Question about OOTP Backup and Txt News

[hefalumps]

This a technical question for some of the veterans out there...

I wanted to make sure my in-game backup was actually backing up all the files it needed to in case I ever have to restore from it. So I compared the league folder in my "saved_games" folder to the one in my "backup" folder using a file sync program. Most everything that wasn't the same was either HTML reports or graphics, all of which the game generates on the fly anyway. No big deal.

But then I noticed a big chunk of files from the news\txt subfolders that were missing from the "backup" folder. Specifically, all the ones from the previous season, such as "league_100_news_1970.txt" that had previously been called "league_100_news.txt" before moving on to 1971.

My question - does OOTP generate these news\txt files from a DAT file so that they could be recreated? In previous versions I'm pretty sure the txt files were the source of all of this. If that's changed and all this stuff is safe in a DAT file that's backed up, great. If not, I'm curious why OOTP didn't consider that these files needed backing up. And if that's the case, I guess I should do a "Copy all files" backup at the beginning of every preseason to make sure I don't miss anything historical if I ever need to restore.

Hope someone can clear this up for me. Thanks!

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by hefalumps

This a technical question for some of the veterans out there...

I wanted to make sure my in-game backup was actually backing up all the files it needed to in case I ever have to restore from it. So I compared the league folder in my "saved_games" folder to the one in my "backup" folder using a file sync program. Most everything that wasn't the same was either HTML reports or graphics, all of which the game generates on the fly anyway. No big deal.

But then I noticed a big chunk of files from the news\txt subfolders that were missing from the "backup" folder. Specifically, all the ones from the previous season, such as "league_100_news_1970.txt" that had previously been called "league_100_news.txt" before moving on to 1971.

My question - does OOTP generate these news\txt files from a DAT file so that they could be recreated? In previous versions I'm pretty sure the txt files were the source of all of this. If that's changed and all this stuff is safe in a DAT file that's backed up, great. If not, I'm curious why OOTP didn't consider that these files needed backing up. And if that's the case, I guess I should do a "Copy all files" backup at the beginning of every preseason to make sure I don't miss anything historical if I ever need to restore.

Hope someone can clear this up for me. Thanks!

think this version or the last they converted to what you thought it might be... i believe it's the text_data.sqlite3 data file in teh .lg temp folder, but i could be wrong.

anyway, if you don't keep history, i've found it's save to delete most of this stuff.

if you are making a backup to the same directory every single time, then you are fine just clicking "backup." if you rename the directories and make new ones for each backup, you need to use "full copy" version of the backup function....
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it still has both, from what we both se ein the directores - 1000's upon 1000's of .txt files (when i read patch notes it sounded as if these were reduced or eliminated but sure doesn't seem that way). and if it reduced hdd read/writes, then it was doing something awfully terrible in previous years, lol, beacuse it's not very consolidated when you open up "resource monitor" and watch 1000 hdd writes occur simultaneously as you 'backup' a game. 1000's of little bits of pieces fragmented all over the hdd even though it's piping into one file (i don't recall paying attention to destination file, but it could be all separate files too - maybe some vestigial of what they replaced)... something still isn't right there - or at least poorly tuned, bad efficiency etc etc whatever the cause is. it definitely needs to be improved (i avoided fix, because it's functional but poorly done or possibly unavoidable in the game's current state).


honestly, if you don't defragment your game after game session or 2 that you play, your ootp files are a mess all over your hdd. every 2+ or however many it takes for you to see a reduction in load times, run a defrag. (Do Not do this for SSDs... never... ever... ever run a defragmenter on an SSD. no moving parts... not a problem... purposeful fragmentation is actually part of how physically stores data and built into how they function for good reason.)

[hefalumps]

Thanks - yeah I always backup to the same folder, which is why I haven't been using the "Copy all files" button since my first backup. But these few txt news files are being ignored. And I do like being able to look back at historical news and transactions, so I don't want them to be lost.

I guess I'll do a "Copy all files" backup the next time I do it, and then closely watch every subsequent backup to see if anything else gets ignored.

[NoOne]

you don't need to... if oyu have it set to "Keep all" for the things you want, you are golden. full backup would only be for a brand new backup directory -- e.g. you rename the old backup directory to be archived for whatever reason...at that point or anythign similar in nature you need to use the full backup to recreate a new backup directory of the league's name.

you don't even need to do a "full backup" the first time - it will do that anyway because it's never backed anythign up. it keeps track of changed or accessed files and those are the only things copied over to the backu directory -- since all is new, all is copied, then flagged as old/saved.

you may just be seeing some template files or something. open it up see if it;s just variables liek "%playername hits X homeruns today in %score with %awayteam"... that stuff is all hardcoded and the variables fill with data from the game - it's all a template that could be visible to us as individual txt files, or possible hidden, i've never looked into it enough.

test: load a backup to anew saved game directory... is the history there? want to make sure even more? sim out X years (1 beyond how long you keep info, if all, then just go out # of years you will feel safe - maybe 5-10ish.)

now make a new backup with this throw-away history long enough for you to feel confident it is keeping everythign you want. restore that - verify history is there.

*keep using different names as you restore backups - never touch the original backup except for loading the first throw-away league you will use. it won't screw up the backup that way... if unsure, the first time back in your original Saved game (not a backup or restored game), use the full backup option the first time back.