Posted this in General Forums, but belongs here

[Vinny P.]

Hey, sorry that I had posted this issue in the generals forum. I thought I was in this forum when I posted at the time real quick.

Anyways:

Ok, heres the thing.

I have a league in ootp 2007 that I have been upgrading for every new version now. It has the old "Joe" bug, in which there are far too many players named "Joe" being generated.

I have decided, that before I begin a new series against another team, I would just go through my opponents lineup as one of my commishes, and simply generate a new name until I get something other than Joe.


Now, I was reading in the ootp 9 manual (I have dabbled a little bit with 9, but am trying to get through my season in 2007 first before I upgrade it) and in the manual it said there is a workaround with the injuries.txt file after league creation, in which you can edit the file however you want. Create a new league, copy the new injuries.dat file from the new league into the league you want to keep over the old injuries.dat. (Backing everything up OF COURSE!) And the new injuries.dat file will then be used in the league. Simple, something that I would have completely over looked since it was TOO simple of a solution to editing injuries after a game universe has been created.

Now, taking that concept, I was wondering if you could do the same with first_names.txt for that workaround. I know what happened, in which my first_names.txt file has names that are not assigned to a nationality. So I end up with a bunch of "Joes." I suppose I could experiment, but I thought it would simply be easier/quicker to post this question here.

Or, before I go to convert ootp 7 to 9, do I even have to worry about this, and just use the default names.txt file? Or can I just copy over my old, updated/fixed, names.txt file into ootp9, and before I convert my 07 league to 9, would 9 use my fixed names.txt file instead...copying the txt file into the 9 directory first, of course?

I guess I am wondering which names.dat would be created, if it creates one at all, considering my game universe already has the .dat file when I upgrade the league? In which case, I was wondering about the work around thing that was suggested for the injuries file in the ootp manual.

If nobody knows about this, I guess I could just experiment myself, and post the results in the forums in the future. I already have an experimentation set up just in case. I would simulate the first 5 seasons with the current .dat folder and look at the frequency of Joes being created in first year player drafts. Then try the workaround, and look at the frequency of joes created in the next 5 seasons.

Seems kind of time-consuming, which is why I am asking this here before I start.

Thanks!

[Tony M]

If I've understood your post correctly, what you are endeavouring to do isn't possible. You can re-import names files (the two .txt ones) but it won't do anything to existing names as they are ring-fenced and will only adjust the changes for any new players created.

[Vinny P.]

Oh, so you think it will work? It'll probably take me an other month or two before I start using my ootp 9 version, so I havent tried anything yet.

I realize it would only apply to new players that are generated for the first year player draft. I will just simply edit old names from Joe as I come across them.

However, I don;t really want to see another person named Joe being generated in my universe ever again lol. Which is why I struck out the name of "Joe" in the names.dat file altogether.

I think I'll just create a new universe sometime and purposely screw up the .txt files to see if I can recreate the "Joes" problem in '07, then go back and fix the file txt file, delete the old .dat file that was created, and have the game create a new .dat file from the fixed txt file, then sim a couple of more season with the new dat file.

heh, for as long as it took someone to reply to this thread, I'm guessing noone is seeing this problem anymore at all, and there really was a fix that I had missed somewhere or other. Oh well, if this workaround works, it works, and I'll be happy!

[Nutlaw]

I'll close this thread out for now, since there seems to be no further development for the moment, but if you need assistance at a later date, please post in Tech Support. Thanks.