1974db Testing Results/Feedback

[nino33]

Maybe I've got to many retired players now?
Manimal's 4.2 database has about 30 Invalid players/staff and about 1,300 Retired players/staff....I curreently have about 4,000 Retired players/staff in the June 3 (crashing) database...

[archibalduk]

I doubt it, to be honest. But I won't profess to be a huge expert on the workings of the database.

The most common cause of difficulties is changing a team or league name - or moving a team from one league to another.

[nino33]

The most common cause of difficulties is changing a team or league name - or moving a team from one league to another.

Maybe it's moving a team or teams from one league to another...I'll check into this...

[nino33]

The most common cause of difficulties is changing a team or league name - or moving a team from one league to another.
nino33 wrote:
Maybe it's moving a team or teams from one league to another...I'll check into this...

I'm 99.99% sure it's not a team name or league change issue, as I've edited the May 1st database so that the teams/leagues are exactly the same as the June 3rd database, and this edited May 1st database doesn't have the crash occur (player/staff search filter/configure works fine)

[CeeBee]

As long as you don't click on configure you'll be fine no matter what you select, so at least it is avoidable.

I also saw that when you go to a game(boxscore/stats/simming while coaching) with the Kings it only says Los, not Los Angeles Kings

The New York Rangers have a similar problem in the game summary. Just shows as "New". Also the LA Kings seem really powerful so far. 10-2 and scoring a ton. And then there's Larry Robinson. Better than Orr by a fair bit in scoring at least. After I get a season done I'll make some player recommendations. Early in the first season there are a lot of average type d- men who are really racking up the points. Also some teams are really scoring a ton of goals but maybe it will average out better after a whole season.

[nino33]

I have to admit I've been absolutely crushed by this crash issue.....I'm not sure what I'm doing, but the way it's looking/feeling right now I might not be doing much on the database until the summer.....this crash issue has killed my motivation

[archibalduk]

Do you want to email the database to me - I'll try and take a look.

P.s. During my poking around in ArtMoney, I've found the bit that limits the number of foreign players that can be dressed in the NHL. I'm trying to find the figure for the number that can be place on the roster too. Thus we could have a little patch, similar to the CSD, which changes the rules and foreigner limits for the NHL. This should prevent all of the Russians coming over.

[nino33]

Do you want to email the database to me - I'll try and take a look.

Thanks!


I'm looking at the "Divisions" and AHL/CHL teams right now (maybe I moved a team from one division to another and the game doesn't like it for some reason?)

[Primis]

Do you want to email the database to me - I'll try and take a look.

Thanks!

I'm looking at the "Divisions" and AHL/CHL teams right now (maybe I moved a team from one division to another and the game doesn't like it for some reason?)

EHM doesn't care WHERE you move a team to, just that it's present in the DB. And that the league structure is right. It doesn't matter what league said team or teams is/are in. Most likely, your alignment is off somewhere.

[nino33]

EHM doesn't care WHERE you move a team to, just that it's present in the DB. And that the league structure is right.

I don't agree. There are many teams that can be deleted (overwritten) and the database will work fine. And Division does seem to matter sometimes, because...

I just moved around a handful of ECHL teams from one Division to another, and now the ECHL is no longer a problem.....but Major Junior is still is a problem (and I don`t recall doing anything to Major Junior in months!)
I compared the non-crashing May 1st database with the 1974DBtest0.2 that I sent out, and I moved Erie back to the South from the North and Jersey from the South back to the North, Fresno/Kansas City/Wichita all went back to the Pacific from the West, Portland/Spokane/Trail all went back to the West from the Pacific, and Amarillo went back to the South from the West and Suncoast went to the West from the South...and now the ECHL seems fine!

All Leagues except for Major Junior can be selected (run as Enhanced) now and the game loads/advances OK + search/configure option works fine!...so now I'm going to review the teams and their Divisions in Major Junior

It doesn't make any sense to me really, but as long as it works...

[nino33]

Grrrr....in the May 1st database and test0.2 database the Major Junior teams are exactly the same!

I can't understand why there's an issue with the search/configure functionality if Major Junior is selected/Enhanced....it's not an issue in the May 1st version



EDIT
I ensured all the default Major Junior teams were in the database, and I changed Major Junior teams I'd made Invalid long ago back to Amateur....alas, no luck, the game still crashes when configuring a search.....I don't get it

[archibalduk]

Firstly, please accept my apologies for the nonsensical post! I have been writing this post at the same time as testing the database. You'll see below that I followed one train of thought, switched to another one and then back to the first! Sorry about that!

On my computer EHM crashes when creating a new game with Canada loaded as Enhanced (using the June Test DB - the May DB loads fine). The game seems to complete the "Assessing Club Rosters" part and then moves during the "Creating Shortlists" part. It loads fine if I don't select Canada as Enhanced. If it were a team/league issue then I would expect an error/crash to appear earlier during the start-up process - at least that's what normally happens to me when I've encountered such problems. It almost sounds like it's a roster or contract issue affecting a Canadian team. Maybe a player with an erroneous Staff Classification, Job Role or roster size? Although normally the Pre Game Editor will throw an error if any such issue appears (in fact I find it much more sensitive/fussy to these things than EHM itself).

Did you use the Pre Game Editor to make all of the changes since 1st May - or have you also used the Updater for updating any contracts?

I'm doing a couple of test runs whilst I'm writing this message. Now that I've done a few more, it looks like maybe the game finishes the "Creating Shortlists" part of the new game process. This is the final part of the process before it goes to the screen where you enter your name and select a team. So perhaps it is a team issue of some description. But if that were the case, surely there would be an error when I view the OHL/QMJHL/WHL standings and League Info screens with Canada loaded as Standard...

So this brings me back to player/staff contracts. I have run the database through the EHM Updater in order to verify the roster sizes of each team. It looks like there are errors for the following teams:

• beauce jaros
• buffalo norsemen
• huntsville havoc
• kazan
• khabarovsk
• lillehammer ik
• montreal red white & blue
• omaha elks
• thetford-mines prolab
• trenton sting
• tucson rustlers
• turku jrs
• val d'or foreurs

Omaha Elks have far too many players playing for them (15 too many players, to be precise - therefore there must be 90 players on this roster). I'm going to try reducing the offending rosters to see if this resolves the problem. Fingers crossed this fixes things...

[archibalduk]

I've corrected the roster size difficulties but this doesn't seem to have resolved it. Although in one test, I did make it to the Add GM screen but it crashed when I selected the CHL - but when I tried this again, it didn't get this far.

Why are there so many players/staff with their club contracted as Free Agent but their club playing for is a team (e.g. Michael Roche 27/01/1900 is a UFA but has his Playing For field set as Omaha Elks)? Does this have some special function? I had always thought that if one of those fields is UFA then the other has to be too.

Anyway, I've tried changing all 7,000+ players/staff that have a UFA "contracted club" and a team in the "club playing for". This has resulted in 222 further roster size problems. I'm going to spend the weekend going through each of these size errors and resolving them. I'm not 100% sure this is going to resolve things because even your May database has roster size issues but it doesn't suffer the crash. I'll give it a go and will let you know - I can't think of anything else at this stage.

P.s. Even if we can't get things working, we can recover things using the May database. I've started work on the create new staff function for the Updater. Once this is ready (maybe 1-2 weeks) we can export the staff list from the June DB, filter out the minor players you created, and then use the Updater to create these players in the May DB. So at least this will minimise your loss.

[nino33]

Thanks so much for all of your efforts Arch!

Did you use the Pre Game Editor to make all of the changes since 1st May - or have you also used the Updater for updating any contracts?

IIRC I did make some contract changes using the Updater in mid/late May (after the issue seems to have arisen), but I never touched Canada/Major Junior



I have no idea why there are roster size issues…I’ve never even looked at most of the teams you listed! And the teams I did “touch” I didn’t add players too (when I made a team defunct while creating a new team, like with the Montreal Red White & Blue, I just transferred players/staff from the defunct team to the “new” team)

The database was originally the default database (not the unfaking database), and then it was the 1979-80 database that Pens66 created…maybe this is why there's so many players who are UFA but playing for a Club? I've noticed this since I started editing; it's always been this way...

I've tried changing all 7,000+ players/staff that have a UFA "contracted club" and a team in the "club playing for". This has resulted in 222 further roster size problems.

If you got 222 additional roster issues, I'm thinking you added the team playing for as the contracted club...why not make Contracted Club and Club Playing For both show "Free Agent"? There should be no historical players with this issue, as all I created had a team name in both Contracted Club and Club Playing For...

Even if we can't get things working, we can recover things using the May database. I've started work on the create new staff function for the Updater. Once this is ready (maybe 1-2 weeks) we can export the staff list from the June DB, filter out the minor players you created, and then use the Updater to create these players in the May DB. So at least this will minimise your loss.

That's fantastic news!

[archibalduk]

If you got 222 additional roster issues, I'm thinking you added the team playing for as the contracted club...why not make Contracted Club and Club Playing For both show "Free Agent"? There should be no historical players with this issue, as all I created had a team name in both Contracted Club and Club Playing For...

Ah that makes my life easier (I was worried I'd be making a lot of your players become UFA thereby undoing all of your work)! I'll give that a go.

[archibalduk]

Unfortunately fixing the roster sizes and unusual UFAs didn't work. However, if I copy the player.dat, staff.dat and nonplayer.dat from the June DB to the May DB, the May DB works fine. It must therefore be something else. Now that I've read back through the recent posts here, I see there's something about NHL team names not appearing correctly in the game summaries. This most likely wouldn't be caused by a roster issue.

Tomorrow I'm going to go through the database file by file to try and isolate the issue...

[nino33]

Thanks so much for your ongoing efforts Arch! Greatly appreciated!

[archibalduk]

I think I've fixed it by merging the player, staff and histories data from the faulty June DB into the May DB. I am running a test sim with all leagues on enhanced and have emailed a copy of the DB to Nino. Here's a quote from my email to Nino which explains a little more:

After spending hours banging my head against a brick wall, I ***think*** I've finally cracked it. I'm running a one year test sim until October of season 2 just to fully test everything (I'm running all leagues on enhanced with the Russian/GB start date). The game loaded fine and I can use the "Configure" button on the Player/Staff Search screen okay. I'll drop you a further message later today once the sim has finished (even with my reasonably powerful laptop, it still takes a couple of hours to sim all leagues on enhanced).

I have been unable to get the June rosters to work. Whatever the issue is, it doesn't seem to relate to the players/staff or any staff/competition/award histories. I think it might be something like the teams/nations/competitions/affiliations. This is quite fortunate because had it been an issue with staff or histories then you would have lost a lot of data (but as I mentioned we could, with some work, recreate the newly created players using the Updater). As things stand, only things such as club and competition data (including related things such as affiliations) will have been lost - i.e. they will have reverted back to May 1st.

What I've done is to copy across all of the player, staff and history dat files from the June DB to the May DB. This includes things like the name sets and all staff/competition/award histories. I've reindexed the database and regenerated the player_info.dat and club rosters. I have also made all of those semi-UFA players become UFAs (i.e. those players that had UFA as their club contracted but had a team listed for their club playing for). Included within the zip file is a file named contract_update.csv which lists all of the semi-UFAs which I have made UFA.

There are currently some Invalid players contracted to teams. These ought to be made UFAs or alternatively set as Player/Staff. There is one invalid player contracted to each of the following teams (you can find them using the filters in the Pre-Game Editor):

<SNIP>

There are also some semi-UFAs which the Updater was unable to make UFA (because they are duplicate players and the Updater cannot fully deal with duplicate players). These players will need their contract/UFA details updated manually:

<SNIP>

What this database really needs now is some checking. The big danger with merging different databases is that data may become scrambled (e.g. attribute data, player rights, staff likes/dislikes, etc may become linked to the wrong players). I think I've gotten away with it, but I would strongly recommend going through a couple of players in the Pre Game Editor and checking every tab of data for those players. If any seem incorrect / mixed-up then we'll have a problem. However, I'm optimistic this difficulty has been avoided.

I'll post an update once the sim has finished.

[CeeBee]

whew!!!! Great work Archi got my fingers crossed

[nino33]

Thanks so much Arch!


I went through the Invalid players contracted to teams and the semi-UFAs which the Updater was unable to make UFA and retired them all.

Then I went through the checklist you provided (checking every tab) and compared the fixedDB you sent me with the May1st version - everything looked good! The only differences were with Kharlamov and Gustafsson, and they were not mistakes/issues, but rather changes I had made in early June right before sending out test version 2 (and so they showed up in the fixedDB but not the May 1st version)


Woo Hoo!

[archibalduk]

Then I went through the checklist you provided (checking every tab) and compared the fixedDB you sent me with the May1st version - everything looked good!

Excellent! This project hasn't half involved a lot of blood, sweat and tears, eh!

I'm still simming at the moment - it's been three and a half hours and I'm only in July 2007. Still, it went through the usual "updating game data" process on 1st Jan and 1st July. It's looking really promising...

Just a thought: You'll need to take a look at a sample of the club and national tournament histories in game just to make sure they're correct. The club competition histories should be fine, but I'd check that the national ones are okay. There's no need to check every national tournament - just check one and that'll be enough (because it'll either be a case that they're all fine or they're all wrong). I would check, but I don't want to interrupt the simming! I'm fairly sure it'll be fine - but it's worth checking.

[nino33]

There's no need to check every national tournament - just check one

Exactly what would be a "national tournament"?

[archibalduk]

There's no need to check every national tournament - just check one

Exactly what would be a "national tournament"?

IIHF World Championships, WC Div 1, World Cup, etc. Those with national teams. Sorry, it's probably not the clearest of terminology I've used there; it's just how SI have referred to them in the database.

[archibalduk]

I've simmed through to 2nd October 2007 without any problem!!

I took a look at the national tournaments and saw there was no history for these. Is that how it should be?

P.s. Buffalo won the Playoffs 4 - 1 against the Blackhawks. Montreal won the regular season. Marcel Dionne scored the most goals in the season (59).

Btw, I have encountered the same issue as mentioned before with regards to the box score. The Rangers, Islanders and Kings all come up with shortened names in the box scores (e.g. it appears as "New" and "Los"). It is kind of the same with the Blackhawks - it appears as Chicago on the box score even though that's not their short name in the database. I would recommend attempting to fix that before making any further changes to the database - just in case it is a serious issue unto itself. I'll try and take a look this evening if I can.

[nino33]

I took a look at the national tournaments and saw there was no history for these. Is that how it should be?

I guess so! I was surprised they were blank! HaHa
I think this is maybe from my efforts last year when IIRC I deleted history via HexEditor...

with regards to the box score. The Rangers, Islanders and Kings all come up with shortened names in the box scores

Fixed! I had Name/Short Name both populated with a team's full name...

Couple of small things. John Hanna ( Cleveland Crusaders) has a birthplace of Moscow, Russia (should be Sydney N.S.) and Jere Gillis is listed as 38 years old and not on any team(age 17-birthday Jan 18,1957 Bend Ore., Sherbrooke Castors).

Both fixed!

After I get a season done I'll make some player recommendations

Sounds good!




Again, THANK YOU Archi!





Motivated again...Woo Hoo!



P.S. While the database has been saved/fixed! some of what I did in May was lost (like team colours it seems...and likely affiliations), and so I have a bit of editing to do before I'll have test version 0.2b available (and I think I'd like to do a bit more editing on player attributes before a wider release of test version 0.2b)