Custom Conferences

[weeeeeeez]

I got the Big Ten back down to 10 teams and when I did that it's not what the schedule should be. Ohio State does not play Michigan the last game of the year anymore. Is there anyway to fix this ?

[cbuhl79]

Re: Custom Conferences

Hi, I worked on this feature, and I can tell you that it will *try* to schedule annual rivalries like Michigan-Ohio State on the correct dates, even if you mess around with conferences.

Can you tell me exactly what changes you made to get the Big Ten down? Did you simply remove Nebraska and Penn State?

Were Michigan and Ohio State not playing each other at all? Or were they actually playing each other, but on the incorrect date? What date?

[Spanky]

Re: Custom Conferences

I posted this in the other thread:

The same thing happened to me. I took out Penn State and Nebraska to give the Big 10 team teams. Michigan still plays Ohio State in week 14, as I think it's supposed to be. However, Michigan then plays Wisconsin in week 15.

I was afraid something like this would happen. It completely destroys the purpose of having custom conferences.

[cbuhl79]

Re: Custom Conferences

I posted this in the other thread:

The same thing happened to me. I took out Penn State and Nebraska to give the Big 10 team teams. Michigan still plays Ohio State in week 14, as I think it's supposed to be. However, Michigan then plays Wisconsin in week 15.

I was afraid something like this would happen. It completely destroys the purpose of having custom conferences.

Thanks, we will investigate this issue.

[Redacted01]

Re: Custom Conferences

I have a whole thread on this where I go through what happens to schedules.

There needs to be an additional option in conference setup where you designate the last week games should be played period. That will eliminate some of this. If you tell the Big Ten to be done by week 14, then you're good. Prior to this year, they and the MWC would commonly finish 2 weeks before championship week. They should have put that along with the start of conference games.

[cbuhl79]

Re: Custom Conferences

After investigating this, I can tell you that dochalladay is essentially correct.

The way the scheduling system works is that once it has determined that two teams should play (based on whatever conference changes you may have made), it first checks the REAL schedule to see if they were already scheduled to play. If so, it tries to schedule the game on that date, or on the closest date available for both teams. Otherwise, it just picks an available date.

What happens here is that the Ohio State - Michigan game remains on the correct date, but because you've removed the Championship Game from the Big Ten, it opens up that week as available to schedule other games in. Since Michigan and Wisconsin aren't scheduled to play in 2011, it just picks an available open date, in this case, the week that was previously reserved for the Championship Game.

[bulls23]

Re: Custom Conferences

After investigating this, I can tell you that dochalladay is essentially correct.

The way the scheduling system works is that once it has determined that two teams should play (based on whatever conference changes you may have made), it first checks the REAL schedule to see if they were already scheduled to play. If so, it tries to schedule the game on that date, or on the closest date available for both teams. Otherwise, it just picks an available date.

What happens here is that the Ohio State - Michigan game remains on the correct date, but because you've removed the Championship Game from the Big Ten, it opens up that week as available to schedule other games in. Since Michigan and Wisconsin aren't scheduled to play in 2011, it just picks an available open date, in this case, the week that was previously reserved for the Championship Game.

It is nice to have people who worked on the game come in and answer our questions. Thank you! I'd like to see more of this.

[Bill1]

Re: Custom Conferences

I also have this problem, not sure if i should post in here. But when ever i change the big ten division names, Indiana somehow get schedulr a game at North Texas on August 27. the other big tean games are now week 2, which is week 1 in real life.

[cbuhl79]

Re: Custom Conferences

I also have this problem, not sure if i should post in here. But when ever i change the big ten division names, Indiana somehow get schedulr a game at North Texas on August 27. the other big tean games are now week 2, which is week 1 in real life.

I can tell you why this happens. There are two parts.

First, we made the decision that if you DON'T modify a conference in any way, that we use the real life data so you should get the exact "real" life schedules. If you DO modify the conference, then we use the scheduling logic and it's not guaranteed that all the schedules will be exactly the same as real life. It still tries to schedule the same matchups and dates, but it might not be exact.

We meant for this to apply only to the tweaks that actually affect scheduling, but as you discovered, it ended up applying to changes that shouldn't affect scheduling.

Second, our scheduling logic actually allows for 15 weeks, with the extra week at the beginning of the season. All of our scheduling logic TRIES to avoid scheduling games in that first extra week, and if that week ends up empty, we just remove it and renumber every other week.

However, if it can't find a better week for a game that it wants to schedule (usually because one or both teams have a game in every other week), then it will allow the game in the first week.

In your case, because you tweaked the Big Ten, it probably allowed the conference schedule to get changed a little bit. Then when it generated the non-conf schedule, it tried to matchup Indiana and N Texas (because they're playing in real life this year). It tried to schedule them in the correct week, but Indiana probably had a conf game that week because of the tweaked B10 schedule, so it had to move it to the extra first week because they had no other open dates.

[BigPapi2004]

Re: Custom Conferences

I really appreciate a person who actual worked on the game to chime in. Thanks a lot cbuhl79 for giving us a direct reply to the whole situation.

[jaytay10]

Re: Custom Conferences

Forgive me if I have missed this, but I have been looking around the boards and testing it myself, but maybe I can get a definitive answer. It appears the most team moves in a dynasty is 255.

My question is when you do a swap does that count as two moves? also when you just add a team to a conference is that also just one move or two (one for leaving the old conference and one for moving tot eh new conference)? Also any change of it being bumped up above 255?

Thank you in advance for any insight you can give us.

[Jhawk513]

Re: Custom Conferences

I can tell you why this happens. There are two parts.

First, we made the decision that if you DON'T modify a conference in any way, that we use the real life data so you should get the exact "real" life schedules. If you DO modify the conference, then we use the scheduling logic and it's not guaranteed that all the schedules will be exactly the same as real life. It still tries to schedule the same matchups and dates, but it might not be exact.

We meant for this to apply only to the tweaks that actually affect scheduling, but as you discovered, it ended up applying to changes that shouldn't affect scheduling.

Second, our scheduling logic actually allows for 15 weeks, with the extra week at the beginning of the season. All of our scheduling logic TRIES to avoid scheduling games in that first extra week, and if that week ends up empty, we just remove it and renumber every other week.

However, if it can't find a better week for a game that it wants to schedule (usually because one or both teams have a game in every other week), then it will allow the game in the first week.

In your case, because you tweaked the Big Ten, it probably allowed the conference schedule to get changed a little bit. Then when it generated the non-conf schedule, it tried to matchup Indiana and N Texas (because they're playing in real life this year). It tried to schedule them in the correct week, but Indiana probably had a conf game that week because of the tweaked B10 schedule, so it had to move it to the extra first week because they had no other open dates.

since you worked on ncaa12

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PUT COLLEGE GAMEDAY IN NCAA 13!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this feature should have been in the game a long time ago....

[kirkdawg]

Re: Custom Conferences

I have a question about realigning conferences in dynasty. I thought I had read that conferences could be changed after year 1 to reflect the shifts out of the Big 12, but I can't figure out how to do that. Am I missing something really obvious? Thanks.

[jaytay10]

Re: Custom Conferences

I have a question about realigning conferences in dynasty. I thought I had read that conferences could be changed after year 1 to reflect the shifts out of the Big 12, but I can't figure out how to do that. Am I missing something really obvious? Thanks.

They can be changed after each year. it is the last step (or second to last) in the off season stuff.

[Redacted01]

Re: Custom Conferences

I also noticed that using custom conferences reopens the kickoff week that was around years ago in the last week of August. I guess it creates more room to make schedules, but it also means teams schedule 2 bye weeks in a row.

I'll also go ahead and ask this here as it is really screwing with my classic setups in this one particular case.

Arkansas has some rivals in the SEC, but not as many or the ones that the game is scheduling. I've moved Arkansas into a 7-team SWC from 1937, but all 5 of their OOC games are against the SEC: Bama, Auburn, USC, LSU, and MSU every single season. I can understand LSU, but that's it. Maybe MSU. But USC is only a permanent game due to the SEC's protected game setup. Bama and Auburn are just division games. Every year I've simmed, Arkansas has finished top 2 in the SWC, going 5-1 or 6-0, but then they get creamed by the SEC so they are winning only 7-9 games.