BZ 1741: Adding league takes forever

[His Own Bad Self]

(I also posted this in General Discussions.)

I'm trying to create a fictional universe. I have 26 leagues set up so far, but adding a league now takes forever, on the order of hours. I don't have any AV software running. I expected my computer to handle a lot more than this... but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what's wrong. If anything is wrong, that is. My PC more than meets the recommended requirements... thanks for any help in advance.

[Tony M]

Could you, if it doesn't take too long, detail the following in a post?

For each league, the number of subleagues, the number of divisions and the number of teams in each division and whether they are an affiliated league of another.

Part of the problem of setting up leagues is that every time you change the structure, all the teams the game has previously created for that league get marked as inactive and a whole new set are created.

So, if you wanted a 2x2x5 structure, you would start with the standard fictional, and in your mind you would expect there to be 22 teams in the database (2x2x5 + 2 All Star teams), but in reality there would be 16+17+18+19+20+2 teams (92 in total). So you can see how adding more and more leagues with more and more teams can lead to massive growth in the teams database and this can slow down league creation.

[His Own Bad Self]

Originally Posted by Tony M

Could you, if it doesn't take too long, detail the following in a post?

For each league, the number of subleagues, the number of divisions and the number of teams in each division and whether they are an affiliated league of another.

Part of the problem of setting up leagues is that every time you change the structure, all the teams the game has previously created for that league get marked as inactive and a whole new set are created.

So, if you wanted a 2x2x5 structure, you would start with the standard fictional, and in your mind you would expect there to be 22 teams in the database (2x2x5 + 2 All Star teams), but in reality there would be 16+17+18+19+20+2 teams (92 in total). So you can see how adding more and more leagues with more and more teams can lead to massive growth in the teams database and this can slow down league creation.

One subleague in all leagues. None are affiliated. Numbers are divisions/teams in each division.

League 1: 6/5
League 2: 2/6
League 3: 2/6
League 4: 4/4
League 5: 3/6
League 6: 6/4
League 7: 2/4
League 8: 2/5
League 9: 2/6
League 10: 7/4
League 11: 1/6
League 12: 2/5
League 13: 2/4
League 14: 2/4
League 15: 2/4
League 16: 2/6
League 17: 2/6
League 18: 2/7
League 19: 2/4
League 20: 2/6
League 21: 2/6
League 22: 2/4
League 23: 2/5
League 24: 2/5
League 25: 4/4
League 26: 2/5

And that's as far as I've made it.

[Carplos]

Part of the problem of setting up leagues is that every time you change the structure, all the teams the game has previously created for that league get marked as inactive and a whole new set are created.

So, if you wanted a 2x2x5 structure, you would start with the standard fictional, and in your mind you would expect there to be 22 teams in the database (2x2x5 + 2 All Star teams), but in reality there would be 16+17+18+19+20+2 teams (92 in total). So you can see how adding more and more leagues with more and more teams can lead to massive growth in the teams database and this can slow down league creation.

So, um, why does it do this?

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by Carplos

So, um, why does it do this?

Ask Markus... I wish I knew the answer because ballparks for example only get created when the final structure is decided and the game starts, so I don't see why teams should be any different. It's easily seen, if you start a fictional league from the menu and up each division to 5 teams.

When you click Fictional League it will create a 2x4x4 structure and these teams will have IDs 1-16.

Change SL1 Div 1 to 5, and teams 1-16 get 'deleted' and the new structure has team id's from 17-33. Change SL1 Div 2 to 5, and 17-33 join 1-16 in being 'deleted' and the new structure has id's from 34 to 51. Change SL2 Div 1 to 5 and 34-51 join the 'deleted' group and 52 to 70 become the current ID's and then finally change SL2 Div 2 to 5 and 52-70 get 'deleted' and the game uses ID's 71-90 for the structure. Click start and it adds 91 and 92 in as the All Star Teams.

I just did that, exported the game to csv and lo and behold the team id's in teams.csv are 71-92...

Unfortunately teams.dat stores the team id for each team but in a sense doesn't use it, it uses the position of the record in the file as it's ID (I once tried to tidy up a teams.dat by removing teams that shouldn't be there and it didn't work as the game assumed the teams left were numbered 1 upwards)

Each team record takes up at least 8 Kb and nearer 10Kb without any stats and stuff so with 70 dead teams you've got almost a Megabyte of wasted space (and that has to be loaded into memory each time you play that league)

It doesn't seem much, but that is just a small example.

HOBS' setup would seem to imply 324 teams in total, but it won't be anything like that.

Starting with League 1

Click Add Fictional League - 16 teams will be created
Change Sub Leagues to 1 - 16 teams deleted, 8 more created
Change Divisions to 6 - 8 teams deleted, 16 more created (it will create 4,4,2,2,2,2)
Change Division 1 to 5 teams - 16 teams deleted, 17 more created
Change Division 2 to 5 teams - 17 teams deleted, 18 more created
Change Division 3 to 5 teams - 18 teams deleted, 21 more created
Change Division 4 to 5 teams - 21 teams deleted, 24 more created
Change Division 5 to 5 teams - 24 teams deleted, 27 more created
Change Division 6 to 5 teams - 27 teams deleted, 30 more created

So, in total for creating League 1, 147 teams (at minimum) will have bit the dust to create the 30 teams in existence.

The other leagues will create (at minimum) 923 teams that aren't used, so in order to get his 324 teams the database will contain over 1440 teams (if the All Star teams are getting created).

I'm guessing your teams.dat file is in excess of 10Mb even before you've run any games...

[Tony M]

The way to avoid this is to create 26 fictional leagues and leave them to start with as 2x4x4, click Start Game and play as commissioner, and then once you get to the first game screen, go to Game Setup, League Setup and Edit League Structure from there for each league.

Adding / deleting teams and divisions and subleagues in there doesn't mark the entire league as being 'deleted'.

[Tony M]

To be honest, I've just tried to create 26 leagues without changing any structures and it's taking a lot longer each time as I passed through 15.

[His Own Bad Self]

Originally Posted by Tony M

To be honest, I've just tried to create 26 leagues without changing any structures and it's taking a lot longer each time as I passed through 15.

I just tried the same thing with the same result.

[His Own Bad Self]

Originally Posted by Tony M

The way to avoid this is to create 26 fictional leagues and leave them to start with as 2x4x4, click Start Game and play as commissioner, and then once you get to the first game screen, go to Game Setup, League Setup and Edit League Structure from there for each league.

Adding / deleting teams and divisions and subleagues in there doesn't mark the entire league as being 'deleted'.

I tried this and it was just as slow. Might be my PC, after all.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by His Own Bad Self

I tried this and it was just as slow. Might be my PC, after all.

That is a lot of leagues. How much RAM do you have?

[His Own Bad Self]

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

That is a lot of leagues. How much RAM do you have?

2GB. In theory.

[Tycobbler]

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

That is a lot of leagues. How much RAM do you have?

Agreed. Couple that with anything running in the background and your going to bog down.

[His Own Bad Self]

Originally Posted by Tycobbler

Agreed. Couple that with anything running in the background and your going to bog down.

There's almost nothing in the background - I made sure of that.

Oh, I can run 26 leagues just fine. It's that the game won't let me get there in the first place because it takes too long to create them. I have to use OOTP8 to create them, make a new game in OOTP8, and then import that universe into OOTP9.

FWIW, I can get a universe of about 28 leagues in OOTP8, and about 40-45 leagues in OOTP2007, before the game starts taking forever to create another new league.

[His Own Bad Self]

An aside: 26 leagues doesn't seem like a lot. If you select all the premade options that are already in the game (under the "add standard leagues" option), that's 27 leagues right there. There's something in the way the game creates new leagues - and it's probably what Tony M was talking about - that makes creating fictional leagues a lot more time-consuming than it should be, if one tries to make too many changes.

[His Own Bad Self]

Originally Posted by Tony M

Ask Markus... I wish I knew the answer because ballparks for example only get created when the final structure is decided and the game starts, so I don't see why teams should be any different. It's easily seen, if you start a fictional league from the menu and up each division to 5 teams.

When you click Fictional League it will create a 2x4x4 structure and these teams will have IDs 1-16.

Change SL1 Div 1 to 5, and teams 1-16 get 'deleted' and the new structure has team id's from 17-33. Change SL1 Div 2 to 5, and 17-33 join 1-16 in being 'deleted' and the new structure has id's from 34 to 51. Change SL2 Div 1 to 5 and 34-51 join the 'deleted' group and 52 to 70 become the current ID's and then finally change SL2 Div 2 to 5 and 52-70 get 'deleted' and the game uses ID's 71-90 for the structure. Click start and it adds 91 and 92 in as the All Star Teams.

I just did that, exported the game to csv and lo and behold the team id's in teams.csv are 71-92...

I'm wondering now if this can be "fixed". Maybe it's not something wrong with the game, it's not a glitch or bug, but it doesn't seem to make sense. Ping: Markus... hopefully he can explain why this is.

[Nutlaw]

Not knowing what else to do here, I logged it as BZ 1741. It certainly shouldn't give you more trouble than OOTP 2007.

[His Own Bad Self]

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

Not knowing what else to do here, I logged it as BZ 1741. It certainly shouldn't give you more trouble than OOTP 2007.

I appreciate it.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by His Own Bad Self

I'm wondering now if this can be "fixed". Maybe it's not something wrong with the game, it's not a glitch or bug, but it doesn't seem to make sense. Ping: Markus... hopefully he can explain why this is.

I've mentioned this problem many times and never had a satisfactory answer to it.

[Markus Heinsohn]

The problem was a different one, I fixed this now.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

The problem was a different one, I fixed this now.

Which part is fixed, the speed of adding leagues, or the quantities of inactive teams generated?