players.dbf problem (Fixed / Broken Again)

[Shing]

I use NLSC rosters for my fantasy sim league; Dynasty Five. Without them I wouldn't be able to continue operating my league, they set the benchmark for realism and, before I post my problem, I gotta say a big thanks to Andrew and co. for their efforts. The problem is:

Whenever I copy and paste the new bunch of rookies (Rose, Beasley etc.) into my fantasy league's original players.dbf, the appearance.dbf goes crazy. All the heights, weights, skin colour etc. are totally different.

Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggestions for fixing it or why it's happening?

Thanks in advance,

Shing

[Andrew]

When you copy and paste data into players.dbf, are you also updating appearance.dbf? If not, then you'll have problems and likely crashes. Also make sure you don't have any duplicate PLAYERIDs/APPEARIDs, I'd say that's quite likely the problem in this case.

[Shing]

Hey Andrew, thx for the help, I'm still having trouble tho.

I find that if I copy the NLSC rookie ratings into my original players.dbf - just into the blank cells at the bottom - they all disappear when I save it and exit. The only way to ensure they stay on the dbf-spreadsheet is to overwrite other players. The same is true when I edit appearances.dbf.

So I decided I could overwrite some older players on my original players.dbf with the NLSC rookies, overwrite those same players in appearance.dbf by noting their playerID. But then, somehow, all the appearances got screwed up again.

Totally a pain in the ass! And I'm really committed to figuring this out now, I've spent hours and hours on it. Please, if you can offer any more suggestions, I'd be very grateful.

[Andrew]

It really is best if you copy and paste to the bottom of both databases and change the ID numbers accordingly. Which program are you using to edit the databases? For an operation like this, MS Excel 2003 is actually OK (not sure about 2007 or versions earlier than 2003 either) because it can save files in the appropriate DBASE IV (.dbf) format without corrupting them.

[Shing]

It really is best if you copy and paste to the bottom of both databases and change the ID numbers accordingly.

Alas! though. It isn't letting me add players to the database, only overwrite existing ones. I'm using MS Excel 2002, I think, which does give the option of saving in dbf IV format.

edit: I've even pasted in the rookies, saved it as players.xls to cement the changes, then re-saved as a dbf and they still disappear even then.

[Shing]

Using Excel 2003 now. Still the same results.

[Shing]

Bwhahahahahahahaha XD

I'm such an idiot.

I'm at home this week, with parents. I'm sitting on my PC getting royally pissed off at why the DBF wont work. After hours of exasperation for the future of my sim league, lo and behold my PC illiterate Mother sits down beside me and solves the problem instantly.

Oh God, the Shame!

hahahahaha

So basically, what I did was, following from my mother's suggestion: Copy my original dbf information into new excel spreadsheets, copy the NLSC rookies onto the bottom of those spreadsheets. Save spreadsheets as players.dbf and appearance.dbf and overwrite originals.

That's it.

I'm happy but humiliated.

[Spree#8]

For future reference:

after you insert data into blank line at the bottom, you have to click little plus to add it. If you don't do it, the line just won't save.

Take a look:

http://img502.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fsffon9.png

[Shing]

Hold that jubilation.

The appearances.dbf still screws up. And yes, I've really checked and double checked that numbers aren't overlapping.

I think I must've spent something like 20hours over the past two days working on this bastard. I think I'm going to just have to live with the appearances totally screwed.

[Andrew]

Do you need to keep any stats in the databases you're editing? If not, it might be easier to just completely overwrite players.dbf and appearance.dbf.

There's something else you might want to try; copying the data from the NLSC roster's faces.dbf file into the faces.dbf file you're using. None of the players in the roster are actually using a created appearance, at the very least they're using one of the generic faces, but it's one of those things that could still be causing problems.

[Shing]

I do need to keep the information about which team each player is on.

Checked faces.dbf, that seems to be fine.

Thanks for your help, but I've just decided to go ahead with crazy appearances. It doesn't affect simming results, but unfortunately we wont be able to have any highlights to watch is all.

[Andrew]

You could always make a batch file to place everyone on their appropriate teams when you run it on the updated players.dbf file that includes rookies.

[Shing]

You mean like a macro? I'm not sure what a batch file is, but I've dealt with successful macros before when editing dbf files.

[Andrew]

Sort of. You can use a batch file and CDBFLite to make mass changes to databases, in this case modifying the ROSTERPOS and TEAM values to move players around to match your league rosters, instead of having to make all the trades again with the new roster.