Alright Boyz, Here we Go! The DDS: College Basketball First Impressions Thread

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

I'm sorry the game has given you such difficulties. It sounds like you've been through everything possible to try and do so. We get a case like that every so often - its maddening as hell that we can't figure it out. We have our theories as to the root causes which is why I switched languages now to .NET, are no longer using some of the controls we used to and even at times think about just making the games for the consoles so as to no longer have the issues of why does the game work on all of these machines but not that one. Would save me a lot of headaches

Anyhow, in cases like this where we've tried and you've tried to fix it I don't have any problem offering a refund if desired. Just send me an email with your license ID if you want one.

I wont ask for a refund. You have put in the time trying to find a solution and I got more than my moneys worth from other games you've designed. Plus I want you to continue creating games and Im happy you have switched languages.

[Alan T]

Ugh.. I'm done with this game as single player for a while on this computer.

I took Brown to the NCAA tourney (Somehow got past a super strong Penn team that had pretty much dominated the Ivy League the previous 5 years). Then in the tourney, I upset 3rd seed Maryland and then another game to get to the sweet sixteen followed by a defeat to 2 seed Florida and a Crash to desktop.

I know silly me.. after such a great feat, I should have saved.. but I think my heart just deflated after having such a high.. bleh stupid bugs.

I contacted elicense and got my order ID again to try to install this on my desktop and see if I have any better luck on that system. If the crashes continue there I'm unfortunately done with this series I think other than a multiplayer league where I just have to export and not actually sim myself. (barring someone being able to fix it).

[EagleFan]

VERY new to the game. What's the secret to improving school prestige? I took a school with low prestige, finished 3rd in our conference, won our conference tourney and made the national tourney only to lose a close first round game to a team that had us overmatched in every position. I received good feedback on the other goals but got negative feedback on not being able to incease the school's prestige. Is that just something that takes multiple seasons to improve?

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by EagleFan

VERY new to the game. What's the secret to improving school prestige? I took a school with low prestige, finished 3rd in our conference, won our conference tourney and made the national tourney only to lose a close first round game to a team that had us overmatched in every position. I received good feedback on the other goals but got negative feedback on not being able to incease the school's prestige. Is that just something that takes multiple seasons to improve?

From Bryan Swartz on the WS Boards when someone else asked a similiar question.

They probably did better the previous season. It isn't a case of have a 'good' year, see prestige go up. There are two elements to prestige, current(what you did in the most recent year) and historical(based on a much longer time-frame).

If you win the national title one year and only make the Final Four the next, your prestige will go down because the short-term or current prestige is lower. If you consistently do well, then your long-term or historical prestige will rise, and a .500 year will result in a higher prestige level than it would have a decade earlier.

[Gary Gorski]

Just to piggyback on that - the historical prestige is weighted much greater than the current prestige. That way if you're a small school and make a serious run (say like a George Mason from a couple years back) you'll get a nice quick boost in prestige which could help you in recruiting the next season - you're a hot topic and the game reflects that. But if you go right back to mediocrity the next season then it basically that gain gets wiped out just as it should. By the same token take a school like Indiana - they were awful this year but they're still "Indiana". They will still pull better recruits than many schools who did much better than them this year, they're still more prestigious and with one good season people will say the program is back - not like a George Mason where people will say it was an awesome year but just a fluke thing.

For your specific situation - if you have a low prestige team I'm going to assume you're playing in a lesser conference as opposed to being like a Northwestern or something in the Big Ten. Finishing third in a bad conference is not exactly a prestige builder. Making the tournament however will help to slightly build your prestige as will continued tournament appearances and conference championships but you have to do it over multiple seasons. You put together 15-20 years of those and you'll have the prestige built to a nice reputation on the national level. That sounds like a tough challenge and it is meant to be.

[Ramzavail]

I keep having an issue with the college players pictures coming over or not coming over into the pro game.

if the default picture is blank, the college players pictures will come in on the pro game as blank. If I set a default picture, then everybody will come in as the default picture. But I don't understand why the college pictures that they had in the college game don't come across in the pro game.

Thats the only slight issue, I'm having currently. I've learned to shut auto-save off just in case you screw up the pro/college game draft link

[Alan T]

I got the game installed on my desktop (big props to elicense who within about 2 hours of my support email responded back with my order-ID information).

Good news: The crashes do not appear to occur on my desktop at all, which is nice.

Bad news: I'm getting a completely different known issue that hasn't been solved where mid-simulation the game freezes up and stops progressing. It sits there using 99% CPU utilization while apparently doing nothing.

I'm trying really hard to get into this game!

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I got the game installed on my desktop (big props to elicense who within about 2 hours of my support email responded back with my order-ID information).

Good news: The crashes do not appear to occur on my desktop at all, which is nice.

Bad news: I'm getting a completely different known issue that hasn't been solved where mid-simulation the game freezes up and stops progressing. It sits there using 99% CPU utilization while apparently doing nothing.

I'm trying really hard to get into this game!

omg i can only imagine how aggrivated you must be!!!

the game is trying really hard to drive you insane!!

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

omg i can only imagine how aggrivated you must be!!!

the game is trying really hard to drive you insane!!

Actually I am not that aggrivated to be honest. I just occasionally get the urge to try to get into a game, or pick it back off of my shelf to try once again to try it out. (such as I did with CM previously).

What I fear is going to likely happen here is I'll eventually get past "basketball season" as the tourney is now over and my desire to try to get into this game will subside for another year.

I don't know why, but I really really love college text sims that give you the opportunity to get your feet wet at a small school and progress through the game as the game progresses too. That is much tougher in pro sport simulations (other than soccer games I guess). My biggest problems I guess are that I'm not as much a basketball fan as I am a football fan, so that makes college bball games tougher to get into (even though I finally loved FBCB something like 5 years after having purchased it).

What I really would love is an updated college football game that improves on BBCF from someone/anyone. This thread isn't probably the best place for that discussion however It is disappointing though, that I've probably spent about 40 hours now trying to solve bugs or troubleshoot DDS:CB without much luck. From the lack of response from tech support, I assume these are difficult for them to reproduce or fix as well. So it is, what it is I guess.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I got the game installed on my desktop (big props to elicense who within about 2 hours of my support email responded back with my order-ID information).

Good news: The crashes do not appear to occur on my desktop at all, which is nice.

Bad news: I'm getting a completely different known issue that hasn't been solved where mid-simulation the game freezes up and stops progressing. It sits there using 99% CPU utilization while apparently doing nothing.

I'm trying really hard to get into this game!

PM sent to you - I'll do everything I can to help figure this out

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

PM sent to you - I'll do everything I can to help figure this out

Thanks, I saw it after my last post. I responded with a book. Hope you enjoy reading!

[jbergey22]

Can you keep me posted Alan as you seem to be having the same issues I have had.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

Can you keep me posted Alan as you seem to be having the same issues I have had.

Not much to post I fear. Gary asked various questions about what was going on with my system at the time (I assume to see if there were any incompatible applications or other applications that might have caused the hang). In my case, absolutely nothing else was running, and when I tried to reproduce the error, I was unable to on the same date. So Gary is going to look into a few other things related to the date of the freeze to see what the problem might be.

For a software developer I can only assume non-reproducible chronic bugs without any form of information are about the worst things possible to try to troubleshoot. From an end user, I can confirm that non-reproducible chronic bugs without any form of information are pretty deflating though as well!

[jbergey22]

Damn, I thought we had a breakthrough. Thanks for the update!

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

Just to piggyback on that - the historical prestige is weighted much greater than the current prestige. That way if you're a small school and make a serious run (say like a George Mason from a couple years back) you'll get a nice quick boost in prestige which could help you in recruiting the next season - you're a hot topic and the game reflects that. But if you go right back to mediocrity the next season then it basically that gain gets wiped out just as it should. By the same token take a school like Indiana - they were awful this year but they're still "Indiana". They will still pull better recruits than many schools who did much better than them this year, they're still more prestigious and with one good season people will say the program is back - not like a George Mason where people will say it was an awesome year but just a fluke thing.

For your specific situation - if you have a low prestige team I'm going to assume you're playing in a lesser conference as opposed to being like a Northwestern or something in the Big Ten. Finishing third in a bad conference is not exactly a prestige builder. Making the tournament however will help to slightly build your prestige as will continued tournament appearances and conference championships but you have to do it over multiple seasons. You put together 15-20 years of those and you'll have the prestige built to a nice reputation on the national level. That sounds like a tough challenge and it is meant to be.

Thank you. I had a feeling it was something along that line. I guess that was the tougher of the goals at that point. I had hope that since I far surpassed the other goals it may help with the prestige.

[DaddyTorgo]

My Alabama State Hornets are 3-0 with an RPI of 21 right now!!

[boberot]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

My Alabama State Hornets are 3-0 with an RPI of 21 right now!!

save early, save often, generate multiple save files.

I try very hard to be a fan of DDS games, but have very similar experiences to Alan.

[vex]

Need to see if I can get some help here, Gary.

I always had problems with crashing but love the game so I just saved frequently.

After 4 seasons though the game crashed and now I can't load my career.

My association is no longer available when I go to load my saved game.

If I click on backup.cbb it loads the an earlier version of my saved file and when I try to save after that it gives me RTE 53 and tells me the file doesn't exist.

When I go into my save folder in the program directory, of course the CBB file isn't showing along with my other associations I've played since it didn't in the Load Association screen as well.

It does still have the File Folder for my association and everything seems to be there. However, when I go into my backups File Folder it has my association, but the folder is blank.

I imagine I need to move a file around or something but I haven't been able to get it to work for the past month...please help! Thanks