EHM The Blue Line

thx BKarchitect for the clarification. I will assume EHM generate division in conference like the first half divisions in the first conference and the second half in the other conference. I will assume too we can't have more of two conference cause we can't change the playoff.

I actually progress in the Scheduler.
Create the league calendar => done
Create the team list sorted by conference/division => done
Create the matches list => half done !!!

I'm able to create a match list for the league but not to create the "bonus matches" (ie: for a NHL 36 teams league with 3 division 80 matches regular and two bonus one away one home).

It's my big problem actually before present an alpha version. So for a 36 NHL team like yours, games by team would be 80. I can do it in a particular case but it will work only for this case. I'm searching a way to do it, If I can't find something good, I will continue and put a working version but limited at the time, perhaps someone here have the skills to improve it

an other thing I'm unable to generate actually is a schedule for an league with a odd number of teams.

I've been thinking about schedules a little bit whilst writing my league structures guide. I have bitten the bullet and am working on some sort of schedule generator. I have an idea how it can work but I'm not sure how successful it will be. But, if nothing else, it should hopefully provide a basic schedule which can be finessed manually.

archibalduk wrote:I've been thinking about schedules a little bit whilst writing my league structures guide. I have bitten the bullet and am working on some sort of schedule generator. I have an idea how it can work but I'm not sure how successful it will be. But, if nothing else, it should hopefully provide a basic schedule which can be finessed manually.

I was just giving this some thought last night. I don't play EHM all that often any more, but, as a CS major, I think it'd be a good side project to work on. I was thinking that you could just brute force everything (just be warned, I have done no research into how schedule generation should be done):

So, given a set of days in a season where games should be played (so the entire season minus breaks), you start with the first team in a list and for each day, give it a 1/(how many games in the season) chance to generate a game that day. If it does generate a game that day, just mark down that the team you are currently generating a schedule for plays that day, regardless of the opponent. You can do stuff like skip a day if a team is set to play two games back-to-back to avoid back-to-back-to-back games. If you get to the end of the set of days and the it hasn't generated an amount of games equal to the amount of games you want the team to play in a season, re-do the whole generation.

Then, go down the list of teams and (iterate for every team) through each game the first team is playing. Give each day a 1/(however many other teams in the league) chance to play that team each day. Then you can either break out of the iterating when it generates a desired amount of games between the two teams or re-do the iterating if it hasn't generated the desired amount of games. Do this for each other team in the league so that the first team's schedule is now full.

Then, for the second team, repeat the process in the first paragraph but the desired amount of games played is now the original desired amount of games played minus the amount that have been scheduled against the first team.

Repeat the steps in the second paragraph with the remaining the teams (since the games between each team in the list and the first team are now set and don't need to be regenerated), then the do the steps in the first first paragraph for the fifth team, and so on.

I hope that all makes sense. I have absolutely no idea if this will work in practice, but I might give it a shot. How are you planning on doing it?

My idea is relatively similar. I am going to divide the schedule into rounds. For example, the NHL would consist of 82 rounds. The generator will go team by team and add a game to each round. If a team is already scheduled for that round, it'll skip that round. If there are games which cannot be added to any round then it'll create additional rounds and put them there.

I'm going to use this as a starting point just to see how it pans out. I'm particularly interested to see how many extra rounds I'll end up with for the NHL (I'm expecting approx 100 rounds). Once I've gotten this up and running, I'll start assigning rounds to dates.

So you generate the games first and then the dates. That sounds like it'll work better. I'm definitely also interested to see how that approach works.

Here is a very early prototype (hence the messy user interface):



The spinbox at the bottom left of the screen is used to set how many divisions you want. You then set the division names (just for ease of reference) and the number of clubs in the top table.

The bottom table is where you input the number of games played against each division. The y axis (vertical) indicates when the team in each division plays at home and the x axis (horizontal) indicates when the team in each division plays on the road. For example, the bottom left cell shows that each team in the Southeast Division (y axis) will play at home against each Central Division team (x axis) once.

The top table automatically calculates how many home and road games each team plays.

To make things a little easier, I added two NHL preset buttons for the 2006/07 and 2017/18 seasons (so it automatically populates the tables with the correct figures). I chose the 06/07 season because I think it's the last season where they used a balanced schedule. The 17/18 preset doesn't quite work because of the unbalanced schedule. I'll figure out some sort of adjustment options if/when I have the whole schedule generation up and running.

Currently the tool will create a list of home games for each team. Now I need to start assigning the games to rounds...

I now have scheduling up and running for the home games of the first team in the league. I need to work on the randomness slightly (you'll see that there are too many games against the same teams from rounds 61 onwards). Otherwise, I now need to figure out how to deal with the remaining teams' schedules.

An admittedly very basic approach resulted in a 300+ round schedule for the NHL which is clearly no good. It works better with smaller leagues though. For example, a 12 team league with teams playing each other 4 times (= 44 GP) results in a 51 game schedule. That's no too bad.

I'm going to try a slightly more complex approach which I hope might improve things a little...

I have made some pretty significant progress with the schedule generator. I am getting a schedule of between 89 and 91 rounds for the NHL. That's very close to the optimum 82 rounds. I didn't think I'd be able to get it quite that close. When my first approach resulted in a 300+ round schedule I didn't think I was going to have any sort of success with this.

Next up is getting some dates assigned to each round.

Hey guys,

Trying to create the ECHL schedule for 2018-19 but I'm having some weird issues with this league, other leagues using the same process (OHL & QMJHL) have been fine but the ECHL is a bit...off. The teams aren't lining up properly though the IDs assigned appear correct. I have tried clearing all the team assignments and re-populating the divisions, which did result in some changes, so I re-did the template but it's still not right.

First game on the schedule is a game between Florida and Newfoundland, Newfound is the home team.


Division alignment appears correct:




In-game results, Worcester should be Newfoundland for the specific example but all the results are off.


Oct. 12 Florida - Newfoundland - Mile One Centre 7:00 pm NDT
Oct. 12 Toledo - Greenville - Bon Secours Wellness Arena 7:00 pm EDT
Oct. 12 Fort Wayne - Indy - Indiana Farmers Coliseum 7:35 pm EDT
Oct. 12 Allen - Kansas City - Silverstein Eye Centers Arena 7:05 pm CDT
Oct. 12 Idaho - Wichita - INTRUST Bank Arena 7:05 pm CDT
Oct. 12 Rapid City - Utah - Maverik Center 7:05 pm MDT

Use real-schedule template is enabled in the structure settings.

Having this issue within the NHL as well, only the Pacific division, even if I swap the teams it's still not right in-game, weird.

As I understand it, the numbering of the teams is by alphabetical order and not the order they appear in the Editor screen. Perhaps it would help if the Editor listed the teams alphabetically to avoid any confusion (I have added this to my to-do list).

So taking your example of Team 101 at Team 006, you're looking at the 2nd team from the South playing against the 7th team from the North. If you list the teams alphabetically, that would be Florida at Worcester. That seems to match what is shown in your screenshot.

Thanks Archi, would be helpful to call that out in the editor for sure!

Even sorted alphabetically I cannot get the ECHL schedule proper. Only 6 teams came out correctly, I can use those to try to figure out what team should be where but something is clearly off.

I figured out the issue, the divisions weren't aligned properly on the schedule templates screen. Clearing all of these and adding them in alphabetical order solved it.

It seems I got seriously side-tracked with the schedule generator given that my last post on this was February last year... Anyhow, I have been working on this further and hope to have something to share this month or next. It is highly experimental and the schedules are far from perfect, but it's a start.

I ended up changing from a division by division approach to a club by club approach. Instead of setting how many games teams from one division play against teams in another, you now set how many games each team plays against each other team. This allows for precise NHL schedules to be created.

Hello!

I made suomi-sarja as a playable league, and when the game is loading i got this message "missing real schedule". The league has no schedule and teams are not playing any league games. What should i do to fix this?

For the initial stages of a league, you have a choice between using the Schedule Dates or a Schedule Template. The Schedule Template allows you to set a real schedule. If you go to the Suomi-Sarja in the Rules & Structures screen you will find a tab called Flags. Scroll down and you will see a setting named "Comp Uses Real Schedule Template".

If you enable this setting, you have to add a Schedule Template via the Schedule Templates screen. You are getting the error because you have enabled this setting but have not created a Schedule Template. If you do not want to use this setting then disable it and then set up some Schedule Dates via the Stages -> Schedule Dates tab on the Rules & Structures screen.

I have come across an interesting issue when using schedule dates in EHM. In the past, I have often set the Number of Dates setting by multiplying the Number of Teams by the Number of Rounds. So for a league with 10 teams and 6 rounds, I'd set the Number of Dates as 60. I'm sure I've seen this in the default EHM database before and I figured having a couple of extra dates would give the game a bit more flexibility when generating schedules.

However, I noticed today that it is resulting in one or more teams playing all of their games either at home or on the road. The solution is the set the Number of Dates to the actual number of games played. So for a league with 10 teams and 6 rounds, the Number of Dates should be 54 (i.e. each team will play the other 9 teams 6 times = 54 GP) and not 60.

Something else to mention is that it is well worth setting the at least the first TV Date for each Schedule Date entry. As far as I can tell, the TV Dates are used in two instances: (1) To reschedule a game which is to be broadcast on TV; and (2) To reschedule a game where a team has a scheduling clash. I haven't tested this fully, but it seems to be proving useful where you have a cup tournament causing schedule clashes with a league schedule. Each set of TV Dates provides rules for rescheduling as follows:

• TV Date Arena Rule: Determines at which arena the rescheduled game will be played. Usually you will want the game to be rescheduled for the home team's arena.
• TV Date Day: The day on which the rescheduled game will be played. E.g. if the main schedule date is a Saturday, you could set the TV Date Day as a Tuesday, meaning that the game will be rescheduled for the nearest Tuesday in the event the original Saturday date resulted in a clash.
• TV Date Time: What time of the day do you want the rescheduled game to take place. E.g. afternoon, evening, etc.
• TV Date Type: This sets the rules for the type of rescheduling. Note 1: I believe Regional/National/Satellite indicates the type of TV broadcast. So you could set different days for different broadcast types (e.g. you could use TV Date 1 for Regional, TV Date 2 for National etc). Note 2: The Do Not Move Matches setting can be used to prevent the game from being rescheduled. This could be useful if you want a game (such as a cup final) to take precedence over any other game which might clash with it (e.g. a league game). Note 3: Silent (No Message) is useful if you want the game to be rescheduled without resulting in a news item appearing in game. I'm not sure if this is the same as using the [None] setting yet - I think it might.

I have been struggling to find a free schedule generator which exports to Excel (they all seem to require subscription) but I have now come across this nifty Excel spreadsheet: https://exceltemplate.net/tournament/ma ... generator/ (the download link is where it says "Free: Yes" - or just click HERE).

The spreadsheet is about 50mb and so it is a bit slow when running it in Excel. I have been using this to create schedule templates for various UK leagues and it has been doing a really good job. Here is how I have been using it to create round robin-style schedule templates:

1.0 Open the spreadsheet named "Soccer_Fixtures_Generator_Pro_V28.xlsx".
2.0 Click on the "Setup" tab:
2.1 Enter the number of teams in the "Number of Teams" cell (Cell K14).
2.2 Enter the number of times the teams play each other in the "Same Team Meeting" cell (Cell K15). E.g. if the teams play each other 4 times (i.e. twice at home and twice on the road), enter "4".
2.3 Enter the team names in Column W. Seeing as the schedule is for a schedule template, enter "0" for the first team's name, "1" for the second team's name, "2" for the third team's name, etc.
3.0 Click on the "Round" tab. This shows the entirety of the schedule. You can then copy and paste the schedule (i.e. Columns H and K) into your schedule template spreadsheet which can then be imported into the Editor. The "Round #" column at Column D is quite handy because it shows what round each game relates to. You can then use this as a reference point when setting what dates you want for each game.

The above will create a simple template if you are willing to set the dates yourself. However, it is possible to make the spreadsheet do this for you. On the "Setup" tab you should enter the Season (Cell K10) and the Start Date (Cell K13). Then on the "Round" tab enter the Start Date at Cell S12. You can choose which days of the week at Cells R17 - R23. You should also set the Number of Rounds per Day (Cell S25) to 1 otherwise you will end up with multiple rounds taking place on the same day.

archibalduk wrote: Sun Sep 08, 2019 4:03 pm I have been struggling to find a free schedule generator which exports to Excel (they all seem to require subscription) but I have now come across this nifty Excel spreadsheet: https://exceltemplate.net/tournament/ma ... generator/ (the download link is where it says "Free: Yes" - or just click HERE).

Thanks so much for posting this Arch!

I came across an old roster and it has 30 teams and i want to add more to it? how do i import the schedules from the 32 team roster database to an older database? can i not used the same schedule for the 2019 database however with 6 divisions instead of 4 or does it have to be the 4 divisions?

also if i have the same setup for OHL like the WHL has for the would the same schedule work?

archibalduk wrote: Sun Sep 08, 2019 4:03 pm I have been struggling to find a free schedule generator which exports to Excel (they all seem to require subscription) but I have now come across this nifty Excel spreadsheet: https://exceltemplate.net/tournament/ma ... generator/ (the download link is where it says "Free: Yes" - or just click HERE).

The spreadsheet is about 50mb and so it is a bit slow when running it in Excel. I have been using this to create schedule templates for various UK leagues and it has been doing a really good job. Here is how I have been using it to create round robin-style schedule templates:

1.0 Open the spreadsheet named "Soccer_Fixtures_Generator_Pro_V28.xlsx".
2.0 Click on the "Setup" tab:
2.1 Enter the number of teams in the "Number of Teams" cell (Cell K14).
2.2 Enter the number of times the teams play each other in the "Same Team Meeting" cell (Cell K15). E.g. if the teams play each other 4 times (i.e. twice at home and twice on the road), enter "4".
2.3 Enter the team names in Column W. Seeing as the schedule is for a schedule template, enter "0" for the first team's name, "1" for the second team's name, "2" for the third team's name, etc.
3.0 Click on the "Round" tab. This shows the entirety of the schedule. You can then copy and paste the schedule (i.e. Columns H and K) into your schedule template spreadsheet which can then be imported into the Editor. The "Round #" column at Column D is quite handy because it shows what round each game relates to. You can then use this as a reference point when setting what dates you want for each game.

The above will create a simple template if you are willing to set the dates yourself. However, it is possible to make the spreadsheet do this for you. On the "Setup" tab you should enter the Season (Cell K10) and the Start Date (Cell K13). Then on the "Round" tab enter the Start Date at Cell S12. You can choose which days of the week at Cells R17 - R23. You should also set the Number of Rounds per Day (Cell S25) to 1 otherwise you will end up with multiple rounds taking place on the same day.

how do u get this to work for a league with 2 divisions? It only allows me to go to end of December instead of the whole season?

I was just wondering if there was a database, that had 30 teams in it so that i could use their database from the ehm 1 editor as im doing a database from 2006-2007 and that had 27 AHL teams and i want to have 30 AHL teams