Problems with crashes & ratings

[kbensel]

I'll try to be as detailed as possible and hopefully someone has some ideas about how to solve this problem (other than to start over *sigh*).

Our league is converting over from High Heat 2002 and we wanted to keep our 6 seasons worth of league stats so I modified the Lahman database to include our players who met certain minimums (1500 PAs, 500 IP) with correct stats. This enabled us to have those players rated on their career performance. That import appeared to go smoothly.

I then filled the minors with fictional players and used the import/export option within OOTP to modify the names, ages, positions, current ratings, talent ratings, etc. of the players. One thing that I did that I probably shouldn't have done (but didn't know at the time) was to convert pitchers into hitters and vice versa. I say that I probably shouldn't have done that because the guys who started as pitchers and I turned into hitters still had pitch ratings and would show up in the rosters page as pitchers. We fixed this problem manually, going through the entire league and removing "Starter," "Middle Reliever," or "Closer" rating from all the non-pitchers. But I'm not sure if there is some problem that is still caused by this issue.

Now, when I try to sim, the game will crash. The time of the crash varies (from the 2nd game to 6 weeks into the season). I have turned injuries off and on, computer owner off and on, and computer manager off and on, and it still crashes. Two other people (the league commissioner and asst. commissioner) have also simmed and had crash after crash. And some of the crashes lead to a complete loss of stats, which obviously is a problem. One thing to note is that I've simmed dozens of seasons with other leagues and not had a single crash.

The 3 times that I have gotten through a season (only once without a crash, and that was simming a week at a time), when I proceed to the next season, the ratings for some of the teams disappear. Gone. Vanished. And oddly, it's always the same teams (ANA, ARI, not ATL, not BAL, BOS, etc.).

So...I have a few questions:

1) Any idea what the problem is? I figure it's either a problem with how I imported (although it seemed to work fine) or with changing pitchers to hitters and vice versa, or maybe both.

2) Are the two problems really 2 symptoms of the same problem? Or are there 2 separate things at work here?

3) Is this problem fixable, or do we have to start over with the conversion?

4) If we have to start over, is there a suggestion about which method (importing via a modified Lahman database or starting with fictional players and then changing all their attributes) is more reliable? The one big benefit to importing is that it carries the stats with it and we don't have to enter them in manually using Pierre's PE2.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Kevin
1.9 GHz P4
512 MB RAM
Windows XP Home

[Steve Kuffrey]

First of all, it's a really big job you have undertaken. Next, I have some ideas but need some additional info.

-When the game crashes, does it happen when the same team(s) are playing? If you have not noticed, try it again and make note.
-How much free HD space do you have on your PC?

Get back to me with these and we'll go from there.

[John C]

I can be of some service here, as I'm the Asst. Commish in this league, and have done some testing:

I'm the one having the biggest problems. I haven't played out a full season yet. I'm going to try some other things that should take care of that (simming by week...I tried by season, then by month). I've had the game crash at various parts of the season...66 games, 17 games, 4 games, 47 games...I haven't gotten to July. It doesn't look to me like it's any one team...at least, I haven't pin-pointed that.

My specs:

Dell Insprion 8200
21.2 GB free on a 27.9 GB HD
1 GB DDR RAM
This was done with AOL Instant Messenger and WordPad in the background, and without those up.

One thing I can do is post the league file and you can take a look at that. I'm doing that as we speak. It will be located at www.thepostgamereport.net/emlb6.lg.zip in about five minutes.

Let me know if you need anything else.

[kbensel]

Steve,

Yes, it's a heck of a project. :-) Good thing the commish is paying me! ;-)

I have not noticed that it's the same teams playing when the crash occurs (I thought about this as well). I just tried simming and it crashed immediately after scheduling promos after day 1. So the crash didn't occur during a game.

I have about 9 GB of free space on my hard drive, so I don't think that is an issue.

Hopefully taking a look at the league file that John posted will help.

Thanks,
Kevin

[eMLBCommish]

Hi Steve,

Permit me to help you out, as I am the Commish of the league Kevin has so tremendously helped and put valuable time into.

1) Today alone, I had 3 crashes. Here's the specifics:

Simmed with injuries off, simmed a week at a time, with all teams human controlled. Did this twice. Both times, my sim crashed on 4/9, EXACTLY on the same game (SD @ LA).

Next time I simmed, I had the same parameters, except that I simmed by the month. One change I made was what day the April 1 day was. First two sims by week 4/1 was a Saturday. This time, I made 4/1 a Monday (start of sim week).

We got past 4/9 and SD @ LA that time. However, it did stop on 6/25. (ATL @ MIL). I gave up from there in frustration.

In all situations, we lose ALL stats from the last time the sim saves. When we go back in, we pick up date wise where we leave off, and would be able to go past the point where things freeze (All cases, I CTRL-ALT-DEL to see OOTP No Longer responds), but there's no point since there is data loss.


2) I have a brand new Dell with over 120 GB of space, and 1 GB of RAM, using a Dell Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz processor on Windows XP.

Your help is greatly appreciated, as you've been very helpful so far...and EXTREMELY quick with your response. You see why we so much wanted to continue our league history but leave our previous platform.

We're still hoping this is feasible!

Thanks!

James 'LB' LeBlond
Commish - eMLB
www.emlb-baseball.com

[John C]

File is posted Steve.

www.thepostgamereport.net/emlb6.lg.zip

-John

[Steve Kuffrey]

D/L the file as I type, hope to be of some help but if I don't find anything please leave the file up if you can and I'll get Markus to look at it.

[John C]

I've got plenty of space there. The file shall remain up.

-John

[Steve Kuffrey]

Ok, I d/l the file and took a look at it. Several teams had no SP in slot 1 and several teams had incomplete lineups with numerous holes not just 1 or 2. I set all teams on "computer manager" then started to sim. I selected "sim season" and it went all the way to the end w/o a crash, lockup or burp.

[eMLBCommish]

Steve,

Another point of information:

Kevin, Comey, and myself are using version 5.12 of OOTP5, and we're having the issues we've discussed.

However, Chris (AL President) also ran a sim, and didn't crash. He's using version 5.01 at the time of the test sims. In regards to disappearing ratings of entire teams, Chris noted only Toronto suffered a complete ratings loss.

Just thought we'd provide you as much as we can to help out with your thoughts.

Thanks for your help again!

LB

[Steve Kuffrey]

If you are using scouts then the "ratings" issue is related to teams "needing to sign a scout" for the coming season. I'm running v5.12 and as I said ran an entire season w/o issue - once I made the switch to computer manager. The problem with the crashes "may" be related to all of the incomplete lineups, rotations, etc. I have not seen this happen recently but early versions of the game had folks experience this.

[John C]

I'll do a check. I set all teams to cpu when I ran my sims.

As far as the scouts, I should have realized that. I've fielded my share of those problems, and I just overlooked it.

-John

[Steve Kuffrey]

Initially I had to make a couple of adjustments myself to a couple of teams w/o SP in the #1 slot, the game may have run even w/o me making the changes but I did it anyway.

[eMLBCommish]

Steve,

Thanks for your comments about the ratings.

As for your concern about the sim crashing, I did try to address that in my last trial I did, but I did fail to mention it to you. Kevin is aware I did this.

I left everything human controlled. But I went to everyone's rotations, depth charts, and lineups and had the computer generate auto everything.

Still had the crash. That's when I gave up.

Would the scouts issue had any relevance then?

Thanks for all your help!

LB

[Steve Kuffrey]

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game? It's just strange that I was able to run it smooth as silk and you guys are getting crashes.

[eMLBCommish]

Steve,

I'm posting my latest version of the file which I zipped after I did the auto managing to have depth charts, lineups and rotations computer selected.

If you want to take a look at this, go ahead. Same thing as Comey posted, except with those changes (and records added).

http://www.emlb-baseball.com/emlb6.lg.zip

Thanks!

LB

[kbensel]

Steve,

I just downloaded the same file that John put on his website, set all teams to Computer Managed, and tried simming a season. It simmed to 7/23 but it crashed on BOS-KC.

If you don't mind, could you try running another sim or two to see if you can get through without any crashes?

Thanks,
Kevin

[eMLBCommish]

Steve,

I just had another crash. I crashed on 4/25, no particular game displayed that it stalled on. Everything was on computer managed.

I know you asked if I uninstalled/reinstalled, but why would 3 of us be having the same issue on 3 different computers?

Kevin informed me he made it to 7/23 before crashing on BOS @ KC.

Thanks again,

LB

[Steve Kuffrey]

I don't really know, it is just strange that so far I can't get it to crash.

[John C]

Sigh...computer managed, I hit "auto-manage" for pitching staff, depth chart, and lineups.

I got to June 6th, and crashed on Colorado/LA. I'm posting that file now...will be up in five minutes. It's located at:

www.thepostgamereport.net/emlb6error.lg.zip

Hope this helps any.

-John