Newly converted OOTP 8 league hanging at "Loading Teams" in 9.2.2

[Corsairs]

This weekend our online league is scheduled to convert over from OOTP 8 to OOTP 9. I ran the "Import OOTP 2007 / 8 Game" function overnight. The conversion apparently ended around 3:30 A.M. and when I got up four hours later I was at the team selection screen. I had to leave for the morning so I saved and exited the game.

I'm trying to get back in now and it's hung at 22% - "Loading Teams". It's been sitting there for exactly one hour now.

Before this latest test where I've been letting it run and hoping it will eventually load, I tried a few other things. I copied my OOTP 8 .dats to a blank folder and ran the importer from there. OOTP 9 quickly convereted and loaded those files (although it did hang for about 25 seconds on the "Load Teams" message, much longer than in OOTP 8). I then backed up the converted .dats from last night and copied the newly converted .dats into their folder (which contains all my picture files, box scores, game logs, etc.). Now instead of loading up quickly it's hanging at "Load Teams" again. I also notice the size of my "Teams.dat" file has ballooned from 42 MB in OOTP 8 to 67 MB in OOTP 9 post-conversion.

I had test-converted this league under three different versions of OOTP 9 (the latest being 9.1.6) and had no trouble like this. Any idea what could be causing this problem? My owners are anxiously awaiting their first OOTP 9 file and I hate to keep them waiting.

[Corsairs]

A little extra information:

• The game did eventually load after 3 and a half hours. After exiting and restarting, it again hung at 22% (Loading Teams).
• The problem seems to have something to do with the pictures in my "images" directory. If that directory is emptied, the game will pause at the Loading Teams message for about 30 seconds (much longer than OOTP 8, incidentally) and then proceed normally.
• Turning off Facegen has no effect. Neither do either of the Facegen troubleshooting modes.
• Disabling my virus checker has no effect.
• OOTP 9 is utilizing 99% of my CPU resources while it's hung like this.

[Chappy]

I am having a similar problem since upgrading to 9.2.2...

Fortunately, mine only hangs for about 30 seconds to a minute, but in all it takes about 4 times as long as it should to load and the teams.dat file is larger than it should be.

[Nutlaw]

Which operating system are you using?

My only suggestions at this point would be to try simming forward a few days to see if that improves performance and to remove and then gradually add back in files from your images folder to pinpoint the trouble further.

[BoofBonser26]

I am a member of Corsair's league and am having the exact same problem that he reported. I am using Vista.

If I delete my entire images folder, the game will load normally. If I have the images folder intact, it hangs at 22% Loading Teams and I haven't been inclined to stick around for 3.5 hours to see if it eventually loads.

[Corsairs]

Apologies for the delayed response. The inordinate amount of time it's taking to get into the game makes testing a very slow process.

Nutlaw, I'm using Windows XP SP2. Advancing days in-game does not solve the problem. I'm attempting to test adding images slowly back into the directory, but obviously that's a process that's going to take a long time to fully test. We have a lot of image files.

What's worse, it seems my leaguemates are experiecing this problem as well now that I've sent them our files. Those that have kept up with the picture updates are experiencing huge wait times to get into the game. Even if they don't have any images at all it's taking 30 seconds to a minute to proceed past the "Loading Teams" message.

I have noticed that the game is recreating several of our image files during the hours that it takes to load the league. In particular, all the high school teams in our feeder league are having their logos recreated twice; one with the nickname included in the filename, one without. Also, several logos are being created for teams that don't exist in our universe.

This may not be a game-breaker, but it's at least close. Would it be possible to have someone take a look at our .dat files? I've FTP'd them to the /incoming/ootp/saved_games directory on your server (file name: "Corsairs_10-12-08.zip"). While I understand we could just ditch our images and continue play (albeit still with an annoyingly long time), that isn't much of a solution for a league that's been using those images for nearly a year now.

[Nutlaw]

Are most of the image files player pictures? Were you using any facegen-related mods, like the facial hair one, before conversion?

What happens if, in a copy of the league, you try to regenerate player images for everyone rather than copy the old files over? Unless your face.dat file was damaged, similar faces ought to be generated.

[Corsairs]

I'll give your suggestion a try as soon as I can get back into the game (it'll be awhile). In answer to your question, yes, the vast majority of our image files are player pictures (8,726 to be exact). If I remove all the player pictures from the "images" directory, the game hangs for a much shorter time at "Loading Teams" (around 3-5 minutes). It still recreates a bunch of logos every time the league is loaded, including every high school logo (twice) and every All-Star logo. By the way, no, we weren't and still aren't using any facegen mods.

[Corsairs]

Regenerating all player and coach pictures does not solve the problem, I'm sorry to report.

EDIT: Is the "images" folder supposed to be read-only? Mine is flagged that way and it's not allowing me to change it. None of the actual images are flagged as read-only, as far as I can see.

[Chappy]

Corsairs,

Did you save any of your previous tests?

I was having a similar problem but was able to fix it by deleting my images folder and then copying the images folder from a previous test import in.

[Corsairs]

I believe I've tried that, but there's no harm in trying again. Chappy, when you fixed your problem by doing this, did you import just your 2007/8 .dat files and then copy your images over later? Actually, if you can spell out what you did in as much detail as possible, I'd appreciate it. I'm at my wit's end with this thing.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

EDIT: Is the "images" folder supposed to be read-only? Mine is flagged that way and it's not allowing me to change it. None of the actual images are flagged as read-only, as far as I can see.

Mine is set that way and I'm not having trouble, so that's not it.

[Corsairs]

I just got home and had a chance to test Chappy's suggestion. Unfortunately it's a no-go. I have some tests lined up for tonight, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced the problem lies somewhere in our .dat files. Hopefully someone can take a look at them. We're scheduled to run our first OOTP 9 sim this Friday. I'm not going to give up our art without a fight, so this is something I'll be sticking with until I can learn more about what's causing it (and, hopefully, a solution to the problem).

[Corsairs]

A quick update: I tried converting just my OOTP 8 files minus "faces.dat" and "messages.dat". This makes OOTP create 1 KB replacement files for those two .dats. I've done this in the past when conducting long-term sim tests to speed things up (since I'm not using faces or reading messages). Of course everything converted and loaded quickly with no images.

After the conversion was finished I tried copying my pictures into the "images" directory (even though they of course won't be associated properly because I didn't convert "faces.dat"). When I tried to load up with the pictures in there and the 1 KB "faces.dat", it was back to hanging at 22%.

What does this mean? I have no idea; hopefully someone smarter than me does.

[BoofBonser26]

Please, anyone who thinks they could help with this, do! I don't want our league to loose our artwork. It's the result of some of the best modders on this board (truthserum and knuckler), with myself, the Commish, and several other league members slowly chipping in over the course of almost a year.

[Markus Heinsohn]

The game generates team logos that were not found in the images folder when loading. But it does that since the first version of OOTP 9, so I do not know why it should take longer now...

Anyway, when all team logos are located properly in the news\html\images folder, then the league will load quickly.

Edit: Corsairs, I just loaded your league and there are more than 4000 teams in the database. Now, when you load the game up and the game does not find the logo for an active (not deleted) team, it'll create one... that's why it takes a lot of time to load for the first time.

Edit2: Crap. The problem is the following: Since you have so many teams in the database (I guess they are a result of adding & then deleting leagues), the game tries to find a logo for these teams when loading. Now, when your images folder is filled with all the player & team pics, this searching takes a lot of time, hence the delay. We will fix this, and a new .exe file will be made available tomorrow...

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

The game generates team logos that were not found in the images folder when loading. But it does that since the first version of OOTP 9, so I do not know why it should take longer now...

Anyway, when all team logos are located properly in the news\html\images folder, then the league will load quickly.

Edit: Corsairs, I just loaded your league and there are more than 4000 teams in the database. Now, when you load the game up and the game does not find the logo for an active (not deleted) team, it'll create one... that's why it takes a lot of time to load for the first time.

Edit2: Crap. The problem is the following: Since you have so many teams in the database (I guess they are a result of adding & then deleting leagues), the game tries to find a logo for these teams when loading. Now, when your images folder is filled with all the player & team pics, this searching takes a lot of time, hence the delay. We will fix this, and a new .exe file will be made available tomorrow...

Thank you so much for looking into this Markus. We'll sit tight and wait for that new .exe. Hopefully it'll do the trick. I don't suppose there's any way for us to remove those unused teams in our database?

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

I don't suppose there's any way for us to remove those unused teams in our database?

No, unfortunately not I'll keep you posted on the progress on the .exe!

[Markus Heinsohn]

Here you go:
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml#post2600460

[Corsairs]

You, sir, are a genius. Version 9.2.3 reduces the hang time at "Loading Teams" from three and a half hours to 15 seconds. I'd call that one heck of an improvement! It's too bad we can't purge those unused teams floating around in our database, but maybe that's something that can be looked into for OOTP 10.

In the meantime, this is more than a satisfactory solution: it's positively brilliant. You've got my thanks and the thanks of our entire league, Markus. Big time.