Schedule Start Time Problem

[Bottom Of The Sixth]

I originally created my own schedule and entered it date by date via the "Edit Schedule" function found within OOTP13.

The 1st year I played out my games all of my games started when I wanted them to which was at 13:05 (1:05pm).

In the 2nd year of the league I noticed that some of the start times varied even though the schedule shows a 13:05 start time.

I just started using the same exact schedule for my 3rd year of league play and every start time is now showing 07:05 (7:05am) even though the in-game schedule still shows 13:05 start times. The only way I can figure out how to "fix" this issue is to go into the Manager Options screen and change my time zone to GMT.

Has anyone else experienced such a issue and if so, were you able to correct it?

I would also like to know if game time actually has any effect on the game. Is weather affected at all by the game start time, or does the game start time only affect whether a daytime park image is used or a night time park image is used?

Thanks

[Bigrod]

Originally Posted by Bottom Of The Sixth

I originally created my own schedule and entered it date by date via the "Edit Schedule" function found within OOTP13.

The 1st year I played out my games all of my games started when I wanted them to which was at 13:05 (1:05pm).

In the 2nd year of the league I noticed that some of the start times varied even though the schedule shows a 13:05 start time.

I just started using the same exact schedule for my 3rd year of league play and every start time is now showing 07:05 (7:05am) even though the in-game schedule still shows 13:05 start times. The only way I can figure out how to "fix" this issue is to go into the Manager Options screen and change my time zone to GMT.

Has anyone else experienced such a issue and if so, were you able to correct it?

I would also like to know if game time actually has any effect on the game. Is weather affected at all by the game start time, or does the game start time only affect whether a daytime park image is used or a night time park image is used?

Thanks

Sounds more like the game didn't import your schedule.
and if so, it's entirely possible for the game to change times the 2nd and subsequent years just as it does the matchups unless you manually imported the exact same schedule your 2nd year.

One should always check the schedule before they start their season. Cause then it can easily be changed in notepad or any text editor.
Export your schedule if you can and check the times and see if you find any time="0730" entries.

Although time doesn't really affect game play, it keep track of both day and night games player stats as well as control the showing of the day/night ballpark pic.

Weather also, is not affected by time.

Not sure about this but, it might affect the pbp. Such as a player losing the ball in the lights or sun.

Almost forgot......you don't have any teams playing in utc 0 time zones do you? That would do it as all times must be local time based on the home teams location.

[Bottom Of The Sixth]

The schedule I am currently using actually is actually my original schedule. At the start of my last preseason, I cleared my schedule and totally created a brand new schedule. Until you mentioned it, I was not aware that the game will mix up the match-ups and starting times if the same schedule was used in back-to-back years so I actually created a new schedule to start using in the years that end with a even number and I am using my original schedule to use in the odd ending years. So after creating the new schedule, I re-imported the old schedule however, the times are all off by 6-7 hours.



As for team locations, I am using the newly created States as Nations World_Default file that was created for this project:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...s-project.html

All of my teams are in the US in the Central and Eastern Time Zones.

[joefromchicago]

By far the easiest way to edit a schedule is to edit the .ldsl file using Notepad++. If you use the in-game editor, it will take forever and you run the risk of getting some funky results.

[Bigrod]

Are you sure the time zones (UTC) aren't messed up in that world.xml file??
I've been doing the games schedule for 4 yrs. and I have to test a lot, but I've never run into a problem like yours unless it was a scheduling error, magagers time zone set incorrectly or world.xml city/state UTC time incorrect.
Attach your current schedule so I can look at it please.

[Bottom Of The Sixth]

Originally Posted by Bigrod

Are you sure the time zones (UTC) aren't messed up in that world.xml file??
I've been doing the games schedule for 4 yrs. and I have to test a lot, but I've never run into a problem like yours unless it was a scheduling error, magagers time zone set incorrectly or world.xml city/state UTC time incorrect.
Attach your current schedule so I can look at it please.

Thanks Rod. Greatly appreciate you taking the time to look at things for me.

[joefromchicago]

Your schedule looks fine. You need to reload it. That should solve your problems.

Be aware that changes you make to the schedule in-game carry through to subsequent seasons unless you reload the schedule. So, for instance, if you decide to "rain out" a game in year 1, that game will be rained out in year 2 as well.

Also, if you want a more realistic start time for games in 1922, I'd choose 2:00 or 3:00 rather than 1:05. Games didn't start five minutes after the hour until television broadcasts began asking for that five minutes to accommodate their pre-game shows.

[Bottom Of The Sixth]

This issue is causing me to be more confused the more games I play.

The way my league is set up is that all games are scheduled at 13:05 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday only. There are no weekday games until the playoffs start.

I control one team and the AI controls the other 63.

I play out each and every game for the team I control. So in a typical game week I'll play out my three weekend games and then auto-sim the league until the next Friday and then play out my three games on Fri, Sat, Sun. repeat.

Well, last weekend (in game terms) I was forced to change my league time to GMT to be able to get all of the games to have the same start time of 1:05pm. I played out my 3 weekend games and then did a auto sim until the following Friday when the next set of games start up again and guess what, the game times on some of the games have changed again. The game time for my next team is now changed to 7:05pm. Out of 32 games scheduled just for Friday, 22 games that are now scheduled for 1:05pm, 7 games are scheduled for 6:05pm, and 3 games are scheduled for 7:05pm! This appears to be a weekly issue and from what I can tell it is not my schedule causing this to happen.

[Bigrod]

Originally Posted by Bottom Of The Sixth

Thanks Rod. Greatly appreciate you taking the time to look at things for me.

No problem...
You're schedule times are correct as previously stated. All 1305. However when you save you're schedule the naming is incorrect and is going to confuse the game. This is not the cause of you're currect problem, but can confuse the game in furture years and the correct schedule may not auto load as it should.
Name them similar to this:
glba_league_mlb_c_2014 and so on for your even years and
glba_league_mlb_c_2015 and so on for your odd years.
The structure is this.
glba_league is the name of your specific league.
mlb is the level of the the league your playing. So if you were playing Triple A ball, it would be aaa.
c is a comment line. That's where you could put in "even years" without quotes for your even yr. shcedules and "odd years" for the odd years schedule or whatever comment you want.
2014 or any year is the year that ootp will use that schedule and no other unless there's no year's schedule to match the year your playing. If ootp can't find the specific year your playing, it will use a best match method and that may not even be one of your custom schedules irregardless of what the manual says!! Unless, your schedule are the only ones in ootps schedule folder. Or it may creates it's own based on your previous yrs. schedule and just change the times and matchups.
Just a little info for future reference.

Your problem really has me puzzled as I've never heard of it before.
Finally got off my butt and checked that world.xml you're using and it's missing the time zone data for a lot of the cities in Canada.
I have no clue how that can affect scheduling or if it does at all.

If it doesn't and your teams aren't in Canada, I'm convinced that irregardless of what ootp shows, it's not using your schedule. In fact, looking at your naming conventions for your schedules as mentioned above, It's entirely possible it's using one of the older real schedules. I doubt it's using one of gmo's as his game times would reflect accurate time zone conversions. Most Pre 2012 Real schedules do not as those are in Eastern time (UTC -5).

[Bottom Of The Sixth]

I went in and explored the in-game world as you suggested and I am seeing the 1st attached pic. In each of the States that are listed on this page, I selected each of them individually. They are all showing UTC times of "0". Once I adjusted the time zone, all of the cities listed on the right side of the page automatically readjusted (see attached pic 2). The only issue I came across is WI. As you will notice in the 1st pic, it has 3 times the number of players being shown in and when I went to edit it, the "State" doesn't show up as the others did (attached pic #3) so I can't edit it. I have no idea why WI has that many more players or why WI is not being listed as a State that can be edited from the World screen. Should I attempt to "add" WI in a 2nd time or is something else causing this?









Thanks

[Bigrod]

Well UTC 0 would definately mess with your game times. They would be off 5-6 hrs.
Next problem is that Wisc. wasn't formatted as a State in the world.xml. Perhaps one of the xml tags was missing, that's why it's not showing as a State in your game and you can't edit it.
You could add it, but you'd have to re add the cities and most likely have to delete them from Wisconsins Nations screen. Lot of work.
Best bet would be to fix the world.xml file if that is indeed the problem.
Then you can manually reload the world.xml file, but I have no clue if it will work with an existing game. You can reload it from the Game tab "Database and Info and Tools" screen. Just click the tools tab and select "Reload world database from xml file".
I'll look at that file again and see if I can find where the error is.

[Bottom Of The Sixth]

Thanks for the suggestions.

This league was originally created in OOTP11, which I played out the 1st year. After experiencing some issues in which I received no reply to my support ticket and also not finding anyone on the forum boards that was able to offer any helpful suggestions, I was forced to transfer the league to OOTP13.

I first uploaded it to OOTP12. As soon as my league was on OOTP12, I immediately uploaded it to OOTP13. After it was on 13, I played out my 2nd full season which is when I started to notice the issue with the starting times. Currently I am early in the season of playing games for season three.

With all that you have suggested, I am starting to wonder if I am better off scrapping my league and recreating it from the ground up, on OOTP13 and starting all over. Needless to say I am a bit confused. I did not experience any starting time issues until I started playing my games on OOTP13 in season two. I am not sure if something was not correct in OOTP11 or it is something in OOTP13 that is causing this all to happen.

Either way, thanks of all of the help and advice so far. It is greatly appreciated.

[Bigrod]

Originally Posted by Bottom Of The Sixth

Thanks for the suggestions.

This league was originally created in OOTP11, which I played out the 1st year. After experiencing some issues in which I received no reply to my support ticket and also not finding anyone on the forum boards that was able to offer any helpful suggestions, I was forced to transfer the league to OOTP13.

I first uploaded it to OOTP12. As soon as my league was on OOTP12, I immediately uploaded it to OOTP13. After it was on 13, I played out my 2nd full season which is when I started to notice the issue with the starting times. Currently I am early in the season of playing games for season three.

With all that you have suggested, I am starting to wonder if I am better off scrapping my league and recreating it from the ground up, on OOTP13 and starting all over. Needless to say I am a bit confused. I did not experience any starting time issues until I started playing my games on OOTP13 in season two. I am not sure if something was not correct in OOTP11 or it is something in OOTP13 that is causing this all to happen.

Either way, thanks of all of the help and advice so far. It is greatly appreciated.

Well I can assure you of one thing....that world.xml has no errors. I created a new fictional game in ootp 14 using it and everything is fine. Wisconsin shows as a Nation and state and I can edit all the cities. Their time zones are all correct utc -6. If I'm correct, your problem started when you started to use this world.xml in your existing game rather than something wrong with your setup or the game itself.
When using a modded xml file it's always best to use it with a newly created game not an existing one. Especially one that has been imported from earlier versions of ootp.
Bottom line at this point is that it'll be much easier to start fresh rather than try to manually fix everything...
Good luck and sorry I couldn't be of more help.

[Bigrod]

Thought I'd add this so you know for sure that world.xml works. This is in ootp 14 and should be exactly the same in 13

[Bottom Of The Sixth]

That is good news, knowing that the world.dat file is a good file. Looks like it's time to recreate my league.

A few posts earlier you offered some naming suggestions for my schedule file. What will work better for me in the long run; using just one schedule and allowing the game to mix up the schedule on its own or using two schedules and naming versions of it for each calendar year that I play?

Thanks

[Bigrod]

Originally Posted by Bottom Of The Sixth

That is good news, knowing that the world.dat file is a good file. Looks like it's time to recreate my league.

A few posts earlier you offered some naming suggestions for my schedule file. What will work better for me in the long run; using just one schedule and allowing the game to mix up the schedule on its own or using two schedules and naming versions of it for each calendar year that I play?

Thanks

It really depends on how you want your scheduling to take place.

The way the game is supposed to work as far as schedules go is:

1. If the schedule has a specific yr./s then it should use only that yr. Once it reaches the end and there is no matching year, then it reverts to using the first year and mixes the matchups.

2. If you don't use years in your schedule name, then ootp will use a best match and as soon as it finds one in the schedule's folder it may or may not use it each and every year and may or may not mix up the matchups/times.

3. If ootp doesn't find any schedule to match your setup, then it randomly creates a schedule based on your schedule options settings.

So these are your 3 options and only you can decide which is best.

You can always regenerate the schedule if you don't like it as long as your in preseason although it won't work well if you have Interleague play.

[pete3]

I think, from experience, that when you enter the starting times, those times are local. So if you enter 7:05 for a game in New York and 7:05 for a game in Los Angeles, the games will start 3 hours apart.

[Bigrod]

Originally Posted by pete3

I think, from experience, that when you enter the starting times, those times are local. So if you enter 7:05 for a game in New York and 7:05 for a game in Los Angeles, the games will start 3 hours apart.

You're correct. All game times need to be home teams local time. The acutal time zone offset is controlled by your personal time zone setting on your manager's options page.