good idea in general.

All the results have not been tested to the point of being "laws," but in my mind they are very solid "theories." If you notice in discrepancies with what is described here, report them, and if you have anything to add, please do.

************************************************** *****

Season-by-season test league results

Season 1 - 2005 - Original generated schedule
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 2 - 2006 - Original generated schedule again
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 3 - 2007 - Imported custom schedule, no ASG
---Postseason box scores numbered incorrectly

Season 4 - 2008 - Imported custom schedule, no ASG again
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 5 - 2009 - Imported custom schedule again, but added ASG
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 6 - 2010 - Newly game-generated schedule
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 7 - 2011 - Imported custom schedule, added ASG
---Postseason box scores numbered incorrectly

Season 8 - 2012 - Before proceeding, imported custom schedule, added ASG
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 9 - 2013 - Created Stickware, added ASG
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 10 - 2014 - Rolled over Stickware
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 11 - 2015 - Before proceeding created Stickware, added ASG preseason
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 12 - 2016 - Before proceeding, imported custom schedule, added ASG preseason
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly, but 5/22 repeated numbers of 5/21 (prev ASG)

Season 13 - 2017 - Rolled over custom above
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 14 - 2018 - Imported custom schedule, added ASG
---Postseason box scores numbered incorrectly

Season 15 - 2019 - Copied dummy schedule.dat just after creation of dummy league
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 16 - 2020 - Before proceeding, imported custom schedule, added ASG
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

Season 17 - 2021 - Imported custom schedule, then copied dummy schedule.dat just after creation of dummy league
---Postseason box scores numbered incorrectly

Season 18 - 2022 - Generated schedule, then copied dummy schedule.dat just after creation of dummy league
---Postseason box scores numbered correctly

SandMan · 10-22-2005, 08:33 PM

If you were beginning a new league you could possibly just play out the season, proceed to next year and then delete career stats, release all and have a fresh new draft. The players age by a year but this should not matter too much. Just delete the almanac for the dummy year and all will be well again...... I also wondered if you just reset the league in the same year, before any games were played if this would "fix" the schedule..... or if it needs to be reset at the proceed to next year function....

gmo · 11-25-2005, 05:46 AM

Quote:

***Import the CSV format schedule before proceeding to the next season.

This really does not work well.

So I finally followed my own suggestion on this. I am not to the end of the "next" season to further confirm that this works in keeping the early season box scores and game logs from being overwritten by postseason games. However, I did find a major problem in that the box scores and game logs were not saved in the Almanac for the season at the end of which I imported a schedule for the following season. So instead of having some wrong box scores and game logs, you get none. Hardly a useful solution. I guess this importing at the end of the year for next year clears something that blanks out the box score tracking, though the results are still there in all the standings and everything else in the Almanac as far as I can tell.

I was able to go back to a backup copy of the league from just before the point where I early-imported the schedule and process that to create the missing files that I could then copy into my Almanac for that season. I would guess that the other method involving copying the schedule.dat file from a dummy league would not have a problem like this, thus I would recommend that method above importing before proceeding into the next season.

EDIT - Plus, with further review I have found that the "last 10 games" section on the player pages in the almanac also gets screwed up by this end-of-season-for-next-season importing of a CSV schedule.

sfgiants88 · 11-25-2005, 05:56 AM

Don't want to make anyone sad, but apparently the person who started this thread (Maximus) has passed away. No kidding.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar....php?t=106279&

10-15-2005, 01:50 AM	#4
Comedian2004 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: In a house in Saint Cloud, Florida. Posts: 7,085	One of the main reasons people use custom schedules is for interleague play, the other would be they have more realistic schedules, where not every team plays everyday. So, at the end of the day a team could be 1/2 game out, where with the normal schedules, at the end of each day, everyone plays the same amount of games. Trouble with the work around, is it really won't work unless you put TONS of work into it. Sure, you copy over the early games, then after the playoffs, you copy them back, well, you then lose the playoff games. Now, you could move the playoff games out of the folder, or rename them with higher unused numbers, but still, inside the html file, it shows it as GAME #1, GAME #2. So, you would have to modify those also. Now, let's say you did this BEFORE you hit the proceed to the next season button. Well, who knows what is going to happen. If you do not make any of the above mentioned changes, it archives the box scores (if turned on), saving it the way it is, with the playoff games starting at game 1. No big deal if you can survive with the missing box scores, but 3rd party programs like mine will not like that. I go through the box scores in a lot of my routines to pull out information. Bottom line is, I will not use custom schedules anymore. It is a shame that a program has options like this, but by using them, you may screw other things up. It may be a problem with the custom schedule itself, but I think it is something in the program that is looking for somewhere else for that information. (Like possibly the last game of the season). Maybe when you generate the schedule, it writes the last day of the season in some dat file, whereas an import does not get that information. __________________ Like BLUES? Visit www.smokestacklightnin.com, you will LOVE it! New show every Monday!! New Blues HOF![/COLOR][/FONT]

10-22-2005, 07:25 PM	#6
gmo Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2002 Location: Longmont, CO Posts: 3,400	Do custom schedules in OOTP6 cause the postseason box scores to beginning numbering at 1, thus overwriting early regular season box scores, rather than being ordered numerically after the regular season box scores? (Tentative) Conclusion: Yes, to the extent of CSV-format schedules imported at the beginning of a season will cause the box score numbering to start over at #1 for any postseason (or even postseason spot determining one-game playoff) games for that season in which the import occurred. However, in subsequent seasons if the schedule is not alterred structurally the box score numbering works properly, plus there are methods to avoid this numbering problem even for that first season. For some time I have noticed this box score numbering problem but never cared too much about it because it neither affected anything important to me like CatoBase nor bothered me losing some regular season box scores. Finally I decided to investigate the issue to see if indeed, as hypothesized, CSV-format imported schedules were to blame. I tested with an 8-team league (with two 4-team subleagues) playing 86-game seasons. As a quick review, the problem is that after the full compliment of regular season games (in my testing case 868/2=344) rather than postseason (or, if necessary, one-game playoff) games being numbered after the regular season games (in my testing case starting with 345), they start over numbering the box score & game log files with 1 and so on thus overwriting the first regular season games' box scores & game logs. I took the test league and gave it season schedules in various ways. The following methods did not show the box score numbering error: OOTP-generated schedules Stickware-generated schedules (copying .dat file into .lg folder) Any schedule (including originally imported CSV) in future seasons The cases where I observed the box score numbering error all involved seasons where at the beginning of that year the schedule in CSV format was imported into the league. If you import a CSV format schedule in the preseason of a year, in the postseason of that year the box score numbering error will occur. However, with the same schedule used in the following season the error will not occur. Furthermore, I found other methods that could allow one to avoid the error. The following two processes resulted in the box score numbering error not occurring: ***Import the CSV format schedule before proceeding to the next season. EDIT: This method has its own problems, specifically it causes the box scores and game logs to not be saved at all in the Almanac for that season while the league goes through the "Proceeding" process. See the notes in post #8 below. Rather than waiting until the preseason of the year for which you want the schedule, go ahead and perform the import after the postseason and everything else is completed in the previous year and just before pressing the "Proceed" button. This obviously requires some planning ahead and a league that is not just beginning. There was one test season case where though the postseason box score numbering error did not occur, another error did occur where the box scores of one day were overwritten by the box scores of the following day. It is uncertain why that happened, but perhaps it had something to do the the All-Star Game date from the previous schedule. Thus the possibility of some kind of an error with this method may make the following method more preferable overall even though it is a bit more work. *Create a dummy league into which to import the CSV format schedule, then after having generating a schedule in the preseason of the real league, copy over the "schedule.dat" file from the dummy league into the real league's .lg folder. This may seem complicated, however the actual process is fairly brief. In the preseason of the year for which you want to import a schedule, go ahead and use the in-game schedule generator to create a momentary placeholder schedule for the league, leaving off an All-Star Game for the time being but going ahead and specifying the number of games the CSV format schedule to be used has. Then create the custom "dummy" league. This dummy league should be the same configuration (specifically the same number of teams) as the real league, and it must be created with the initial season year the same as the year of the current season in the real league (very important so that the year shown in the schedule matches the year of the league). There is no need to make the team names the same (any random cities will work), and the league does not even need players, but just to be safe set the number of games per team to be the same as what is in the CSV format schedule to be used. After the league is generated, simply go straight to the Edit Schedule page under League Setup and import the CSV format schedule into the dummy league. No need to yet fiddle with the All-Star Game date and Year Starts On day as those can be set in the real league. Now from the .lg folder of the dummy league, copy its "schedule.dat" file into the .lg folder of the real league thus overwriting its "schedule.dat" file. Then open the real league in the game (after that the dummy league is done and may be deleted). On the Edit Schedule screen set the All-Star Game and Year Starts On information, then check the Report to see if everything appears as it should. Simply importing a CSV format schedule into OOTP6 is apparently what opens the door to the box score numbering error. A season rolling over into the next, seems to "fix" the schedule. Copying over "schedule.dat" files does not raise this issue. That is how Stickware works, and the same applies when using the dummy league method described above. Key to both though is copying the "schedule.dat" file into a league not already having this error embedded. Thus in the dummy method the step of having the game generate a schedule first is added. Generating a schedule in-game is necessary before importing a schedule with a different number of games than the league had previously so the league knows the right number of games in the season at least for magic number calculation, and it is probably just a good idea in general. All the results have not been tested to the point of being "laws," but in my mind they are very solid "theories." If you notice in discrepancies with what is described here, report them, and if you have anything to add, please do. ********************************************** *** Season-by-season test league results Season 1 - 2005 - Original generated schedule ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 2 - 2006 - Original generated schedule again ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 3 - 2007 - Imported custom schedule, no ASG ---Postseason box scores numbered incorrectly Season 4 - 2008 - Imported custom schedule, no ASG again ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 5 - 2009 - Imported custom schedule again, but added ASG ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 6 - 2010 - Newly game-generated schedule ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 7 - 2011 - Imported custom schedule, added ASG ---Postseason box scores numbered incorrectly Season 8 - 2012 - Before proceeding, imported custom schedule, added ASG ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 9 - 2013 - Created Stickware, added ASG ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 10 - 2014 - Rolled over Stickware ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 11 - 2015 - Before proceeding created Stickware, added ASG preseason ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 12 - 2016 - Before proceeding, imported custom schedule, added ASG preseason ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly, but 5/22 repeated numbers of 5/21 (prev ASG) Season 13 - 2017 - Rolled over custom above ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 14 - 2018 - Imported custom schedule, added ASG ---Postseason box scores numbered incorrectly Season 15 - 2019 - Copied dummy schedule.dat just after creation of dummy league ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 16 - 2020 - Before proceeding, imported custom schedule, added ASG ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Season 17 - 2021 - Imported custom schedule, then copied dummy schedule.dat just after creation of dummy league ---Postseason box scores numbered incorrectly Season 18 - 2022 - Generated schedule, then copied dummy schedule.dat just after creation of dummy league ---Postseason box scores numbered correctly Last edited by gmo; 11-25-2005 at 05:45 AM.

10-15-2005, 12:49 AM	#1
Maximus Major Leagues Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 417	OOTP schedules I have been using stickware for my custom schedules but I have since learned that there is a bug using custom schedules (which can be read here: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...4&postcount=38 ). What is the problem with using the default schedules? By problem I don't mean bugs, ect - I mean realism, ect. Also, would it be possible to rename the regular season box scores so that they are not over-written so that they still can be viewed and kept in the leagues history? Thanks for any help in advance. edit: I run a 36 team league. Last edited by Maximus; 10-15-2005 at 12:51 AM.

10-15-2005, 01:14 AM	#3
gmo Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2002 Location: Longmont, CO Posts: 3,400	I have seen this happen continually in my 12-team league in which I have played dozens of seasons, yet in a 24-team league in which I have completed only 2 seasons one time it did not do that overwriting the initial boxscores (the startup season, but indeed using a custom schedule) yet the other season it did (again using a custom schedule). It does that overwriting regularly, but I do not think that it is necessarily just something that arises when using custom schedules. I have taken to assuming it will just happen. Even though I save box scores, I do not bother with trying to fix this. There can be a workaround, but it could be rather involved. Before postseason games (or even one-game playoffs for postseason slots) begin, save somewhere else the early-numbered box scores that might get overwritten. You will have to figure out the number for which to do this, as it will be the number of possible after-regular season games if all the postseason series went the full distance (plus perhaps any one-game playoffs). For MLB with the 5-7-7 I think that would be 41 (plus), so it is not that many. You could save them by doing an export from the online league screen or just copying the files from the League_News_Box folder to somewhere else. Then after the postseason you could rename the playoff game boxscores to numbers coming after the regular season. That would not be too tedious I suppose, but you would probably have to make changes to the "box.html" file in the Almanac after the season to point the postseason games to the proper files as the original links should still go to those early numbers the game will overwrite. Again, I have not done this. I do not see why it would not work just, but I cannot guarantee it. Plus it is some work. If anyone could find a system to when this overwriting happens and when it does not, that might be useful.

10-22-2005, 08:33 PM	#7
SandMan Hall Of Famer Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 2,946	If you were beginning a new league you could possibly just play out the season, proceed to next year and then delete career stats, release all and have a fresh new draft. The players age by a year but this should not matter too much. Just delete the almanac for the dummy year and all will be well again...... I also wondered if you just reset the league in the same year, before any games were played if this would "fix" the schedule..... or if it needs to be reset at the proceed to next year function....

11-25-2005, 05:56 AM	#9
sfgiants88 All Star Reserve Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 885	Don't want to make anyone sad, but apparently the person who started this thread (Maximus) has passed away. No kidding. http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar....php?t=106279&