Online File Will Not Download

[Recte44]

Friendly morning bump. This is kind of a maddening issue.

[f.montoya]

You've got to be kidding me.

56+ Megabytes??????

I will be honest and say...

After about 20 - 25 MB of a league file, give up the in-game up/downloding. As I mentioned before, the game doesn't have a download manager. Therefore, the more time that the game sits mid download, the more chance that interuptions of connections will sever the entire download. Your league file is too large. If you run a league of size, you're just going to have to live with the inconveniences of manually running the entire system.

The internet really hasn't caught up with Markus' game but I believe that Markus may have some possible solutions for this issue in the next version but for the time being, please realize that bandwidths and internet connections play a part on these functions.

[mikev]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

You've got to be kidding me.

56+ Megabytes??????

I will be honest and say...

After about 20 - 25 MB of a league file, give up the in-game up/downloding. As I mentioned before, the game doesn't have a download manager. Therefore, the more time that the game sits mid download, the more chance that interuptions of connections will sever the entire download. Your league file is too large. If you run a league of size, you're just going to have to live with the inconveniences of manually running the entire system.

The internet really hasn't caught up with Markus' game but I believe that Markus may have some possible solutions for this issue in the next version but for the time being, please realize that bandwidths and internet connections play a part on these functions.

You're kidding right?

56+ megabytes is hardly considered a large file, especially given that broadband speeds make downloads of that size take (literally) minutes.

I'm assuming that OOTP just uses a vanilla FTP connection, in which case failure due to bandwidth problems is extremely, EXTREMELY unlikely. FTP in and of itself is one of the most stable transfer tools there is. I personally used ftp to transfer the entire HTML (including images) of the league in question from one webserver to another.

I'd be interested to know if the official stance of SI/Markus is that online leagues are limited to a certain number of subleagues in order to keep the file size down. I don't know that I've ever read anything that says that.

[A.J. Holz]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

After about 20 - 25 MB of a league file, give up the in-game up/downloding. As I mentioned before, the game doesn't have a download manager. Therefore, the more time that the game sits mid download, the more chance that interuptions of connections will sever the entire download. Your league file is too large.

In one of my leagues, I can download the 56MB file manually ten times in a row with no timeouts. However, OOTPBB2006 fails on this download four times out of six.

In another league, the league file is approx. 20 megabytes. OOTP failed one time out of two.

So your analysis isn't correct. Something is wrong with OOTP2006, and saying that the Internet has to fix itself to work around the problem isn't very helpful.

[joshuaaaaaa]

What percentage of OOTP players are in online leagues? Are we the majority or the minority? Seriously, if maybe only 10% of the users are in online leagues, I can see these things not being addressed in design, and I've always had the opinion that its a much larger percentage. I certainly hope we're considered in the development of 2007.

[bibs]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

The internet really hasn't caught up with Markus' game but I believe that Markus may have some possible solutions for this issue in the next version but for the time being, please realize that bandwidths and internet connections play a part on these functions.

Well hopefully Markus can take some time out to help the internet catch up with his masterpiece. Markus and Al Gore (the inventor of the internet you know) can team up and then move on to solving world hunger and peace in the Middle East.

[A.J. Holz]

Originally Posted by mikev

I was thinking about this last night. and the reason the ACB works is that it's roughly 10% as large as the MBBA file. There are about 2600 "files updated" when we load the ACB league file, as opposed to over 26 THOUSAND with the MBBA.

Actually, I had a problem with the ACB file download today. For no particular reason it bombed in the middle of the Load Online League File process. I tried again and the second time it worked.

OOTP2006's file download mechanism seems to be VERY touchy. Sure could use a fix for this.

[knudlen]

well, hopefully by the time Markus gets around to 'inventing' a download manager, a herculean task well beyond the scope of the current interweb, he'll already have completed the time machine he developed for historical leagues, so he can go back and include the manager in ootp2006. I, frankly, believe that this is the *only* help you will ever receive on this issue, so go ahead and close your eyes and wish real real hard, and suddenly you'll be in a parallel timeline where this problem never even existed.

[f.montoya]

Originally Posted by mikev

You're kidding right?

56+ megabytes is hardly considered a large file, especially given that broadband speeds make downloads of that size take (literally) minutes.

I'm assuming that OOTP just uses a vanilla FTP connection, in which case failure due to bandwidth problems is extremely, EXTREMELY unlikely. FTP in and of itself is one of the most stable transfer tools there is. I personally used ftp to transfer the entire HTML (including images) of the league in question from one webserver to another.

I'd be interested to know if the official stance of SI/Markus is that online leagues are limited to a certain number of subleagues in order to keep the file size down. I don't know that I've ever read anything that says that.

No. Not kidding. Broadband connections vary and your connection is probably different from mine as well as others out there. And don't forget that not everyone has a broadband connection.

Failure or interuptions due to "server" side issues, including bandwidth overload are possibilities. There are all kinds of server hicups during any given day and OOTP just doesn't handle them well.

56 megabytes is not too large for a simple manual download for those with a reasonably fast internet connection but it is too large for an online league. If your file is this size, then you are including too many items when creating the file before uploading.

There is no official stance by SI regarding how many leagues you can include in order to have an online league run without issues. The very fact is that the whole system isn't perfected yet as this was the very first version of OOTP to include the "in-game" upload/download feature. Markus is aware of the problem and with beta-testing beginning soon for the 2007 version, it's at the top of the list of things that need attention.

That said, I do know that Markus is planning some improvements in how the game orgainizes the files needed for online leagues and that we should expect file sizes to remain reasonable in the next version.

For those using OOTP 2006 for online "universes" and have to have 100+ boxscores and game logs and all the news and history files included for all leagues in their league file, you can expect issues with the in-game up/download feature.

While you mention that FTP is an extremely stable transfer tool, I agree. The FTP upload is working fine within the game. That's not the issue at all. It's the downloading within the game that causes the problems we are discussing here. I merely point out that the game is having a problem when the download progress is too slow, gets interupted or severed and what could cause some of that.

The bottom line is, you have every right to complain about something not working the way it was meant to work. Unfortunately, the limits of this feature are seemingly being pushed beyond what it can handle and the only way around this now is to work within it's limitations. Or go external with downloading the league file as we did with previous versions of OOTP.

[f.montoya]

Originally Posted by A.J. Holz

In one of my leagues, I can download the 56MB file manually ten times in a row with no timeouts. However, OOTPBB2006 fails on this download four times out of six.

In another league, the league file is approx. 20 megabytes. OOTP failed one time out of two.

So your analysis isn't correct. Something is wrong with OOTP2006, and saying that the Internet has to fix itself to work around the problem isn't very helpful.

Yes. Something is wrong with OOTP's in-game download feature. But my analysis is only speculating on possibilites that could be causing the interuptions and slower download progress for some while not for others. OOTP does not handle interuptions and sudden slowdowns or severed connections to the server it's downloading from very well at all. The issue is not on your end. "The internet not catching up with Markus" was a little sarcasm on my part(sorry for that) in meaning Markus didn't take in consideration that the game needed to manage these downloading issues in a better way than it does. At the moment, anything at all can cause the crash and the larger the file size, the lower your chances of avoiding this problem.

[mikev]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

No. Not kidding. Broadband connections vary and your connection is probably different from mine as well as others out there. And don't forget that not everyone has a broadband connection.

Those that don't are more than likely not involved with online baseball leagues.

Originally Posted by f.montoya

Failure or interuptions due to "server" side issues, including bandwidth overload are possibilities. There are all kinds of server hicups during any given day and OOTP just doesn't handle them well.

56 megabytes is not too large for a simple manual download for those with a reasonably fast internet connection but it is too large for an online league. If your file is this size, then you are including too many items when creating the file before uploading.

To me, I read this as "too bad, but it doesn't work. Sorry." 56 megabytes is not an unreasonably large file. Even with a 384/128 DSL line, you're talking less than 10 minutes of download time. Quite simply, if including X number of items causes the download to break, than it shouldn't be coded into the game to allow X numbe of items to be included, or the game should be patched to fix the issue.

Originally Posted by f.montoya

There is no official stance by SI regarding how many leagues you can include in order to have an online league run without issues. The very fact is that the whole system isn't perfected yet as this was the very first version of OOTP to include the "in-game" upload/download feature. Markus is aware of the problem and with beta-testing beginning soon for the 2007 version, it's at the top of the list of things that need attention.

It's very unfortunate that the "Final Patch" has been released for 2006 already, and anybody with an online league experiencing these types of issues will be forced to upgrade to 2007 (for a 35 dollar fee, of course) in order to fix something that, quite frankly, should have been taken care of in the beta testing phase. I haven't beta tested in quite some time, but isn't a part of that process a stress test of sorts to see how far things can be pushed before they start breaking?

Originally Posted by f.montoya

That said, I do know that Markus is planning some improvements in how the game orgainizes the files needed for online leagues and that we should expect file sizes to remain reasonable in the next version.

Hopefully.

Originally Posted by f.montoya

For those using OOTP 2006 for online "universes" and have to have 100+ boxscores and game logs and all the news and history files included for all leagues in their league file, you can expect issues with the in-game up/download feature.

But the upload feature works fine. It's the downloading and extracting that is broken. Either it doesn't work at all, or it works and then news and emails are blank. Which is funny, because the "Baseball Universe" aspect of 2006 is exactly what was touted as one of the great new features of the game... for solo players, apparently.

I think that online play was an afterthought with 2006, and it's too bad.

Originally Posted by f.montoya

While you mention that FTP is an extremely stable transfer tool, I agree. The FTP upload is working fine within the game. That's not the issue at all. It's the downloading within the game that causes the problems we are discussing here. I merely point out that the game is having a problem when the download progress is too slow, gets interupted or severed and what could cause some of that.

Right. The game is broken, not the FTP process. FTP has worked properly for years and years. However, it's proving very difficult to get someone affiliated with SI/OOTP to say that there's something wrong, and even harder to get them to fix it. Which it should be... fixed.

Originally Posted by f.montoya

The bottom line is, you have every right to complain about something not working the way it was meant to work.

At this point, our complaints seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Originally Posted by f.montoya

Unfortunately, the limits of this feature are seemingly being pushed beyond what it can handle and the only way around this now is to work within it's limitations. Or go external with downloading the league file as we did with previous versions of OOTP.

Which is probably what will have to happen.

Hey, if we're doing more than the game is capable of, fine, we know it's limits. However, THIS SHOULD BE FIXED RIGHT NOW. There is absolutely no way that anybody who has bought OOTP2006 should have to wait, and pay, for OOTP2007 to fix issues like this. The bottom line is that the game doesn't work the way it was advertised to, and it's (apparently) not going to be fixed.

[f.montoya]

Sorry to disagree with you, mikev but the original release of OOTP 2006 did not include this feature. The in-game up/downloading of the league file was a gift Markus threw in there with the 3rd patch. You can remove the gift yourself if you don't like it by uninstalling the game, and re-installing the game pre-patch. Or just don't use it. The game was not advertised to be able to up/download the league file within the game so I suggest you re-install the "advertised" version.

[bibs]

Mikev,

Your expectations really haven't caught up with Markus' game but I believe that Markus may have some possible solutions for this issue in the next version

I mean come on, you got this great "gift" and all you can do is bitch about how it doesn't work.

[Recte44]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

Sorry to disagree with you, mikev but the original release of OOTP 2006 did not include this feature. The in-game up/downloading of the league file was a gift Markus threw in there with the 3rd patch. You can remove the gift yourself if you don't like it by uninstalling the game, and re-installing the game pre-patch. Or just don't use it. The game was not advertised to be able to up/download the league file within the game so I suggest you re-install the "advertised" version.

That is a crappy response, Montoya. "Advertised" or not, it was put out with this feature in it and as consumers who paid for this we have good money to have a reasonable expectation of functionality.

I know you aren't "the company", so I'm not quite as offended as if Markus, Marc, Steve, etc. had told me that. Still, it's pretty troublesome.

[mikev]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

Sorry to disagree with you, mikev but the original release of OOTP 2006 did not include this feature. The in-game up/downloading of the league file was a gift Markus threw in there with the 3rd patch. You can remove the gift yourself if you don't like it by uninstalling the game, and re-installing the game pre-patch. Or just don't use it. The game was not advertised to be able to up/download the league file within the game so I suggest you re-install the "advertised" version.

Partially right, it does seem as if it's just a throw-in.

But, I don't see anthing saying they added the ability to upload and download in game here, just that they made it visible to the commish:

1.0.3 Build 12270
-----------------

New features and functionality

- Added a "Offer all minor league free agents minor league contract extensions" function to the teams' possible free agent screen
- Added player overall and potential rating to player profile screen
- Added all league reports into a submenu within the league main menu
- Added "Schedule" to the tabs of the team screens
- Added an info message that informs managers if staff members are leaving the team after the season
- Added an info message that informs managers when players retire
- Added AI lineup selection options to the game setup, traditional (weighting overall ratings/stats more than splits) and sabermetric (depending solely on split ratings/stats)
- Added a "clear schedule" function to the schedule editor

- Improved player development & aging algorithms
- Improved roster management AI
- Improved both the broadcast and webcast game screens
- Coaches & scouts may now refuse 'demotion' to minor league jobs
- Commissioners may now retire or unretire players manually
- When promoting a player to the active roster, he is automatically added to the 40-man roster if there is room
- Players with a major league contract who are on DFA and no longer on the 40-man roster and cleared waivers may now be assigned to the minor leagues
- Added the option to only display qualifiers in the sortable player list within the league statistics screen
- Improved importing of historical stealing ratings
- Tweaked development of market size, fan loyalty and fan interest
- Fixed allstar game date editing
- Fixed rescheduling of allstar game problem
- Fixed coaches causing staff expenses when leaving the team
- The "force trade" option now handles waiver trades properly
- Fixed several play-by-play issues
- Tweaked contract values earned through salary arbitration
- Improved AI in terms of a salary cap
- Fixed HTML bug on team leaderboards report
- The "Download league files" menu button will now be shown for commishes, too
- Tweaked injury system, increasing the amount of day-to-day injuries
- Removed protection of traded draft picks
- Fixed Mac problems with online leagues
- Tweaked closer usage in order to give them a few more innings pitched
- Tiebreakers now occur in leagues without playoffs as well

Here's patch 2:

Download Patch 1.0.2

Added Features

- Added player status to player HTML report
- Added ability to generate depth charts based on a lineup
- Improved default league settings for included real leagues
- Added the option of being notified when a player is eligible to come off the DL
- Added potential minor league free agents to the possible free agents list of a team
- The game now remembers the last logged in manager in non-online games
- Amateur drafts now can have less than five rounds
- Added the option to easliy change a player's uniform number in the player profile screen
- Added uniform number to the player lists (delete \data\tables folder once in order to get the numbers to show up)
- The ballpark name is now editable in the team options screen
- Added league financial report
- The league structure can now be edited during the offseason and preseason
- Added the option to erase all player career stats
- The dialogs "Create reports" and "Upload league files" will save the settings automatically

and, patch 1:

1.0.1
-----

Additions

Added the option to disable the news ticker to the game preferences
Added "Run computer manager on all teams" to the "Other Functions" menu of the league setup
Added ratings to the player lists used in the transaction screen and the trade screen
Added the option to turn off playoffs
Added the option to prevent any AI moves on computer controlled teams
Added the option to erase the service time of every player
Added more checks for a human controlled lineup before entering the game screen (#1617)

I don't see the ability to upload and download in-game as an added feature in any of the patches, which leads me to believe that it was a part of the original game.

[f.montoya]

Originally Posted by mikev

Partially right, it does seem as if it's just a throw-in.

But, I don't see anthing saying they added the ability to upload and download in game here, just that they made it visible to the commish:



Here's patch 2:


and, patch 1:


I don't see the ability to upload and download in-game as an added feature in any of the patches, which leads me to believe that it was a part of the original game.

I was beta testing the game. Trust me. It was not in the original release of the game. I even wrote a tutorial after release regarding uploading that I had to unpublish due to this surprise.

[mikev]

Whatever, I'm not going to argue the semantics of when it was added to the game.

Either way, it's broken and it should be fixed.

[mikev]

Also, I'm glad that this issue is being looked at by somebody at least, but it's still a little troubling that nobody from OOTP/SI proper has bothered to chime in yet.

[f.montoya]

Originally Posted by Recte44

That is a crappy response, Montoya. "Advertised" or not, it was put out with this feature in it and as consumers who paid for this we have good money to have a reasonable expectation of functionality.

I know you aren't "the company", so I'm not quite as offended as if Markus, Marc, Steve, etc. had told me that. Still, it's pretty troublesome.

"Crappy" you could call it, if you feel it fits. I wasn't trying to appease the unsatisfied. I am not the developer, nor do I work for S.I. But it's comments like yours that may change the future of how Markus deals with feature additions after release, for better or worse. It may have been best if Markus had just saved this feature for the next version, rather than let it be "tested" by the users and dropping it in on a whim. I would suspect that next year, there will be no such "gifts" until they are fully tested, which this one was obviously not.

Don't get me wrong. There's no sarcasm here. You are right and S.I. and Markus should have learned a lesson with this.

[mikev]

Originally Posted by f.montoya

"Crappy" you could call it, if you feel it fits. I wasn't trying to appease the unsatisfied. I am not the developer, nor do I work for S.I. But it's comments like yours that may change the future of how Markus deals with feature additions after release, for better or worse. It may have been best if Markus had just saved this feature for the next version, rather than let it be "tested" by the users and dropping it in on a whim. I would suspect that next year, there will be no such "gifts" until they are fully tested, which this one was obviously not.

Don't get me wrong. There's no sarcasm here. You are right and S.I. and Markus should have learned a lesson with this.

Recte has every right to be upset. This was slowly killing a league that is currently in it's 23rd season and has been around since OOTP5. It is without a doubt the best league that I've ever been a part of, but all the trials and tribulations of both the conversion and the subsequent problems have taken a major, major toll on a lot of online leagues, and it's really too bad.