Online league file clarification

[SC_Dawg]

Originally Posted by Stu

Ok here's what I found. I'm going to go through directory by directory on what should be included, should be left out and stuff you have the option of leaving out.

Stu! You are the man! Thanks so much!!!!!

Oh and Cooley you are correct. What I figure I would do is migrate the box scores off into a seperate folder once I had them in a zip file that I had loaded up to the league site. Hehehehe will make simming smaller amounts of games per sim day more likely, which is something I always have preferred.

[Cooleyvol]

You don't have to do that Dawg............just delete the old ones each time you create the zip file. It won't delete them from existence, just delete them from the zip file.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

You don't have to do that Dawg............just delete the old ones each time you create the zip file. It won't delete them from existence, just delete them from the zip file.

Correct. After you create the zip, open it up and sort by name and you can delete all the game logs/box scores from the previous sims.

Personally, I'm not going to include any of them in my league files and have people only be able to view them in the html reports.

[SC_Dawg]

Originally Posted by Stu

Correct. After you create the zip, open it up and sort by name and you can delete all the game logs/box scores from the previous sims.

Personally, I'm not going to include any of them in my league files and have people only be able to view them in the html reports.

And you do this every time you sim? To me that is more of a waste of time than to move the box and log to a seperate folder after they have been in zipped up in the current league file. Using the method I want to use I will only be dealing with each box and log in one zip file vs in the method you are describing I have to deal with the same box and log as many times as I have simmed after the box and log is created.

Guess it is a different strokes for different folks thing.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by SC_Dawg

And you do this every time you sim? To me that is more of a waste of time than to move the box and log to a seperate folder after they have been in zipped up in the current league file. Using the method I want to use I will only be dealing with each box and log in one zip file vs in the method you are describing I have to deal with the same box and log as many times as I have simmed after the box and log is created.

Guess it is a different strokes for different folks thing.

No, I was just trying to clarify what he was suggesting, probably poorly.

I move them all to another folder and upload a "full" league file at the end of each year.

[battists]

This is great info, and will definitely get into the next revision of the game guide. If we can distill this into a simpler set of instructions, I vote we post this as a sticky in the online leagues forum!

[MustangLM]

I tested zipping the league files earlier as well. I was able to get a new league with no sims conducted zipped to 5 MB, just the .dat files. I simmed 3 seasons worth of games and tried it again. The smallest zip file I was able to create was 21 MB, again with just the .dat files. This is a big concern of mine as well.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by MustangLM

I tested zipping the league files earlier as well. I was able to get a new league with no sims conducted zipped to 5 MB, just the .dat files. I simmed 3 seasons worth of games and tried it again. The smallest zip file I was able to create was 21 MB, again with just the .dat files. This is a big concern of mine as well.

Simming multiple seasons is one thing I didn't do in my test. Unfortunately I doubt theres much we can do about it.

[strzepeksc]

I am using the mlbquickstart roster set. I attempted to upload to my website and all seems to be uploading but takes much longer as opposed to OOTP6.5 The FTP host, username, password etc were set to the same settings as with the old game. It uploads the files according to the upload page but shows 2 errors. When it is complete, the website still shows the old game and old league. The test connection was varified as successful. Please explain the proper procedure and suggest what could be wrong. Thanks

[MustangLM]

The league I tested was an MLB type set up (30 teams) with full minors and all the other leagues enabled. I figured that would be worse case in terms of file size. I only saved box scores for human teams and in this case it was only one club at the time, but these weren't included in the zip file. My concern is what a size the file will grow to as a league goes 5, 6, 7 and more seasons deep. I agree with Cooleyvol that it will be the end for a lot of dial-up players.

[battists]

We need F Montoya in here. He's the bomb when it comes to making things zip and unzip efficiently...

[SC_Dawg]

bump

[f.montoya]

Originally Posted by strzepeksc

I am using the mlbquickstart roster set. I attempted to upload to my website and all seems to be uploading but takes much longer as opposed to OOTP6.5 The FTP host, username, password etc were set to the same settings as with the old game. It uploads the files according to the upload page but shows 2 errors. When it is complete, the website still shows the old game and old league. The test connection was varified as successful. Please explain the proper procedure and suggest what could be wrong. Thanks

Your solution could be this : OOTPBB 2006 Upload Reports Super Fast Tutorial

[f.montoya]

Originally Posted by Stu

Simming multiple seasons is one thing I didn't do in my test. Unfortunately I doubt theres much we can do about it.

Try using GZIPTar instead of zip to compress the league file. The file sizes are much smaller.

[f.montoya]

Originally Posted by marky32082

This should be stickied if it's accurate.

By the way, this is perfectly accurate. this thread shouldn't be allowed to fall to the back pages.

[Andreas Raht]

When you click on "Create Reports", OOTP will create the same reports which are being used inside the game. The league reports, team reports, player pages, the history reports, and so on. There are NO special online league files which are created by the reports dialog. The whole /news folder structure does not contain any special online league files.

When you click on "Create Reports", a new file named "files.txt" will be created inside the import_export folder. It will list all reports and images and so on that have been handled. If you tick the "Include Images" checkbox, these images will not be created, they will not be copied, but they will be listed in the files.txt! If you've set a date range, for example 7, only the box scores, game logs and news files of the last 7 game days will be in the files.txt.
In other words: You set the options as you want them, click on "Create files", and after the creation process the files.txt will contain a list of all files that match the options.

Now you click on "copy files" and only these files will be copied to the folder that you've defined.
OR you click on "FTP upload" and all these files will be uploaded.
OR you use the files.txt to create a ZIP file or whatever which you can upload.

The files.txt format is easy (but well, it's not intuitive).

Each line starts with a letter that represents a folder (relative to the /news/html folder):

a /
b /leagues
c /teams
d /players
e /box_scores
f /game_logs
g /coaches
h /history
i /images

So if your league database was in c:\program files\si games\ootp\saved_games\your league.lg, the letter "g" would represent c:\program files\si games\ootp\saved_games\your league.lg\news\html\coaches

The character following the letter is a tab (chr(9) I believe, or \t in C) and starting with the third character in the line there is the name of the file.

EDIT: you don't need the files.txt at all if you don't want to use a special tool or something like that. If you want to get all the files that match the options that you've set in the create reports dialog (date range), simply enter the folder name of an empty folder like c:\temp and click on "copy files". All the files listed in the files.txt will then be copied to that folder, including the folder structure, so you can then just zip that c:\temp folder and upload it.

Another EDIT: Only the following files in the /news/html folder structure should not be deleted:
- the file /styles.css
- the files inside the images folder
- the files inside the box_scores folder

All the other files in the /news/html folder structure are being created "on demand" whenever you click on a link inside the game, or when you use the "Create Reports" dialog. The news and game log files for example are being created by the game based on the corresponding files inside the /news/txt folder structure. Again: all the files in the /news/html folder structure, which are not in the root, or in the images or box_scores folders, can be deleted anytime.

Hope that makes sense
Andreas

[Wabner]

I imported my online league that is about to start the 2023 season, ran a test sim though April 30th of that season, and the DAT files alone win zip to around 16 megs. The scouting.dat file is by far the biggest -- unzipped at around 23megs. I guess w/o scouting turned on it wouldn't be so bad.

Dial-up owners do in fact look like they could have issues to say the least.

Stu, so you are saying that after I create the reports and before zipping the files for my owners, I can delete the leagues folder inside news/html and those files will be recreated when they install the zip and open the game?

[Stu]

Originally Posted by Wabner

Stu, so you are saying that after I create the reports and before zipping the files for my owners, I can delete the leagues folder inside news/html and those files will be recreated when they install the zip and open the game?

In my copy, the scouting.dat was 1kb, after 1 year, with scouts turned off, so you were correct there.

Yes, anything in the html -> leagues, teams, players, game logs and history folders can be deleted. These files are created by the game, when you view them in the game. So if you go to Team 2's home page in the game, it will create a team_2.html file in the teams folder. If you look at standings in the game, it will create a standings.html file in the leagues folder, etc etc.

It's important to differentiate the html\game logs and txt\game logs folders though. You can delete html\game logs but if you delete txt\game logs, you will lose all your game logs. Same goes for html\box scores.

Personally, I'm going to save a copy of the game logs and box scores for use in the online reports, but delete them from the league file I distribute to owners. They won't be viewable in the game, but it's a trade off I'm willing to make to cut down on the download size.

[Wabner]

Gotcha Stu. Thanks man

[battists]

What I'd like to see happen is this:

After we figure out what makes the most sense, someone should be able to write a simple batch file using WinZip's command line utility or some such, that just zips everything up.

Then, I can talk to Markus about potentially including this in future patches or releases, or even somehow building it into the game engine, like a "prepare league file for human GMs" button or something.