Some issues in 1.g Mac version

General discussions about the 1st version of Tennis Elbow Manager

Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby Curtis » 17 Mar 2012, 04:18

I tried to send this as a PM, but the board software informs me that the user 'manutoo' does not exist:

Hello, Manutoo.

It's been awhile since I played, so I broke out my 1.g mac version of TEM earlier this week. I haven't updated to 1.h because I don't want to lose the game I had 'in progress' (if you can call a game you haven't played in 11 months 'in progress'). Anyway, I've run into a couple of problems, and I'm notifying you in case there's something you can do about them for next year's update. Note that I'm still using OS 10.5 and a non-Intel Mac, so I can't send you anything important electronically.

The problems started when player contracts began coming up for renewal during the fourth season. Up until then I had been able to meet all the contract conditions, but I couldn't get Catherine Suire up to 1 in doubles, or Mary Pierce to 2 in singles (both stalled at 3), so they both left and had to be replaced. The first replacement was Demongeot, who was primarily interested in doubles play. So am I, so I thought we would get along well, but her singles ranking was around 130, so I couldn't get her into many high level tournaments, and the partner she came with wasn't very good, so I paired her with S. Pitkowski.

Their combined 6 and 23 rankings could get them into any doubles tournament, but Demongeot needed to play high level singles also, so she could accumulate enough experience to raise her mental attributes. This required her to enter qualifiers. She participated at Indian Wells in doubles, exiting early, but she was already signed up for the singles qualifier for Miami, which was held during the second week of Indian Wells.

At the beginning of the second week of Indian Wells I was asked if I wanted Demongeot to fly back to the coaching center in France. Since I was expecting her to go to Miami that week, I selected 'no'. I was then asked if I wanted her to go to the Miami qualifier, and I selected 'yes'. And then she didn't go anywhere, until after Indian Wells wrapped up. After both the singles and doubles finals concluded, Demongeot woke up in Miami without having flown there, and without her coach, who had flown with her to Indian Wells. She was allowed 42 hours of practice time before her first match, which she won, then 2 more before her second match, then another 14 after being told she had qualified to the Miami main draw, totaling 58 hours of practice that week, in addition to two matches. That was the first problem.

The second was connected to the coach not traveling with her, and possibly to her arriving in Miami without having flown there. The following week, when the main draw began, the other three players in my stable arrived with their entourage. (They're dragging about eight trainers around with them these days, though I don't see where the expenses for the trainers' travel and hotels are being deducted.) I didn't notice whether the coach went with them or not.

Now all four players and all of the trainers, except possibly the coach, were in the same city, playing in the same tournament, and every time I tried to do any training with Demongeot I received the message that there was no one available to train with her! I had to spend all 58 hours of the qualifying week and every available training hour of the two week Miami tournament working on either physical training (which she desperately needed) or her serve. She wasn't even allowed to spar with the other players who weren't in my stable.

An oddity also occurred shortly after the second new player (Nathalie Tauziat) signed with me. This happened right at the beginning of the run-up to the French Open. By the time she signed on it was too late to sign her up for any of the warm-up tournaments, though I was able to temporarily assign her Demongeot as her doubles partner (since changed). Demongeot was already signed for the Madrid tournament with the partner she had when I acquired her, but the game did allow me to change it to Tauziat, even though it was too late to enroll Tauziat at Madrid.

Then the week of the tournament arrived, and I received a message that due to her ranking Tauziat was required to play in the Madrid tournament, which I initially thought was wonderful. I was given four choices (including 'ignore the requirement', which I thought was odd), and I chose 'play both singles and doubles', since she was already going to be playing doubles as Demongeot's partner. When the pairings were displayed, Tauziat was only in the singles tournament, and Demongeot was nowhere to be seen. Demongeot had to qualify in singles for Madrid, and she went out in the second round of the qualifier, but she and Tauziat as a pair were highly enough ranked in doubles — 23 and 50 — that they should have been seeded.
******
There is one other annoyance which has come up, but this is a feature which I assume is working as designed, not a bug. I have noticed that when playing at the highest level of difficulty, it's impossible to improve skills while in the training center. I have all of the +25% trainers and assistants, and purchased the physical fitness complex, but it takes 38 hours a week just to maintain the existing levels, leaving only 4 hours a week for improvements. That's 9 hours to maintain mental skills (2 each, except concentration only requires 1), 10 hours for physical (3 each for weight training and swimming, 4 for sprinting), 8 hours for the technical skills (2 for each of the four major categories), and 11 hours to rest scattered throughout to keep long term form from dropping below 84 or so. That leaves 1 hour each left over to barely improve the major technical categories.

It's even worse for Emily, because even though I gave her the maximum globetrotter skill, she loses ground faster than anyone else. She takes 10 hours for mental skills (2 in each), 12 in physical (3 swimming, 4 weight lifting, 5 sprinting), 12 in technical (3 in each major category), which leaves only 8 hours to rest, and that isn't enough, so instead she has to lose ground somewhere every week. By the way, the numbers she's trying (and failing) to maintain in the technical skills are only in the 50-55 range, which isn't anywhere near her potentials.

This doesn't happen when we are at tournaments, so I have begun leaving the players at the previous tournament site until the next tournament appears, which is totally unrealistic. The only times they can actually improve their skills is when they're away from the training center, which is also unrealistic. So, I'm fighting fire with fire.
******
I am still enjoying your game, but I hope some of these issues can be straightened out before you introduce TEM 2.
Curtis
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby manutoo » 17 Mar 2012, 06:17

Hello,

your v1.0g game should be compatible with the v1.0h.
Just install the v1.0h in a new folder & try to put your Profiles subfolder in it to see if it's alright or not.

I think at least a couple of issues you reported have been fixed by v1.0h.

The training efficiency being lower when in the Training Center is quite strange, but unfortunately, I'd need a saved game to look into that. So let me know if you upgrade your computer... ;)
ManuTOO
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby Curtis » 17 Mar 2012, 06:56

I believe my first version of this game was 1.0c. When d came out, and again with e, f and g, I tried to carry existing games into the new versions, and each time they disappeared. This time I'm not going to try. I will upgrade to 1.0h when I stop having fun with this version.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the problem is with training efficiency, unless I don't understand what you mean by that, which is possible. What seems to be happening is that if a player stays at one tournament location from one week to the next WHILE A TOURNAMENT IS IN PROGRESS, her skills don't deteriorate (so this only applies during the six two week tournaments, or if the player is in a qualifier followed by a main draw). When a player moves from her training center to a tournament site, or from one tournament site to another, or remains at a site the week after a tournament concludes, there is a reasonable skill deterioration. If the player moves from a tournament site to her training center, or stays at her training center from one week to the next, there is a large skill deterioration between weeks. So, the problem I'm seeing isn't the skills training more slowly at the center, it's that the skills deteriorate more quickly while at (or moving to) the center.

And, as I noted, Emily Bouvier is more affected by this than the other players.

Thank you for your very rapid responses in both of these threads.
Curtis
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby Curtis » 17 Mar 2012, 08:33

All right, I just did some research. First, I did download 1.0h, replaced Profiles with a copy of the Profiles folder from 1.0g. As with all previous versions, even though it claims it's allowing me to 'resume current game', in fact it's starting a new game from scratch, with Emily at base values, week 52 of year 1, no other players under contract, etc. That feature simply does not work for me.

Second, I was reading through the documentation and noticed something that made me think. I have selected the following talents for Emily: Early Ball Hit and Ball Feeling at 2, and the three Serves, Slice Mastery and Globetrotter at 1. Globe trotter is supposed to reduce the rate at which skills deteriorate due to travel. I did not select Fast Learner, but the effects of that are supposed to include losing skills more rapidly. So, it's as if the game believes Emily should be losing skills at the Fast Learner rate instead of the Globetrotter rate.

Third, the documentation says that the more difficult the level of the game, the more slowly skills should be lost. I can state with absolute authority (I've tested it many times) that when the players are in the training center they lose skills at approximately .7 per skill per week (Emily closer to .9 or 1.0). I have not tested lower levels of difficulty to see how they compare, but this seems very high to me. It's closer to .4 per week when they are traveling (.6 for Emily). I also note that physical and mental skills which are at their potential fall at about the same rate as technical skills which are 20 to 40 points below their potential. I don't have anyone whose technical skills are close to their potentials, so I can't compare those rates of decline.
Curtis
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby Curtis » 17 Mar 2012, 09:17

manutoo wrote:your v1.0g game should be compatible with the v1.0h.
Just install the v1.0h in a new folder & try to put your Profiles subfolder in it to see if it's alright or not.


Now I am angry. Not with you, but with myself because I allowed myself to be talked into trying this when I knew it was a bad idea. Not only does 1.0h not allow me to continue my current game (although it tries to allow me the option), I have lost my 1.0g game also. When I tried to start it up, it also started a new game. When I went to the 'Load Game' folder in-game, all of the saves were listed as 'invalid'. Apparently the act of copying the Profiles folder invalidates both the saves in the copy and the original folder, because both act the same.

Now I'm unhappy. :evil:
Curtis
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby Curtis » 17 Mar 2012, 14:46

manutoo wrote:I think at least a couple of issues you reported have been fixed by v1.0h.


I started a new game in 1.0h, and at least the issue of players traveling to tournaments without getting on a plane, then not being able to train while at the tournament, persists. This was a simpler situation this time.

Two players with very poor rankings were assigned as a doubles team, then sent off to U.S. Futures 1/2/3/4 to play in both singles and doubles. Their rankings in singles were so low that they needed to pass through qualifiers, but they did not need to qualify in doubles. They did not always win or lose in the same rounds. At the beginning of U.S. 2 the game asked me for each of them if I still wanted them to go through qualifiers for U.S. 3, and I said they should. Then one of them lost in the first round of the main draw for U.S. 2, while the other went on to win the tournament. They were also progressing as a team through the doubles main draw, but lost at some point before the finals. The game never asked me if I wanted the losing player to leave for U.S. 3, and eventually the winning player was given a wild card to U.S. 3.

Then the losing player was assigned 30 hours of training time, which was in addition to the 12 hours she received before her first round match. When I tried to have her spar, I was told there was no one available to train with her. As in version 1.0g, all I was allowed to train were physical skills and serving. After each qualifying round I was given two more training hours, so again the hours added up to over 42, plus matches. She qualified for the main draw. The next week her partner arrived at the same site, with the coach, but the teleporting player was still invisible, except to her opponents during matches. She did a lot of sprinting those two weeks, which was probably good for her, and may have helped to counteract the cigarettes, but I was really counting on those sparring hours to improve her technical skills.

The next week the winning player flew from U.S. 3 to U.S. 4 with the coach, but the losing player flew from U.S. 2 to U.S. 4. So apparently the game had simultaneously thought she never left U.S. 2 (which was why nobody could interact with her) and realized she was present at U.S. 3 during those moments in which she was actually in a match.

EDIT: UPDATE: About two months later almost the same thing happened again. Two members of a doubles pair, playing consecutive futures at the same location, both needing to qualify in singles but already qualified to the main draw in doubles. One exits the first tournament early and plays in the singles qualifier of the second tournament (I forgot to note whether she took a plane) while the other wins the singles title at the first tournament and is wildcarded into the second. This time I'm fairly certain that no extra training hours were assigned to the player in the qualifier, and that she was able to spar during the qualifier. As soon as the main draw began, she again became invisible and was unable to train anything but her serve and physical skills. This time the coach wasn't traveling with this team, and I didn't note whether the flight back to the training center was from different tournaments. (Sorry, but I was watching a basketball game while playing TEM, and it was distracting.)
*****
As a suggestion for future versions of the game, after a new player signs a contract, the tournaments to which she is already committed should appear on her schedule. In versions of the game through (I think) 1.0f, players were never committed beyond the week in which they sign (and they always lost in the first round that week), but in both 1.0g and 1.0h I find that some players are committed for weeks in advance.

All three of the players I signed for my new 1.0h game flew from the tournament they were in directly to another the following week, without the game even giving me the option of bringing them to the training center instead. They all gave me the option of bringing them to the training center after they each lost in the first round of the following week's tournaments, but the last one I signed decided after one week at the center that she wanted to dash off to somewhere else. This time the game was polite enough to ask me if I wanted to let her go. I was curious, so I allowed it, and of course she lost in the first round again.

EDIT: ERROR CORRECTION: The game did NOT ask whether I wanted her to go. The popup was the standard one asking what class of flight, what level of hotel, and did I want the coach to go with her? What I agreed to was the coach going with her. :oops:

It doesn't bother me that my players had lives and plans before they joined my stable, but it does bother me that NONE of these tournaments were noted in their schedules. You should even note the ones they're playing in the week they sign, because two of the three I signed this game I was unable to find in the draws of any tournaments of those weeks, although the results did show up in their histories the following week. :jap:
Curtis
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby manutoo » 18 Mar 2012, 05:16

If you stay at the tournament location on the 2nd week, your player's skills won't drop between the 2 weeks, but they should drop more at end of the 2nd week, though.
So normally, it should give more or less the result than returning to the Coach Center, so I guess there's a bug hidden somewhere... :fear:

I checked Fast Learner effects and normally, it should work as intended and not interfere with other talents.

It's quite strange you got your saved games marked as invalid..! Did you copy or move the Profiles subfolder ? Or maybe it's due to some OSX 10.5 behavior that I'm unaware of (I'm still with 10.4)

There's obviously a bug there, I guess related to the partner handling in doubles. Hopefully, someone else will notice that as well and send me their saved games.

CPU players can register 1 week early for tournament, so they can be busy the week you hire them & the following one.
ManuTOO
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby Curtis » 18 Mar 2012, 10:43

manutoo wrote:It's quite strange you got your saved games marked as invalid..! Did you copy or move the Profiles subfolder ? Or maybe it's due to some OSX 10.5 behavior that I'm unaware of (I'm still with 10.4)

There's obviously a bug there, I guess related to the partner handling in doubles. Hopefully, someone else will notice that as well and send me their saved games.


I copied it first, then moved the copy from the 1.0g version to the 1.0h version. Removed the 1.0h version (I could not have mistaken which to remove, since the one that came with 1.0h was not marked 'copy'.), renamed the 1.0g copy by removing the word 'copy' from its title, then tried running the program. As new versions of TEM always do, it told me it was a demo and prompted me to pay for it. I activated my TEM key, then tried opening it again. It opened and allowed me the option of continuing current game. I selected that, but the game opened to an Emily with all her skills at 5%, except surface skills at 4.3%, and she did have 90 accumulated experience. I have no idea if my Emily had 90 at that time. I also noted that her hair and clothing had changed, and that she was the only player I had. At that point I stopped exploring and shut it down in disgust.

I them went back to 1.0g and tried to open it. Except that it didn't claim to be a demo or ask for money, the result was the same. I went to 'load game' and the five saves there had no dates, just the label 'invalid save' (same label for each save, in slots a, h, i, j, k; the others were labeled 'empty slot'). At that point I trashed 1.0g and started a new game with 1.0h.
*****
I've run into another bug in doubles. Twice, about a month apart, one of my doubles teams (not the one which had the previous problem) was going through a period where they kept winning futures tournaments, but kept having to qualify for the next tournament. Whenever they got to play doubles they won, but they usually didn't get to play because one or the other of them would win singles* (see note below), and that would result in both of them missing the doubles qualifying for the next tournament. At some point they each received notice that due to their success in doubles they would miss the next singles qualifying, then immediately two new notices popped up. One said that team B / A had received a wild card into the main draw of the next tournament, and the other said that team A / B had also received a wild card to the same tournament. I thought that was funny, until the next tournament draws appeared and showed the same team in both the top and bottom half of the field. (In both cases the team was listed as A / B.) :fear:

I wondered whether the game would crash if they met in the final, but fortunately your design was more robust than that. The first time it happened one of them lost in the semi-finals, while the other won. I was able to take advantage of my knowledge when I played the same team in the finals that I had lost to in the semis, and the second time I spent experience to boost for the victory. (I also accumulated experience twice as fast, but was not allowed double practice time. In fact, my impression was that once doubles started I received no practice time, since the time I would have spent practicing was used up in playing extra matches. I also believe that we tired more quickly, but I'm not certain.) We only received money and ranking points for the victory, none for losing in the semis. The second time we met ourselves in the final, and we won. There was another scary moment the first time it happened, because after one of the team(s) lost in the semis, they got on a plane and flew away to qualify in doubles at yet another tournament. I was certain that I would have to forfeit the final to the team that had beaten us in the semis, especially since the qualifier was played before the final… in another country. Apparently the game knew enough not to also wild card us into that third tournament. When the summary of the previous week popped up at the beginning of the next week, no mention was made of our having qualified, and when the draw was posted we were in as a typical unseeded, unqualified, non-wild card team.

After that third tournament we returned to the training center to develop our mental and physical skills, but the next time we went on the road nearly the same thing happened again. During the layoff their ranking dropped low enough that they again had to pass through qualifications. The only differences the second time were that they met themselves in the finals (see above), and they were allowed into the main draw of the following tournament without having to go through qualifying or receiving a wild card. (It was a less prestigious field.)

* = {Four tournaments in a row they faced each other in either the first or second round, or in singles qualifying. I put four stars into Luck, and I did not appreciate that much. Reading the description of the Luck talent in the documentation, it may almost be working as designed, since it is only supposed to affect first round matches, and in only one of those tournaments did they meet in the first round; the others were twice in the second round of the main draw and one in the second round of qualifying. My personal preference would be that players I have under contract could never meet before the semi-finals, but at a minimum they should never meet in a qualifier, and preferably not before the third round of the main draw.}
*****
This game is addictive!
Curtis
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby manutoo » 19 Mar 2012, 05:02

I'm still quite puzzled about what happened with your saved games. Maybe OSX 10.5 actually does some trick with the file access... I'm still on 10.4 so I can't check for now... :sweat:

I checked the Wildcard system, and it could be given to both partners when both of them were coached by you. It'll be fixed for next update.

I'm also raising the Max Luck occurrence from 20% to 40% . ie: in 60% of tournaments, you still won't be lucky in the draw and treated normally.
ManuTOO
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby Curtis » 21 Mar 2012, 02:44

If you plan to come out with TEM 2.0 next year, perhaps you should wait on the Mac version of it until after Apple releases 10.8, then move directly from 10.4 to that. 10.8 should be out in early summer of next year.

I looked through some of my old posts here and found some of the same issues being raised. One of the responses to made to an old post got me to wondering about the Profiles folder and what should be in it. Mine has a default folder, and nothing else. Within the default folder are a WTA folder and a WT_Current.Ini. Within the WTA folder there are .Ini and .sav files for WT_Current (again, which I assume is the current save), and Tour07, Tour 08 and Tour09, which I assume are the three next most recent saves. Is this how it should be? Your response from last year implied that there should be a folder named Curtis in there somewhere. I have tried renaming the default folder Curtis, but it just changes back.
*****
Thank you for mentioning how frequently the 'luck of the draw' comes into use. I had thought that it was used all of the time. I may find something else on which to spend those talent stars.
*****
I may start my 1.0h game over again, but at least through the first year and a half Emily was receiving the proper benefit from the Globetrotter talent.
Curtis
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Re: Some issues in 1.g Mac version

Postby manutoo » 21 Mar 2012, 04:51

You should have "Curtis" subfolder in "Profiles" only if you have create a "Curtis" profile, else you're using the "Default" profile. The file list is correct.
ManuTOO
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