Schedule Question(s) For A Large League

[LunaticFringe82]

I posted some of this on the main board, but thought my specific schedule questions might fit better here. I'm working with the demo at this point, but if I can get some comfort with making a schedule, I'll buy the game.

I want to create a very large league, one with 30 divisions of 30 teams each. There will be no interdivisional games. When I try to set up this league in the demo and hit create... the game invariable freezes at "creating schedules... 16%".

So I poked around a little and found the code for hand entering a schedule and have a couple of questions:

1) Once I create a text file containing the entire schedule (52,200 games), where do I need to put the file so the game will read it?

2) I assume that I need to create the league structure PRIOR to uploading the schedule file. If that's correct, how do I "Create League" without the game trying to generate a schedule and crashing?

3) Do any of the experienced players here have any other tips/tricks that will help me get started?

I'm really intrigued with the notion of a very large league with a resulting large playoff pool which gets whittled down to one overall champion.

Thanks for any help!

[gmo]

So sounds like you are figuring 58 games per team, a football/soccer-like setup with one home and one away game against each team? That is a huge number of games. The limits are up to 50 divisions each with 50 teams, so you are below that, but I wonder how well such a massive league will function. Do you plan on configuring all 900 teams or will most be simply as created with their names and such?

1) In general, put the file in the Schedules folder in the data folder in your OOTP folder. It can load automatically from there, provided all is set correctly to have that happen.

2) If the schedule is set up properly it can load when the league is initially created.

3) Check the schedules folder for the format and naming schemes of the schedule files. For this league the file would be something like "IGN_BGY_G58_SL1_D1_T30_D2_T30_..._D29_T30_D30_T30_ c_.lsdl" Frankly I am not sure if a filename that long (with D3 through D28 included, well over 200 characters) will even work. Perhaps I just still remember too well past limits on filename lengths. With the filename and setting in the heading of the file matching how the league is set up at creation - league configuration, # of games per team, interleague/not, balanced/not - when the game tries to get a schedule it will find that file and load it rather than try to create a new one.

[Tekneek]

So the game allows numbers of teams and divisions that it cannot even start a game with? Why would they talk about these huge upper limits if the game suffocates just trying to make the schedules for it? Not like the schedules required are special custom ones really. I'm confused about these un-advertised limitations.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Tekneek

So the game allows numbers of teams and divisions that it cannot even start a game with? Why would they talk about these huge upper limits if the game suffocates just trying to make the schedules for it?

Probably an oversight mostly.

While the upper capacity for league and division sizes is high, I expect it was thought that few, if any, players would be running one really, really big league - I bet it was expected folks would be running large numbers of smaller leagues.

[LunaticFringe82]

For me, the ability to run a very large league that produces a long playoff "season" culminating in one champion is/was the MAIN THING that drew me to OOTPB 2006. If I wanted to run multiple leagues that were independent of each other, I can do that easily enough with Strat or Diamond Mind.

I don't even care if there is any inter-divisional play, I just want to be able to follow the large league through the season, then see what storylines emerge through the long playoff road. Ideally, if I could get this started, even with 20 divisions of 20 teams (400 teams), I'd like to see 64 teams in the playoffs.

But I need some comfort that this will work before I fork over the dough.

[Tekneek]

Apparently they intended to hook you in with the concept of a huge league, but neglect to inform you that you would have to create the schedules yourself (assuming that would fix the problem, although I am not personally certain) else the game would just lockup trying to do it on its own. I haven't been critical here about this release, but I am really concerned about why they advertised mind-blowing numbers of teams and divisions if the game engine couldn't even start a game with that setup. I don't care what they thought most people would do.

I may not think most people will drive a car at 200 mph, but if I advertise that it CAN go 200 mph it better not fall apart when somebody tries to do it. It seems more than a little deceptive to me.

[Le Grande Orange]

Though the full style of schedule file name might be too long, however you can use a different name for the file. If you give the schedule file a name which matches the name of your league, the game should use that file first before trying to load another file.

I'll have to check the details on that, but I do recall that it was possible to do it that way.

Originally Posted by Tekneek

Apparently they intended to hook you in with the concept of a huge league, but neglect to inform you that you would have to create the schedules yourself (assuming that would fix the problem, although I am not personally certain) else the game would just lockup trying to do it on its own.

Or it's a heretofore unencountered bug which needs fixing.

[LunaticFringe82]

I did set it up manually, using a "short name" for the league as detailed elsewhere in this forum.

Unfortunately, it still hung up at 0%.

I wish I knew if this was something that I was doing or if it's the game. I guess I'll just wait for 2007.

[Can of Corn]

You won't be able to have more than 16 teams in the playoffs at this time. I continually get errors when trying to do 32 or more teams.

[Tekneek]

Originally Posted by Can of Corn

You won't be able to have more than 16 teams in the playoffs at this time. I continually get errors when trying to do 32 or more teams.

This is crazy. So, they advertise you can have a big number of divisions, but I guess you cannot even have playoffs turned on if you decide to take them up on that and actually use that many divisions? I would never go out and tell people some amazing number that would then break the game. They should have figured out the max number the game wouldn't commit suicide over and only mention that number. It's something like this that is really blowing my confidence in SI.

[kardypaine]

I'm running a world league with two leagues of 16 divisions each (division numbers vary, but there are 176 total teams), resulting in a 32 team playoff, and the playoffs ran fine, though on the standings page during the playoffs you can't see the bottom-most part of the bracket, and there is no scroll bar to move down to see it.

In a test run I ran the league with wild-card teams, which generated a 64 team playoff, and this ran fine as well, though the bracket problem on the standings page was even worse.

[Tekneek]

Originally Posted by kardypaine

In a test run I ran the league with wild-card teams, which generated a 64 team playoff, and this ran fine as well, though the bracket problem on the standings page was even worse.

That is good. I take back some of my criticism. Then the biggest issues are allowing leagues too large for the game to build a schedule and not being able to see the playoff 'standings'/bracket due to UI design limitations.