Order of Operations for running a multiplayer League

[Flasch186]

Gurus -

Could someone post an order of operations for running a multiplayer. For example,

1. run draft
2. import player files
3. run free agency for the week
4. sim games

etc. Im kinda at a loss as to what happens when?

Thanks

[sjshaw]

We could use a "Running a MP League FAQ" if anybody wants to volunteer.

[Ben E Lou]

Bump. Some of y'all who did some testing on this yesterday want to jump in here? This would be a great thing to link to from the main sticky.

[Flasch186]

bumping myself again so im not forgotten

[sjshaw]

OK, here is how my experience went. I hope this is correct; I will fix any errors as they are brought to my attention.

1. Everybody in the league, including the commish, opens the MP controls panel and selects "Enter New Career" as a participant. Use the League ID selected by the league, and select draft options and your team. All owners must select the same draft option or the process will not work.

2. Email the file (identified by the dialog box that pops up) to your commish.

3. The commish collects all the stage file exports and puts them in his "import" directory. (pain in the ass)

4. Commish opens the MP controls panel. Click "new game." Enter the league ID and click "check entries" to make sure all the exports are ready to go. Check the assorted options you want, making sure to select the correct draft option. Click OK.

*NOTE and POTENTIAL BUG?* If you select "Begin with Complete/Preference Draft," you better be ready to go, because you cannot exit the draft once you click OK. The only way to exit is to give the 3-fingered salute and shut down FOF.

So, since you can't exit the draft, you have to do the entire draft at one sitting. With 53 rounds * 32 teams, this could make for a long night. Also, how do the other players get to see the draft class?

...more to come

[FBPro]

Really appreciate the insights, keep them coming.

[sjshaw]

To clarify, these directions are from the perspective of a commish who is also playing as a participant. So, the commish needs to do all the "participant" actions and "commish" actions, such as exporting a stage file and moving it into the "imports" folder, exporting stuff to the "leagues" folder, etc. So the commish needs to open the game and switch from "commissioner" to "participant" and back as his role switches.

5. The commish sets from which team of reference he views the league in the "Choose/Edit color scheme" from the Global Game Options. This introduces a way for the commish to cheat (or as I call it, a way to "HornsManiac" the league)... all he has to do is change his team of reference and he sees that team from that scout's point of view. Theoretically, the commish could switch to a team that has an "excellent" scout at QB, get a better idea of all the "true" ratings of the QB's in the league... rinse and repeat for each position.

6. Now, here is where I have a question. Who sets options such as "Coach resets depth chart + game plan," and automatic signing? I don't know if the commish's global settings controls this or if each participant's settings control. I don't know if those options can be changed.

So, until this is clarified, make sure that the commish and participants choose to save all teams' game logs and boxes and the league's choice for coaches and scouts taking charge.

7. OK, back to the real stuff. After the draft, the commish saves the game and hits "export game files" on the MP controls panel (if you didn't save, the game prompts you to do so). The commish has to get the contents of the "Exports" folder to all the league owners, whether by email or uploading to a server for download (a much better option, IMHO). The files are pretty big and need to be zipped.

8. The participants unzip the contents of the commish's file into their "leagues" directory. These files consist of logs and boxes along with game-specific files. With the MP control panels visible, click "open" and open the league as a participant. The draft results are visible and players can set depth charts, release players, make offers on FAs, etc. One really cool thing is when you offer a FA, then waive a player to make room, the game asks if you want the waiver to be conditional on signing the last player to whom you made an offer. Very cool. One bad thing about FA offers is you can't revise an offer once you make it. I'm used to being able to just make another offer to the same FA to fix things, but I couldn't do that here.

9. After the participants (and the commish "acting" as one) make their changes, set their depth charts and game plans, etc., hit the "export stage file" button on the MP Controls panel. The file generated should be emailed to the commish as before.

10. With the MP Controls panel visible, the commish opens the league file as "commissioner." Hit the "Team Control Panel" to view the status of the about-to-be-imported files. It's pretty cool that the window that pops up tells you the status of all the files. ("Ready to be imported," "Incorrect stage file," etc.) This is also where you can change a team from CPU-controlled to human-controlled and vice versa.

11. The commish hits "Import Stage Files" and sims as far as he wants; once done, save the game and export as before. Before doing this, the commish may want to clear out the "export" folder to eliminate old boxes and logs. Zip and make available to participants, who just repeat as detailed above.

More to come on post-season activities like the draft and FA, but 3 more comments/requested changes:

1. It would be nice to be able to password-protect or otherwise secure each team. Otherwise, nothing stops a person from "becoming" another team and looking at his game plan, etc. This could even include exporting an erroneous export file! Horns could have a field day!

2. Also, it would be nice to have an easy way for the commish to revert the game if he makes a mistake. An "undo last function" could work. Otherwise, the only way I see for a commish to back up is to quit without saving and re-open. In fact, I'm not sure even that would work.

3. Like I've said before, we need a way to automate the importing/exporting for a 32-team league. It is very ponderous as implemented now.

[Ben E Lou]

Adding to the sticky now......If there is more discovered, continue to post.

[pbot]

Originally posted by sjshaw
1. It would be nice to be able to password-protect or otherwise secure each team. Otherwise, nothing stops a person from "becoming" another team and looking at his game plan, etc. This could even include exporting an erroneous export file! Horns could have a field day!

Trusting a commish is one thing, trusting 31 other owners is another. I would really like to see some form of protection added.

[sjshaw]

Last night I and a few FOBLers decided to take what we had learned (as detailed above) and start over. We wanted to emulate the structure of our future FOF league (FOFL). This encompasses a fake universe of players, dispersed by a full initial draft. We want to have a live draft on Yahoo! or AIM.

The first issue was that of custom cities and teams. Everybody except Daimyo had the default cities/teams. Daimyo had customized his. While I chose CAR, Duke chose CHC, and Simms chose TB, Daimyo had to choose one of his custom teams. What if the team IDs overlap? What if I don't want custom cities, but my league does? So, how in the world can a new custom league (full of changed cities) be emulated on everyone's version of the game? Does this mean that every owner wil have to have the same global cities/teams? When we play in the FOFL, do all our solo games have to use the same FOFL teams? This needs to be addressed. In fact, after we started, it reset all Daimyo's franchises back to their right cities, but kept his custom nicknames.

Next, we took a player file generated by Daimyo's script to start our league. I sent the .fdt file to the testers and I started the "official" MP league using that .fdt. The idea was: each tester could create a throw-away game with that .fdt file and see the same draft pool I did, so they could tell me who to pick. Otherwise, how can league owners see the initial pool of players? We wanted to run a "live" draft for the first 2 rounds and then autodraft the rest.

We quickly ran into problems. First, even with X-factor turned off, there were major variations in the players. In my file (the real league file), there was a total choad QB who was a 7/23. In everybody else's files, he was never less than a total stud (we're talking Brock Sheriff here). So, we absolutely need a way for the commissioner to start a league using a full draft and save, exit, and export the league BEFORE starting the draft.

Even with this change, it is going to be a major pain in the ass to have a live draft. How can owners follow the action? In the 5th round, how will people keep track of who has been chosen? One solution is to save, exit and export after each round, which keeps the number of players you have to remember as "picked" to a maximum of 31, but is a pain. OOTP enables owners to follow a live draft by picking each player for each team in his individual copy of the game, so in the 7th round, players who have been taken are shown as such.

Basically, the lesson here is that unless Jim patches so that we can exit the draft and export, we can't do a full draft.

So, I just ran a preference draft and exported a ZIP file to my server for everyone to download. Once people opened up the league, we found another problem. The preference draft is, um, unimpressive. Duke's team's first *8* draft picks were offensive linemen. Daimyo had QB preference maxed out and nothing else close and his QBs sucked. This needs work.

Then, we found another thing. You better BACK UP. I accidentally overwrote a file in my leagues folder and the league was gone. Poof. While it's obvious that the *.fmk file is the key, I would like an in-game option to back up a league to a separate file/destination. If the commish's hard drive ever crashes, a lot of time and work can go down the drain.

We started over and simmed through the exhibition season. We decided to test FA signing. Each of us made an offer on a FA. Daimyo offered what he wanted (230K), I offered 10K more, Duke offered 500K and Simms offered 750K. He ended up signing with me for 240K. We looked and found that his hometown was closest to me, so maybe that was his deciding factor. We did this again with another FA who was closest to Daimyo, and the guy signed with Duke for more money than Daimyo was offering, but the same amount Simms offered. It was interesting to note that the player's agent had 6 players with Duke and only 2 with Simms.

One irritation is that there is no way to correct an offer. I wanted to change my $240K offer to $260K, but couldn't do it.

Another bad thing is that "conditional releases," that is, releases contingent upon signing a FA, occur immediately and not AFTER the week is simmed. This sucks because Simms suddenly found himself with not enough QBs and couldn't change his depth charts. The release should have waited until after the sim, shouldn't it? Otherwise it isn't really conditional.

Next, we tested which global settings (the commish or the individual team's) with regard to "Scouts set depth chart/game plan," etc. Simms and Duke changed their settings and I didn't. It turns out that the commish's settings are the ones that count. Good to know.

I simmed through the entire season so we could test the offseason MP implementation. One confusing thing is: should I export before or after pressing the "end season" button? Or both?

During the staff hiring phase, we experienced something really cool. I bid on Duke's Defensive Coordinator to become my Head Coach. Duke offered him more money, but only to remain as DC. The guy accepted my offer. Poaching other people's coaches/scouts/coordinators will be fun. We imported/exported after each stage, which is a bit tedious, but fine.

Daimyo tried to make an offer on a scout but got the message that his owner was limiting him to $900k for scouts. This brings up an interesting issue. The participants in a MP league are not "owners," but "general managers" subject to the whims of fake owners. Do all these fake owners have the same "personality?" Will some MP players get hamstrung by the hands of fate when the teams are assigned? Will MP players accept that a lot of things will be out of their control? I would like to see Jim provide some answers and/or ways to address this.

Then came Free Agency. Aside from the tedium of exporting/importing through 20 rounds, everything went as expected, although there was one player to whom everyone made an offer, but the only offer that showed up in the player card was mine. Time constraints limited us from exploring this further, but some of you might want to check and see about this.

The amateur draft proceeds like the initial draft should. You can exit and export after each round, so it is a bit easier to keep up with "offline."

That's about it, but I will be happy to elucidate on issues and/or answer any questions.

[cthomer5000]

A full 53 round draft is absolutely insane. 1,696 players. If it took 2 minutes per pick, you guys would be done in 56 hours.

[sjshaw]

We would do the first 20 or so rounds live and the rest auto or list.

[DukeRulesMAB]

We've done much crazier things than that in FOBL, ct. When we converted from v3 to v4, some doofus (read: Shaw ) editted every single one of the new ratings (Team Leader, Consistency, Clutch) for every single player (over 2000 of them) in the league to our default settings. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

53 draft rounds is a piece of cake.

[cuervo72]

Hmm, I'm considering creating a csv file based on a FOF4 career to import into FOF2004...(1 team down, 31 to go!)

[gstelmack]

Can anyone confirm that "participants" cannot save their turn and come back to it later before exporting? It appears from my preliminary testing that "Save Game" has no effect for participants. If you come back later, all your changes are gone. Is this accurate?

[Flasch186]

perhaps the order should be revisited now that it seems some of the vets are learning a bit more as to what works best. For example, maybe 1. should be to upload the cities files (exactly which files) to the owners. 2. owners import these into their ? directory. etc.

[sjshaw]

I am still unclear how the whole cities thing works.

[Flasch186]

weel i assume all the owners must have the commishes sities file to start....for fictional leagues, like my USFL

[cthomer5000]

Originally posted by sjshaw
I am still unclear how the whole cities thing works.

my guess is the cities each owner has on his computer don't matter at all. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the only city settings that matter are on the commissioners computer where the games are actually simmed.

even if the commish has completely renamed the league, i'm sure that when you open the game file, the teams will still be listed as whatever you have them set to. It won't matter if your cities aren't set the same, but it might be confusing to follow allong if they don't match.

[Flasch186]

must eliminate confusion....confusion will lead to problems for a commish. What sucks is that all the games on that computer will have the new fictional stuff by default. that stinks.

[cthomer5000]

Originally posted by Flasch186
must eliminate confusion....confusion will lead to problems for a commish. What sucks is that all the games on that computer will have the new fictional stuff by default. that stinks.

"new fictional stuff?"

what does that mean?

[Flasch186]

fictional cities....any changes become the default for any other career you want to start unless im doing something wrong.

[cuervo72]

Originally posted by cthomer5000
my guess is the cities each owner has on his computer don't matter at all. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the only city settings that matter are on the commissioners computer where the games are actually simmed.

even if the commish has completely renamed the league, i'm sure that when you open the game file, the teams will still be listed as whatever you have them set to. It won't matter if your cities aren't set the same, but it might be confusing to follow allong if they don't match.

That would be my guess too, that there is a team ID (or really a franchise ID, based off of the numbers in the teams.txt file for the player editor) that is hard coded and can't ever change, and then a city ID associated with the team that is determined on startup and after startup can't be changed.

So the team nicknames will correspond to team ID's, and will be whatever you currently have in your nicks.fdt file. Now the city ID associated with a team I'm not so sure about. I guess that has to do with how the league is created, and I'd guess it is determined by the commissioner when he starts up (though I could be wrong). So if the commissioner starts the game with your team in Arizona (a city ID of 9?), that's what the city ID will be on everyone's version of the game. All you as a team are being identified by is your franchise ID (I believe the number or number-1 is part of the file suffix you send to the commish). So if I choose to edit the city file and make Arizona into Sedona, on my system the team will be from Sedona. But I'm guessing (and it is only a guess) that specific information about the city isn't passed in the files we send to the commissioner, so we wouldn't effect anyone else. I'm not sure how this would effect your particular view of the city, its finances, etc, but I'd guess it wouldn't have a bearing on the game because all of the game decisions are being run by the commish.

[Flasch186]

So if a owner, non commish, opens my game file i send ot him and he looks up his team will it be the right cityand nickname or will he just "imagine" it's the right one. ie. the Las Vegas Nemesis but it will actually show up as the Las Vegas broncos?

[sjshaw]

When I ran the MP league, I had the default cities. One player had custom cities. When he chose a team, he had to choose from his custom teams, which increased the chance he would choose a team that was already taken (he couldn't see the teams).

When he opened the first league export, I believe his cities reverted back to the default. This whole issue confuses me and I am going to run some experiments.

[sjshaw]

From the help file:

City Affiliations Screen

Use the City Affiliations Screen to view or modify the initial city affiliations for each franchise.

When beginning a new career, the game will use these affiliations to locate each team. This screen will have no effect on an existing career.

When changing affiliations for use in a multi-player league, the commissioner should create one these affiliation files and send it everyone in the league.

The commissioner should take the frfoot.fni file from the universe directory in his installation and distribute it to the league. League members should place this file in their universe directories. This will replace any changes they have made on their own, both for single-player games and multi-player games.

City Names and Abbreviations Screen

Use thie City Names and Abbreviations Screen to view or modify city names and abbreviations used in the game. Changing a city name or abbreviation applies to all games played, not just the current game. It will instantly change all references to that city, even in past saved games and past seasons of the current game.

Abbreviations must be three characters. To refer to San Francisco as SF, use a space before or after the SF.

When changing city names for use in a multi-player league, the commissioner should create one these affiliation files and send it everyone in the league.

The commissioner should take the frfoot.fcy file from the universe directory in his installation and distribute it to the league. League members should place this file in their universe directories. This will replace any changes they have made on their own, both for single-player games and multi-player games.

[sjshaw]

So it appears that owners will have to rename/move files around if they want to see the league's cities without trashing their own. I'll work on it a bit tonight.

[cthomer5000]

Originally posted by sjshaw
So it appears that owners will have to rename/move files around if they want to see the league's cities without trashing their own. I'll work on it a bit tonight.

sounds easy enough.

[cuervo72]

Originally posted by cthomer5000
sounds easy enough.

Still, it's not as smooth as it could be. It would be nicer at least if a multiplayer career would have its own directory with its own set of ini, fcy, etc. files rather than juggle these. Granted, utilities that import/export these files to and from csv makes this easier.

[Flasch186]

I find it rather ridiculous, sorry Jim, that I have to dedicate one of my license / computers to running a multiplayer league, USFL, and then use my other license / Laptop for all my personal leagues. Seems like there should be a better, maybe not easier way (programming wise) way to do this.

[Easy Mac]

you don't have to.

[Flasch186]

talk to me, explain to me my fix. Cuz I want it badly to work easily.

[Sidhe]

I want to know if there is an easier way to do this too. Can you have multiple copies of FOF2004 on your hardrive, maybe? I cannot be bothered to switch out the files every time. I know there will come the time I forget.. what a hassle.

[Front Office Midget]

I have several FOF folders in my computer with one license. One I am going to dedicate to my Multiplayer league (DHMFL... still spots open in the multiplayer forum, shameless plug ), the other to my personal fictional career. All you have to do is run the install file several times to different folders.

[Sidhe]

That's way cool. I will now attempt to do the same..

[Sidhe]

Just a warning to CPU novices.. for whatever reason, installing the second FOF wiped my league out.. Best to save some files, though I' don't know which ones, if anyone else does this.

[sjshaw]

Somebody will write a tool or batch file to swap the files out by changing the extensions. I wouldn't sweat it too much.

[Flasch186]

so, grizzled vet, do you recommend waiting on a tool or doing the second and possibly 3rd installation?

[Sidhe]

Here's something strange.. can someone help me out with this?

It seems that the different instances of FOF2004 on my hardrive somehow are sharing files. If I change the cities in one, it changes the cities in the other. The same save game is available in both. But they are in different directories!!

"C:\Program Files\Solecismic Software\Front Office Football 2004\frfoot2004.exe"

"C:\Documents and Settings\David\My Documents\FOF2004-MP\frfoot2004-MP.exe"

Where have I made my mistake? Is it in putting the second one into my Documents and Settings directory? It's all way over my head..

[sjshaw]

Looks like I'd wait on a tool or batch file. Too bad this isn't unix or I'd just write a shell script. I wonder how to do that kind of stuff in Windows?

[Flasch186]

ok, ill wait........wish i didnt have to but I know Jim needs a vaca. I hope he gets back well rested and hammers out some script fro proplr to make these utes.

[Flasch186]

proplr = people

[3ric]

My solution for the problem of switching files between a single-player career and a multi-player game:

I created two *.bat files to copy the files (fni, fcy and helmet bitmaps) when I need to switch. The first one for my multiplayer game (placed in the FOF2k4 directory):

copy universe\cfl\frfoot.fni universe\
copy universe\cfl\frfoot.fcy universe\
copy universe\cfl\*.bmp pictures\
start frfoot2004.exe

I have a subfolder in the universe folder with the CFL files and the helmet pictures named CFL, all the files are copied before FOF2k4 is launched.

When I want to run my single-player career, I run this bat file (placed in the FOF2k4 directory):

copy universe\nfl\frfoot.fni universe\
copy universe\nfl\frfoot.fcy universe\
copy universe\nfl\*.bmp pictures\
start frfoot2004.exe

Again, a subfolder named NFL in the universe folder with the relevant files that are copied before starting the game. Makes it easy switching cities, nicknames and graphics.

[Franklinnoble]

Wow. Just read all this, and now I have a headache.

Sounds like I'd better wait for FOF2k5 before I want to try any multi-player stuff...

[gstelmack]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble
Wow. Just read all this, and now I have a headache.

Sounds like I'd better wait for FOF2k5 before I want to try any multi-player stuff...

This is only an issue for those who want different cities/team names/conference names/etc between multiplayer and single player.

[Dutch]

I am a huge supporter of 3ric's strategy for loading different games. It's so easy and works like a champ.

Thank you!

[Tasan]

Good job 3ric! ;- )

[JeeberD]

Originally posted by 3ric
I created two *.bat files to copy the files (fni, fcy and helmet bitmaps) when I need to switch. The first one for my multiplayer game (placed in the FOF2k4 directory):

What in the heck is a .bat file?

[3ric]

It's a text file with the ending .bat instead of .txt, create a text file and copy the DOS commands into the text file. Then change the ending, which makes the file runnable. Double clicking the file executes the commands in the file.

[JeeberD]

OK, 3ric. I'm an idiot when it comes to this sort of thing. Could you walk me through the process using baby steps? I would love to be able to have separate games for single player and CFL usage...