[sjshaw]

To clarify, these directions are from the perspective of a commish who is also playing as a participant. So, the commish needs to do all the "participant" actions and "commish" actions, such as exporting a stage file and moving it into the "imports" folder, exporting stuff to the "leagues" folder, etc. So the commish needs to open the game and switch from "commissioner" to "participant" and back as his role switches.

5. The commish sets from which team of reference he views the league in the "Choose/Edit color scheme" from the Global Game Options. This introduces a way for the commish to cheat (or as I call it, a way to "HornsManiac" the league)... all he has to do is change his team of reference and he sees that team from that scout's point of view. Theoretically, the commish could switch to a team that has an "excellent" scout at QB, get a better idea of all the "true" ratings of the QB's in the league... rinse and repeat for each position.

6. Now, here is where I have a question. Who sets options such as "Coach resets depth chart + game plan," and automatic signing? I don't know if the commish's global settings controls this or if each participant's settings control. I don't know if those options can be changed.

So, until this is clarified, make sure that the commish and participants choose to save all teams' game logs and boxes and the league's choice for coaches and scouts taking charge.

7. OK, back to the real stuff. After the draft, the commish saves the game and hits "export game files" on the MP controls panel (if you didn't save, the game prompts you to do so). The commish has to get the contents of the "Exports" folder to all the league owners, whether by email or uploading to a server for download (a much better option, IMHO). The files are pretty big and need to be zipped.

8. The participants unzip the contents of the commish's file into their "leagues" directory. These files consist of logs and boxes along with game-specific files. With the MP control panels visible, click "open" and open the league as a participant. The draft results are visible and players can set depth charts, release players, make offers on FAs, etc. One really cool thing is when you offer a FA, then waive a player to make room, the game asks if you want the waiver to be conditional on signing the last player to whom you made an offer. Very cool. One bad thing about FA offers is you can't revise an offer once you make it. I'm used to being able to just make another offer to the same FA to fix things, but I couldn't do that here.

9. After the participants (and the commish "acting" as one) make their changes, set their depth charts and game plans, etc., hit the "export stage file" button on the MP Controls panel. The file generated should be emailed to the commish as before.

10. With the MP Controls panel visible, the commish opens the league file as "commissioner." Hit the "Team Control Panel" to view the status of the about-to-be-imported files. It's pretty cool that the window that pops up tells you the status of all the files. ("Ready to be imported," "Incorrect stage file," etc.) This is also where you can change a team from CPU-controlled to human-controlled and vice versa.

11. The commish hits "Import Stage Files" and sims as far as he wants; once done, save the game and export as before. Before doing this, the commish may want to clear out the "export" folder to eliminate old boxes and logs. Zip and make available to participants, who just repeat as detailed above.

More to come on post-season activities like the draft and FA, but 3 more comments/requested changes:

1. It would be nice to be able to password-protect or otherwise secure each team. Otherwise, nothing stops a person from "becoming" another team and looking at his game plan, etc. This could even include exporting an erroneous export file! Horns could have a field day!

2. Also, it would be nice to have an easy way for the commish to revert the game if he makes a mistake. An "undo last function" could work. Otherwise, the only way I see for a commish to back up is to quit without saving and re-open. In fact, I'm not sure even that would work.

3. Like I've said before, we need a way to automate the importing/exporting for a 32-team league. It is very ponderous as implemented now.