Every player became "Smith Smith"

[kerouac]

Hi all,

Been lurking around, learning a ton about the game both before I bought it and since I've been playing it for the past couple of months.

Today something strange happened, and I'm sure it's been well-documented, but I couldn't seem to find anything about it.

Basically, when I loaded my game, every player had changed his name to "Smith Smith".

I shut it down and restarted/reloaded, hoping it would revert to normal, but no dice.

It wasn't a big deal to me in general, since I'm so new I'm starting a new league fairly often until I get it "just right" for me, and I didn't like my settings for this particular league anyway, but I figure I should let the tech support forum know, just in case.

For background, in case it helps, I have 2008, was playing a historical league setup, but started it in 2007, erased the past history, and simmed for 50 years; then I expanded and put myself into GM. I'm not sure if knowing that helps or not, but there it is just in case.

Thanks.

[Nutlaw]

It sounds as if your names.dat file got damaged in some way.

There were some old issues with this that I believe have been cleaned up since. The fact that you were hopping around from version to version would make it difficult to track. Just to verify, were you using 2.0.3.68 in OOTP 2007 and 8.0.0.13 in OOTP 8?

[kerouac]

Thanks for the reply.

I've had 8.0.0.13 the whole time. I bought 2008 and haven't installed a patch. The bouncing around is more on the type of league setup; basically where I tried a few different league setups while I try to find the right fit for "me".

I hope starting several different leagues didn't really mess something up.

Is there something I should download, or fix, on my end, or is this just one of those things and another reason why I should backup?

[Nutlaw]

Ah, I understand now. When you say that you tried several different leagues, do you mean that you started new saved game universes or that you repeatedly deleted and created new leagues within the same universe?

Messing around with historical leagues can sometimes cause issues.

I don't think that there is anything that you need to download or fix, but if you want to walk me through exactly what you plan to do for a new league, I'd be more than happy to point out any potential problem areas.

[kerouac]

Thanks again for your help! Knowing this is a relatively complicated game, and adding in the sandbox aspect, I spent a fair bit of time reading the manual and the forums before even buying it; figuring that I should at least have a basic understanding of what the game can do before I spend 40 dollars and lots of time on something that may simply be over my head.

But then I saw how much people help each other on the forums, and that was one factor that made the decision for me

Basically, I started a few different universes, and then realized I had this or that setting wrong (like inflating the number of amateur rounds more than I should have), or did something stupid to mess up what I want to do.

Basically, what I'd really like to accomplish is start with the MLB setup, with a AAA, AA, A, and Rookie League, delete the previous history (to take away the difference in eras), run the league without my involvement for long enough, maybe 50 years or so, to set a baseline for standout performances/careers/teams in which everything is relatively equal (era-wise) but similar to how things are in RL (like market size/budget differentials).

Then, expand the league with a team in my hometown, which would make it a small-market team. I'd like to run that expansion team and see how my team/players perform over the same period of time -- 50 years or so -- compared to how the game ran its teams during both the pre-expansion and post-expansion mini-eras.

It might be a dumb way to set it up; but that's what I've wanted past baseball video games to be able to do since way back when; and now it seems that OOTP has just the game Now it's just a matter of me figuring out how to shape the sandbox to fit what I want to do; and without turning every player into "Smith Smith".

[Nutlaw]

Sounds like a fun plan, and I'm fairly sure that the Smith Smith issue shouldn't be a regular occurrence. You do want to back up your saved game regularly just in case, however.

Since you are going to to be simming far ahead into the future anyway, do you need to run the league as a historical game? It might reduce some potential issues to simply begin with a modern roster set.

When running a long-term sim, you have to be aware of the file sizes that you will be creating. I'm not sure what your computer's specs are, but unless they are mind-blowing you are going to want to scale a few things back.

If you are using an existing roster set, go to Game -> Game Setup while in commissioner mode. Under the Global Setup tab, you'll want to save no box scores or game logs. You'll likely also want to limit the news logs, injury logs, and transactions logs history. Under the League Setup tab, you'll want to view the Options tab for each league and carefully select the Select Stats Detail that you feel that you need. You may want to turn the minor league details down to Low.

If you are planning to use FaceGen, you may want to disable it until such time that you actually begin to play out your games, or at least only create pictures On Demand. Otherwise, you'll end up with a bunch of images that you'll never see.

If you are creating a new league from scratch, you'll want to look under the Create Game tab and deselect the Create and Maintain Hidden Players box if you aren't using scouting. You may also wish to consider limiting your settings on keeping career L/R splits, fielding stats, and postseason stats, at least to the major league level only.

Sticking to only one league structure is a safe move. If you end up with a roster set that includes other leagues, you might want to simply delete them from get-go.

After going through your long sim periods, you may also wish to delete all of the files found in the messages folder within your .lg saved game folder. They start to add up.

That's ... just about everything I've got for long-term sims. Is there anything else that I can help you with right now?

[kerouac]

Thanks for the great help!

I think that covered everything I could think of to ask, plus a lot of things I hadn't even considered yet.

Again, thanks so much for the detailed and quick assistance

Cheers!

[Nutlaw]

No problem. If you have any further questions in the future, please don't hesitate to ask.