Slimming down saved league files

[thbroman]

I am writing to ask if other players have experimented with finding ways to reduce the size of league save files. They rapidly grow to be quite large, as everyone knows, and although an archiver like RAR or ZIP reduces them considerably, the archiving itself still takes seemingly forever.

One thing that I have noticed is that the game does not get rid of old messages stored in the "message" folder. Personally, I cannot imagine wanting to go back to see whether one of my scouts thought a player was any good a couple of years ago, but even if someone might want to archive such information, is there any reason why the game requires those messages to be saved? In other words, can I just delete them without harm?

Are there other files that people have found can be deleted without problem? By the way, I have the game setup choices set to saving nothing except boxes from human teams.

Thanks for the advice.

[RchW]

There is a post or a thread in here that goes through what files/folders you can delete with no ill effect. Try searching. I want to think it was f.montoya who posted this info.

[ctorg]

Here are two little batch files I made to use before backing up. One deletes box scores and game logs, and the other deletes all the messages, You can put them in a league's root directory to use them.

It's not much, and if you care about archiving these things, don't use them, but the leage works without them.

[thbroman]

Yea, I did try searching the threads, but I didn't find anything. But I'll try again using montoya's name.

I'll give your utility a try, ctorg. Thanks for sharing it.

[1998 Yankees]

This is what I do, from a note that I made for myself. This works for me, but please use caution if you do the same:

Files That Are Safe To Delete To Improve Game Performance

messages - delete entire contents of this folder; NOTE: ALSO DELETE MESSAGE.DAT.
news/html - delete contents of all folders except images; do not delete the styles.css file.
news/txt - delete contents of leagues* and teams** folders; do not delete anything from players folder.

* Definitely delete the log.txt files generated from game logs. The other files are not large or numerous, so consider leaving them alone.
** You can find, isolate, and save the team numbered files that correspond to the team whose news is to be kept, if any.

Note the note about deleting messages.dat. If you don't do that, all the message files will be recreated next time you start the game. They will all be blank, but backing up all those blank files takes time. Don't worry, the game generates a new messages.dat file the next time you start it.

The files in news/html are mostly saves of reports that you generated, and box scores and game logs. You can do without all of these, but don't touch the images, however.

Most of the news/txt files can be deleted, but you will notice some of them being gone in the game so you may want to be selective. Don't touch the player history files.

[beorn]

That is very helpful.

Could you (or anyone else) comment on whether this would work the same way for online leagues, or whether there are additional things for online leagues?

Many members are finding our file update times rather large, and some are even finding that exporting is time consuming.

[sjshaw]

I would be interested in what online leagues do when turning over to a new season. We are starting our first 2007 offseason and would appreciate any advice on what to do.

[Corsairs]

Forgive the massive bump on this old (yet extremely useful) thread, but like beorn and sjshaw I'd be very curious to know what online leagues do between seasons to cut down on file size. Are 1998 Yankees suggestions appropriate for online leagues, or are there different steps we should be taking? Like others, I'm finding our lile size is rapidly growing out of control and backing up the league takes over an hour. It'd be great to be able to cut into that time without losing critical league/player history.

[SittingDuck]

Hell of a thread. Invaluable. My thanks to 1998 Yankees.

[1998 Yankees]

It's always my pleasure, SittingDuck. Just please, back your league up first before doing any of this.

[SittingDuck]

Also, thanks to CTorg for his utilties.

[Bigdummie]

1998, Where do I find these folders to delete them? I recently upgraded my RAM to 1.5GB and the game sims so much faster, but it takes several minutes to close after I quit. Thanks for any advice

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by Bigdummie

1998, Where do I find these folders to delete them? I recently upgraded my RAM to 1.5GB and the game sims so much faster, but it takes several minutes to close after I quit. Thanks for any advice

Navigate to the OOTP data folder in My Documents (Windows, don't know Mac).

Messages.dat file: \data\saved_games\[your game name].lg

Messages: \data\saved_games\[your game name].lg\messages

News: \data\saved_games\[your game name].lg\news*

*In the news folder are two root folders: html and txt.

From folders inside html you can delete things like box scores and game logs that you don't want and files in other folders that get generated and saved only because you called up a report in the game. Don't touch the images folder unless you know what you are doing.

From folders inside txt you can delete team and league reports that you may not need any more, like injury logs, development reports, transactions, etc. Don't touch the players folder unless you know what you are doing.

I'll repeat myself one more time on two things:

1. Back up your game first! If you delete something that you miss when you start the game again, restore the backup copy of your game and try again.
2. Be selective! You can see what you are deleting, so just don't blow everything away. Open some of them up, they are only html or text files. There are ways of isolating some stuff while deleting others; for example, team reports are filed by team number so you can sort the folder and delete all the other team reports except your own.

Standard disclaimer: I know a bit about computers, I am organized, I am careful, and I back up regularly. If you are not all of these, tinkerer beware!

[Bigdummie]

Thank You for your advice. I know very little about computers, so will proced with caution. I will check it out tomorrow when these old eyes are primed with caffine. Thanks again

[Purple Cowboy]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

This is what I do, from a note that I made for myself. This works for me, but please use caution if you do the same:



Note the note about deleting messages.dat. If you don't do that, all the message files will be recreated next time you start the game. They will all be blank, but backing up all those blank files takes time. Don't worry, the game generates a new messages.dat file the next time you start it.

Ah-ha! This happened to us once in an online league and we never could figure out why. Thanks 98Yanks!

[Bigdummie]

1998Yanks, thank you for the info, worked liked a charm. Thanks again

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by Bigdummie

1998Yanks, thank you for the info, worked liked a charm. Thanks again

Heck, you're not such a Bigdummie after all.

[Bigdummie]

Thank You, I do have my senior moments, however.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by Bigdummie

Thank You, I do have my senior moments, however.

You're not the only one.

[jg2977]

Just wondering, what would happen if I deleted the player histories files? Would it render my baseball universe unplayable?