Not another Joe Smith

[marky32082]

Ok so I just checked on my league after simming all day and noticed it had crashed... ...fortunately the game is able to restart and I do some snooping around to try figure out what the cause is. I notice that there are Joe Smiths everywhere. Every team seems to have multiple Joes hanging around. There is one weird thing though (as if multiple Joes isn't weird enough), there are some news articles that when I click on the hyperlink to a non-Joe Smith name, it takes me to a Player Report for...you guessed it... a Joe Smith. I'm not terribly upset at having apparently lossed my league but thought I'd post my experience here for posterity anyway.

One problem with all this is since I came back after an extended period of simming and then a crash and found all the Joe Smiths, I don't know if they showed up pre or post crash. In other words I don't know if the database got corrupted causing the Joes or if they started showing up before.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by marky32082

Ok so I just checked on my league after simming all day and noticed it had crashed... ...fortunately the game is able to restart and I do some snooping around to try figure out what the cause is. I notice that there are Joe Smiths everywhere. Every team seems to have multiple Joes hanging around. There is one weird thing though (as if multiple Joes isn't weird enough), there are some news articles that when I click on the hyperlink to a non-Joe Smith name, it takes me to a Player Report for...you guessed it... a Joe Smith. I'm not terribly upset at having apparently lossed my league but thought I'd post my experience here for posterity anyway.

One problem with all this is since I came back after an extended period of simming and then a crash and found all the Joe Smiths, I don't know if they showed up pre or post crash. In other words I don't know if the database got corrupted causing the Joes or if they started showing up before.

Alien influence... they took all your players and replaced them with their own... but their research department supplied them with only one option to use as their alias while on our planet.... you've uncovered their plot and MAY be the next one to go.

[marky32082]

Wow. Not quite the response I was expecting. Thank you though for your insight. Maybe I'll keep that league closed so I can stop the invasion then.

[marky32082]

Bump

[TylerG30]

I had the same with Joe Smith's everwhere! It wouldn't be so bad, but all Joe's have the same attributes....0's lol. Seems to happen everytime I close the game and load a saved game. Maybe I'll just wait for another patch :-(

[battists]

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to respond to this thread.

Unfortunately, despite my prolonged absence, I don't think I have much good to offer here. We've only seen this in a few cases, and we haven't managed to repair this issue.

Do you have a backup of the league from before the crash?

We do recommend (as we do with all games) that you make regular backups of your league files.

I'm sorry I couldn't offer any better news on this.

Steve

[Markus Heinsohn]

This is a sign of a messed up league... the name database was not stroed properly, so the game replaces missing names with Joe Smith. Sorry, no fix possible.

[Anthony Odarczenko]

Any clue what causes this? This isn't anything we saw in the old game. Are we all susceptable to this if the database doesn't store right at random times, or is it just some of us that are going to get this?

1.) My league was historical - 1994
2.) My league just "died" about 2 months in to the regular season, and 6 months into the year.

It's just peculiar. I have a reasonably recent backup - but will I run into the same problem with that file. We've done tests in the past to see how our league setup would function (especially recently) and never ran into any problems, which is why this peculiar.

[millzee53]

The only solution i can come up with is...



OOTP6.51a > OOTP2006

[scefalu]

Originally Posted by millzee53

The only solution i can come up with is...
OOTP6.51a > OOTP2006

Well, there are some ways that this may be true. However, even with previous versions there were crashes that would completely corrupt the database beyond repair. Just as in those cases, the only safety is in league backups. The really irritating part of this problem is that the league seems to recover, but on closer inspection it's FUBAR. It just makes you want to tear your hair out ... if you have any surplus, which I don't.

So, just as with anything stored on a hard drive ... back up frequently and you'll be happy when the league goes belly up. That'll be right after you make the trade of the decade.

Good luck ... here's to never seeing a league crash.

- Shawn

[Comedian2004]

Being a beta tester for quite a while, I have ran MANY MANY leagues and this has NEVER happened. I have ran a few 100 year leagues also.

In fact, today I did a hard drive cleanup and it cleaned 12 gig worth of space that test leagues were taking.

The point I am making is not that I have too much time on my hand or that I am a good tester, it is that crashes do not happen very often.

I am a preacher for making backups, but not a person that follows my own advice. Diskspace is cheap now a days and there are tons of free software out there that can automate the task for you. Do a league backup while you sleep.

Who wants to spend 15 minutes backing up the league everytime you want to play a game?

You can use a backup program to automate it to do it every night, or just manually do it when you have to run to the store and get some supplies.

[bp_]

Originally Posted by Comedian2004

You can use a backup program to automate it to do it every night, or just manually do it when you have to run to the store and get some supplies.

Check out SyncBack. It's free and good.

[marky32082]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

This is a sign of a messed up league

Thanks for the response even if it isn't terribly detailed. I've already moved on and hopefully won't run into Joe Smith again.