so very frustrated....please assist! - Page 2

bbo4 · 03-21-2002, 04:01 PM

Atom, I used a 200mhz processor with this game and it was chewing it up. Like mentioned before, due to the DB sizes etc. it feeds on your processor. On the 200 I bought more ram to test it and it really didn't make a difference. I went from 64mb to 128mb and the game still took a long time to generate and sim. Actually, importing Lahmans DB was a killer. It took almost an hour. On my normal pc it takes about 10min!!

bbo4 · 03-21-2002, 04:03 PM

also, heed khaos's advice. do not mess with virtual memory. (unless you realy don't like your computer and enjoy headaches trying to figure out where you went wrong!)

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 04:36 PM

Thanks for the input. So, I'm screwed?? It's really not a fun game to play when you spend 90% of your time waiting, you know?

Night2000 · 03-21-2002, 05:42 PM

[quote]Originally posted by atomheart:
Thanks for the input. So, I'm screwed?? It's really not a fun game to play when you spend 90% of your time waiting, you know?

<hr></blockquote>

Sorry to hear the game is running so slow for you. Well it seems like you tried everyone's suggestions and still no good. It seems like the only answer would be to upgrade the CPU. I myself have been running a P3 450 and the game runs pretty smooth. However, I plan to purchase a new computer next month. It's just the way of technology, and we have to upgrade every couple of years to keep up. I don't know how much gaming you do, but the newest games are constantly demanding more CPU power.

atomheart · 03-21-2002, 08:30 PM

I don't use the computer much. I have a PS2 that fufills my gaming/entertainment needs. The only games I play on the pc are sports sims.

The thing that bothers me the most is that it wasn't slow in the beginning. Sure, it wasn't blazing, but it did the job well. And now, only 3 seasons in, it takes 10 min to load the freaking thing. With minors sim off. With box scores off. With everything else on the cpu disabled/off. A 20 league team. It has taken me over an hour to play 3 games.

I was considering more RAM anyways, but now I hear that even if I double it, I'm still going to have very slow load times.

Wouldn't you think that a computer, with the "system requirements", which I surpass, give me a better product than this?

Khaos · 03-22-2002, 03:51 AM

The system requirements are always the minimum it takes to run something. The MINIMUM. Right now you are only 34Mhz past the minimum. The program does run, it just runs slow. It's like you are expecting a Chevette to do the same 0 to 60 time as a Corvette.

Databases as they get larger are CPU hogs. You need a faster CPU. If you don't want to spend the money just for one game, that's understandable, but there isn't any other solution. The more seasons you play, the larger the DB will get, and the slower things will get. I know it's not what you want to hear, but your expectations of what this game should be able to do on your PC can not be met. You would be hard pressed to find many new PC games that will even run with a 200MHz machine.

atomheart · 03-22-2002, 04:47 AM

I own many sim/db games such as FOF, with no slowdown.

Then just chalk me up as an unsatisfied customer.

Scott Vibert · 03-22-2002, 04:59 AM

Have you tried running a smaller league? The size of this database is much larger than the size of the FOF database, so running a full sized 30 team+ league will require a huge (by comparison) database that will take a long time for your CPU to process.

Your processor is 34Mhz off the min, the RAM is at the min recommended (not min needed to run, just the min recommended level), it will run slow.

I can certainly understand your frustration, but it sounds to me like you need to try and use a smaller league and its accompanying smaller database to be able to get some enjoyment out of the game... or make sure you are playing the game with the TV on to entertain you during the breaks to save.

atomheart · 03-22-2002, 05:16 AM

Ok, so I'm defeated.

I'd like to thank the people of this forum for their help. Very quick, very good, and very professional.

I'm considering starting another league.
A few questions, Scottvib, or anyone else out there:

Given my pathetic cpu, what is a good amount of teams to have?

I'm currently trying to get my small-market buccos back to the glory days. Is there a simple way to take the team I now have, and transfer it to my soon-to-be-created league?

Furthermore, what about the logos/rostersets/facepacks? How can I instruct the computer to just transfer some of this info from my current league to my new one?

Thanks, guys/gals.

Scott Vibert · 03-22-2002, 05:49 AM

[quote]Originally posted by atomheart:

Given my pathetic cpu, what is a good amount of teams to have?
I'm sorry you have to have to lose your old league, but in the end its probably for the best. (Why do I feel like I'm consoling someone after they had to but down a pet) I suggest trying a test 12 team league first and seeing how well your computer handles it, if it does it with ease then maybe go with a 16 team league. In any event I would just create a generic test league first and let it sim awhile to see how things go.. then get down to work creating the league you want (who knows maybe you'll start to enjoy your test league and keep it going, this has happend to me before).

I'm currently trying to get my small-market buccos back to the glory days. Is there a simple way to take the team I now have, and transfer it to my soon-to-be-created league? 
I think in Version 3 the easiest way was to use Pierre's editor. Since the editor isn't available for Version 4 yet there probably isn't an easy way to do it as of yet. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Furthermore, what about the logos/rostersets/facepacks? How can I instruct the computer to just transfer some of this info from my current league to my new one? 
One possible way would be to dump all the players into "free agency" in the old league. Then copy over the players.dat file(s) into the new league. Then to establish your Buccos resign all players that you had on your team. Let the draft sort out the rest of the players. For the logos you'll have to rename the images to reflect the new leagues team numbers, but if you do that you can just copy them into the LOGOS folder of the new league. For the player images, just copy them into the PHOTOS folder of the new league.

<hr></blockquote>

Hope this helps..

One thing that might be easier is to just go through and radically contract several teams in your current league during the off season (you said you were at the World Series). First thing you would do is before you click proceed to next season go into the League Setup Screen and turn off financials (this will stop the release of free agents/coaches for this year (which is important). Then proceed to next season and go to the Edit League Structure and contract (delete) enough teams to get you down to the 12 - 16 teams I'd recommend (I'd still suggest running a few test leagues first). Then go to the edit free agents screen and delete all the free agents. (This should help free up space in the database as you will have gotten rid of 14-18 teams worth of players.) You would also probably be best served to delete some of the extra coaches, just since you'll have so many of them now. Also you'll need to generate a new schedule to account for the new size of the league.

The benefits to that is you don't lose your photos, you don't loose your logos, you don't loose your team or the history you've spend the time to develop in the league... you can even make a story that says Bud Selig got his way after all and contracted all the non-original teams. (Maybe only keep the original 16 teams or keep only 12 of the original 16 or something). Hopefully this would help to speed things up... but there are no guarentees and of course you'll loose some stars if you do that.

If you do what I suggested the original teams current locations are: (AL: Baltimore (was Milwaukee/St. Louis), Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Minnesota (was Washington), New York (was Baltimore), Oakland (was Philadelphia/Kansas City). NL: Atlanta (was Boston/Milwaukee), Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles (was Brooklyn), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco (was New York), St. Louis).

Good luck.

Edit - BTW don't forget to turn financials back on after you finish deleting the free agents.. otherwise you'll never have free agency in your new league. (I'm not sure if you'll have free agency in your transition season (from 30 to 12-16) I still recommend you run a test league first, just to check what your CPU will handle best.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: ScottVib ]

atomheart · 03-22-2002, 05:59 AM

Thanks a lot. You answered all my questions, even the ones I thought of as I read your post.

I think I'll try the 16 team league, something I was leaning to when I decided to start over. (sniff.)

You're the man. I was going to give you stars (or whatever those things are to the left) but I couldn't figure out how the heck to do it. Anywho, I'll let you know how it turns out.

atomheartmother

Kevin · 03-22-2002, 07:23 AM

Atomheart

Before you give up find a trusted person who works in the PC hardware support business and see if he/she can help you. I ran OOTP3 easily and quickly on a PII 200 with 96MB of RAM and much less hard drive space. Version 4 looks like it is more resource intensive, but not exponentially so.

A pro could check out your virtual memory and other settings quite easily. I suspect that without some changes to your PC in the way of settings, your experience with a samller league may not be satisfying either. A good place to start looking for help is if there are some techies at your workplace.

Don't give up too soon.

03-21-2002, 04:01 PM	#21
bbo4 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: South of Boston, Ma Posts: 214	Atom, I used a 200mhz processor with this game and it was chewing it up. Like mentioned before, due to the DB sizes etc. it feeds on your processor. On the 200 I bought more ram to test it and it really didn't make a difference. I went from 64mb to 128mb and the game still took a long time to generate and sim. Actually, importing Lahmans DB was a killer. It took almost an hour. On my normal pc it takes about 10min!! __________________ "In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the Bigs."

03-21-2002, 04:03 PM	#22
bbo4 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: South of Boston, Ma Posts: 214	also, heed khaos's advice. do not mess with virtual memory. (unless you realy don't like your computer and enjoy headaches trying to figure out where you went wrong!) __________________ "In 1962 I was named Minor League Player of the Year. It was my second season in the Bigs."

03-21-2002, 05:42 PM	#24
Night2000 All Star Reserve Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Monroe, NJ Posts: 716	[quote]Originally posted by atomheart: <strong>Thanks for the input. So, I'm screwed?? It's really not a fun game to play when you spend 90% of your time waiting, you know? </strong><hr></blockquote> Sorry to hear the game is running so slow for you. Well it seems like you tried everyone's suggestions and still no good. It seems like the only answer would be to upgrade the CPU. I myself have been running a P3 450 and the game runs pretty smooth. However, I plan to purchase a new computer next month. It's just the way of technology, and we have to upgrade every couple of years to keep up. I don't know how much gaming you do, but the newest games are constantly demanding more CPU power. __________________ http://night2000.blogspot.com/ This post has the Al Bundy and Homer Simpson stamp of approval!

03-22-2002, 03:51 AM	#26
Khaos Major Leagues Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Canfield, OH Posts: 473	The system requirements are always the minimum it takes to run something. The MINIMUM. Right now you are only 34Mhz past the minimum. The program does run, it just runs slow. It's like you are expecting a Chevette to do the same 0 to 60 time as a Corvette. Databases as they get larger are CPU hogs. You need a faster CPU. If you don't want to spend the money just for one game, that's understandable, but there isn't any other solution. The more seasons you play, the larger the DB will get, and the slower things will get. I know it's not what you want to hear, but your expectations of what this game should be able to do on your PC can not be met. You would be hard pressed to find many new PC games that will even run with a 200MHz machine. __________________ squish

03-22-2002, 05:49 AM	#30
Scott Vibert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: My Computer Posts: 8,182	[quote]Originally posted by atomheart: <strong> Given my pathetic cpu, what is a good amount of teams to have?</strong> I'm sorry you have to have to lose your old league, but in the end its probably for the best. (Why do I feel like I'm consoling someone after they had to but down a pet) I suggest trying a test 12 team league first and seeing how well your computer handles it, if it does it with ease then maybe go with a 16 team league. In any event I would just create a generic test league first and let it sim awhile to see how things go.. then get down to work creating the league you want (who knows maybe you'll start to enjoy your test league and keep it going, this has happend to me before). <strong> I'm currently trying to get my small-market buccos back to the glory days. Is there a simple way to take the team I now have, and transfer it to my soon-to-be-created league? </strong> I think in Version 3 the easiest way was to use Pierre's editor. Since the editor isn't available for Version 4 yet there probably isn't an easy way to do it as of yet. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong. <strong> Furthermore, what about the logos/rostersets/facepacks? How can I instruct the computer to just transfer some of this info from my current league to my new one? </strong> One possible way would be to dump all the players into "free agency" in the old league. Then copy over the players.dat file(s) into the new league. Then to establish your Buccos resign all players that you had on your team. Let the draft sort out the rest of the players. For the logos you'll have to rename the images to reflect the new leagues team numbers, but if you do that you can just copy them into the LOGOS folder of the new league. For the player images, just copy them into the PHOTOS folder of the new league. <hr></blockquote> Hope this helps.. One thing that might be easier is to just go through and radically contract several teams in your current league during the off season (you said you were at the World Series). First thing you would do is before you click proceed to next season go into the League Setup Screen and turn off financials (this will stop the release of free agents/coaches for this year (which is important). Then proceed to next season and go to the Edit League Structure and contract (delete) enough teams to get you down to the 12 - 16 teams I'd recommend (I'd still suggest running a few test leagues first). Then go to the edit free agents screen and delete all the free agents. (This should help free up space in the database as you will have gotten rid of 14-18 teams worth of players.) You would also probably be best served to delete some of the extra coaches, just since you'll have so many of them now. Also you'll need to generate a new schedule to account for the new size of the league. The benefits to that is you don't lose your photos, you don't loose your logos, you don't loose your team or the history you've spend the time to develop in the league... you can even make a story that says Bud Selig got his way after all and contracted all the non-original teams. (Maybe only keep the original 16 teams or keep only 12 of the original 16 or something). Hopefully this would help to speed things up... but there are no guarentees and of course you'll loose some stars if you do that. If you do what I suggested the original teams current locations are: (AL: Baltimore (was Milwaukee/St. Louis), Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Minnesota (was Washington), New York (was Baltimore), Oakland (was Philadelphia/Kansas City). NL: Atlanta (was Boston/Milwaukee), Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles (was Brooklyn), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco (was New York), St. Louis). Good luck. Edit - BTW don't forget to turn financials back on after you finish deleting the free agents.. otherwise you'll never have free agency in your new league. (I'm not sure if you'll have free agency in your transition season (from 30 to 12-16) I still recommend you run a test league first, just to check what your CPU will handle best. [ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: ScottVib ]</p>

03-21-2002, 04:36 PM	#23
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	Thanks for the input. So, I'm screwed?? It's really not a fun game to play when you spend 90% of your time waiting, you know?

03-21-2002, 08:30 PM	#25
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	I don't use the computer much. I have a PS2 that fufills my gaming/entertainment needs. The only games I play on the pc are sports sims. The thing that bothers me the most is that it wasn't slow in the beginning. Sure, it wasn't blazing, but it did the job well. And now, only 3 seasons in, it takes 10 min to load the freaking thing. With minors sim off. With box scores off. With everything else on the cpu disabled/off. A 20 league team. It has taken me over an hour to play 3 games. I was considering more RAM anyways, but now I hear that even if I double it, I'm still going to have very slow load times. Wouldn't you think that a computer, with the "system requirements", which I surpass, give me a better product than this?

03-22-2002, 04:47 AM	#27
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	I own many sim/db games such as FOF, with no slowdown. Then just chalk me up as an unsatisfied customer.

03-22-2002, 04:59 AM	#28
Scott Vibert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: My Computer Posts: 8,182	Have you tried running a smaller league? The size of this database is much larger than the size of the FOF database, so running a full sized 30 team+ league will require a huge (by comparison) database that will take a long time for your CPU to process. Your processor is 34Mhz off the min, the RAM is at the min recommended (not min needed to run, just the min recommended level), it will run slow. I can certainly understand your frustration, but it sounds to me like you need to try and use a smaller league and its accompanying smaller database to be able to get some enjoyment out of the game... or make sure you are playing the game with the TV on to entertain you during the breaks to save.

03-22-2002, 05:16 AM	#29
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	Ok, so I'm defeated. I'd like to thank the people of this forum for their help. Very quick, very good, and very professional. I'm considering starting another league. A few questions, Scottvib, or anyone else out there: Given my pathetic cpu, what is a good amount of teams to have? I'm currently trying to get my small-market buccos back to the glory days. Is there a simple way to take the team I now have, and transfer it to my soon-to-be-created league? Furthermore, what about the logos/rostersets/facepacks? How can I instruct the computer to just transfer some of this info from my current league to my new one? Thanks, guys/gals.

03-22-2002, 05:59 AM	#31
atomheart Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 454	Thanks a lot. You answered all my questions, even the ones I thought of as I read your post. I think I'll try the 16 team league, something I was leaning to when I decided to start over. (sniff.) You're the man. I was going to give you stars (or whatever those things are to the left) but I couldn't figure out how the heck to do it. Anywho, I'll let you know how it turns out. atomheartmother

03-22-2002, 07:23 AM	#32
Kevin All Star Reserve Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Nova Scotia Posts: 501	Atomheart Before you give up find a trusted person who works in the PC hardware support business and see if he/she can help you. I ran OOTP3 easily and quickly on a PII 200 with 96MB of RAM and much less hard drive space. Version 4 looks like it is more resource intensive, but not exponentially so. A pro could check out your virtual memory and other settings quite easily. I suspect that without some changes to your PC in the way of settings, your experience with a samller league may not be satisfying either. A good place to start looking for help is if there are some techies at your workplace. Don't give up too soon. __________________ It seems more like today than it did all day yesterday.