Issue with Schedules

[Dontirri]

Hi.
I've been building my own league (fairly complex, 2 conf 8 div 32 teams)
I've gotten the league into a playable state with everything working... with one exception.

The schedule. Now, it works the way I want it to, except... the first scheduled matches are a year in the future (im using the latest TBL rosters as my base)
Like, I start the game at 2nd Aug 2024 and the first scheduled round is 30th Aug 2025.

I'm at my wits end at what to do to try and fix it. Im using a schedule template, I have my draw dates set right.

Any advice on where to start looking for a solution?

[archibalduk]

It sounds like the Year Offset might be set to 1 (one) rather than 0 (zero) for those games. The Year Offset is relative to the year in which the season starts. So with a 2024/25 season, a Year Offset of 0 = 2024 and a Year Offset of 1 = 2025. For those games taking place in Aug-Dec 2024 you'll want a Year Offset of 0 and for Jan 2025 onwards you'll want a Year Offset of 1.

[Dontirri]

... Well don't I feel a bit dumb for not realizing that.

Thanks ^^

[archibalduk]

Glad it's sorted - it's very easy to miss these settings!

[Dontirri]

Well now I've hit a whole new snag... Can't get playoffs to trigger.

Everything else works (well, Player of the Week/Month doesn't even tho I've done them, but that's W/E), I got a good schedule which runs smoothly despite the complexity (32 teams, 8 divisions split to 2 conferences of 4 each, 2 teams from each advance) but after the reg season is done, PO's never trigger. I'm adding some screenshots of my stage structure if someone can figure out whats the problem


basic stucture of Stages 1-4 i.e the 4 divisions of the eastern conference


Rules for Stages 1-4, i.e the 4 divisions of the Eastern Conference


Schedule of stage 1


Basic data of stages 5-8 i.e the 4 divisions of the western conference


Rules of stages 5-8 i.e the 4 divisions of the western confernce


Basic data of stage 9 i.e the Eastern Conf Playoffs


rules of stage 9Z


Schedule of stage 9


basic rules of stage 10 i.e the western conf playoff


rules of stage 10 (uses the same schedule as stage 9)


Basic rules of stage 11 i.e the Finals


rules of stage 11


and schedule

So yeah. I know there is a lot of screenshots, but I REALLY wanna get this league of mine to work...

[archibalduk]

Can you upload a copy of your DB to something like Dropbox?

[Dontirri]

Sure. Here it is

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1q906a5e ... foejt&dl=0

[archibalduk]

I think the issue is that your schedule template isn't resulting in an equal number of games per team. Generally the game won't trigger the next stage if it appears that some teams haven't yet played a full schedule of games (i.e. 74 games per team in the case of your league). If you sim through to the end of the regular season then you'll see that the following teams are playing the wrong number of games:

BALDERIS:
- HC Panter - 76 GP
- Dinamo Riga - 72 GP

CALCATERRA:
- Steaua Bucuresti - 71 GP
- Medvescak - 71 GP

WASSERVOGEL:
- Amsterdam - 78 GP

I think the solution to the above is to make the following changes to your schedule template:

• Re-assign two of Panter's games to Riga (this will reduce Panter's GP to 74 and increase Riga's GP to 74)
• Re-assign two of Amsterdam's games to Steaua Bucuresti and two of Amsterdam's games to Medvescak (this will reduce Amsterdam to 74 GP and increase Steaua Bucuresti and Medvescak's GP to 73 each)
• Add an additional game for Steaua Bucuresti vs Medvescak (this will increase their GP to 74 each)

You may already know this, but the quickest way to sim through a season for testing purposes is to start a new game, add a blank manager and then immediately click on: Settings icon (top right corner, by the date/time display) -> Selected Leagues -> Test Leagues. This will then allow you to quick sim to a date in-game (e.g. to say 25 June 2025 by which time the final stage should be complete). It's a one-time option in-game; i.e. you cannot use Test Leagues again within that saved game and you can't use it if you've previously clicked on Continue.

Whilst I expect the above is the cause of the playoff stages not triggering, I'd suggest also making the following corrections:

Comp Rules tab
Max league games: Change this to 74. This should be set to the maximum number of games a team will play during the regular season.

Stages tab
Stages 1 - 7: Change Next Upper Stage to Trigger to zero. When running simultaneous stages, you only need the "last" simultaneous stage to trigger the next set of stages. Given that Stages 1-8 are simultaneous, you only need Stage 8 to trigger Stage 10 (this will also trigger Stage 9 as EHM won't skip over Stage 9 when triggering Stage 10).
Stages 1 - 8: On the Rules sub-tab, disable the Check For No Fate fate rule. This setting means that no fate rule is processed for that stage; i.e. where you don't want to enable any of the other fate rules. You want Qualified For Next Stage enabled, so you can disable Check For No Fate.
Stage 10: Change the Playoff (top) end place to 0 (zero) instead of -1.

If it still doesn't work once you've corrected the schedule template and made the above changes then upload your updated version and I'll take another look.

[Dontirri]

I did what you said, and now when I use the test league function (didnt know about this, thanks!) I get "COMP_BASIC_RULES:get_stage_structure - invalid stage index"-error.
I'm starting to wonder whether I'm just being too ambitious with my 2 conf 8 div league and EHM just struggles with it. Even tried to reduce the number of games to 62 (play everyone once) for simplicity

Here's the db with your fixes applied https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1q906a5e ... dqvwu&dl=0

[archibalduk]

That error message means that there's an incorrect/non-existent stage index number referenced in a setting somewhere. It should be an easy fix.

Your structure isn't particularly complicated; it's just a case of fixing a few minor errors. It's fairly usual to make a few minor errors when creating a new structure but they're generally easy to fix.

I'll take a look tomorrow and will let you know.

[archibalduk]

Here's the changes you need to make. This definitely fixes the regular season and allows the playoffs to correctly start. I've run out of time to test the playoffs in full, but the below should hopefully get you there. I'll do a final test tomorrow.

Stage 9
Stage to draw teams from: 1 (this will draw the 8 teams from Stage 1 upwards until it finds 8 teams - so essentially Stages 1 - 4) (having this set to zero was probably the cause of the error message)
Next upper stage to trigger: 0

Stage 10
Stage to draw teams from: 5 (this will draw the 8 teams from Stage 5 upwards until it finds 8 teams - so essentially Stages 5 - 8)

Stages 9 and 10: Schedule Dates screen
Row 1 (First Round)
No. of games: 4 (this is the number of match-ups rather than the number of games in a series - 8 teams = 4 match-ups)
No. of legs: 4 (this means the winner is the team that wins 4 games - i.e. best of 7 games)
Leg offset (days): 2 (this is the number of days between games in a series - 2 is the usual setting for a 7 game series)
Draw year: 1 (this is relative to the start year in the same way as the Year Offset in schedules)

Row 2 (Semis)
No. of teams: 4
No. of games: 2
Extra teams: 0 (unlike the First Round, you're not drawing in any extra teams from the preceding stages; you just want those who have won in the First Round)
Round code: 1 (each round has an index/code - the first round is zero, the second round is 1, the third is 2, etc)
No. of legs: 4
Leg offset (days): 2
Draw year: 1

Row 3 (Final)
No. of teams: 2
No. of games: 1
Extra teams: 0
Round code: 2
No. of legs: 4
Leg offset (days): 2
Draw year: 1

Stage 11
Stage to draw teams from: 9 (this will draw the 2 teams from Stage 9 upwards until it finds 2 teams - so essentially Stages 9 - 10)
Number of dates: 1

Stage 11: Schedule Dates screen
Row 1 (Final)
No. of teams: 2
No. of games: 1
Extra teams: 2 (this indicates that you'll take two teams from the preceding stages - i.e. each conference champion from Stages 9 and 10)
No. of legs: 4
Leg offset (days): 2
Draw year: 1

[Dontirri]

Huge thank you!
The playoffs trigger now, but it's not the end of my issues...
The Finals trigger an error stating "CUP_PROCESS_FIXTURE - unable to find fixture" pops up on the screen when I do the test league function. They do fire, but when I look at the playoff tree, something is mighty off. Series are best of five, but the number of games actually played is all over the place and the wrong team advances... Here are some screenshots to show what I mean



sidenote: any way to get the weekly/monthy awards to function? I cant seem to get them.
And also, any way to move the Free Agency forward by a month or two? It triggers in the middle of the playoffs...

[archibalduk]

The issue with the losing teams going through is because you have enabled the "Loser Continues Through" setting in the Round Rules. You've also enabled various best of 2, 3 and 5 games settings in Round Rules rather than best of 7; hence you're getting best of 5 in-game.

I've listed out the changes below together with a few additional corrections I spotted while checking through everything. The below seems to trigger the various playoffs correctly but it then crashes on 1 July 2025. I think this is because the final round of the playoffs (Stage 11) hasn't completed before 1 July 2025 which is the standard date for the reset of each league for the new season. I think we need to look at the timing of each round of the playoffs in Stages 9-11. You will see that each round/row of the playoff Schedule Dates sub-tab has four settings:

1. Date
2. Day
3. Draw Date
4. Draw Day

Date determines the date on which the first game of that round will occur. You can either specify a Day or leave it as "[none]" (you do this by entering -1 into the Day field and pressing Enter). If you specify the Day then the game will adjust the Date each season to fall on the selected Day. E.g. if you selected 1 April as the Date and Monday as the Day then if 1 April in a season does not fall on a Monday, the Date will be moved to the nearest date falling on that Day. E.g. 1 April 2025 is a Tuesday, so EHM will move the first game to Monday 31 March 2025. In 2026, this would be Monday 30 March 2025. However, if you set the Day as "[none]" then the Date will never be adjusted in EHM - e.g. if you set 1 April then it will always be 1 April in-game.

The Draw Date and Draw Day work in the same manner as the above. I.e. the Draw Date is adjusted to fall on the selected Draw Day unless you set the Draw Day to "[none]". The Draw Date determines the date on which the teams for the round in question will be drawn. The Draw Date must occur before the first game of the round in question and must occur no earlier than the final date of the preceding round/stage. E.g. the Draw Date for the Eastern Playoffs First Round must occur no earlier than the date on which the final Eastern regular season game takes place and before the Date of the first scheduled game of the First Round.

Hence fairly close attention should be paid to the Date/Day and Draw Date/Draw Day settings:

- You want the Date/Day to occur after the end of the preceding round/stage; and
- You want the Draw Date/Draw Day to occur on/after the end of the preceding round/stage and before the first game of the round in question.

For the above reasons, we'll need to check how EHM is scheduling each round of Stages 9 - 11 in-game against the settings we have in the database. This should hopefully help us figure out why Stage 11 isn't completing before 1 July.

The above is also why you can end up with a crash a few years into the game if you have used a specific Day/Draw Day setting (i.e. the Day/Draw Day is pushing the Date/Draw Date to a date which violates the two principles I mention above). That's not to say you cannot use the Day/Draw Day but you just have to carefully map everything out, usually by ensuring whatever you set as the Day/Draw Day in the database corresponds with the initial Date/Draw Date set.


Comp Rules tab
Draw date: 1.7.2024 (not 1 May)

Stage 10
Draw day: -1 (this will then appear as [none] when you press Enter) (if you Draw Date is set one or two days before the round's Date but you set both the round Day and Draw Day to the same day (i.e. Monday) then you'll end up with the game being unable to draw teams)


Stages 9 & 10
On the Schedule Dates tab:

1. Extra team start index: 0 for all rows

2. Round Rules: Click on Round Rules for every row and then change the following settings:
- Loser Continues Through: False (you want the losers to be eliminated)
- Two Leg Higher Seed Wins: False (we want a 7 game series and not a 2 game series)
- Two Leg Home Win: False (we want a 7 game series and not a 2 game series)
- Hockey Best of Three: False (my understanding is that you want 7 game series and not 3 game series)
- Hockey Best of Five: False (my understanding is that you want 7 game series and not 5 game series)
- Hockey Best of Seven: True (this will result in a 7 game series in conjunction with the No. of Legs setting we adjusted earlier)

Alternatively, when you click on Round Rules for each row, you can enter 266688 in the Manual Override row in the Round Rules screen (it's the bottom row) and then press Enter.

Stage 11
On the Schedule Dates tab:

1. Draw Date: 1 Jun (rather than 1 Jan)

2. Round Rules: Click on Round Rules for single row and then change the following settings:

- Two Divisional Brackets: False (this is the final with two teams, so we can't have divisional brackets)
- Loser Continues Through: False
- Two Leg Higher Seed Wins: False
- Two Leg Home Win: False
- Hockey Best of Three: False
- Hockey Best of Five: False
- Hockey Best of Seven: True

[Dontirri]

Finally got stuff to work! You are amazing for having the time and energy and patience to help me through this.

Those kind of nitty-gritty stuff is something I hadn't even considered. The whole round-rules thing was a new thing to me, I got no idea how I ended up with those rule to begin with...

But yeah. Huge thanks!

[archibalduk]

Excellent! There's definitely a steep learning curve editing/creating structures but it starts to make more sense once you've worked through it bit by bit. I'd say more often that not there's some small setting somewhere I'll have overlooked on the first try of a new structure, so you get used to stepping through each setting/stage one by one to check for a mistake.

sidenote: any way to get the weekly/monthy awards to function? I cant seem to get them.

Sorry I missed your questions last time. I'm not totally sure, but try setting "Nation" to Belgium for each of the EHL awards. That's the only thing that I can see which appears to be missing.

And also, any way to move the Free Agency forward by a month or two? It triggers in the middle of the playoffs...

I think Free Agency starts on 1 May because you have the league's trade window running from 30 April to 31 January (see Transfer Rules -> EHL -> Trade Windows). Try moving the start of the trade window from 30 April to a later date (e.g. late June/1 July).

[Dontirri]

Hey. Me again.
I'm trying to make my database more indepth by making more leagues playable, but whenever I try to add a playable league I get faced with this:

I think I've done everything correctly, But I guess I'm missing something? Here is the database file https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1q906a5e ... r5knv&dl=0