FBCB2 discussion: Full version now available

[Radii]

Thought of another cosmetic thing from my online league. Is it possible to highlight the human owned teams in a different color to check the pretourney/conf tourney screens. It happens on the NCAA tourney screen so I figure it has to be possible. This way if I want to recap the human team results off the tourney screen real quick I can.

I'd like to see this in the HTML as well, maybe on the standings page, polls, top 100 recruits page for the ones that sign with human run teams?

[whomario]

sth is off with the timeouts now, have had teams call like 3 in a row without any ball being played in between :confused: also i think the benches get cleared a bit too early and too drastically. Not that the games aren´t decided, but IRL even up 30 you´ll still won´t see the bench mob in with 5 minutes to go.

[HeavyReign]

The blowout code shouldn't kick in any earlier than 5 minutes remaining in the game.

I'll run more tests on the timeouts. I saw that once when I was testing but fixed what caused it. Was this on 2.1.25,2.1.26, or 2.1.27?

[dawgfan]

So, one of the things I love about this game is how easily it allows me to think of it like an RPG as a coach, and how interested I get in researching the schools I coach and get offers from.

I just started my 3rd career, opting this time to sim a season first and see what offers I got rather than choosing my first school. My only offer was from North Dakota, so I took it. I really doubt I'd ever have had any motivation otherwise to start researching the school on Wiki, and certainly wouldn't have had any reason to look up their basketball history as well as the history of the Great West conference.

Now, I'm up to speed on a variety of things:

- That North Dakota was, until recently, competing in Division 2;
- That they are in their last season competing as "The Fighting Sioux", as well as reading up on the controversy over retiring that nickname and mascot;
- That their hockey and basketball arenas are privately owned and were financed by a former UND grad named Ralph Engelstad, a self-made Las Vegas casino tycoon who also supposedly had a soft spot for Hitler;
- That Phil Jackson is a UND alum;
- That the Great West Conference does not have an auto-bid to the NCAA Tournament - instead, the winner of the Great West Tournament is given an auto-bid to the CIT;
- That the Great West is (not surprisingly) highly fragile, and both North Dakota and South Dakota will be leaving after the 2012 season; North Dakota to the Big Sky, South Dakota to the Summit League (except for football where they'll join the Missouri Valley Football Conference)

The things you learn playing a sports sim...

[whomario]

@ HR : It doesn´t kick in before 5 minutes, i´m propably just not used to it yet :)

I just won my first championship with the new version btw :) In the semifinal my 3rd string junior PG that played merely 5 MPG over the season steps in and scores 17 in 22 minutes, his previous season high was 8.
6 guys averaged between 8 and 13 PPG (the 7th and 8th rotation guys had 5 and 6 respectively)

[HeavyReign]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v220.exe

Extract the files to your install directory. When you start the game it should say version 2.2.0 in the bottom left corner after applying the update.

Version 2.2.0 (Previous builds will not load saves from this build)
************************************************************
Fixes:

Changes:
*Human teams highlighted on preseason tourneys screen and conference tourney screens
*Added additional color option for links to human teams,players,recruits on the html output page

Version 2.1.28
************************************************************
Fixes:

Changes:
*Added support for Height.ini. This file allows you to set the height distribution for created players by position.

[murrayyyyy]

Thanks Brian. Can't tell you how much the colors make things easier at first glance. Just thinking ahead, does it work for conference tourneys also? (Yeah, I know I could have said something sooner)

Been going thru the short history of my league (4 years) and looked at all the tourneys on the history page. It's nice to see it goes back in time also.

[RPI-Fan]

Thanks Brian. Can't tell you how much the colors make things easier at first glance. Just thinking ahead, does it work for conference tourneys also? (Yeah, I know I could have said something sooner)

Been going thru the short history of my league (4 years) and looked at all the tourneys on the history page. It's nice to see it goes back in time also.

The change list says it highlights for conference tournaments.

[murrayyyyy]

The change list says it highlights for conference tournaments.

Just another reason as to why I shouldn't be able to read messge boards after a 18 hour work day lol. :banghead:

[Groundhog]

Started up a new game last night with simulated history. Created a level 4 coach and waited for offers, eventually having to choose between 6 prestige independant SIU Edwardsville (not sure why they are still an independant, given they are in the OVC) and 7 prestige Navy. I went with SIU for more of a challenge.

It's the first time I've quick-simmed through games in a while. Started playing at 9.30pm. Went to bed at 1.30am. Woke up for work at 6am. I'm amazed that this game can still suck me in like this.

Anyone had much luck with indies in the latest version? I'm yet to crack .500+ but have come close, hoping that after my 4th season is over I'll get offers to move on.

[HeavyReign]

Being under .500 is bad if you want job offers. The new offer code really doesn't like that.

[Bigsmooth]

I've had decent success with Seattle U. That's probably because they started out with 35 prestige though. I've turned down a ton of jobs just waiting to get a chance to move into a conference. Think I will just force that to happen soon if necessary.

[Groundhog]

Being under .500 is bad if you want job offers. The new offer code really doesn't like that.

OK, I like that, and I feel like I'm only about a season or two away from being .500 given the recruits I'm bringing in. Does it consider RPI at all in this particular section of the game? I've resisted the temptation to schedule "cupcakes" - using quotes because they aren't exactly cupcakes compared to my squad! - by mixing in a range of teams, also knowing that RPI affects progression, but I wonder if that for the purposes of a coaching progression career where I don't get too attached to my school if it's better to just concentrate on win %?

[HeavyReign]

The answer is both really. You need to win with as high an RPI as you can manage to score well in the Independents. If you can sneak into any of the postseason tourneys that would help too.

[sjshaw]

HR rules and this game is great.

My only wish right now is improved HTML reporting for recruiting. FOCB-FBCB sims during the day when I rarely have access to the game. I would like to be able to check the uploaded HTML to see how my last round of recruiting went and where I stand with my call list.

[Young Drachma]

What a wacky Sweet 16

16 seed
4 seed
2 seed
14 seed
1 seed
5 seed
7 seed
3 seed
1 seed
13 seed
15 seed
14 seed
1 seed
4 seed
2 seed
3 seed


Poor bastards in the South region are the only ones with the 1,2,3,4 arrangements.

[dawgfan]

Fixed a few errors I ran across in the new logos and changed color values I had forgotten to update (or save the update) in the teams.csv. Also updated Arizona State to their newly released logos, and found new transition logos for North Dakota as they begin to move away from the Fighting Sioux nickname and mascot.

http://www.fbbgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8784&p=36926#p36926

[Izulde]

Anybody else not having their coach edits take completely?

When I open it up in the editor, everything's correct, but when I look at his coach card, the ratings are right, but the home town name, state, and high school are all wrong (ie what they were before).

[HeavyReign]

I remember fixing that before but it must not have worked. Actually it looks like I might have fixed it on the print screen before but not the regular screen. Its fixed again now.

[Radii]

Our online league just updated to the latest. I absolutely love the HTML improvements identifying human coached teams. Thanks!

[murrayyyyy]

Three notes from the HTML output for online leagues. Just things I have noticed.

1) Is there a way to have the scores from the previous years tourney post on site? It always shows zeroes for the score.
2) Could you add current pre-season tourneys as a menu option from html output. I think most people would rather see those on the html output than last years tourney with no scores.
3) If you have a league with four tourneys, the last tourney is not on the past champions tab.

Thanks

[Thomkal]

to add to Murray, can you add recruits signings to the html like you had in the first version?

[bryce]

What is the rhyme/reason behind the number of home games permitted during the scheduling process? I thought it was on an alternating annual basis, but that theory got crushed in my 4th year:

Year 1: 19 away games, 10 home
Year 2: 19 H, 10 A
Year 3: 19 A, 10 H
Year 4: I anticipated 19 home, but I got stuck with 19 away again and only 10 home...

edit to add I had few, if any, 'carryover' games scheduled in any eyar - eg, no home-and-home or other series...

also to add it's an indie team in case anyone is wondering how this is even possible given conference scheduling...

[Radii]

What is the rhyme/reason behind the number of home games permitted during the scheduling process? I thought it was on an alternating annual basis, but that theory got crushed in my 4th year:




Are you seeing that at the outset when it reports how many games you have?

Reason I ask is we've seen a bug that we can't figure out how it happened in our online league with a couple teams. Boston College (http://www.fbcb-fofc.com/league/rosters/roster26.htm). Ended up with all away games in non-conference, cannot figure out when or why it happened. I save all the old sim results but not all the exports... can't recreate it either

[bryce]

[QUOTE=bryce;2457071]What is the rhyme/reason behind the number of home games permitted during the scheduling process? I thought it was on an alternating annual basis, but that theory got crushed in my 4th year:

[\QUOTE]


Are you seeing that at the outset when it reports how many games you have?

Reason I ask is we've seen a bug that we can't figure out how it happened in our online league with a couple teams. Boston College (http://www.fbcb-fofc.com/league/rosters/roster26.htm). Ended up with all away games in non-conference, cannot figure out when or why it happened. I save all the old sim results but not all the exports... can't recreate it either

I'm seeing it from the get-go, from the start of the scheduling process. The email I get tells me as much, and that's what I'm forced to schedule.

[HeavyReign]

What is the rhyme/reason behind the number of home games permitted during the scheduling process? I thought it was on an alternating annual basis, but that theory got crushed in my 4th year:

Year 1: 19 away games, 10 home
Year 2: 19 H, 10 A
Year 3: 19 A, 10 H
Year 4: I anticipated 19 home, but I got stuck with 19 away again and only 10 home...

edit to add I had few, if any, 'carryover' games scheduled in any eyar - eg, no home-and-home or other series...

also to add it's an indie team in case anyone is wondering how this is even possible given conference scheduling...

With the current settings for low level teams from low prestige conferences, the outlier here is the 19h, 10a year. That shouldn't be possible.

[HeavyReign]

Are you seeing that at the outset when it reports how many games you have?

Reason I ask is we've seen a bug that we can't figure out how it happened in our online league with a couple teams. Boston College (http://www.fbcb-fofc.com/league/rosters/roster26.htm). Ended up with all away games in non-conference, cannot figure out when or why it happened. I save all the old sim results but not all the exports... can't recreate it either

Don't feel like you can't ask me about things like this right away when you notice them. With a league file right at the start of scheduling it would be easy to trace where the error was coming from. I looked at the current league file and it shows the BC should've been eligible for 9 home games so there had to have been an error in the code that reports the number of available games. Do you remember if both the schedule update email and the scheduling screen had the problem or was it just the scheduling screen?

The other question is had the answered all schedule proposals made by other teams to them first? The schedule screen will report 0 home games left if you have active proposals but the schedule email should tell you the actual total number of home games you have left to schedule.

[britrock88]

It happened to my team (Maryland) in FOFC, too, and IIRC, the scheduling email was normal. It seems as if the dates were just locked in as road games upon accepting any offer (home, away, H/A, or A/H) from a CPU team, or on their accepting your offer.

[Radii]

Don't feel like you can't ask me about things like this right away when you notice them.

Yeah, for sure, I was just surprised and annoyed that i couldn't recreate it and then got sidetracked by something shiny somewhere and forgot to bring it up ;)


With a league file right at the start of scheduling it would be easy to trace where the error was coming from. I looked at the current league file and it shows the BC should've been eligible for 9 home games so there had to have been an error in the code that reports the number of available games. Do you remember if both the schedule update email and the scheduling screen had the problem or was it just the scheduling screen?

It looks like they were listed as being eligible for 9 home games... something weird happened in the middle and they got scheduled as road games.

BC for certain said that they did nothing but accept requests from e-mails, in the first sim they didn't do anything at all and then just accepted CPU requests which were most if not all for home games but showed up as road games, we just didn't catch it until a number of sims later.

http://fbcb-fofc.com/download/fofcfbcb.zip.sched2 <-- after the first scheduling sim, shows all of BC's offers in the mail.

http://fbcb-fofc.com/download/fofcfbcb.zip.rec1 <-- after the second scheduling sim, BC now has a bunch of road games that they had mail offering home games before.


both are zip files just renamed for storage purposes.

[Radii]

dola, i did the exact same thing as UNC, I think every game i scheduled was done via accepting requests from CPU teams, nothing weird happened with me. I don't export/import my own instructions though, I just do them in game then import, so that is one difference.

We were not on 2.2.0 when this ran, this was 3 or 4 updates prior.

[HeavyReign]

Ok, thanks. I'll do some experimenting. If they accepted them as home games then it definitely could be in the import/export process.

[bryce]

oops, double post.

[bryce]

With the current settings for low level teams from low prestige conferences, the outlier here is the 19h, 10a year. That shouldn't be possible.

It might have been 18 & 11. I may have the exact totals wrong, but its some large-ish discrepancy... It may not be a bug, it just threw me for a loop when I was expecting more home than away in year 4, but the reverse happened.

[britrock88]

You can bring that about that kind of home/away imbalance at lower-prestige schools with lots of home-and-homes. But it's interesting that you were able to tip the balance without those arrangements.

[HeavyReign]

As a low independent team the game is designed to require you to play more road games than home games. If you have a year where you have 19,18,17 home games etc, then that is a bug and please let me know right away so I can look at the save. Although as was mentioned above, if you used home/home games to do it then that might explain it.

[youcancallmeal]

Had two weird things happen in a game in the online league. First, my opponent called 3 timeouts in a row with nothing in between. BTW am I right to assume the only benefit to calling timeout is a small rest for your players and being able to substitute? So the timeout after a long run by the other team is largely a cosmetic thing and not literally a momentum-killer.

Also, I started out the second half in a 1-3-1 zone, which wasn't one of my enabled defenses (but was one of the CPU team's).

[britrock88]

Had an interesting bit where I was down 33-40 to start the second half, ran off an 11-0 run over 7 minutes, and the CPU team didn't call timeout.

[HeavyReign]

Was there a media timeout in the middle of that run?

[HeavyReign]

There is a small momentum like factor that gets reset when you call a timeout.

[HeavyReign]

Had two weird things happen in a game in the online league. First, my opponent called 3 timeouts in a row with nothing in between. BTW am I right to assume the only benefit to calling timeout is a small rest for your players and being able to substitute? So the timeout after a long run by the other team is largely a cosmetic thing and not literally a momentum-killer.

Also, I started out the second half in a 1-3-1 zone, which wasn't one of my enabled defenses (but was one of the CPU team's).

Nevermind. I found what causes this.

[britrock88]

Yeah, there was a media timeout -- good thinking. What are the rough criteria for trigger momentum-killing timeouts now?

[HeavyReign]

The criteria for calling a timeout is still being developed. It depends on run size, timeouts remaining, and time left in the game. I made a bunch of adjustments now that the triple time out issue is fixed so hopefully we'll start to see better timeout usage.

[youcancallmeal]

There is a small momentum like factor that gets reset when you call a timeout.

Ah, good to know. I actually did not mind the old timeout logic, was it a 6-0 run that triggered it? The flaw was that it did not account for media timeouts. Maybe 7-0 would have been better so two 3s wouldn't trigger it.

There's probably a "smarter" way to do it but I thought that way had it's own charm. It mirrors how it works in real life too...one team has a couple of turnovers, opponent gets a couple of quick hoops, and Coach calls time -- almost impulsively, seemingly without much thought for time/score.

[murrayyyyy]

There's probably a "smarter" way to do it but I thought that way had it's own charm. It mirrors how it works in real life too...one team has a couple of turnovers, opponent gets a couple of quick hoops, and Coach calls time -- almost impulsively, seemingly without much thought for time/score.

I don't know about that. I've had extreme cases when the CPU had taken 3 timeouts before the first media timeout.

[whomario]

I still have the problem that teams will call 3 straight timeouts without the ball being inbounded in between. Actually i think allways happens in the first half and it´s allways when there´s 3 timeouts left (burning those remaining 3 in a row).

And it´s not a rare thing either, happens a couple times each season. I´m on version 2.1.27

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y159/Mario84/fbcbbug.jpg

[britrock88]

2.2.0 has fixed that, I think.

[HeavyReign]

Nah 2.2.1 will fix it I just haven't been able to post it yet.

[sjshaw]

HR:

In addition to adding the recruiting info back to the HTML, if you could possibly look into these, I would be appreciative.

1. Ability to sort recruits by 3PT%, if you can make room for it in the display.
2. I just started playing a lot of single-player in FBCB2, and think the redshirting and player unhappiness could be tweaked.

(A) I took over a team with 11 prestige and now have them up to 30+. Almost no signees will redshirt, even walkons. IMHO, no walkon should ever refuse a redshirt. After all, they're walkons.

I think as far as scholarship guys go, there could be a finer balance between the redshirt free-for-all in FBCB1 and this version. Maybe just for low prestige teams, who need that extra year of development in order to maximize their talent. In reality, players with leverage can call the shots, and that's really only top-flight recruits at big-time schools.

(B) I find that my walkons frequently get unhappy and transfer after their freshman year because they're not playing. Much moreso than scholarship guys. This seems weird to me... if anything, it should be the other way around. I think this could use a tweak too.

[dawgfan]

Hey Brian, I've noticed in my most recent career what seems to be an unusual number of high level, young coaches. I'll do a survey when I get home, but I've seen quite a few guys that would have started off as head coaches at high prestige schools in their late 20's, and with pretty high coaching levels - more than I would normally expect to see.

I'll post results later tonight (hopefully) of my survey.

[HeavyReign]

Let me know what you find including whether these were coaches that started in the default league or ones that were created later on. I tweaked the coach creation previously in version 2.1.25 and in my tests things have seemed reasonable.

[dawgfan]

This isn't an exhaustive list, but some of the guys I've run across - these are all guys that have been head coaches (except where noted) since the start of my current dynasty:

Baylor coach - age 27, assistant for 4 seasons, then head coach at age 31 (now 41), currently level 11, A+/D/A+/A+
Texas coach - age 34 (now 48), currently level 12, C/A+/A+/A+
Texas Tech coach - age 29 (now 43), level 9, D/A/A/B
Duke coach - age 33 (now 47), currently level 11, A+/D/A+/A+
Michigan St coach - age 31 (now 45), currently level 13, A+/C+/A+/A+
Auburn coach - age 33 (now 47), currently level 10, A+/C-/A+/B-
Kentucky coach - age 32 (now 46), currently level 12, A+/C/A+/A+

Now that I look at it, I suppose this isn't that unusual. There are more guys that were head coaches at a young age, but aren't as high a level.

[HeavyReign]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v221.exe

Extract the files to your install directory. When you start the game it should say version 2.2.1 in the bottom left corner after applying the update.

Version 2.2.1
************************************************************
Fixes:
*Fixed a display error after editing the highschool of a computer coach
*Added more code to prevent conference games from being played too close to the start of the conference tourney
*Added check to make sure 8 team double bye tourney has 4 days in default league editor
*Added code to verify all conference tourneys have a valid schedule when starting a new game.
*Fixed bug that caused multiple timeouts to be called in a row
*Fixed bug that caused the opposing teams defense settings to be used during the first possession of the 2nd half.
*Team strategy will now update properly if an illegal screen is called leading to FTs for the defense.
*Switching to cpu recruiting after you have offered scholarships in a month should no longer result in the computer offering additional scholarships.

Changes:
*Added the option to prevent players from refusing redshirts

[Young Drachma]

This isn't an exhaustive list, but some of the guys I've run across - these are all guys that have been head coaches (except where noted) since the start of my current dynasty:

Baylor coach - age 27, assistant for 4 seasons, then head coach at age 31 (now 41), currently level 11, A+/D/A+/A+
Texas coach - age 34 (now 48), currently level 12, C/A+/A+/A+
Texas Tech coach - age 29 (now 43), level 9, D/A/A/B
Duke coach - age 33 (now 47), currently level 11, A+/D/A+/A+
Michigan St coach - age 31 (now 45), currently level 13, A+/C+/A+/A+
Auburn coach - age 33 (now 47), currently level 10, A+/C-/A+/B-
Kentucky coach - age 32 (now 46), currently level 12, A+/C/A+/A+

Now that I look at it, I suppose this isn't that unusual. There are more guys that were head coaches at a young age, but aren't as high a level.

In my AD dynasty I've noticed this but not a bad way. Most really good young assistants don't get jobs until their mid-to-late 30s or even later in some cases into the mid-40s or so. I almost always have to go and artificially Brad Stevens them into jobs earlier than the game usually appoints them.

[dawgfan]

This is probably mainly my computer's fault (and mine for not restarting before playing), but I got an RTE '7' "Out of memory" a few minutes ago (this was on 2.2.0). Of course I hadn't saved in the last 45 minutes, and lost 20 games and 2 months of recruiting...

:(

[HeavyReign]

What was the last thing you did when it happened? I wouldn't expect it to be your computer's fault.

[dawgfan]

I had lost in my conference tournament, and was doing a "Sim to Game" to the Monday following the NCAA Selection Day, and clicked "yes" to watch the tournament seeding.

[HeavyReign]

If you still have your save from that season could you send it to [email protected]?

[dawgfan]

If you still have your save from that season could you send it to [email protected]?
Do you just need the saveinfo.dat, or more (all?) of the .dat files?

[HeavyReign]

all the dat files

[dawgfan]

Sent...

[whomario]

is it just me or has scheduling become infinitely more difficult after one of the previous updates ? (jumped 1 or 2 i think)
No one is willing to schedule road games ...

[HeavyReign]

There shouldn't be any changes there.

[whomario]

hmm, i could swear that up to last weekend i could go 3,4 seasons without any team rejecting me and since the latest update i have like at least 6 or 7 out of 9 teams reject me. Just now went 0 for 8 in scheduling home games (everything from 10 to 100 prestige in the selection)

[Young Drachma]

hmm, i could swear that up to last weekend i could go 3,4 seasons without any team rejecting me and since the latest update i have like at least 6 or 7 out of 9 teams reject me. Just now went 0 for 8 in scheduling home games (everything from 10 to 100 prestige in the selection)

What's your prestige, though?

[whomario]

What's your prestige, though?

the same as before i updated ;) (93 currently, has been between 90 and 95 for 5 years, 3 before the update and now the 2nd after)

i just did save/re-load 3 times to test this and went 0 for 24 overall in trying to schedule home games, when i accept proposals and there´s 3 left i´ll go 0 for 3 the next week.

[whomario]

i also have another nitpick : Why are there so many players coming in that can´t even play 3 minutes before getting tired ? Especially for guards this seems weird.

[dawgfan]

is it just me or has scheduling become infinitely more difficult after one of the previous updates ? (jumped 1 or 2 i think)
No one is willing to schedule road games ...
It's not just you. I had the same thing happen to me last night - after never getting more than a couple rejections on scheduling, I had nearly all of them rejected in my off-season last night (about 9 I believe). Similar thing - I'm running a prestige 91 team, pretty much all the rejections were about teams refusing to play any more road games in their schedule.

Never seen anything remotely close to this before.

[OldGiants]

Had six scheduling rejects last night on my first session with the new patch. I simply accepted the other proposals, but I never had more than one rejection in a season before.

[HeavyReign]

Found the problem with the schedule requests. Must've messed it up when I was looking around for the issue reported in the online league.

[HeavyReign]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v222.exe

[dawgfan]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v222.exe
Thanks Brian. Scheduling had suddenly become a real pain in the butt.

[bryce]

Really respect the quick response times on bugs and discussion points, Brian. Much appreciated.

[chesapeake]

I was just about to complain about scheduling, and lo, it is already solved. Many thanks, Brian!

[dawgfan]

Hey Brian, minor scheduling complaint:

I took over at Duke in my latest career, and not only do we often not face North Carolina twice in a season, every time we face them only once in the regular season, it's an away game in Chapel Hill.

[HeavyReign]

Drawing only road games in the single years would've been random chance. I was aware that Duke/UNC happens the last day of the regular season always but I couldn't find any other guaranteed matchups in the conference like that. Does this sound right? I may be able to come up with some way of making that work.

[Radii]

Drawing only road games in the single years would've been random chance. I was aware that Duke/UNC happens the last day of the regular season always but I couldn't find any other guaranteed matchups in the conference like that. Does this sound right? I may be able to come up with some way of making that work.

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/acc/sports/m-baskbl/auto_pdf/model-three-years.pdf

Each team in the ACC has two "primary partners" that they play twice every year. UNC always plays Duke twice, and the last game is the last game of the regular season for each team. Outside of those two teams (UNC plays NC State and Duke twice every year, Duke plays UNC and Maryland twice every year, etc), they have a rotation system.

[dawgfan]

...and of course the game proves me wrong by giving me a single game vs. North Carolina that's a home game for the upcoming season.

As for the info Radii provided, it's less important to me personally to make sure that one of the two Duke/NC games is the last regular season game (I certainly don't mind, but it's not a huge priority for me personally), and more important to program in the "primary partner" rule. Though I can see where that would potentially get complicated in situations when conference movement is enabled...

[Radii]

As for the info Radii provided, it's less important to me personally to make sure that one of the two Duke/NC games is the last regular season game (I certainly don't mind, but it's not a huge priority for me personally), and more important to program in the "primary partner" rule

Agree completely.

[Groundhog]

Well, I just nabbed a couple of amazing recruits with lowly Alabama State... only to hit the "New Game" button by accident. Hitting "cancel" then takes you back to the main menu, losing your current game. :(

Maybe a pop-up "are you sure?" box would be handy if you have a game open when you click here?

[murrayyyyy]

Well, I just nabbed a couple of amazing recruits with lowly Alabama State... only to hit the "New Game" button by accident. Hitting "cancel" then takes you back to the main menu, losing your current game. :(

Maybe a pop-up "are you sure?" box would be handy if you have a game open when you click here?

I did this once but quickly learned there was an autosave button in the game.

[Young Drachma]

Is it possible to ensure that when a coach gets fired mid-season or at the end of the year prior to the off-season being run, that his last job ends up in his player card? This is obviously an online league issue, but I've noticed it before and always thought around it, but it came up again and figured I'd ask about it.

[HeavyReign]

I'll take a look at that. Shouldn't be hard to change I'd imagine.

[Swaggs]

I have been loving this. Adding the transfers, the color ratings and the additional history features are all great adds.

Do all computer generated coaches begin at level 0? I'd like to see more competent (re: higher level) younger coaches. In real life, it is not unusual to see very high end coaches in their early to mid-40s (Izzo, Donovan, Dixon, Stevens, etc.).

[dawgfan]

I have been loving this. Adding the transfers, the color ratings and the additional history features are all great adds.

Do all computer generated coaches begin at level 0? I'd like to see more competent (re: higher level) younger coaches. In real life, it is not unusual to see very high end coaches in their early to mid-40s (Izzo, Donovan, Dixon, Stevens, etc.).
See my post above - I've had careers where I've seen quite a few really good young coaches.

[HeavyReign]

If you are using the latest version then you should see cpu coaches starting a range of levels. It was added this spring. Latest build is:

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v222.exe

[murrayyyyy]

How's the work coming on the NBA side? Saw you were working on it and haven't seen any bugs for the NCAA game lately. Would love a NBA version like the NCAA game.

[HeavyReign]

Work is getting done. I'll talk about it more when I start getting closer to beta.

[Radii]

We have a good number of human coaches in the ACC and Big 10 in our online league, and I was thinking of doign some kind of ACC/Big 10 Challenge, using the entire conferences, not just the human run teams. Last year's #1's play each other, etc.

The problem is that its not possible that I know of to force two CPU teams to play each other.

1) Is there any way to facilitate this in the game as it is? I want Georgia Tech and Illinois to play on Dec 7th as part of this but both are CPU run, any way to force this to happen?

2) If its not possible I'd like to request that it be made possible.

3) I'd love the ability to send out the invites for preseason tourneys myself if I want as well. Perhaps make the preseason NIT contain the perceived top 16 human run teams, or really do whatever I want with it. Is a change like that possible?

Thanks!

[HeavyReign]

I'd say both could be possible without an unreasonable amount of work. For #1 I could basically make it possible to schedule games between any two teams and set it as home/road/neutral as long as both teams had an opening on that day. Basically a manual schedule override.

#3 would really just require the screen to do so and perhaps some extra data added into the save.

[britrock88]

Speaking of home/road/neutral, how about a way to set up one-off neutral games in non-conference play?

[HeavyReign]

nvm

[HeavyReign]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v224.exe

Extract the files to your install directory. When you start the game it should say version 2.2.4 in the bottom left corner after applying the update.

Version 2.2.4
************************************************************
Fixes:
*Fixed a freeze when the game was unable to find enough valid head coach candidates.
*Redesigned the schedule request code used by team import/exports. Some old requests may be deleted when loading a game. It will not be possible to answer email requests for these games either.

Changes:
*Human teams are now highlighted on the schedule proposal team list.


Version 2.2.3
************************************************************
Fixes:
*clicking new game will now prompt you before exiting an active game.
*Coaches fired midseason should have the current season results saved to their coach history.

Changes:
*Added the option to manually seed preseason tourneys. This is available in the tools menu and can be done any time in between the coach hiring period and the tourney
scheduling period.
*Added the option to manually schedule singles games. This is available in the tools menu and can be done any time in between the coach hiring period and training camps.

[Groundhog]

Thanks again HR!

[dawgfan]

Thanks Brian!

Side note - can you shed a little bit of light on the pre-season tourney selection logic? I just had my 2nd season in a row where I wasn't offered a spot in any pre-season tournament. Both teams were coming off of NCAA tournament appearances; first season my prestige was 62, second season my prestige was 68. First season was with the 2.2.2 build, second one on the new 2.2.4 build.

I was a little surprised, since it seems like once your team reaches a certain prestige level, it's almost guaranteed to get some kind of pre-season tournament offer...

[HeavyReign]

Basically for each prestige level of tourney and number of teams the game has an ideal prestige level that it targets on a descending scale by seed. Tourneys with prestige level 1 will avoid top 50ish teams to start. I'd think the safest range for getting a tourney most years is going to be the top 20 teams or so. I'll make myself a note to take a look at the breakdown of how many of each prestige range are actually getting invites using the default tourney setup.

[dawgfan]

Thanks for the info Brian.

In a "it would be a cool thing to have" vein, how difficult would it be to add the option to host your own 4-game tournament if your team doesn't get an invite from one of the default tournaments? You could scan the teams not already invited to a tournament and try to put something together at your school (presumably you'd have to look for lower prestige teams in order to be the host)...

[Balldog]

I think it would be cool to be able to lock a team to a region in the NCAA tournament but doubt its very feasible :)

[Young Drachma]

Thanks for the info Brian.

In a "it would be a cool thing to have" vein, how difficult would it be to add the option to host your own 4-game tournament if your team doesn't get an invite from one of the default tournaments? You could scan the teams not already invited to a tournament and try to put something together at your school (presumably you'd have to look for lower prestige teams in order to be the host)...

If we're talking pre-season tournies, you could just add your own tournament before the season starts to achieve this. I add and delete them all of the time.

[dawgfan]

If we're talking pre-season tournies, you could just add your own tournament before the season starts to achieve this. I add and delete them all of the time.
Ah, cool. I'll poke around and see if I can figure out how to do this.

[dawgfan]

For anyone else that is running the 2.2.4 version, under a coach's history are you seeing his post-season listed as "left midseason"?

Every coach in my universe shows that in their post-season column for the two completed seasons I've done in my current career on the 2.2.4 .exe.

[HeavyReign]

Doh http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v225.exe will fix that.

[dawgfan]

Thanks for the quick turnaround Brian!

[britrock88]

The latest build does not password-protect a team's recruiting page in MP mode.

[murrayyyyy]

Just a note on the season flip. When the file flips, the injury dates don't advance any. So if you have a guy injured for one day, you can then force a redshirt on him when he normally wouldn't take one. So all injuries from April's final game til June don't count.

[bryce]

I LOVE this game, but there's one thing I've noticed that started happening about 5-10 builds ago - you know how the individual defensive pressure defaults to High for your starters at the outset of a game? If I change that to Normal before the tip, those changes don't take place. So I wait for the first deal ball, then make the changes to Normal, and those do take effect. So it seems like it has something to do with entering the game in play-by-play mode but before the actual game starts.

Actually, now that I think about it, another thing along those same lines: my depth chart never seems to flow to the game. For example, right now my C and PF are always switched. So my C in my depth chart becomes my PF in the game, and my PF in my depth chart becomes my C when I start a game. It's not just those two positions, though. In previous seasons it's been other positions that flip. Not a big deal since I coach every game, so I just make the switch before tip, but it also started happening at the same time as the previous issue, about 5-10 builds ago.

(I know, I probably should have mentioned it at the time, but these are such minor issues I didn't want to sound burdensome.)

Ok, one more minor request since I'm on it. How hard would it be to have a button on the depth chart screen that makes every player eligible at every position? This is 100% cosmetic since it takes all of 25 seconds to click on every position for every player, but if it's easy to program, I thought I'd throw it out there.

Thanks for all the hard work and constant attention. I saw the thread about a pro game coming to fruition - I'll be buying that for sure! I bought Gary's pro game a few months ago, but he was never interested in fixing any issue anyone brought up. I still don't think the game is playable in fact, but I will admit I gave up trying once I discovered FBCB2. Buying a text sim really is the same as buying into the programmer.

[hollmt]

Brians support he offers for his games is what makes the people devoted to him and his games so much. It is one thing to make a game good, but another thing altogether to support it continuously and not gripe and moan about it when people offer suggestions, even if just little ones.

Go to sleep Brian..I see you lurking in this thread :)

[Sweet16]

Hello all. Here is my first post. I'm a retired programmer and I pretty much spend all day every day playing FBCB2, so obviously it is my favorite past time since buying it a few weeks ago. I've tried coming up with something like this a couple of times but didnt stick with it. Since I feel like somebody else did my work for me, I appreciate the excellent product and excellent support.

I have two questions:

1) I coach every game. Does anyone else feel that the free throw rebounds are skewed too much to the offense? I cant find stats to prove it, but from watching and playing in a great bunch of games, I'd say there are too many FT rebounds going to the offense and of those, too many result in tip-ins, dunks, and rebounds by the FT shooter. Maybe the same code used for field rebounds is used here.

2) Is there some way to show how well the players are doing defensively? Steals and blocks are rare, as are occasional drawing of charges and 5-sec violations. I'd like to see some stat that indicates how often a player performed well or poorly on defensive opportunities so I can have the same info as a coach watching the game.

[inranger]

Just ran across a problem Brian, I'm getting a "runtime 9 - subscript out of range" error. I was just starting a new season, and noticed that there were no preseason tourneys scheduled. On the hotseat page, I tried to sim to my first game and got the error. Any idea what is going on here?

[Illini Boy]

I have one question, but it is extremely important to whether or not I will buy this game. Can conferences have any amount of teams? (IE Big East with 17, Great West with 5)

Thanks,
Illini

[OldGiants]

Hello all. Here is my first post. I'm a retired programmer and I pretty much spend all day every day playing FBCB2, so obviously it is my favorite past time since buying it a few weeks ago. I've tried coming up with something like this a couple of times but didnt stick with it. Since I feel like somebody else did my work for me, I appreciate the excellent product and excellent support. I have two questions: 1) I coach every game. Does anyone else feel that the free throw rebounds are skewed too much to the offense? I cant find stats to prove it, but from watching and playing in a great bunch of games, I'd say there are too many FT rebounds going to the offense and of those, too many result in tip-ins, dunks, and rebounds by the FT shooter. Maybe the same code used for field rebounds is used here. 2) Is there some way to show how well the players are doing defensively? Steals and blocks are rare, as are occasional drawing of charges and 5-sec violations. I'd like to see some stat that indicates how often a player performed well or poorly on defensive opportunities so I can have the same info as a coach watching the game.

Welcome! Good to have another retiree on the site. I'm glad you're enjoying FBCB2, it takes up much of my non-wife directed free time, too.

I'll try to give you some tips from how I play the game, but I have a very different playing style from you for all sports sims: I never play out the games. My reasoning is that all too often coaching the game gives the player (me) options that the AI does not have and makes the game too easy for me. Fast simming allows me to look only at the overall stats and decide if they are true to life. Thus the FT rebound issue never comes up for me, because I don't know it exists. I am, therefore, happy.

As to defense, I go by the +/- ratings and the perimeter and inside defense attributes, which Brian has said are accurate on your own team (if not all, I don't remember). If there is a discrepancy between what I'm expecting and the +/-s then I tweak my defense. Essentially, I play MtM with two others in the mix after I've played a few seasons and can get three up to the high 90s quickly. I can't tell, without more analysis, but I think this has a decent impact on the results I see.

I judge the team shooting percentage, turnovers and points allowed to see if everyone is doing their job. I don't expect a scorer to throttle his man on D, rather to do what he should do: outscore him. I leave the inside D to one or two players (one if the other is one of my scorers).

Overall, I try to get my team to play enough defense to match the style and talents of the players I have. Normally I try to have a smothering defense, but in FBCB2 I have not tried to do that as much and have added scorers as often as D and rebounding for more balanced teams.

Anyway, keep having fun.

[britrock88]

I have one question, but it is extremely important to whether or not I will buy this game. Can conferences have any amount of teams? (IE Big East with 17, Great West with 5)

Thanks,
Illini

Fortunately for you, the answer is YES. I don't remember the exact range, but I'll find that for you and edit in the numbers.

EDIT: conferences can have 2-20 teams.

[dawgfan]

Hey Brian, odd bug I've noticed occur a few times recently. Definitely has happened in the 2.2.5 patch, I think it might have happened in the 2.2.4 patch as well. I'll see if I can cause it to happen in my current career again, but the basic issue is this:

- When in the Team Schedule phase, I've had instances where I've proposed a number of games, then tried to cancel one of those invites only to find that multiple game invites were canceled, and the teams I'd tried to schedule with no longer listed as available on any date

I'll try to get a more concrete repro for you.

[Illini Boy]

Fortunately for you, the answer is YES. I don't remember the exact range, but I'll find that for you and edit in the numbers.

EDIT: conferences can have 2-20 teams.

Thanks! That is fantastic news! I will probably end up buying this game very shortly.

Thanks,
Illini

[OldGiants]

I thought the "Unhappy" while on academic suspension issue had been fixed and no longer occured. However, in my new save under 2.5, a freshman was on academic suspension the first quarter (and dropped into the last slot) and is now "Unhappy"

[Groundhog]

I thought the "Unhappy" while on academic suspension issue had been fixed and no longer occured. However, in my new save under 2.5, a freshman was on academic suspension the first quarter (and dropped into the last slot) and is now "Unhappy"

I kind of like it like that. In real life that could make a guy unhappy and wanting to transfer as well.

[OldGiants]

Or was it "Unhappy" while injured that was fixed? I could not find it in this thread.

[HeavyReign]

I LOVE this game, but there's one thing I've noticed that started happening about 5-10 builds ago - you know how the individual defensive pressure defaults to High for your starters at the outset of a game? If I change that to Normal before the tip, those changes don't take place. So I wait for the first deal ball, then make the changes to Normal, and those do take effect. So it seems like it has something to do with entering the game in play-by-play mode but before the actual game starts.

Actually, now that I think about it, another thing along those same lines: my depth chart never seems to flow to the game. For example, right now my C and PF are always switched. So my C in my depth chart becomes my PF in the game, and my PF in my depth chart becomes my C when I start a game. It's not just those two positions, though. In previous seasons it's been other positions that flip. Not a big deal since I coach every game, so I just make the switch before tip, but it also started happening at the same time as the previous issue, about 5-10 builds ago.

(I know, I probably should have mentioned it at the time, but these are such minor issues I didn't want to sound burdensome.)

Ok, one more minor request since I'm on it. How hard would it be to have a button on the depth chart screen that makes every player eligible at every position? This is 100% cosmetic since it takes all of 25 seconds to click on every position for every player, but if it's easy to program, I thought I'd throw it out there.

Thanks for all the hard work and constant attention. I saw the thread about a pro game coming to fruition - I'll be buying that for sure! I bought Gary's pro game a few months ago, but he was never interested in fixing any issue anyone brought up. I still don't think the game is playable in fact, but I will admit I gave up trying once I discovered FBCB2. Buying a text sim really is the same as buying into the programmer.

Could you tell me the build number you are using? I've checked the defensive pressure with the current build and it seems to be sticking if I change it before tipoff. I'm assuming the position switches you are seeing are on the matchups section? When you go to strategy the PF will be listed as guarding the C and vice versa?

[HeavyReign]

Just ran across a problem Brian, I'm getting a "runtime 9 - subscript out of range" error. I was just starting a new season, and noticed that there were no preseason tourneys scheduled. On the hotseat page, I tried to sim to my first game and got the error. Any idea what is going on here?

If you zip your save and send it to [email protected] I'll take a look at it. It almost sounds like the previous save didn't complete.

[HeavyReign]

Hey Brian, odd bug I've noticed occur a few times recently. Definitely has happened in the 2.2.5 patch, I think it might have happened in the 2.2.4 patch as well. I'll see if I can cause it to happen in my current career again, but the basic issue is this:

- When in the Team Schedule phase, I've had instances where I've proposed a number of games, then tried to cancel one of those invites only to find that multiple game invites were canceled, and the teams I'd tried to schedule with no longer listed as available on any date

I'll try to get a more concrete repro for you.

Found it.

[HeavyReign]

I thought the "Unhappy" while on academic suspension issue had been fixed and no longer occured. However, in my new save under 2.5, a freshman was on academic suspension the first quarter (and dropped into the last slot) and is now "Unhappy"

It was fixed so that most players won't be affected but a small percentage can still become unhappy.

[Sweet16]

Welcome! Good to have another retiree on the site. I'm glad you're enjoying FBCB2, it takes up much of my non-wife directed free time, too.




Thanks for the welcome and tips. I coach each game for the same reason you dont: I want an extra edge against the AI. I only take full control with a lead late in the game so I can put in my better defenders and FT shooters, which the AI doesnt seem to do. Plus, I sometimes see an exciting game.

I'm looking forward to the pro version.

[dawgfan]

Found it.
Cool - I tried to repro it this weekend, but no dice.

[bryce]

Could you tell me the build number you are using? I've checked the defensive pressure with the current build and it seems to be sticking if I change it before tipoff. I'm assuming the position switches you are seeing are on the matchups section? When you go to strategy the PF will be listed as guarding the C and vice versa?

I'm using 2.2.5. The switches are actually in the Subs section (matchups, too, but I understand that's the coaching assistant probably making recommendations?) I'll email you the two screenshots if that helps (one of depth chart and one of lineup right before tipoff)... Let me know if you need more info. Thanks.

[HeavyReign]

Ok, I found what causes the positions to switch. When two starters were eligible to play each other's positions the game would switch them if it believed their combined ratings were higher at the opposite positions. I set it so this code won't override starting positions anymore. I'm still not able to recreate the issue with the defensive pressure changing. I remember an issue with those settings not saving that I fixed around 2.1.25 or so. I don't see it in the notes but I remember doing it when I redid the matchup code. Could you confirm it is still happening on the current build in your save?

[HeavyReign]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v226.exe

Version 2.2.6
************************************************************
Fixes:
*Team recruiting area should require team password during the offseason period.
*Injuries should heal in between the end of the season and the start of the scheduling period.
*Defense matchups won't be adjusted by the computer until tipoff occurs
*Multiple game proposals should no longer be cancelled if you cancel just one.
*If two starters are eligible to play each other's positions, they will play the positions in which they are starting even if the game rates them better at the opposite positions.

Changes:
*Added the option to store custom default league files that can be selected at the start of a new game. The first time you run the game with the new build a folder called "defaultleagues" will be created inside the data folder for the game. To store a custom default league create a new folder inside the defaultleagues folder with the name of the custom league file. Place the custom teams.csv, tourneys.csv, and conf.csv files inside this folder. You can also include custom FBCB.ini and Height.ini files if you want to use special modifiers for the custom league. To locate the data folder for the game, goto tools > edit default league > open folder.

[murrayyyyy]

Changes:
*Added the option to store custom default league files that can be selected at the start of a new game. The first time you run the game with the new build a folder called "defaultleagues" will be created inside the data folder for the game. To store a custom default league create a new folder inside the defaultleagues folder with the name of the custom league file. Place the custom teams.csv, tourneys.csv, and conf.csv files inside this folder. You can also include custom FBCB.ini and Height.ini files if you want to use special modifiers for the custom league. To locate the data folder for the game, goto tools > edit default league > open folder.

So if I read this right I can make my own league and edit. Been waiting for this. Want to make a 1990 league (I think the year before big conferences started) and just been putting it off. Just been scared to mess with the original file.

[bryce]

Ok, I found what causes the positions to switch. When two starters were eligible to play each other's positions the game would switch them if it believed their combined ratings were higher at the opposite positions. I set it so this code won't override starting positions anymore. I'm still not able to recreate the issue with the defensive pressure changing. I remember an issue with those settings not saving that I fixed around 2.1.25 or so. I don't see it in the notes but I remember doing it when I redid the matchup code. Could you confirm it is still happening on the current build in your save?

I noticed it still happening in 2.2.5, but I just fired up 2.2.6 and made a change in the pressure prior to tip and it took effect like I wanted it to. Since this is an all likelihood my last game of the season (as 14-seed Alabama St vs mighty 3-seed Kentucky), it might be a bit before I get rolling in my next season, but I'll definitely check at that point...

Thanks for fixing the lineup issue!

[HeavyReign]

So if I read this right I can make my own league and edit. Been waiting for this. Want to make a 1990 league (I think the year before big conferences started) and just been putting it off. Just been scared to mess with the original file.

You currently still have to do the editing either manually or with the default league editor and then transfer the files to the new folder. This basically adds a storage location for custom default leagues that have been created that you can choose while starting a new game. I could possibly look at making it possible to export default league files from an active game as well.

[dawgfan]

Is anyone out there using a coaches file to attempt to recreate the current coaches out there? Daunting task I'm sure to try to rate all of the 300+ head coaches and their assistants, but I figured I'd ask to see if anyone has tried doing so...

[gstelmack]

Is anyone out there using a coaches file to attempt to recreate the current coaches out there? Daunting task I'm sure to try to rate all of the 300+ head coaches and their assistants, but I figured I'd ask to see if anyone has tried doing so...

Honestly, the real problem is all the changes. Up until about 2 months ago Mike Anderson was a 100/100/100/100, and suddenly he's a 20/10/10/20 coach. That's just too hard to keep up with...

[dawgfan]

Honestly, the real problem is all the changes. Up until about 2 months ago Mike Anderson was a 100/100/100/100, and suddenly he's a 20/10/10/20 coach. That's just too hard to keep up with...
Gold!

[murrayyyyy]

Honestly, the real problem is all the changes. Up until about 2 months ago Mike Anderson was a 100/100/100/100, and suddenly he's a 20/10/10/20 coach. That's just too hard to keep up with...

Wait a minute! I didn't know there was ass hurt Missouri fans on here. Get over it already. He wasn't going to be Norm Stewart. At least he left the Pressey kids behind.

[murrayyyyy]

You currently still have to do the editing either manually or with the default league editor and then transfer the files to the new folder. This basically adds a storage location for custom default leagues that have been created that you can choose while starting a new game. I could possibly look at making it possible to export default league files from an active game as well.

Yeah, haven't even begun to start looking at how I could do it, but it's a project I've had in mind. I was going to use that decade to set the prestige of the teams and conferences. Just too lazy to start on it.

[Radii]

Wait a minute! I didn't know there was ass hurt Missouri fans on here. Get over it already. He wasn't going to be Norm Stewart. At least he left the Pressey kids behind.

ohhhh you have no idea :)

[Balldog]

I've thought about doing a coaches file but struggled figuring out how to accurately rate them. I was thinking I could use Kenpom's site but I never got a good scale to work with, I should explore again. I'd really like to do a roster file for the upcoming season but there isn't a good way to do it because the game imports roster to far from the default rosters and the stats get a little wacky.

[dawgfan]

I've thought about doing a coaches file but struggled figuring out how to accurately rate them. I was thinking I could use Kenpom's site but I never got a good scale to work with, I should explore again. I'd really like to do a roster file for the upcoming season but there isn't a good way to do it because the game imports roster to far from the default rosters and the stats get a little wacky.
Yeah, I started to think about doing one, then quickly remembered how many teams there are and the difficulty of trying to rate all of them in the various categories and decided to see if someone else had tried to tackle it...

;)

[HeavyReign]

This should get you started on a 1990 file:

http://www.fbbgames.com/fbcb/custom/1990.zip

The teams and conferences are all set up. You mainly just need to adjust team and conference prestiges. Make a 1990 folder inside the new default leagues folder and place these files there. Then select 1990 under the new League File listing on the new game screen to start a new game.

[Balldog]

This should get you started on a 1990 file:

http://www.fbbgames.com/fbcb/custom/1990.zip

The teams and conferences are all set up. You mainly just need to adjust team and conference prestiges. Make a 1990 folder inside the new default leagues folder and place these files there. Then select 1990 under the new League File listing on the new game screen to start a new game.

Sweet!

[Groundhog]

Hmmm. Anyone know where to find historical alignments of division 1 conferences? Would be interesting mapping all the changes year-to-year, especially now that we can add conferences and things in the offseason.

[Groundhog]

Also HR, a pretty minor cosmetic thing, but if I had a list of say countries, cities, and country-specific names, would it ever be likely to get this included into the recruit generation data in FBCB to spruce up the foreign guys a little?

[Balldog]

This is a list of teams coming and going from D1
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball alignment history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Men%27s_Division_I_Basketball_alignment_history)

[Izulde]

Hmmm. Anyone know where to find historical alignments of division 1 conferences? Would be interesting mapping all the changes year-to-year, especially now that we can add conferences and things in the offseason.

Now that I didn't think of. I have the historical D-1 entry dates, but I didn't consider matching the historical alignment path. I just grew it organically.

Which reminds me, I need to get back to it at some point. Maybe after I get EHM'ed out.

[murrayyyyy]

Hmmm. Anyone know where to find historical alignments of division 1 conferences? Would be interesting mapping all the changes year-to-year, especially now that we can add conferences and things in the offseason.

I was going to use this to show mapping of conferences.

1989-90 Season Summary | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com (http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/seasons/1990.html)

Not sure what you can do with schools disappearing.

[murrayyyyy]

This should get you started on a 1990 file:

http://www.fbbgames.com/fbcb/custom/1990.zip

The teams and conferences are all set up. You mainly just need to adjust team and conference prestiges. Make a 1990 folder inside the new default leagues folder and place these files there. Then select 1990 under the new League File listing on the new game screen to start a new game.

I'll look at it this weekend. Too much real work in the way right now. Thanks for the start.

[murrayyyyy]

This is a list of teams coming and going from D1
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball alignment history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Men%27s_Division_I_Basketball_alignment_history)

This list is missing at least one school. Central Arkansas isn't on there and I've got them in Radii's league.

[murrayyyyy]

Worked on the 1990 file last night. Few notes. I think there are 4 conferences where the tourney bids have to be turned off(I know Big 10 and Pac-10 are two of them). There was 2 confrences where the amount of conf games was off I think. I changed the Big 8 tourney to a 8 team format instead of top 2 getting byes til the semis. I think I adjusted some conference prestiges. But a great tool to start with HR. I appreciate it more than you know.

I got tired of entering nicknames somewhere in the C's. Also have to adjust team prestiges but trying to decide on what slice of years to determine that (I'm thinking 10 year history). I'll probably do head coaches next and not sure if I'll do players yet.

My question this morning is if I change prestige for the teams, does a generated league reflect rosters to give them that prestige. For example, I make American a 99 prestige and open a new league. I assume the game creates random opening day rosters based off prestige since a fictional world would have nothing to go off of. So American would have a roster like Duke in the default league (Or someone that good). Was just sitting here thinking about it. Damn file corrupting my mind, I got actual work to do.

[bryce]

FYI, I've moved into a new season and the defensive pressure changes that I make before tip are now taking hold, so all is well there. Thanks!

[Balldog]

My question this morning is if I change prestige for the teams, does a generated league reflect rosters to give them that prestige. For example, I make American a 99 prestige and open a new league. I assume the game creates random opening day rosters based off prestige since a fictional world would have nothing to go off of. So American would have a roster like Duke in the default league (Or someone that good). Was just sitting here thinking about it. Damn file corrupting my mind, I got actual work to do.

Yes, if you give American a 99 prestige they will be rated similar to Duke.

[HeavyReign]

Also HR, a pretty minor cosmetic thing, but if I had a list of say countries, cities, and country-specific names, would it ever be likely to get this included into the recruit generation data in FBCB to spruce up the foreign guys a little?

I'm sure I could make the game look for data for more countries and allow the option to specify how often those countries are used.

[HeavyReign]

Must download for anyone using 2.2.6:

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v227.exe

Fixes error 9 on the first day of a preseason tourney if you entered the manual game scheduling screen after tourneys were scheduled.

[britrock88]

Pardon my youth, but why 1990 in particular? I have been working on a default file for the year in the mid-80s (pardon me for forgetting at the moment) when the tourney expanded to 64.

As a super wish, any hints on how to best measure prestige when building historical datasets?

[murrayyyyy]

Pardon my youth, but why 1990 in particular? I have been working on a default file for the year in the mid-80s (pardon me for forgetting at the moment) when the tourney expanded to 64.

As a super wish, any hints on how to best measure prestige when building historical datasets?

Well I completed my test file and took 1990 for the reason that it is the last season before the super conferences began. The next season Arkansas and South Carolina moved to the SEC to make the first 12 team conference. Shortly after the bricks sarted falling left and right. The Southwest and Metro conference disappeared just to name a few. In the mid 80's I think 30+ schools were still independent which bugged me. I wanted the number to get as small as I could.

Also I think it was a year that had a lot of legendary coaches getting ready to leave the game and some new blood coaches who are great today starting out their careers.

What I did for the purposes of my file (Since I couldn't find the ages of every coach) was I made them all in their thirties. That way I could sim out history and they would still be around. I wondered how many teams would keep their coaches as long starting fresh. Also I took that teams average scores for the year and set that as the teams pace (Loyola Marymount, UNLV, Ark and Southern are 10's I think while Air Force and Princeton are 0's)

What I did for prestige was used the SRS (simple rating system) from basketball refference for every team which ended up being 31.1 for UNLV and -29.6 for Northern Illinois. Then I set up ratios for everything in between (UNLV ended up being 100, Northern Illinois 0 and Robert Morris a 50 (SRS=0))

I'm sure the test file can still use some editing on it but it's worked okay so far. The file is and the thread I'm using to sim out history is [url="http://www.simnation.net/forums/showthread.php?7987-1990-Before-the-changes"] 1990: Before the changes... (http://iaa-fbcb.us/1990 ncaa.zip)...

[Balldog]

Pretty much done with a 1978 startup, hope to post it tonight

[Illini Boy]

I was editing all of the pre-season tournaments for my league I'm making. I noticed that when editing the tournaments that the host teams wouldn't save. I would edit them in the excel sheet and they wouldn't save when I started the game. I tried to edit the host info in the game and it wouldn't save either. I'm not sure if this is a known bug or I am just doing something completely wrong (I doubt it, but it is possible). Any idea's?

Thanks,
Illini

[HeavyReign]

This should fix the hosts issue:

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v228.exe

[Illini Boy]

This should fix the hosts issue:

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v228.exe

It is fixed! Thanks so much for such a quick fix! Much appreciated!

Thanks,
Illini

[dawgfan]

I continue to be impressed by the challenge of this game.

In my latest career, I opted to start off with Bryant in the Northeastern Conference. They were a 4 in prestige, lowest in that conference. I figured it would be a challenge, but in my last career I'd started off with North Dakota in the Great West Conference and they had dropped to a 0 in prestige when I was hired, and I had been able to turn things around pretty quickly to where I was winning the conference by year 3.

What I hadn't figured on though was the spread in prestige within the conference as a factor - whereas in my last career the highest prestige in my conference was a 20 or so, in this one the highest prestige teams were in the high 30's.

So far I've done OK with Bryant - 10-8, 9-9, 9-9, 10-8 & 9-9 in conference, and I've raised the prestige to 11 and gotten two (minor) facilities boosts. But I'm also treading water as you can see by the conference records - while I've definitely raised the talent level at Bryant, the rest of the conference has also improved in that regard*. The roster I took over featured scholarship guys worse than the walk-ons you get at major conference teams - all red/red except for one orange/green and two red/orange guys. Now, most of my roster is green in potential with a nice mix of orange and yellow and one or two greens in current.

And while I feel like I've developed a pretty good grasp of recruiting strategy in this game, I can still get humbled - I whiffed completely two seasons ago when I had 3 openings, chasing some pretty good foreign players that lasted to the last couple of months in the season with no other offers but refusing to commit to me and then ditching me for high-level teams at the last minute.

I do think I'm close to breaking through and winning the conference and/or conference tournament (which would bring an auto-bid to the NCAA), and close to at least garnering a CBI or CIT tourney invite, but it hasn't happened as quickly as I thought.

I continue to be impressed at how this game can challenge you - every time I think I've had an "a-ha!" moment and figured out the keys to success, I keep finding out I still have more to learn. Kudos Brian - great game and great support to your customers!

* I think that might be a minor flaw with the game - it would appear that the initial rosters of the very low prestige teams are not sustainable. There's enough talent in the recruiting pool every year that even the worst teams will see a modest improvement in roster talent

[Balldog]

I'm unable to view this complete article but it would be interesting if this could be used to create a real coaches file:

NCB: The coaching preferences of Kentucky's John Calipari, UConn's Jim Calhoun - ESPN (http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/insider/news/story?id=6742653&ex_cid=nhffromfb&action=login&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fncb%2finsider%2fnews%2fstory%3fid%3d6742653%26ex_cid%3dnhffromfb)

[inranger]

I recently installed FBB on a new laptop, but can't figure out how to keep the desktop and laptop in sync. I copied the saved file from my desktop to a flash drive, but can't seem to figure out where to copy it on the laptop so that FBB there finds it. The laptop is running windows 7. Can anyone walk me through the process of copying files to keep the two computers in sync?

[HeavyReign]

First off make sure you are running the game as an administrator. For FBB you just need to copy the \leaguedata\ folder from the old install to the new installation folder.

For FBCB, go to tools and choose edit default league then choose open folder. Copy the entire contents of this folder to your flash drive. Then run the game on your new computer and do the same to open the data folder. Then past the data from the flash drive to this folder. This should perfectly sync up the data on both computers.

[inranger]

First off make sure you are running the game as an administrator. For FBB you just need to copy the \leaguedata\ folder from the old install to the new installation folder.

For FBCB, go to tools and choose edit default league then choose open folder. Copy the entire contents of this folder to your flash drive. Then run the game on your new computer and do the same to open the data folder. Then past the data from the flash drive to this folder. This should perfectly sync up the data on both computers.


Thanks HR, I appreciate your help.

[OldGiants]

The pre-season tournies aren't happening. It happened before the 2.2.8 patch becasue it did not work the previous season at all. By that I mean the games did not get played.

the 2012 season worked as expected. In 2013, none of the games were played, however, I did not notice because I was not in one.

In 2014, I got an invite to the GDS tourney, accepted and the days between 11/11 and 11/23 (roughly) were marked as taken up with the tournament so that I could not schedule. I played the first round game, then it simulated to 11/23, skipping the tournament second round. I did win the first round. the tourney history has no results listed for 2013 or 2014, but does have the invited teams for 2014.

[HeavyReign]

:banghead:

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v229.exe

Looks like when I was trying to make it so the messed up tourneys would play without missing a year I put in some debugging code and forgot to take it out. As long as the tourney is scheduled correctly and hasn't been started yet it should work now.

[OldGiants]

:banghead:

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v229.exe

Looks like when I was trying to make it so the messed up tourneys would play without missing a year I put in some debugging code and forgot to take it out. As long as the tourney is scheduled correctly and hasn't been started yet it should work now.

Many thanks. I'll try to find some time today to move forward a season and let you know how it goes.

[youcancallmeal]

Maybe this has been asked, if not answered, but what are the criteria for NCAA selection and seeding?

RPI seems to play a big role, and winning % (or maybe just total games won). But I still see a lot of situations that aren't explained by those two. What about top-50 wins, for example?

[HeavyReign]

W/L matters and there are significant adjustments based on who the team beat and who their losses where against. Obviously beating better teams matters while losing to those teams doesn't hurt you as much. Losing to sub 200 RPI teams is bad for your rating. If you see weird things happen feel free to let me know and I can take a look at a save once the bracket is set but no games are played.

[youcancallmeal]

Cool, thanks. Something did come up in the online league just now. Several of the teams assigned to the 12-seed play-in games were conference tournament champions. Meanwhile, some of the 13 seeds were at-large selections.

[Klinglerware]

I am 15-20 years into a solo career at Monmouth. I have built the program into a perennial regular season champion/20 game winner (albeit one that consistently chokes in the conference tourney). My hot seat rating is "ice cold".

Interestingly enough, I have not received a single head coach offer during this entire span. Was this something that might have been tweaked?

[HeavyReign]

Conference champs were getting moved because of the code to reseed teams due to conference conflicts. I made some more tweaks to the code so it should only bump at large teams into the play-in games. I can rerun the seeding on the league save with the new code if you guys would like.

Klinglerware, I'd be happy to look at your save if you want to send it to [email protected]. That's the only way I can get you an accurate answer for why you aren't getting offers.

[dawgfan]

I am 15-20 years into a solo career at Monmouth. I have built the program into a perennial regular season champion/20 game winner (albeit one that consistently chokes in the conference tourney). My hot seat rating is "ice cold".

Interestingly enough, I have not received a single head coach offer during this entire span. Was this something that might have been tweaked?
I was about to post an almost identical question. I'm in year 13 of a career at Bryant, and while I haven't been quite as successful as you're describing, my hot seat rating has been "cool" since year 3 and I've raised the prestige from 4 to 27, been to 2 NIT tournaments and won the conference tournament once for an NCAA tournament appearance.

Not one head coaching offer, whereas my previous experience with the game would have suggested I'd have started getting offers starting somewhere between year 5 and 7.

[OldGiants]

I am 15-20 years into a solo career at Monmouth. I have built the program into a perennial regular season champion/20 game winner (albeit one that consistently chokes in the conference tourney). My hot seat rating is "ice cold".

Interestingly enough, I have not received a single head coach offer during this entire span. Was this something that might have been tweaked?

I'm head coach of Detroit and not gotten any offers through four seasons, including one as National coach of the year. Another was Horizon COY. So I looked at the new coaches after season 4 and discovered everyone (and I mean everyone) hired had been an assistant at a big name, high reputation school. No one had moved up from a head coach job at a lower prestige school.

[HeavyReign]

OK, I found the head coach issue. I'll post a fix once I confirm that it is working. It will take a few seasons to work itself out because the head coach performance rating wasn't getting saved so its like all head coaches are starting from scratch right now.

[HeavyReign]

This includes the updated tourney selection code and the head coach fix:

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v2210.exe

[dawgfan]

Thanks Brian. I also remembered that in my current career, not only have I not gotten any job offers, I haven't gotten any level increases either. So while my assistants have improved, I haven't gotten any bonus points to spend on coaching ability.

Sounds like this was related and is fixed with the new build?

I should have figured out there was an issue a few weeks ago - when I started this career, I was attempting to do what I had in my previous one - sim a season without a job and then see what offers came my way in season 2. I did this, didn't get any offers, simmed to seasons 3 and 4 and still no offers. Started over just to double-check that I had coaching offers turned on, simmed to season 2 and still no offers. Finally gave up and chose a job manually, but this should have been a clue to me that maybe something wasn't working right.

[Klinglerware]

OK, I found the head coach issue. I'll post a fix once I confirm that it is working. It will take a few seasons to work itself out because the head coach performance rating wasn't getting saved so its like all head coaches are starting from scratch right now.

Thanks for the great support, Brian!

Dawgfan - In my current career, I have received a level increase about 3 times in 15 years.

[bryce]

Glad to hear the HC issue was fixed. I was getting frustrated with that as well. 6 years with Alabama A&M and the last two have included 20+ wins and NCAA appearances, but nary a bite on jobs.

[OldGiants]

Pre-season tournies worked fine again. I haven't gotten to a new HC offer segment yet.

[OldGiants]

The POG seems to go for the high scorer on the winning team too often. Example is my last game. PF had 18 points, 8 rebounds, no blocks or steals. He is POG. Center had 14 points, 12 rebounds, 3 blocks and one steal. They each had 2 assists. I would have gone with the C as POG.

[britrock88]

The POG seems to go for the high scorer on the winning team too often. Example is my last game. PF had 18 points, 8 rebounds, no blocks or steals. He is POG. Center had 14 points, 12 rebounds, 3 blocks and one steal. They each had 2 assists. I would have gone with the C as POG.

The POG algorithm seems to also pay attention to shooting percentage and assist:turnover ratio, too. See if that changes how you feel about the selection.

[HeavyReign]

POG is determined using Hollinger's game score formula:

(Points x 1.0) + (FGM x 0.4) + (FGA x -0.7) + ((FTA-FTM) x -0.4) + (OREB x 0.7) + (DREB x 0.3) + (STL x 1.0) + (AST x 0.7) + (BLK x 0.7) + (PF x -0.4) + (TO x -1.0)

[rjolley]

Is the POG coded to always be from the winning team? If a player on the losing team has a monster game, but no one else plays well, and the loss is close, shouldn't he still be the POG?

[HeavyReign]

Game scores from the losing team are multiplied by .7

[rjolley]

Ah, good to know.

[dawgfan]

Hey Brian, out of curiosity - have you considered creating iPad versions of your games? Not sure if they are capable of running them, nor do I know how much work it would be on your end to port them if so, but a really good sports sim like your basketball games might be the killer apps that finally get me to cave and buy an iPad...

[rjolley]

I'd vote for an Android version, if I had a vote.

[HeavyReign]

It's something I've been thinking about looking into once I finish the new pro version. Unfortunately, work has been slow for the past month or so. I think if I wanted to find an actual programming job then that would be a great skill to have. There's not much out there for someone who has focused on VB6 programming forever.

[OldGiants]

POG is determined using Hollinger's game score formula:

(Points x 1.0) + (FGM x 0.4) + (FGA x -0.7) + ((FTA-FTM) x -0.4) + (OREB x 0.7) + (DREB x 0.3) + (STL x 1.0) + (AST x 0.7) + (BLK x 0.7) + (PF x -0.4) + (TO x -1.0)

Good to know the formula. I did notice that FG pct might have entered into it.

I have seen players on the losing team get POG a reasonable amount of the time, too. Particularly after a monster game.

[OldGiants]

I'd vote for an Android version, if I had a vote.

:+1:

I have finally talked my wife into seeing the need for me to have an Android phone.

[dawgfan]

:+1:

I have finally talked my wife into seeing the need for me to have an Android phone.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd think smartphone screens are too small to really support the FBB/FBCB interface adequately. But I certainly wouldn't complain if he gave it a shot...

[rjolley]

Was thinking more tablets.

[dawgfan]

Was thinking more tablets.
That's my thought. Maybe that's what OldGiants meant...

[dawgfan]

I haven't gotten to a new HC offer segment yet.
New HC offers are confirmed working (just in case anyone was curious).

I'm monitoring prestige rating changes - my initial impression is that it's harder to raise prestige in this build, but that may just be me.

[OldGiants]

That's my thought. Maybe that's what OldGiants meant...

The Android OS. Droid screens are getting bigger with each iteration. Tablets would be good, but they are too new, other than Apple stuff.

[OldGiants]

New HC offers are confirmed working (just in case anyone was curious).

I'm monitoring prestige rating changes - my initial impression is that it's harder to raise prestige in this build, but that may just be me.

Yes, I've gotten offers after my last season. Did not get any after my first, losing season in the Big Ten, but that is normal.

Prestige increases have been bigger for me as Detroit than as VCU before the last bunch of patches, 46 to start, then: 51, 56, 59, 65, 65 (after going 12-20 in first BigTen season). I'm 20-10 going into tourney time and expect an NCAA bid and another 3 point bump. Only one NCAA bid in this rise, too. The last pop from 59 to 65 was Elite 8. Had a 3rd rate tourney win before the Elite 8.

[britrock88]

Just something I've noticed from MP leagues, but deep in postseason tournaments, where talent is concentrated among the few remaining teams, game scores seem a bit high. Teams are average 85-90 points a game, it appears.

I've noticed that my more talented teams, by and large, are recommended to run their offenses at higher paces. So I think there might be some kind of concentration of high-paced offenses among the very best teams that leads to high-scoring NCAA games.

[Klinglerware]

The Android OS. Droid screens are getting bigger with each iteration. Tablets would be good, but they are too new, other than Apple stuff.

Yeah, probably better on a tablet. FWIW, I used to play the old FBCB (with logmein to a PC) on a device with a 4" touchscreen--but that device had a resistive screen and a stylus. I don't see it working out too well with a small capacitive screen...

[dawgfan]

Yes, I've gotten offers after my last season. Did not get any after my first, losing season in the Big Ten, but that is normal.

Prestige increases have been bigger for me as Detroit than as VCU before the last bunch of patches, 46 to start, then: 51, 56, 59, 65, 65 (after going 12-20 in first BigTen season). I'm 20-10 going into tourney time and expect an NCAA bid and another 3 point bump. Only one NCAA bid in this rise, too. The last pop from 59 to 65 was Elite 8. Had a 3rd rate tourney win before the Elite 8.
I took over UNLV two seasons ago. They had been to back-to-back Sweet Sixteens, yet had seen their prestige increase only 1 point each season (something like 70 to 72 - I'm working off of memory here since I'm at work).

My first job in this career was at Stephen F. Austin. When I took over, they were at 40, and despite consistent 20 win seasons and 10-12 conference wins plus a couple NIT invites and a CIT, my prestige dropped each season down to 33 before climbing back up to 35 in my last season before I got the UNLV offer.

Just seems a little more conservative that what I was used to.

[Sweet16]

I am running version 2.2.10 and the game no longer see's a save game to open. The folder is there when I look using Windows.

I was coaching a game and finished it. On arriving at the hot seat screen, the cursor remained as an hourglass. I clicked on SAVE and got the RTE '55' "File already open" message. On starting the game again and clicking LOAD, it shows no save games to load.

I've seen an increasing number of RTE crashes of various types over the last week. I patched it back to 2.2.2 but still no save games found.

Any ideas?

[HeavyReign]

Check the save folder for any files with .bak extension and then change them to .dat if that file is not present. Basically it sounds like one of the files for the save was corrupt so the game didn't finish loading but the save button wasn't disabled like it should be. If you are able to restore the save by finding .bak files and the game doesn't load let me know and I'll look at the files to see what's going on.

Also, I can't stress enough to everyone that if you get an error then let me know asap. Try to remember the last thing you did as well and what the error was. If you get an error then it will happen again.

[Sweet16]

Wicked fast response, Brian. Thanks.

I renamed the .bak files and the saved game is there again. Surprisingly to me, I didnt lose anything at all except the box score from the game I had just coached.

I will keep you apprised of my future RTE's.

[dawgfan]

Question on head coach attributes - does the head coach's recruiting ranking not matter as much as I had thought?

Here's the scenario - twice in the last 3 seasons as coach at Washington, I've offered and put on my call list in-state studs who had "very high" interest in me in July (the first month of recruiting), then followed up in August with full recruiting actions, only to find in September that Oregon had offered and jumped immediately to the top of their recruiting interest list.

Oregon had a 9 point edge in prestige (90 to 81), and their recruiting coordinator was rated an A+ compared the A- of my recruiting coordinator, but my recruiting rating was A compared to F for Oregon's head coach, and of course I also had distance in my favor.

What's throwing me is the A vs. F - I figured that large of a gap, combined with a slight edge in distance would be more than enough to compensate for the 9 points difference in prestige and the slight edge to their recruiting coordinator, especially considering I offered a month before them.

Does the head coach recruiting rating not matter that much? Am I maybe overlooking something else like potential playing time (maybe I was more stacked at their positions with young players?)

[OldGiants]

I'm interested in the answer, too. I will add that 90 vs. 81 is not merely an edge, it is 11% more and I usually give up when I see this happening. I have not landed a recruit with this kind of gap, either. In other words, 90 vs 80 with same conference is not likely to end kindly for the 80.

I'm using the number ratings, and I have usually have a recruiter in the 75-80 range, so my total is 180 out of 200 possible, rarely worse than other schools--except for the elite 90s type of schools.

My first cut in recruiting is to drop players recruited by higher prestige schools and go for the overlooked guys. I've also had success giving a schollie to a top recruit who has not qualified and banging away into January. I picked up a 7-2 C (#64 recruit, now projected as the 14th pick in the NBA draft) that way, as Duke and Kentucky offered him in January, but I had enough socked away in the early months to give my then-rated 65 Detroit team the edge.

[dawgfan]

See, that's the thing - I've been able to win battles like that before when I had obvious edges in head coach and recruiting coordinator recruiting ratings.

I figured my A to F edge was enough to allow me to overcome the prestige, but obviously not...

[HeavyReign]

The head coach recruiting skill should matter. There are also factors for how well the recruit likes your coaches and how well he likes the campus that could be coming into play here. You should get that sort of information as feedback in recruiting if I ever get around to updating the recruiting engine. If you have saves with recruits still in the recruiting pool after committing that you ever want me to look at let me know. I can run some tests to see how the hidden factors worked and we can figure out if something needs to be tweaked.

[Groundhog]

When you say "campus", is this referring to the school's prestige, training facilities, or a sort of random "yes or no" variable?

[HeavyReign]

It's kind of like a chemistry rating between the player and your school. Basically some players might feel more comfortable at a campus located in a big city. Others might enjoy a small town feel. The same sort of thing is factored between the coaches and the player.

[dawgfan]

There are also factors for how well the recruit likes your coaches and how well he likes the campus that could be coming into play here. You should get that sort of information as feedback in recruiting if I ever get around to updating the recruiting engine.
Let me just say how fantastic this would be as an addition to the game. And please, save some cool features like this for FBCB 3 so you can actually get some money from us fanatics instead of always adding stuff in the patches...

:)

[OldGiants]

It's kind of like a chemistry rating between the player and your school. Basically some players might feel more comfortable at a campus located in a big city. Others might enjoy a small town feel. The same sort of thing is factored between the coaches and the player.

Definitely a great addition. Knowing big city versus boon docks (Blacksburg being the booniest place I've ever been) would be fun.

[Sweet16]

Does anyone know what the Rank column on the team history screen refers to?

[britrock88]

The end-of-season poll ranking, except it covers all 345 teams in this form.

[Radii]

Starting to get frustrated with recruiting, a post I made on our multiplayer site:


Does pre-season interest just not matter at all anymore? I had a ton of guys who listed me as very high initially. Many in the top 100, many seemed to have stats that I look for when I recruit, so I eval and contact them. A couple bigs that are very strong rebounders and a couple guards who have very high steals I go ahead and offer a scholarship to. Only one of the four guys, all of whom loved me, got a recruiting pitch and a scholarship from me, continue to list me as "very high".

#63 OVR Steven Hawkes from Florida is the most baffling. He listed me first, South Carolina second, I forget who else after that. The dude is a top 100 recruit, he's identified that North Carolina is his top school. His top school comes calling, decides that they like his stats enough to take a chance and offer him a scholarship right away. I'm pulling out all the stops with my 100 rated coach and 83 rated assistant to tell this guy I want him to come to Chapel Hill, his #1 school... and magically after the first round and my offer he realizes "oh shit, UNC isn't in Florida! I'd actually rather go to South Florida, Florida or Miami, fuck UNC".

South Florida, Florida and Miami haven't made offers, but all three jumped ahead of me and my 98 prestige and 100 rated coach and my scholarship. Is it seriously reasonable in any way that he just now figured out that he desperately wants to stay near home and there's no way I could have figured that out before? Is there even any point in sticking with him after this first month?


-- Joining RonCo and Others recruiting frustrations!


tl;dr: I coach 98 prestige North Carolina with 3 final fours and 1 national title in the last 4 years. My recruiting rating is 100, my recruiting assistant's recruiting rating is 83. I targeted a number of players who had "very high" interest in North Carolina, most of whom had me #1 or #2 on their lists. After contacting them and in a few cases offering an early scholarship, all but one dropped me to "average". The one I listed above seemed to have randomly decided after recruiting started that he wants to stay at home and prefers a bunch of significantly smaller schools who haven't made offers over 98 prestige UNC. That's fine, but he didn't know that before? He thought he wanted to go to UNC but I scared him? Really?

[dawgfan]

I hear you. I'm really excited by the possibility that Brian will expand recruiting in the future to show the various recruiting factors in some way so we have more information on what the players are looking for, but in the meantime it can be a frustrating crapshoot after the first month to see how they actually react to recruiting actions.

[dunkem]

I look at it like TCY... some guys have distance as their main factor. That's why all the Florida schools got over you I think with the original NC choice being random first impression of who he might be interested in based on combo prestige/distance. When the calls started coming, the distance weight might've came in strong. If a Florida school was chosen in the initial top four, I'm pretty sure that school would be at the top, but I guess the player didn't know other Florida schools wanted him initially.

I've been in the same boat many times too. I think distance used to be too strong a factor before, but it seems with some of the patches that it's been lessened.

[dawgfan]

I look at it like TCY... some guys have distance as their main factor. That's why all the Florida schools got over you I think.
Sure, but his point is why wouldn't those schools be listed first initially if distance is the biggest factor? Given UNC's prestige and his Head Coach and Recruiting Coordinator recruiting ratings, it doesn't seem possible that any of the Florida schools jumped over him via those areas...

[Radii]

I look at it like TCY... some guys have distance as their main factor. That's why all the Florida schools got over you I think.

I've been in the same boat many times too. I think distance used to be too strong a factor before, but it seems with some of the patches that it's been lessened.

That definitely seems what its like. The kid prefers distance strongly enough that a call from South Florida is worth more than a scholarship from UNC. I don't have an issue with that, and I don't have in issue with some randomness or some unknowns. It just seems very flawed for that kid to ever list UNC or South Carolina as his top choices.

[dunkem]

You guys are fast.. I was just editing my message to clarify. I just think it's the initial impression that throws everything off. HR probably has the athlete with top four vs. top 25. If there were a top 25, random impression, like I mentioned, I'd bet Florida schools would end up on top and show that he's clearly a distance recruit.

Maybe HR's random top 4 impression says - top 100 ranked recruits, prestige over 75 and distance within 800. When actual calls come in, then the true weight of distance comes in and the prestige presumption goes away. *shrug* only HR knows.

[bryce]

In solo play, I think the human head coach offers still need adjusting. I started this game with the impression I could work my way up the coaching ranks, but that hasn't proven to be possible.

I started out by accepting the only job offer I got - Longwood. I took tiny Longwood to the CIT tourney in my second year. Taking Longwood to ANYTHING should be worthy, frankly. I stuck around for three more years of varying success (for Longwood - 16ish wins was my max out, but still - it's LONGWOOD for love of Pete!). I finally quit after 5 seasons to try and get an offer.

That worked. Kind of. Alabama A&M was the only team to come calling. After a rough start to get my own kids in there, I went on a roll starting in year 4. 20-13 on year. 23-10 in another Those were two NCAA appearances. Then 4th place in the NIT another season. Consistently finishing at least .500, or well over. 8 or 9 seasons of this but nothing, nary an offer, ever.

I know it's not world breaking, but these were two tiny schools with awful reputations that I did more with than really expected. I'd like to think that would lead to a job offer SOMEWHERE up the chain, even just a little bit up the chain.

I finally just resigned from AA&M in the hopes of getting that offer elsewhere, but no dice. I guess I'm retired now...

I guess the best way to play this game is to pick your school you want to coach forever, like your alma mater for instance?

[HeavyReign]

Bryce, please let me know what version you have? There was a several build stretch where it wasn't possible to get head coach offers due to a bug in saving the head coach results.

I'm open to taking more of a look at the recruiting. Expanding the system would come when I someday get to work on a new version of the game so I'd be looking for tweaks to make the current system work better right now.

[bryce]

It's version 2.2.10.

Thanks.

[HeavyReign]

Ok. If anyone has a save where they feel like they should be getting job offers and aren't, I'd be happy to look at it.

[HeavyReign]

I made some tweaks to the recruiting engine and it would be good to get some feedback. If you are playing in the online league then don't overwrite your normal FBCB2010.exe file as recruiting actions made with this won't import into the league unless the commissioner is using the build as well. I did some more checking into getting job offers and didn't see an issue so please send along any saves where this isn't the case. Just make sure you aren't mixing in too many below .500 seasons as those are hard on your coaching rating.

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v2215.exe

Version 2.2.15
************************************************************
Fixes:
*Added checks to make sure recruiting actions aren't being imported from a different recruiting pool when using team exports.

Changes:
*Added column to the player ratings text report indicating if the player is redshirting.
*Increased the importance of coach recruiting ratings.
*Increased the effect of recruit preferences on later recruiting actions.
*Decreased the cost of recruiting actions for players closest to your school.

[bryce]

Is there a specific file to send? What's the email addy again? I know you've answered those before, but this is a lengthy thread!

Thanks man.

[HeavyReign]

Basically anything in the main save folder except for records.dat. Zip and send to [email protected].

[OldGiants]

I just had a strange thing happen on the latest build. I needed one more game, and recieved an offer from American for a home game. The email now reads "American has offered you a home game on 12/12/2021. You have accepted the offer."

When I go to my schedule, the game is there, however it is "at American"

I thought the offer was to play at my place.

[HeavyReign]

Nevermind, fix incoming.

[HeavyReign]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v2216.exe

[bryce]

Using latest version, I just noticed a bug when coaching a game. One of the guys I have a redshirt on was available on my bench, while a non-RS guy was nowhere to be seen. It was like they got switched. I checked my roster after the game, and correct RS guys are denoted as such...

This one seems obscure, so let me know what other info you need...

Thanks.

[bryce]

More info: I checked my season stats, and there are stats on the afore-mentioned non-RS guy who disappeared from my bench suddenly during gameplay. So it might be in the latest patch that this starts happening..

[HeavyReign]

That code hasn't changed in a while so it wouldn't be the newest version doing it. Does the redshirting player appear in your depth chart screen? Same with the non RS player?

[bryce]

Depth chart is correct for both players. It correctly shows all my non-RS guys and leaves out my RS guys.

I just started this career a week ago or so (only 3 games into my first season), and as mentioned, the non-RS guy does have stats from the first 2 games, so he used to be (rightly) available to play.

Hope this helps.

thanks again.

[britrock88]

Super minor HTML thing...

http://www.iaa-fbcb.us/html/

Head to the IAA bracket, the South Region, and look at the 1/8 matchup. USF's score is carried over from the 1st round (as is the hotlink associated with it). I think this is true for all 1-seeds.

[rjolley]

Was the new 68 team field added? I thought it was, but I'm seeing only the 65 team field.

Also, wanted to say how much I'm enjoying getting back into the game after awhile away and it's still providing that one more turn feel. I've stayed up way longer than I needed to just to get to the end of the season to see if I was able to get all of my recruits...then I had to see them play...then another class was coming in...next thing I know, it's 3a and I have to be up at 7a.

[Radii]

Was the new 68 team field added? I thought it was, but I'm seeing only the 65 team field.

yeah, it was. you may have to enable it in league options. On the tourney brackets screens for each region at the bottom you'll see a 16a. vs 16b or 12a vs 12b matchup for the extra teams.

[HeavyReign]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v2217.exe

Fixes:
*Fixed an invalid score and link for 1/8 2nd round game in the html tourney bracket.
*Rewrote the code that displays available bench players on the substitutions screen to make sure all available players show up and ineligible players do not.

Changes:
*Added code that will "finish" the recruiting round for you if you have available funds. If you've spent any of your budget at all during the month, the code will just finish spending your money and fill any empty spots in the call list. It will max out spending on any scholarships you have offered or the #1 prospect for each position of need. If you've made no actions, the code will also offer scholarships when appropriate and will revoke offers if you are behind the offers of 3 superior schools that are already in the top 5. With this code, only turn on cpu recruiting if you want the cpu to handle all recruiting. This should allow you to not be hurt if you have to miss a month of recruiting in online leagues.

[britrock88]

HR, your responsiveness continues to impress me.

[bryce]

Thanks, HR.

[rjolley]

yeah, it was. you may have to enable it in league options. On the tourney brackets screens for each region at the bottom you'll see a 16a. vs 16b or 12a vs 12b matchup for the extra teams.
Thanks Radii. Thought I saw that it was added. I'll check when I get home.

[dawgfan]

Question for those regularly playing FBCB2:

How frequently are you seeing guys either listed near the bottom of the 2nd round, or not listed at all, jumping early into the draft? Conversely, how often are you seeing guys projected in the first round staying?

In my current career, I'm having a really bad run of luck of guys leaving early - quite a few guys projected low in the 2nd round (or not projected at all to get drafted) leaving early, and nearly all of them going undrafted.

I had another one last night that was really frustrating. The kid was the #1 overall recruit when I landed him but for whatever reason was never projected as much of a pro, always well down the list of prospects in my conference and never projected even close to 2nd round draft status. I suspect it was because he was on the short side for a post player - 6'7", and while he had 'A' strength, he didn't have very high quickness or jumping ratings. However, he was a really good college player with A/A rebounding, B+ post defense, B shot-blocking and A+ inside rating on offense.

He decided to jump in the draft after his Junior year where he was an All-American, averaging 16/9 for the season, and of course he went undrafted.

Really bums me out, because I've had several such instances in this career where you just imagine yourself telling the player "Kid, I love your game but the NBA just doesn't have much interest in you right now. Come back for another season, keep refining the areas in your game where still have room to grow, let's try to win a championship!" only to see them jump anyway and get ignored. Earlier in this career it seemed to be a lot of my foreign recruits, and I justified the early entries as them deciding to head to Europe or Asia to play (and also as a bit of a counter to the fact that it's easier to land highly rated foreign recruits).

[rjolley]

I've only had two players go early in my current career. One was projected to go late 1st after his freshman year and rose from there. Since I've instituted a 3-year rule similar to college football, I had him until he was a junior when he bolted, going 5th overall.

The other player was rated to go low in the second round, so I didn't think he would go. At the end of the year, he went 24th overall. Surprised he went that high, but that was a move that worked out.

Now that I've taken over Georgia Tech and have 5-star recruits interested, I expect to see more players planning to leave.

One thing I have noticed is a lot of players transferring, even when I was at 20-25 rated Lafayette, for playing time. It would be nice to have a way of promising the player something. Some of my players were freshmen who transferred after not getting playing time, but were in line to get playing time with players in front of them leaving as seniors. I would like to be able to pitch to them that they'd having playing time next year and/or for them to notice that 2 players at their position are leaving and they have a chance a significant minutes once they leave.

[HeavyReign]

http://www.fbbgames.com/FBCB2010v2218.exe

Changes:
*Adjusted the early departure distribution so more players projected in the first round will leave and decreased the chances of lower ranked players leaving.
*Increased the importance of current ability in the early departure decision.


The ability to interact with players would be something I'd be looking to add when I get to working on a new version....or I need to figure out a way to make money while adding new stuff in a continuous cycle.

[sovereignstar v2]

HR, your responsiveness continues to impress me.

""

[dawgfan]

The ability to interact with players would be something I'd be looking to add when I get to working on a new version....or I need to figure out a way to make money while adding new stuff in a continuous cycle.
Definitely - speaking for myself, I'd totally understand if you put a halt to new features/improvements from here on out and saved those for FBCB3 and only addressed serious bugs/crashes. You have to make some money somehow...

;)

[Mota]

I agree as well. You've supported the game for a long time. If another bug comes up hopefully you could still patch it but any new features would probably be saved up for a new version.

[rjolley]

Yeah, I agree. Definitely should be something for the next version.

[Balldog]

Yep, its time for a new version. You deserve the money!

For the new version... :)
I'd still like the ability to import a CSV file with rating edits and the ability to lock teams to a region in the NCAA tournament.

It would be cool if there was some kind of preseason preview, with all-american teams, all-conference teams, etc. Really would add to the immersion.

[OldGiants]

Thanks for the updates, HR. I'm with those who will buy Version 3 when it comes out, so I'd recommend an announcement soon that you are working on that and current updates are ending.

As to odd drafts, I prefer to not allow anyone but seniors to leave, so I'm no expert on early leaving. I did have one strange experience. I had a green/green SG/SF type who the depth chart always slotted in as the seventh or eighth man except for a few starts during an injury crisis. During that period, he set my team's all-time high scoring game with 46 points. Come draft day this six starts in a career player went 44th after not being projected as a draftee.

I found it odd that the AI never put him higher than seventh in the rotation (except for that injury crisis stretch) and then picked him 44th out of the blue.

[bryce]

This is by far my favorite text sim. A few thoughts for any future version:

- I think I'm the only one beating this drum, but I'd suggest perhaps maybe possibly revisiting the coaching offers logic?...

- It would be nice to be able to have a button that makes all players eligible at all positions on the depth chart screen (instead of clicking on each position for each player.)

- Is there a place in the game that stores old seasons' stats that I just haven't found? Sometimes I find myself looking at my team's history and click on an old season and I expect it to bring up that season's roster/stats, but it always brings up the current roster. Or would this make the game ridiculously large memory-wise? Or do I just have an option not selected somewhere?

- I'm not in the game right now, so this is by memory, but I don't *think* the FTS rating is included in the Offensive Rating dropdown of the Roster screen. I feel like I usually have to click through every player individually or go to the depth chart screen for it. It would be nice to have it included on the Off Rat dropdown...

Those are the main things that jump out at me, though I may add some when I'm playing as they jump out at me. Obviously most are just icing; the engine itself is really strong.

edited for typo

[youcancallmeal]

A couple of random things:

I would really love to have, in lieu of the bubble watch, a full-on "bracketology." The bubble watch is much improved from FBCB1, but it remains hard to tell where you are if you're above the bubble. Since a distinction is already made between "Locks" and "Ins", seems like a bracket with seeds, and maybe last 4 in, last 4 out, etc would be a cool next step.

In assistant hiring: When you filter by salary, click on someone's "coach card", and then close it, you lose your salary filter (goes back to the default $250K). Would be nice to keep that rather than having to change it every time.

AD expectations: Seems to me these should be a little bit more stable. IMO, it should be very rare to find a school that just wants to "avoid last place." Even at the worst schools, unsuccessful coaches are canned relatively quickly. In the game, you sometimes see poor coaches languishing for many years, because expectations are so low they'll never get fired.

Likewise, if I take over a team that's below .500 in the league, and quickly win 3 or 4 titles, I shouldn't be instantly punished for that with drastically higher expectations. Maybe after 3-4 more years without another title, perhaps. But there should be a fairly long grace period for coaches who move the needle in that way.

Affirm the above comments about FBCB3, you can count on my $30.

[Groundhog]

Yah, you spoil us Brian. It makes me sick to my stomach to think back on all the cash I've given to EA Sports over the years, considering the fraction of time I've spent on their titles as opposed to FBCB alone. I even bought two copies of FBCB1 because I felt so bad about that.

My advice would be to leave FBCB2 alone outside of maybe bug fixes and any new additions would be best saved up for a FBCB3, or even an "expansion pack" type of release. You definitely deserve more financial benefit for the amount of work and post-release support you put into your products. I can't think of a single other developer that even comes close to what you provide.

[bryce]

A couple of random things:

In assistant hiring: When you filter by salary, click on someone's "coach card", and then close it, you lose your salary filter (goes back to the default $250K). Would be nice to keep that rather than having to change it every time.




Yes! This is a good suggestion. I would have remembered this one when I got to the offseason, but you beat me to it.