Mana Games

[Curtis]

I am certain that this was caused by something I did. I started a new game to test whether I could change the day of month for a new characters birthday. When that was successful I then quit the game. I tried some time later to continue my previous game. I hit 'resume current game', not realizing that the game I never actually played had become the current game. When I saw that it was, I deleted that save and went back to the end of the previous week in the game I had been playing.

This is where the problem arose. Two of my players suddenly had their potentials lowered by 10-40% in their physical skills only. I went back to the week before that, and the potentials were also reduced. The week before that, and again reduced. As near as I can tell the reductions were the same in each case, and they only affected physical skills and long term form (which dropped to around 70%).

These characters have effectively been ruined. Since I was going to start a new game when 1.0c became available, this is not as bad as it could have been, but I would really like to keep it from happening again. Do you have any suggestions?

[manutoo]

Hello,

did this happen around their birthday ?
If so, it's normal.
If not, it's a bug...

How old are they ?

[Curtis]

I don't know how to find the birthdates for players other than Emily. (This is another reason it would be nice to have it included in the News )

They are both quite young — 15 and 16, I think. One of them is Mary Pierce, who should be a real life player. I think the other was randomly generated. Emily was not affected.

The reason I do not think this is something natural is that the game has gone back and retroactively changed these potentials for weeks already played. The three autosaved weeks are 48, 49 and 50 of year one (1990). When I originally played these weeks they had potentials in the 60-100 range; now they are in the 50-70 range FOR THOSE SAME WEEKS. I would think that potential drop due to aging would only affect the game going forward, not change the weeks already played.

This happened immediately after starting a new game unintentionally. Should I just never start a new game until after I have deleted the old one?

[Curtis]

Oh, for goodness sake!

First of all, they were both 15. Second, after leaving the game alone for a couple of days, I just started it up to check their ages. Their potentials have returned to what they should be.

Something new had been added — there were two Week 48 saves, the second being from when I was running through the old weeks to see if they were all 'corrupt' (or whatever the problem was). Its time stamp was about 14 hours after the other Week 48. When I hit 'resume current game' it sent me to this 'new' week 48, and all of the weeks are now uncorrupted. The two Week 48s were slightly different, but very close (probably something I did when checking them).

I have now deleted all of the old saves except Week 50. (Unless my shutting the game down just generated another one?) Anyway, today or tomorrow I will try playing and see if anything new has happened.

***

This is probably a bad place to put this, but here is another suggestion for 1.0c or 2.0: During creation of the default character, one of the things you can do is change her height. A text appears that says something like tall players are potentially stronger, but short players may be faster. When I first noticed this a couple of weeks ago, I tried making Emily as tall as possible, and as short as possible. I saw no differences in her potentials. I think it would be a good thing if there was a difference, something on the order of a 1% increase in strength potential and 1% decrease in acceleration potential for each cm above the default, and the reverse for each cm below the default.

Tall people really have no disadvantage in speed (witness basketball players and track runners), but if height is being used as a proxy for muscle mass, taller (more muscular) players might well not be able to accelerate or change direction as quickly.

Just a thought. It is also possible that you have already incorporated this, and for some reason my test did not pick it up. I would try again, but I am not starting any more new games until 1.0c is released.

[Curtis]

Based upon your definition of acceleration bonus, speed does appear to be the skill that would be affected. *sigh*

I have begun playing week 51, and everything appears normal. A disappearing bug?

[manutoo]

Humm, all of this is quite strange, for sure..!
And speed doesn't mean pure top speed, but overall speed on the court, which is mainly depending of the acceleration ability of your player...

By the way, you don't have to start a new game when you install the v1.0c ...

[Player's height]
when you change the height, you should be able to see the potentials for Speed & Smash going up & down...