No Rating Record Found Error

[Mudster]

I know this has been posted on, but I can't find it for the life of me. I just had this happen and I remember the results from the last time it happened to me quite a while back and I don't want to go through that again. I'm getting endless "Rating Record Not Found" boxes for many fighters. Is there something I can do to stop this as I am guilty of not making back ups.

[JCWeb]

Mudster, from bitter experience I have to agree this "No Rating Record Found" bug can be a real troublesome one to deal with. I first ran into it about six months ago, got the usual "be sure to make backups" response, but I don't think OOTP took it very seriously until one guy who posted in Dec. requested a refund because of the lack of tech support. Check out the post and series of follow-ups that can be found on the Tech Support page with the lead post by someone named "stevebydac."

Here is what I recommend to anyone dealing with this unfortunate situation for the first time:

Step 1 -- Minimize the Damage. Don't panic. Exit from TB2 immediately. I like to use the Control-Alt-Delete key to get to Task Manager. You could also just shut down the computer, although this would not be the first choice. The one thing I think I did wrong the first time was to keep clicking on the stupid popup window which I believe had the effect of zeroing out the rating records for a bunch of fighters -- now they may have been lost already, but no use making matters worse ... (Besides, it took a heck of alot of mouse-clicks until it got to the end and stopped.)

Step 2 -- Assess the Damage. After exiting TB, this means going to your folder on the Hard Drive where you saved the the TB game files and look for the "Data" folder for your current database. Specifically you are looking for the "ratingrecords.dat" file and any other files with the same prefix like "ratingrecords.bak." What you should do is look at both the size of the files and click on "properties" to see how recent they are. You generally want to get the largest, most recent file and save it as the new "ratingrecords.dat" file. What I found is that the file that came with the original game is around 645 KB, the one with the patch is around 729 KB. With all the tomato cans and additional boxers, though, it could be much larger (mine is around 1090 right now). You will probably find if you have been hit with the bug that the ratingrecords.dat file is a really low number, maybe even 0 KB or 25 KB which means that data has somehow been lost. If you are lucky though, the automated backup (ratingrecords.bak or some similar name) will have most of the data still intact. If so, delete the corrupted file and rename the bak as the dat file since that is the one the game needs to read on start-up. Worse case scenario, if you have no data in the bak file, you either need to copy the file from a default database or reinstall the game, renaming the default database and then copying the ratingrecords.dat file into your current database, recognizing of course you may be short some fighters if you added any to the original game.

3 -- Repairing the Damage. Once #2 is completed, you can restart the game and, if you are lucky, everything will be OK. But what I found is a bunch of records with the ratings all zeroed out. I also found fighters with this problem were all mysteriously moved to the HW division. If faced with this situation, you need to determine how many of these fighters were active in your database. For inactive fighters, you can get them back by copying them for the original game or from wherever you downloaded them. Active fighters I found to be a bigger issue because copying them from the original game meant you will lose stuff you might care about, like the history files for each such fighter. For those that I cared about, I went through the tedious process of jotting down the relevant numbers and then entering them manually--which of course meant that the history files (which were somehow unaffected by this bug) remained intact. This whole process took several hours and I had to go through it at least twice until I figured out a way to prevent it -- which is why I don't wish this bug on my worst enemy.

4 -- Prepare for the Future, or an Ounce of Prevention goes a long way. What I've learned to do is to backup those data files, in particular the "Ratingsrecord.dat" file after every session where I edit or add a fighter, and also the "Fighter.dat" after sessions where I make edits on the fighter screen, including manual adjustments to career mode, for example. (I have since had instances where the fighters.dat file has become corrupted and caused a game crash as well as the issue with the ratingsrecord file.)

Sorry for the long-winded rambling post, but unlike many others here I am not a "Computer Geek" but this is what I have learned the hard way. I only hope that the many hours it took me to finally overcome this problem were not in vain ...

By the way, I assume since this is a recent post, you (like me) have experienced the problem after installing the new patch (27) which would of course indicate that the bug has not been entirely "cured" by whatever changes were made in that patch.

[David Ball]

I myself had severe problems with this before the update but have not been troubled with it since.

Just as an observation, and not because it will help very much...Once or twice I have clicked through all the "no rating record" boxes, and I don't recommend it. Other problems aside, what you wind up with are fighters with zeroes in every rating field.

I even tried fighting a match between two of them. They each moved around the ring, I believe they fell into the occasional clinch, but they never threw a single punch all fight. It was like one of those fights in the 1920's or '30's the refereee would have ended by throwing both boxers out of the ring and declaring "no contest," except that here the ref just let it go for ten rounds.

The spectators got a little restive at times, but considering they had paid to watch two professional boxers and instead got an exhibition of amateur dancing, they were really extraordinarily patient. I don't know exactly how they all felt about it when it was all over, but for me the whole experience was a little surreal.

[mh2365]

Good post JC .... I'm not much help here because since buying the orginal game a few years ago, I have never once had this problem. Can't explain it other than I rarely shut my game down, it's pretty much up all the time.

[Mudster]

Thanks for the response, albiet about a day too late. I've already deleted the whole smear and have made cornerwork my new best friend again.

[Mudster]

Just had this happen again. I'm not sure, but I think it may have happened when I was starting up the game. The game seemed to freeze during the setup phase so I ctrl-alt-deleted out of it. When I restarted, the no rating record boxes started coming up.

[Mudster]

JC..I tried what you suggested, but found basically empty files at both the .dat and .bak files. I never got to make backups because I had just finished redownloading all the files from cornerwork and was deleting the unneeded fighters. I'm afraid to even start a new database if it's going to screw me again like this. I might just wait for a solution to come up for this.

[JCWeb]

Mudster, if the ratingrecords.dat and ratingrecords.bak files in your currently active database are empty, then you need to go into another DB like the default one that came with the game (I right now have two other databases listed) and then copy the ratingrecords.dat file that looks like the most recent and complete (hopefully one with something like 645 KB of data) into the data file folder for the current database.

If there are no other databases listed in your TB 2 directory, then I think what you have to do is reinstall the game--perhaps in a different directory and find the ratingrecords.dat file and then copy that file so you have something that is not empty, otherwise your game will not start. Once the game starts, then you go to step 2 damage assessment, etc.

Also, you should check and see if it's just the ratingrecords files that are empty but whether other files like fighters.dat may have missing data as well.

Big caveat here -- I am not a computer expert this is just based on personal observation and experience dealing with this issue.

[Mudster]

For anyone interested, I think I figured out what I was doing to cause this error. At the start up phase when the game is turned on, it will do some "compacting". For whatever reason, every once in a while, it would take an extra long time (it even says "this may take a few minutes", but I hate waiting). Thinking that my computer froze, I would Control-Alt-Delete out of the compacting phase and at the next start up, it would start giving me the errors. Not sure if it was coincidence, but I decided to leave it run this time for the first time, and after a few minutes, it kicked into the regular game without getting the errors.

[JCWeb]

When I first experienced the problem back in Sept., I initially thought it was a problem with my computer caused by the remnants of a Trojan/virus that had given me fits last summer. Then when I started to read that others had similar issues, I thought more broadly, that maybe this was a bug created when they separated out the ratingsrecord.dat file from the fighters.dat file when TB 2 was put out, since the issue did not exist while I was using TB 1.

For the record, I have never tried to interrupt the game when it has said "compacting files" as Mudster has described, and I have still experienced the bug from time to time (even once or twice after installing the latest patch). But this time the backups have done the trick and I haven't missed a beat (he says with fingers tightly crossed).

[sabotai]

I started getting this problem too recently. I think it has to do with importing certain exported fighters, and if the fighter exists in your game, having the game create a new record. This doesn't happen all of the time, but every once in awhile. I basically either just overwrite the existing record (if I'm starting a new DB, don't do this if it's a mature universe) or I simply don't import the fighter at all. I have not had the problem since.

Also, yeah, interrupting the game while it's going through it's start up will most likely destroy a data file or two, which basically means your database will be messed up.

[Tomato Can]

I agree with Sabotai.

I have not had this problem since I began "policeing" the fighters that I import. If during importing many fighters, The screen pops up saying this fighters "id" already exists, do you still want to import? I always choose "NO". Since doing this I have not had this problem.

It always occured for me when some one "created" a new fighter by just changing the name and other cosmetic stuff. If I had that guy in my universe and then later imported the real fighter who had that "id", I always ran into that problem.

Since I no longer allow the other guy with they same "id" in, I no longer have this problem.

[JCWeb]

The above two posts by Sabotai and Tomato Can raise questions in my mind (assuming that this is the cause of the bug). How do you handle the following situations?

1. You have a boxer whose rating record was zeroed out because of the bug and you want to import it from TB 1 or the default database.

2. You have a boxer that was updated with the new patch (the ratings record has 1-2006) and you want to override the existing boxer with the new ratings record.

If I understood both of you correctly, would not doing both of these possibly trigger the bug? Also, what's the fix if the boxer you want to override is in your active database with a rating and a record that you don't want to replace -- you just want to change the ratings? (my guess is in that case the only way is to change the ratings record by hand, right?)