FOF8: Exporting and importing in MP league

[zsteelers]

hello everyone, is there any difference between the export files from CCFL/GML and other MP leagues, such as RNFL?

I'm trying to join RNFL, but I run FOF8 on a mac using PlayOnMac. As a test, I was able to successfully read the CCFL files from Ben's website. However, I get a message in FOF8 that the files that I got to setup RNFL are corrupted and that I cannot load a game. I'm using and FTP client to copy the files to my leagues/[league_id] folder.

From older messages, it seems that Ben has solved this issue in late Dec 2016 -- any guidance here would be highly appreciated.

[zsteelers]

To be more specific, I downloaded the ccfl2017 files as a test, although I'm not part of that league. I could manage to read them OK it seems, and my leagues/[league_id] folder contains the following.

[league_id].ffn
[league_id].fgd
[league_id].fju
[league_id].fpd
[league_id].fps
[league_id].frc
[league_id]Week.Year

Where league_id is ccfl2017 or RNFLxxxx. My procedure is the following.

1) 'Enter a New Career' under Control/Participants, and select the Rams. I did the same step with ccfl2017 and RNFLxxx, and in both cases FOF8 tells me that a file was created in /export/[league_id]/[league_id].26Q . I believe 26 is the ID code for the Rams.
2) I would then click on the icon 'Open an MP game', and select the corresponding game.
3) For ccfl2017, the league files are read OK and I am prompted a password for the Rams, which I obviously don't have since I'm not managing the Rams in that league.
4) For RNFLxxxx, I get the following message 'Unable to load game data file. Save game is corrupted'.

I'm totally clueless on how to proceed.

[Ben E Lou]

Where'd you get the FTP information for the CCFL?

[zsteelers]

Hi Ben, thanks for the quick response.

sorry, I didn't get the ccfl files from the ftp as I don't have that info (I meant that I got the ftp files for RNFL, which I'm trying to join).

The ccfl2017 files I downloaded from the CCFL webpage

Index of /files

after following a thread here on the new zip files export. I thought that would help me.

any of the zip files seem to read fine for me, although I'm not able to do anything past the team password stage as you would expect. but at least it tells me that the files are reading fine, which is not the case for RNFL. I just checked and also the zip files from your GML website read fine to me.

any ideas you might have would be very welcome, thanks a million.

[PackerFanatic]

Wondering if our initial file might be missing something - although I haven't heard of issues from the few others that have joined since FOF8.

[zsteelers]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Where'd you get the FTP information for the CCFL?

Ben, following my previous message, I think now I know what is going on -- you mentioned these in one of your posts before, and it's related to FOF8 compressing the ftp files.

I did some extensive tests setting up my own test mp league, and the issue is related to the ftp files being compressed by FOF8. We are not able to read directly the files exported by FOF8 with the 'Export game files' function available to the commissioners, since they are compressed. The zip files that Ben provides in CCFL/GML/IHOF are uncompressed, and this is why I can read those files and not yours from the ftp.

Is it possible to decompress the ftp files? I couldn't do it with any of the usual suspects like zip, 7z, gzip, rar etc

[Ben E Lou]

Oh, I thought commishes had gotten the word about compression. I've tried to spread it.

Yeah, you have to create zip files / backups from the /leagues folder, not the Export folder.

The only way I know of to uncompress the files is to download them via in-game FTP.

[PackerFanatic]

I think the problem is that the initial ZIP we provided is uncompressed properly, but he cannot pull down the files in-game (and I do not provide the uncompressed files in ZIP format like your leagues do).

[zsteelers]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Oh, I thought commishes had gotten the word about compression. I've tried to spread it.

Yeah, you have to create zip files / backups from the /leagues folder, not the Export folder.

The only way I know of to uncompress the files is to download them via in-game FTP.

thanks for looking into this, Ben.

Would you be willing to share with other commissioners your script for producing zip files from the leagues folder?

if yes, I could see a light in the end of the tunnel for joining MP leagues other than CCFL/GML/IHOF! too bad they don't have an opening at the moment, since these are the only files I can read.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by zsteelers

Would you be willing to share with other commissioners your script for producing zip files from the leagues folder?

I could share the script, but it'd be useless to do so without considerable technical work on their end. It runs on my machine, but also accesses my FTP server and database server. They'd have to set up a MySQL server on their machines with Apache installed, have a database with tables that mirror mine, have a way to update those tables with every sim to reflect the current stage, be able to access that database remotely (some hosting providers don't allow this,) and adjust significant parts of the code to match their own computers and their server configurations. (I'm moving files around on my machine to create backups in Dropbox, as well as backing them up on the server.) Anyone able to do all of that would probably find it easier to write their own script than to modify mine, because it's highly integrated with everything else that I'm doing.

Just walking through the code quickly, the script does the following

1. Connect my machine to server via FTP.
2. Connect my machine to remote database. (Again, some hosts don't allow this.)
3. Grab current season, stage number, and stage name from remote database. (If they're not updating their remote database daily with the current stage, this won't work.)
4. Identify what files in my /leagues/ directory have changed today.
5. Copy some of the files identified in step 4 (not all should be put in the backup...some are related to my team only or to commish-only functionality) into my dropbox/leaguebackups folder.
6. Create a zip file in the dropbox folder mentioned earlier.
7. Upload the zip file to the /files folder of the appropriate league on the FTP server.
8. Grab all import files from today and upload them to a folder on the server that another script uses to identify when each team last exported.
9. Close the FTP connection.
10. Close the remote db connection.
11. Output a link to the next step in my simming process. (Auto-posting.)

Line breaks included, it's only ~80 lines of code, but just about every section is customized to work with my local machine, web server, and db structure. Steps 8 and 11 could be left off for others, but those only total 9 lines of code. The rest of the steps would be essential to the process for anyone.

[zsteelers]

indeed a lot of effort would be needed and, unfortunately, I'd be surprised if any commish would be willing to go through that just to make it work for one user.

I guess I'll have to wait for an opening at GML/CCFL/IHOF to play MP :-(

thanks again for the technical info.

[Sharkn20]

Originally Posted by zsteelers

indeed a lot of effort would be needed and, unfortunately, I'd be surprised if any commish would be willing to go through that just to make it work for one user.

I guess I'll have to wait for an opening at GML/CCFL/IHOF to play MP :-(

thanks again for the technical info.

The OSFL has also a lot of openings and youcan put yourself in the waiting list of the CFL too.

[zsteelers]

definitely! I just registered for the OSFL and hope to be activated before the new season starts. excited about that league!

I found a workaround to join MP leagues using FOF8 on a Mac -- I'll post a detailed how-to later on, but I'm using virtualbox from Oracle (free) and a free windows 7 image from microsoft that lasts for 90 days.

[Front Office Midget]

Piggy-backing on this thread, might have to start another or send an email to support.

My league just got our conversion file for the 2046 season. Participant can load the Solecismic-exported end-of-2045 file, but cannot load my exported start-of-2046 file. When they try, they get the "Unable to load data file. Save game is corrupted" message.

Our method is the same as FOF7. I email them a zip of all the contents of the export folder, they unzip it into their leagues\leagueid folder. Has something changed? Confused as to why this is happening.

[zsteelers]

In FOF8, exported and imported files are compressed, and probably encrypted -- at least I couldn't uncompress them with usual protocols like zip, 7zip, gzip, bzip, rar, etc. Because of that, Mac users cannot load the compressed files in game (not sure why). Perhaps something similar happens to some windows users? I sent an email to solecismic support asking for further clarifications on the import/export format, but never got a response.

My suspicion is that the Solecismic-exported EOS 2045 files are uncompressed, but yours are. This could be easily checked by comparing their sizes. E.g., the .fju file is about 30-35 MB uncompressed, and 3-4 MB compressed. This would explain why the Solecismic files could be loaded, but not yours.

One way to solve this would be to make available the appropriate files from your league folder, which are not compressed (again, file sizes should be larger than those in the export folder). Be careful to not send commissioner or other files. If you look in the most recent GML or CCFL zip files, you could see which files you need to make available. the drawback is that you would need to do a zip of the appropriate files and make them available after every sim.

I hope this helps!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Front Office Midget

Has something changed?

Yes. Directions for how to do it now are on the Solecismic site. The poster above is correct about compression. But there's not a need for zip files if you follow all of the instructions.

[Front Office Midget]

Ok, but none of the members of my league have used FTP. We have always been able to just zip the files back and forth via email, which was really simple.

Is this no longer possible? Is it now necessary to set up an FTP?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Front Office Midget

Ok, but none of the members of my league have used FTP. We have always been able to just zip the files back and forth via email, which was really simple.

Is this no longer possible? Is it now necessary to set up an FTP?

Originally Posted by Help File

Multi-Player Overview:

Multi-Player in Front Office Football Seven involves one commissioner and up to 32 separate team owners. This is a stage-based game. Team owners send the commissioner stage instruction files. The commissioner imports these information files into the game, runs the stage, saves the game, then exports a new set of league files from the game.

Specific multi-player functions can be found in two places. The New Multi-Player Game and Open Multi-Player Game icons are at the top of the game window. And the Controls section of the menu system contains Commissioner and Participants menus.

Note that multi-player games are played outside of the Steam framework. A commissioner must set up an FTP site to support multi-player games. You can use the Steam version of the game for multi-player play, but you won't use the match-making functions within Steam.

The game itself lists FTP as a requirement for this version. Technically, if you want to go through the hassle of grabbing the files from /leagues that need to be distributed for every stage, than you could do that, but I'd hazard a guess that you'd be the only commish going through that trouble. FTP is *far* easier. You don't send out the same files each stage, and giving out certain wrong ones will cause significant problems in your league. You'd have to check the /export folder to see which ones, then grab those from /leagues.

[zsteelers]

well, I mentioned above a possible way of doing zips from your league folder that should work, but Ben definitely has a lot more experience in this thing than me.

[Front Office Midget]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

The game itself lists FTP as a requirement for this version. Technically, if you want to go through the hassle of grabbing the files from /leagues that need to be distributed for every stage, than you could do that, but I'd hazard a guess that you'd be the only commish going through that trouble. FTP is *far* easier. You don't send out the same files each stage, and giving out certain wrong ones will cause significant problems in your league. You'd have to check the /export folder to see which ones, then grab those from /leagues.

Ah, truth be told I assumed that help document was outdated because the second sentence says "Front Office Football Seven" and since that game didn't require FTP, I still assumed this one did.

I guess I'll just have to quit being stubborn and learn how to do something new new. Thanks.

[Ben E Lou]

Heh. Well, the same thing was true for FOF7: FTP was "required" and easier than creating zip files with every stage. The difference was that the zip file workaround back then could be done straight from the /export folder, because he wasn't doing compression. But in either version, FTP is easier. It's just that in FOF7 it was "noticeably easier" and in FOF8 it's "far easier."

[Front Office Midget]

After an hour and a half of trying to set up and log onto an FTP server to no success (something about failed to create listen socket, aborting), I'm going to see if just sending the files from the "leagues" folder works.

We are only a 4 person league, so going through hours of trying to learn how to set up an FTP does not really seem efficient for us.