Teams.dbf causing post-season crashes?

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

Oh NLSC forum, please illuminate my mind!

The 2009 play-offs are over in my very old Dynasty (I think I started with the 07/08 rosters) and I decided to add a little more flavour by turning the generated rookies (team 39) into the 2010 draft class (e.g. the John Wall draft). And I decided to inject a few retired players before the post-season begins. And somewhere along the way I screwed up.

So... Draft Day goes through normally. Rookie scouting is OK. I've balanced the budgets so that the game doesn't hang during Re-sign. Draft Picking goes without a hitch. Free agent signing goes through as well. (Though considering EVERY team in the league is over-budget, I have no idea how these teams are acquiring NEW contracts.) Now when the last day of FA is over and 10+ last-minute messages flood in, I'm ready to enter Post-Season trading... and the game dumps me out every time (no hanging, just a dump) saying there's an error # -70, error # 91102, Reading File dfile4...() TEAMS

I've cleared the Database/WorkingDB directory every time, but the error returns. After fixing up the "game hangs at Resign" I'm stuck with "game kicks me out at Trading."

Now, I'm pretty sure it can't be Players.DBF causing issues, but that's the only file I ever modified. I changed the draft class (Team 39) names, but only added stats for "John Wall" (plyr001)... and just some basic stats from FGPbase to Primacy. (Player value and IsGenerated are all untouched, and these changes are easy to remove.) I also added some players that retired already; fogies like Jason Kidd and Steve Nash like to ride off into the sunset every year... I actually let them do it this year, so I'm replacing their 15th man with said players. I remove the playerID so it goes back to the original starting ID instead of the generated rookie (so I don't have to modify Appearance.DBF). PlakyerPKG points to STNASH_ instead of plyr0000, etc.

But if I only made changes to Players.DBF, why is Teams.DBF causing my game to stuff up during Post-Season?

I'll try re-undoing the rookie stats, and I can try re-creating the 15th man (since their season/career numbers can be '0').. is it because this season all teams (but mine) had 15 players? All teams are over-budget? (I raised the Salary Cap last year and shrunk it this year.)

Edit:
OK, just weird. This one time out of like two dozen tries, it lets me simulate everything (draft and all) through to the second day of Trading.

,,but then as soon as I try to open Trading, the game crashes (Teams error)... and I can't Simulate through Trading again.

[Andrew]

Have you cleared the contents of the currentdb folder as well? That can also sometimes help.

If you've still got the roster you used to start the Dynasty, you can try copying the teams.dbf file to your Dynasty save and see if it works. Make a backup first as you'll lose some season data doing that, but if it works we can perhaps at least isolate the issue, confirm there's something wrong with teams.dbf and see what can be done from there.

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

Thanks for the quick reply Andrew.

I've never seen anything in my CurrentDB folder, but I tried using an older Team.DBF with my current Player.DBF and entered the Draaaaaaft... woah. Teams were getting triple-picks (and forfeiting them). My team wound up with just a last-place pick despite no team having ever trading picks this season. Game still crashed when I tried to enter Trading.

Going over the Draft... ATL (who has always been in the playoffs) got the first two picks, followed by ORL & BOS (both usually reach the 2nd round), then ATL again, ORL, BOS, MIN, MIN, MIN, ATL, ATL, ATL, ATL...

Using an older Player.DBF and Team.DBF (wow, my trainer just spontaneously retired to be with their kids)... a rash of players retired this year (instead of 0~1), the Draft is still screwy with teams getting multiple picks, and Trading still causes the game to crash with the same codebase error.

This was just a surreal experience. Was it because everyone in the league was retiring so much that's causing the glitches? (Or the likelier culprit: that the conflict in files dates was causing a mass retirement glitch.)

Crap, it's late, my mind isn't thinking clearly. What was the file that could be edited to change draft picks again? Instead of simulating the draft, I watched it and saw that some of the teams were displaced by the whole OKC/SEA thing again (SAC gets SA's pic, etc.)

[Andrew]

That usually comes about due to inconsistencies with tmcareer.dbf. It could be the full rosters that are causing problems (that'd certainly be why teams are forfeiting picks), but to be honest I'm not sure what else to suggest at this point. I'm guessing that something's gone wrong at some point in changing things around in the files, but it's difficult to say what exactly.

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

Boy, I'll say it's difficult. I've got new appreciation for all the hours you put into the patches.

I've cross-checked the DBF files to see how they relate to each other and a lot just seems to be redundant jargon (such as Scratch values), but there's so much of it, I'm hesitant to modify any of it. When injecting new players into an existing Dynasty, I've tried to create new entries using the NLCS2010 playerIDs and deleting a generated ID, but it wound up being much easier (and possibly safer) to use a generated playerID and then modify its corresponding appearance entry to match the Roster save. (Too bad DBCommander can't mass-copy and mass-paste columns/rows like Excel, it would make stat-moving a lot faster.)

Oh, and I think I figured out what was wrong with my save file. Apparently any time I tried loading any save file and trying to continue, the game would hit the same TEAMS error, crash, and kick me out to Windows. All my save files? Not even Why, but How was this possible? Even the save I had all the way back from the end of last season. So I started a new Dynasty to see what was wrong... and the game gave me the 2006 rosters (including the "Seattle Thunder").

Somehow the game was resorting to using the default 2006 team file and values instead of the NLCS2010 updated ones like it normally would. (Normally, when entering the game, teams would be using the updated Roster in all modes.) That's why the Draft Picks were being reassigned to other teams (Portland getting Philly's pick, the Spurs getting the Kings picks, etc.) and why nothing was matching up to the "Teams" file.

After quitting the new Dynasty, I loaded the NLCS2010 rosters file and could resume playing my old game with no problems.

Now I just have to finish modifying the class of 2010 as they've integrated themselves into about 3 years of generated players. Sometimes this means guys like Evan Turner end up on IR2 until an injury "corrects" the team roster. (I just have to double check the appearanceIDs so I don't have a 7' black-and-white PG.) Strangely, the CPU almost never trades (especially Boston who now have Rondo AND Wall)... but they do like to renew contracts and they can sign Free Agents when they are already over-budget in the post-/pre-season (seriously, is there a way for the Player to do that?) and wind up with a 15-man team that's more than twice-over the salary cap.

[Andrew]

Glad to hear you got it sorted. I've heard of similar issues happening with NBA Live 2005 but NBA Live 06 has generally been pretty good about that stuff. It's always frustrating to come across problems like that when messing around with the databases and I've certainly had my share of headscratching moments.

It's definitely safer to replace the existing generated rookies, so I'd recommend continuing in that vein.

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

Apologies for dragging up an old thread Andrew, but just wanted to ask a technical question while it's still fresh in my mind.

I haven't tried it with the latest PC Project Version (6.0-2013/4), but in a previous version, I edited players.DBF and appearance.DBF of my Dynasty save to include the real-life class of 2011 and 2012. Things worked great with just stats, but I didn't like having to look at the blank portraits or the generic PLYR00 heads. Changing the player values (instead of PLYR00, it would be KYIRVIN, etc. -- but I left the PlayerID number alone because that's tied to a lot of other things) seemed to work. I could play every game, sim or not... until the end of the month when I (and the CPU teams) get a Trainer's report that causes the game to kick me out to Windows.

Any ideas what happened here?

[Andrew]

I'd have thought that'd be fine, but the databases can be touchy at times when it comes to fiddling with stuff like that in a Dynasty in progress. It's possible that the game doesn't like generated players having face assignments other than the generic PLYRXXX faces, so you could try changing their ISGENERATE fields to False.

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

...wow, I did not expect a reply, well, now. But that is a great idea.

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

Hmm. No, it's still causing crashes. Even have "ISEDITED" set to true.

I did a fresh re-install so I could apply the latest PC edition patch to get the 2012-13 roster up (and to eliminate the clutter amassed from re-patching over the 2010 patch with the 2011 one) and tried editing the DBF a team at a time and simulating the year after each team. I've only edited the "C" teams, but everything seems to be working well so far.

It could have been that I was trying to edit too much at once before (I would replace almost the entire line in PLAYERS.DBF, including SCRATCH, Season/Career Stats, and SALARY) or perhaps it was the amalgam of patches I had.

Speaking of patches, is there any way I could re-name the uniform-jersey files? I tried playing as the NY/NJ Nets and the game crashed. I went back to see what I did and found I quickly clicked through and selected their default 201x Away uniforms ... which were the 2007/2008 NJ-orange. Going through the list, their 2008 uniforms are the new Brooklyn-black. Selecting any uniform-jersey except the default Away and the game runs normally. So, any way to correct this (or remove the buggy 2007/08 jersey from the choices)?

[Andrew]

Sorry, that's a bit hard to follow. I'm not exactly sure what you've edited or what you're trying to do.

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

Sorry. Editing around midnight causes me to ramble a bit.

Originally, it looks like I did a bunch of edits at once without logging what my changers were (there's Sav1, Sav2, Sav3... but no TXT file to indicate what the differences are). Digging around, it looked like halfway through I was trading players between teams WHILE inserting the actual Draft Class of 2011 into the season. All of the saves wound up having spectacular issues -- crashing if I entered the Trade screen, giving team.dbf errors if I wanted to play, abruptly exiting to Windows the end of the month, etc.

But I also found that some of the data I entered was mistyped (88 became 888, STBLAKE_ was SBTLAKE_), having both the 2010 and 2011 NLSC patches in one game wasn't helping (graphical glitches were common), and I'm not sure why the game often exited to Windows without any warnings or error messages at the end of the month. (Sometimes it would do this at the start of the next season.)

So I did a fresh re-install of Live06, applied the 2012 NLSC patch, and used a non-edited Dynasty save. This time around, I'm documenting what I insert and where it goes and simulating into next season whenever I finished editing a team. For most of the player edits, I'm removing a Generated Player for a Real-Life Rookie or existing Free Agent.

IsGenerate, IsHistoric get set to False. IsEdited is set to True. PlayerPkg is set to the actual player and I'm double-checking for spelling. I am staying the hell away from changing PlayerID, Scratch1, Scratch2, Scratch3, IsCreated, all of the Rookie fields, all of the Cash fields (even Resign and BirdRights) as well as all the Season-Stats and Career-Stats.

Currently I'm halfway done -- only 24 more entries and the entire duplicated generated class of 2011 (they ALL look and are named exactly like the class of 2009 -- and even have similar stats) will be replaced with the IRL rookie class of 2011.

Next, I will have to ask if there's a way to make a hard Salary Cap. Almost every team in my 6-year Dynasty is a $100+M team (the only two that aren't are still $90+M). No one's really retiring so the CPU is resigning a lot of old vets to 1- or 2-year $30M contracts (e.g. Jermaine O'Neil is still on the Heat) year-after-year, even if the star enters FA and the team is over the cap.

It would be nice if I didn't have to raise the NBA Salary Cap again (I raised it to 60, then 75 before taking it down a bit) or forced some players to enter FA so teams would be more open to trading. I'm just a little afraid to mess with Cash fields and FA (they have a weird value in Players.DBF) Then again, I kind of like the fact players under 35 aren't retiring en masse.

Oh yes, and a glitch.

Which jersey files do I rename if I wanted to switch the default ones around? The Brooklyn Nets default Away jerseys are crashing the game every time I play any mode. (The game exits to Windows with an error message.)

Specifically, the default Away uniforms for the Nets (2009-10 Away) are their old 2008 orange NJ uniforms. If have to scroll back (left) past their 1975-76 Away uniforms to reach their 2008-09 Away uniforms -- the black Brooklyn ones.

I'm not sure if renaming the 2009 and 2008 uniforms will fix the problem (I'm also not sure which files in SGSM to rename) or if it's the orange NJ uniform itself, or something else entirely.

[Andrew]

There's no way to make a hard cap, no.

The easiest and preferable fix for the jersey situation would be to copy teamgear.dbf from NLSC1213 to the Dynasty save folder, since it can be safely overwritten.

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

There's no way to make a hard cap, no.

Ah well. Any idea on how to permanently force teams to lower their salaries? If I lower the cost of each player, when their contract runs out, they're just going to ask for more. (And the CPU can resign players they let go for more than the cap.)

The easiest and preferable fix for the jersey situation would be to copy teamgear.dbf from NLSC1213 to the Dynasty save folder, since it can be safely overwritten.

Oh, this isn't just happening in my Dynasty, this is happening throughout the game in any game mode. If I enter practice or 1-on-1 or any other mode, if someone wears the default Nets Away (2009-10) uniform, the game will crash.

Again, for some reason the default Nets Away 2009-10 uniform in my game has the image of the Real-Life 2008-09 orange NJ uniform. The real 2009-10 black Brooklyn uniform is under "2008-09 Away" label -- the game even shows a picture of the black uniform. I guess this means I can never see the "NJ Orange" Away uniform in any of my games. (Also, no offense, but those 2008 NJ uniforms looked horrible. I like the inclusion of the 90s and 80s uniforms, but probably should have stuck with the 2004 blue-and-white ones instead of... whenever the orange ones were from.)

[Andrew]

The only methods that come to mind would be to increase the salary cap to something over $100 million, or reduce everyone's salaries before starting a Dynasty. That's the CASH_YEAR field.

Same solution applies. The teamgear.dbf file from NLSC1213 should be working fine, so it can be copied to any other save folder. I'm also guessing you're referring to the Nets' red jersey that was originally an alternate but became their primary road jersey a few years back; they don't have any orange jerseys. I'm still not sure why you're encountering those problems though, I haven't run into any issues when testing the jerseys and the teamgear.dbf file from NLSC1213 should definitely be working fine.

[Shoot1stAskL8R]

The only methods that come to mind would be to increase the salary cap to something over $100 million, or reduce everyone's salaries before starting a Dynasty. That's the CASH_YEAR field.

Ach, I was afraid of that. I might have to let the CPU have those 0-salary players it likes to make just to keep costs down. Or until another mass retirement happens.

Same solution applies. The teamgear.dbf file from NLSC1213 should be working fine, so it can be copied to any other save folder. I'm also guessing you're referring to the Nets' red jersey that was originally an alternate but became their primary road jersey a few years back; they don't have any orange jerseys. I'm still not sure why you're encountering those problems though, I haven't run into any issues when testing the jerseys and the teamgear.dbf file from NLSC1213 should definitely be working fine.

Hm. Well, I thought of something and decided to clear the WorkingDB and CurrentDB folders (basically a roster reset) -- the game played with the NJ Nets (with Brooklyn logo) and gave me a much more limited assortment of uniforms. The latest Away one worked fine, but that was because it was set to black. So I loaded the NLSC1213 roster again.

Good news is that it fixed the order of the uniforms. The Brooklyn uniforms are now correctly listed as the 2012-13 Home/Away designs and the default for Nets players. The red (I still see orange, but I remember the red) uniform is now listed as 2008-09 "Alternate."

However, selecting the red uniform and entering the court still crashes the game. As soon as the progress bar shows up, the game exits to Windows with an error box. Hum. Something, somewhere, somehow must have gotten corrupted on my end? I'd rather not re-install a patch over the patch again (that's what caused me so much grief last year) so I'll just be content with having the correct default Home/Away uniforms. Thanks Andrew, amazing work as usual.

[Andrew]

I'm not sure how you're seeing orange as there is no orange jersey for the Nets and the crash is still a puzzle as the necessary files for the old alternate (that became their primary jersey for a couple of years) should still be in there. I can take another look though.