A custom schedule generator

[Ruwisc]

Originally Posted by Fishbreath

If I'm not mistaken, OOTP randomizes which team gets which team number from a schedule file, so there would be some work required on the OOTP end before there's the chance to do pool selection based on inputs. It would be nifty, though!

This is not actually true from what I've seen - when a schedule is first loaded, schedule IDs are assigned in the same order as the teams are listed on the league Structure page. For example, in MLB Baltimore gets #1 when you load in because they're first alphabetically in the AL East, and San Francisco gets #30 because they're last in the NL West. The ID numbers only get randomized in following seasons, and they don't get randomized at all if you have multiple schedules set up to rotate (the game only randomizes it when it uses the same file in back-to-back seasons). So it's totally possible to set up really complicated schedule scenarios, depending on how much patience you have.

[Fishbreath]

Good to know! Rivalries/team mappings might be a nice someday feature.

[bwburke94]

Getting this error whenever I try to use the new release:

[Fishbreath]

I briefly had a release posted which manifested that crash, but I think I fixed it—if the 2.11 you have was downloaded prior to 9:27 p.m. on October 4, you probably have the bad one still.

[bwburke94]

I'll try redownloading.

[Fishbreath]

I have the bones of the inverted double round robin scheduler done, which means it can handle a structure like SL1_D1T3_D2T3_D3T3 moderately well:

T1 schedule debug 24 games 12H/12A
Divisional 0 games 0H/0A
Subleague 24 games 12H/12A
        T5 4 games 2H/2A
        T8 4 games 2H/2A
        T7 4 games 2H/2A
        T4 4 games 2H/2A
        T6 4 games 2H/2A
        T9 4 games 2H/2A
Interleague 0 games 0H/0A

This does require bye days, however. I'm not sure if these are distributed optimally, or if there's more room for improvement:

        T1  T2  T3  T4  T5  T6  T7  T8  T9
    1S              8A  9A  7A  6H  4H  5H 
    2S              8A  9A  7A  6H  4H  5H 
    3S  6A  4A  5A  2H  3H  1H             
    4S  6A  4A  5A  2H  3H  1H             
    5S  7H  8H  9H              1A  2A  3A 
    6S  7H  8H  9H              1A  2A  3A 
    7S  8A  9A  7A              3H  1H  2H 
    8S  8A  9A  7A              3H  1H  2H 
    9S              7H  8H  9H  4A  5A  6A 
   10S              7H  8H  9H  4A  5A  6A 
   11S  5H  6H  4H  3A  1A  2A             
   12S  5H  6H  4H  3A  1A  2A             
   13S  4A  5A  6A  1H  2H  3H             
   14S  4A  5A  6A  1H  2H  3H

This represents an improvement and a downside over each of the extant scheduling mechanisms. (For pools with an odd number of teams, there are bye days and the constraint that teams should not play divisional opponents on subleague days is relaxed. For pools with an even number of teams, some teams will skip playing some subleague opponents.) This method is more correct, in that it allows for perfect matchup generation for subleague play for subleagues with odd numbers of divisions. On the flip side, it takes longer, because it has to insert more bye days.


There are a few more tasks on my plate before I can release this:

• Do the calendar math in the right place. The algorithm that determines the length of the season runs before the precise kind of matchup generator is chosen, and the choice of matchup generator now has an impact on how long the season might take. I'll have to do the deciding earlier on.
• Add a settings knob to turn it on or off. In some cases, it may be better to eat the tradeoffs than to stretch the subleague portion of the schedule to 1.5x the number of games.
• Add a settings knob to prefer inverted rotation for opponent pools that don't need it. This lets you tweak whether a given pair of divisions should meet up all in one go, or whether games between their teams should be spread out through the season.

[TXRangersElite0819]

So in a nutshell. I am not understanding how to use the schedule generator and it would be nice if I could get a more direct explaination and if Possible I'd like someone who sees this posting to use the schedule parameters that Im currently trying to get done to use them and make whatever it is that I need in order to give me a solid example that I can use for my tournament. I don't know exaxtly all the information your going to require but I'll give you what I know now and if you need more then just let me know.

First off it's gonna be a double round robin

8 blocks of 4 teams each for a nice even setup

First round in double round robin where the they face each team twice for a total of 6 games per team per block with the top 2 teams moving on from each block

Tiebreaker games (yes) if you think its wise, suggestions are welcome so long as the tourney structure remains in tact

2nd round breaks off into single eliminationn 16 team bracket sorted by seed in a 3 game series 1home 1away 1home

Round 3 is 8 teams in 5 game series 2home 2away 1home

Round 4 is 4 teams in 7 game series 2home 3away 2home

Final round is 7 game series 3home 3away 1home

That's what Ive got but if you need more info just let me what you need . Again any adive is welcome and if you take me up on fhis then thinls is my first THANK YOU for you

[bwburke94]

That can be done with custom playoffs.

[AllStar289]

I know the league i'm trying to make a schedule for is super complex, but the program keeps crashing after i type "y". This mainly only happens when i have 24 Division games and 24 Interleague games.

[bwburke94]

Originally Posted by AllStar289

I know the league i'm trying to make a schedule for is super complex, but the program keeps crashing after i type "y". This mainly only happens when i have 24 Division games and 24 Interleague games.

Attach your settings file, please.

[AllStar289]

Originally Posted by bwburke94

Attach your settings file, please.

Sorry i saw this so late, i added four teams to the league and that somehow fixed the crashing issue. Thanks though!

[Baconi]

Terminal just tells me "Unable to access jarfile"

[Ozzie7227]

Originally Posted by Fonzie13

Having some trouble generating what I think ought to be a simple schedule, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong ...

I've set up a 32-team league, two subleagues, each subleague with 4 divisions of 4 teams each. Here's the schedule I'm trying to generate:

1. DIVISION
Each team plays the other three teams in its division: two 3-game series at home, two 3-game series away. (36 division games total)

2. SUBLEAGUE
Each team plays the other 12 teams in its own subleague (i.e., all four teams in all three of the other divisions): one 3-game series at home, one 3-game series away. (72 subleague games total.)

3. INTERLEAGUE
Each team plays all 16 teams in the other subleague: one 3-game series. (48 interleague games total.)

The generator gets the division and interleague games right ... but not the subleague games.

Instead of scheduling 6 games against all of the other 12 subleague teams, the generator picks one of the other three divisions, and schedules 18 games against those 4 teams. (And, zero games against the teams in the other two divisions in the subleague.)

It doesn't seem to change if I set balanced schedule to true or to false; same thing happens on both settings.

How do I tell the generator to schedule against ALL of the other teams/divisions in the subleague, instead of only scheduling against one division?

Relevant section of settings.ini file pasted below. Thanks in advance for any help.

; Whether to write to the schedule file
; claiming interleague play is supported.
interleague=true
; Whether to write to the schedule file
; claiming the schedule is balanced.
balanced=true
; The league structure, in schedule file
; format. Underscores are permitted but ignored.
structure=SL1_D1T4_D2T4_D3T4_D4T4_SL2_D1T4_D2T4_D3T4_D4T4

; This many divisional games.
divisional_games=36
; This many subleague games.
subleague_games=72
; This many interleague/interdivisional games.
interleague_games=48
; If set to true, the scheduling engine will attempt
; to set up subleague pools between divisions of the
; same size.
match_divisions=true
; If set to true, the scheduling engine will attempt
; to set up interleague pools between divisions
; of the same size.
match_subleagues=true

[divisional-series]
; Series scheduling options.

; The preferred length for series.
preferred_length=3
; In each division (or subleague, or all teams,
; for the two following sections), teams will
; be divided into this many pools.
pool_count=1

[subleague-series]
preferred_length=3
pool_count=3

[interleague-series]
preferred_length=3
pool_count=3

I know this is an old post, but I wanted to document the solution I found to this problem. This uses the most recent version (v2.11 from 10-04-2020) as of the date of this post. These settings gave me exactly the subleague schedule that Fonzie was trying to accomplish.

; Whether to write to the schedule file
; claiming interleague play is supported.
interleague=true
; Whether to write to the schedule file
; claiming the schedule is balanced.
balanced=false
; The league structure, in schedule file
; format. Underscores are permitted but ignored.
structure=SL1_D1T4_D2T4_D3T4_D4T4_SL2_D1T4_D2T4_D3T4_D4T4

[schedule]
; Scheduling options. The scheduling engine will
; create a schedule with exactly this many games,
; or inform you what to change to create a valid
; schedule.

; This many divisional games.
divisional_games=72
; This many subleague games.
subleague_games=72
; This many interleague/interdivisional games.
interleague_games=12
; If set to true, the scheduling engine will attempt
; to set up interdivisional pools between divisions
; of the same size.
match_divisions=false
; If set to true, the scheduling engine will attempt
; to set up interleague pools between leagues of the
; of the same size.
match_subleagues=false
; If set to true, the scheduling engine will attempt
; to set up interleague pools between divisions of
; the same size. If enabled at the same time as
; match_subleagues, match_subleagues will take
; priority.
match_subleagues_by_division=true

[divisional-series]
; Series scheduling options.

; The preferred length for series.
preferred_length=3
; In each division (or subleague, or all teams,
; for the two following sections), teams will
; be divided into this many pools.
pool_count=1

[subleague-series]
preferred_length=3
pool_count=1

[interleague-series]
preferred_length=3
pool_count=3

T32 schedule debug 156 games 78H/78A
Divisional 72 games 36H/36A
T30 24 games 12H/12A
T31 24 games 12H/12A
T29 24 games 12H/12A
Subleague 72 games 36H/36A
T21 6 games 3H/3A
T22 6 games 3H/3A
T24 6 games 3H/3A
T23 6 games 3H/3A
T18 6 games 3H/3A
T19 6 games 3H/3A
T20 6 games 3H/3A
T17 6 games 3H/3A
T28 6 games 3H/3A
T26 6 games 3H/3A
T27 6 games 3H/3A
T25 6 games 3H/3A
Interleague 12 games 6H/6A
T8 3 games 3H/0A
T7 3 games 0H/3A
T6 3 games 3H/0A
T5 3 games 0H/3A

[Ozzie7227]

I know the latest release (2.11) includes notes about having fixed crashes on file writing, but I think there's still a bug (or something about my specific set-up that's causing a problem).

I can successfully generate a schedule, but my "write" command results in the command prompt closing with no file. The last time I tried it, just now, I caught a glimpse of the word "Exception" in the command window before it closed.

Does anyone have experience with this behavior or any suggestions on debugging?

[bwburke94]

What's the file path to your 2.11 folder?

[Ozzie7227]

I think I see where you're going...I have it in an OOTP folder on an external drive. Guessing it needs to be somewhere in the OOTP program folder proper?

[bwburke94]

I have it in Dropbox which works fine. The problem's either specifically the external drive, or the file path containing weird characters the command prompt can't deal with.

[Ozzie7227]

Actually, forgot this was on my laptop...the program's at C:\Program Files (x86)\OOTP Schedule Generator. I also tried it when saved under C:\Program Files\OOTP Schedule Generator just to be sure it wasn't the '(x86)' causing the issue, no luck.

[Ozzie7227]

Anyone have any ideas on this one? I'd love to get the utility to work before OOTP 22 is released. Thanks!

[bwburke94]

It's in Program Files, which means you might not have write permissions. Try moving it to your desktop.