Difficulties with WTA doubles

General discussions about the 1st version of Tennis Elbow Manager

Difficulties with WTA doubles

Postby Curtis » 07 Apr 2011, 09:01

Hello, Manutoo.

I was in the runup to the French open in the second year of my campaign (1991), and my primary doubles team of Suire and Pierce was resting and training in preparation for Strasburg International, when I received a notification that Madrid was a mandatory singles tournament for both of them. The popup said that I could enter no other tournaments that week, which was not a problem, since I hadn't planned to enter any.

The popup for Suire gave me four choices, the first three being to enter singles, doubles, or both. Since this was a mandatory singles event, it seemed odd that I had the option to enter doubles only, but I selected to enter both. Then the popup for Pierce appeared and was the same, except that it defaulted to entering both, since she was Suire's doubles partner and Suire had already selected to enter both. So far it seemed good, except that when I arrived at the tournament, my doubles team was not entered. Since doubles is Suire's primary reason for existing, and also I wanted to stockpile some extra experience points for the French Open, I was surprised, puzzled and disappointed by this.

The next odd things that happened involved my second doubles team, which is Bouvier and Pitkowski. I delayed entering them in the low Challengers longer than I should have, because every time I tried, I got a popup that they probably weren't ranked highly enough to enter the qualifying tournaments, so they probably wouldn't be allowed to play at all. Finally a $21,000 French Challenger appeared on the schedule, so I entered, assuming they would get a wild card, both of them being French. Well, they didn't get the wild card, because they were the 3 seed! I had hoped they would do well in that tournament, so I'd entered them in a low Italian Challenger the following week, and got the same 'probably will not qualify' message. When they made it to the finals of the French Challenger, they earned the wild card for the Italian tournament. Again, it turned out they didn't need it, since they were the 1 seed! Annoying, but workable. Here is where things went very badly:

At the same time I entered the French and Italian low Challengers, I also entered the French Open and the mid-level Challenger in Furth, which is the week after the Open ends. Same messages about probably not qualifying, but for the Open I was again counting on wild cards, and I hoped I would do well enough in the Open to qualify for the Furth qualifier, which takes place during the second week of the Open. Note that at this point the girls were ranked just under 300 in singles and around 312 in doubles. Well, I did get wild cards into the main draw for the Open singles (I just wanted to get into the qualifier, but it turned out well), and was given the last seed in Open doubles qualifying. They qualified, and I was very happy. :applause:

The French Open exceeded my wildest dreams, with all four girls making it into the third round in singles. (Suire and Pierce were seeded 25 and 26, so they were no great surprise, though it was a bad surface for Suire.) Eventually Pitkowski met Pierce in the round of 16, and Pierce went on to win the tournament! :D And the crowd went wild. :dance: :cheers: :wav: Meanwhile, both doubles teams received excellent pairings after the first round. (Bouvier and Pitkowski each spent 40 points to get past what I think was the number 4 doubles seed in the first round, after which everyone had smooth sailing.) The second week arrived, and everyone was still playing. I got the popup asking whether I wanted Bouvier and Pitkowski to participate in doubles qualifying for the Furth tournament. Naturally, I said yes. Well, in the end, Bouvier and Pitkowski played Suire and Pierce in the doubles final AND BEAT THEM!!! :dance: At which point I received the notice that my qualifying in the Furth tournament had been cancelled. :shock: :annoyed: :?

I was a bit stunned by that, but had some hope that they may have been allowed to participate in Furth anyway, but it was not to be. Despite there being a bye in the first round of the doubles field, my team was not allowed to participate. Apparently the tournament directors felt that an empty court would draw a larger audience than the French Open champions. This is a problem. Due to their Open win, Bouvier and Pitkowski rose from 300+ to approximately number 35 in the world, and they were in Furth anyway to play singles, but there was no mercy in the directors' black hearts. :evil:

So, I have recently experienced three problems with doubles: First, when a popup asks if you want to play doubles, and you say yes, you should be allowed to play.
Second, you shouldn't get a popup for singles or doubles that your ranking probably isn't high enough to enter a qualifier when in fact you are ranked well enough to be a (or the) top seed in the main draw.
Third, you should never EVER be barred from participating in a tournament because you were too busy participating in the finals (or semi-finals, really) of a much higher level tournament at the same time as the qualifying for the lower level tournament. Being the Open champion and being barred from a mid-Challenger is an extreme case, but really they should have received a wild card even if they were busy in the semi-finals of a high Challenger. :BeatDeadHorse: :banghead:

This game is being played with the 1.0g Mac build that you released at the end of January.
Curtis
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Difficulties with player shortage

Postby Curtis » 08 Apr 2011, 00:52

These are NOT bugs, so I'm listing them separately.

I'm playing with modified Tour WTA.ini and Tour Category WTA.ini. I changed the $10,000 Futures from category 21 (32 main draw) to category 20 (64 main draw). This requires many more players, so I increased the player maximum to 5000, though there are nowhere near that many players generated so far.

The result of increasing those fields is to create a shortage of players in other categories, which I had not expected. I have noticed shortages (represented with 'byes' appearing in the fields) in both the $8500 Futures and the $21/25,000 Challengers so far. This is not a problem. What can be a problem is the way the game is dealing with the player shortages.

For one Futures tournament Emily was forced to travel a week early to play in singles qualifying, but when she arrived there, she was the only player! The entire field was 'byes', except for her. She had no extra money to bring her coach along, and with no other players present she had nobody with whom to practice. She was forced to spend the entire week exercising, serving and resting. Oh, yes, and paying for her hotel. :whistle: To make matters worse, when the tournament proper began, there were eight 'byes' in the first round, so she really shouldn't have had to go through qualifying at all.

And those eight 'byes' bring up the next point. None of the seeded players (top eight seeds) received a 'bye' in the first round. The 'byes' were evenly distributed between the top and bottom of the draw (a good thing), but in each half of the draw two 'byes' played each other in the first round, guaranteeing that two 'byes' would make it to the second round. These second round 'byes' also were not positioned so that they even theoretically could have matched with seeded players.

So, I have three suggestions for next year's version 1.0h: First, when a tournament has 'byes' due to lack of players entered, the first 'bye' should be assigned to the top seed, the second to the second seed, and so on.
Second, unless more than half the field is composed of 'byes', two 'byes' should never face each other in the first round.
Third, when there are just enough, or not enough, players entered in an event to fill the main draw, the qualifier for that event should be cancelled and the would-be qualifiers granted wildcards into the main draw. Or they could go in as qualifiers, whichever works best for you. :jap:

Note that a later tournament doubles qualifier had a field of sixteen, ten of whom were 'byes'. There were two rounds of qualifying. The 1 and 2 seeds received 'byes' in each round. The 3 seed played 6 in the first round, while 4 played 5. In the second round the two winners received 'byes', so there were no second round matches. This is nearly how it should have worked. Preferable would have been for 3, 4, 5 and 6 to receive first round byes, then in the second round 3 plays 6, and 4 plays 5, but the effect was the same either way. It is possible that the two losing teams lost out on some prize money for going out in the first round instead of the second, but it would not have been much.

Note also that if my team had been the 1 or 2 seed and received a double bye, I would not have objected to having to attend. A tournament actually was played, and there were other players available to practice against.
Curtis
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Re: Difficulties with WTA doubles

Postby manutoo » 08 Apr 2011, 06:27

Hello,

about the Byes : there's no reason for me to spend time to fix something that shouldn't happen if everything is set correctly... You should already be glad the game isn't crashing..! ;)
It may be these changes that lead to the pessimistic message about ranking not high enough to qualify.

About other bugs, I'd need your saved games to check them, if you upgraded to an Intel Mac...
ManuTOO
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Re: Difficulties with WTA doubles

Postby Curtis » 08 Apr 2011, 10:11

Would it help if I sent you the System Log? I can't find the saved games anywhere in my directory.
Curtis
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Difficulties with game changing my settings

Postby Curtis » 08 Apr 2011, 20:10

I realize you still can't help without the saved games, but one of the issues from my initial post just happened again.

Pitkowski received the 'Wimbledon is a mandatory event' popup, telling her that due to her doubles rank she had to play in the British Open or not at all. It gave the same four options, and once again I selected 'play both singles and doubles'. Once again, she was only signed up to play in the mandatory event (doubles).

This was especially disturbing since I had already signed her up to play both singles and doubles, and her doubles partner was still signed up for both. As you know, when one partner is signed up for an event, the other is automatically (both players under my control), so this should not have happened. This was not an issue for Madrid, since the players were originally scheduled to take that week off.

This is not the first time 1.0g has changed my settings, though the other times were only cosmetic. My girls have 'team colors' (different combinations of red, white and blue), and for each player, including Emily, the first two to four times the game advanced a week after they signed with me, their outfits would change to something random. In each case my uniforms eventually were accepted, but it was very annoying. And I have not modded anything to do with that function.
Curtis
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Location: Watertown, New York

Re: Difficulties with WTA doubles

Postby manutoo » 09 Apr 2011, 07:03

System.log is only useful in case of crash or visual bug.

Your saved games for Women are in this subfolder : "Profiles\Default\Wta" . (replace "Default" by your Profile name if you created one)
Send them compressed in .zip or .rar to the address email you got your License Key from.
Join your Players & Tournaments bases if you modified them.

About Colors, did you notice when they changed ? If so, could you provide a step to step to reproduce the bug ?
ManuTOO
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Re: Difficulties with WTA doubles

Postby Brecht » 09 Apr 2011, 13:34

Just answering about colors: with an older version of the game, I aslo tried to change the outfits of the coached players. When I closed the game and re-opened it, their outfits were back to the previous colors. I guess the game simply doesn't save those changes!
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Re: Difficulties with WTA doubles

Postby Curtis » 09 Apr 2011, 19:31

manutoo wrote:Your saved games for Women are in this subfolder : "Profiles\Default\Wta" . (replace "Default" by your Profile name if you created one)
Send them compressed in .zip or .rar to the address email you got your License Key from.
Join your Players & Tournaments bases if you modified them.

About Colors, did you notice when they changed ? If so, could you provide a step to step to reproduce the bug ?


Thank you. I have now advanced the game beyond that point, but if it happens a third time, I will try to do that. I don't have a compression utility, so I will ask the person who convinced me to buy a Mac if there is a free one available.

Under Players.WTA.Ini, the only change I made was the one you recommended in the HowToMod.html (MaxPlayer = 5000). The changes in Tour.WTA.Ini and TourCategory.WTA.Ini are more extensive.

I think I may see the answer to why I have never been able to continue a game after downloading a new build. You say to copy the Profiles folder to the new build, but above you said that if I create a profile (which I do), then Default should change to my profile name. It doesn't. The Profile is always Default, no matter how many times I change it. Also, I can only have one at a time, which I assume is intentional. Should I rename it myself? I am really enjoying my current game, and I wouldn't want to lose it. I assume that by Profile you mean the manager character I create. If you mean something else, please tell me what it is.

To the best I can remember, the colors changed when I advanced the week. Emily changed when I advanced from week 52 to week 1. I reset her, and I think she was good after that. I picked up Suire in week 5 and gave her a uniform, and her outfit changed for week 6. I changed it back, and it changed again for week 7. I changed it back, then it was good after. The same with Pitkowski in week 10 — it changed in 11 and 12, but was good after the third time I set it. I signed Pierce in week 15, and hers changed in 16, 17 and 18, but stayed good after the fourth time I set it.

I never noticed it changing within a week. I would notice it when I went to Coach Players after the week changed, to set their training schedule. Two of the girls played matches they had apparently signed up for before they signed with me. I didn't notice whether their uniforms changed before the matches. My impression was that each time they changed, it was to something random. I did not get the impression that they always reverted to what they had been before receiving their uniforms. Note that the only player whose hair I changed was Emily, and it stayed the same when her outfit changed. None of the other girls' hair changed when their outfits changed.

*****

I noticed something else different with this build, though I hesitate to mention it. In past games under previous builds, sometimes when girls sign with me they are already in the middle of a tournament. When that happens, they immediately lose in their current round and ask to fly to the coaching center. When I check their schedules, the tournament for that week is darkened (selected). No problem.

In this build Suire and Pierce, who both had entry points when I signed them, (Emily and Pitkowski did not) were in tournaments at the time, and they lost in the current round, but they did NOT ask to fly to the coaching center, and their schedules did not have tournaments selected. The following week, each of them flew to new tournaments, which also were not on their schedules, lost in the first round, then asked to come home. I did get the popups at the beginning of that week, asking which class they should fly to get to their tournaments. I did not get popups showing their results, and they were not credited with any prize money from either tournament. (Meaning, they played rounds in two tournaments each, and received no money from any of them.)

I have always assumed that the reason new players always lose immediately is so they will start with $5000.

Just to make clear, despite these oddities, I am very much enjoying this game.
Curtis
crazy of the little yellow ball
crazy of the little yellow ball
 
Messages: 115
Gaming Since: 03 Nov 2008, 22:07
Location: Watertown, New York

Re: Difficulties with WTA doubles

Postby manutoo » 10 Apr 2011, 06:32

About the colors, before v1.0g, they were not saved for the hired players.
Now they should be saved & reloaded, but it seems they are overwritten during the course of the tournaments or something like that... :sweat:
I did a quick try & colors didn't change & were correctly reloaded, so I'd need a saved game + a step-by-step to reproduce that bug, though... :fear:

Curtis,
the Profile has nothing to do about your coach or your tennis players. It's just allow to have different users having different settings & different current saved games.
To create a Profile, you have to turn on the "Advanced Options" in the "Misc Options" menu and go to the newly available "Profile" menu.

Newly hired players are not forced to lose, it's just random.
Not sure why you didn't see their weekly report or their planned tournaments, but you can send me your saved games if this happens again...
ManuTOO
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