Alright boyz, it's the BBCF First Impressions thread.

[Celeval]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

#1 -- I don't know what moves the team prestige, or how that is calculated, but intuitively, I'd expect that a season exceeding reasonable expectations would tend to bring prestige upward, at whatever rate.

A couple of things that I picked up from somewhere in the BBCF forums - schedule strength, and national prominence both matter. An unbeaten season against subpar competition (ref: Boise State, Utah) didn't necessarily do as much for prestige. I've started scheduling more away games at national programs, and that seems to generally affect me positively - a close loss at Texas might do more than a home win v. Florida Atlantic.

[twothree]

Anyone able to reproduce the following error in a clean install of BBCF 1.52?

Start BBCF. Select create league. Select Big Plains 12. Click the save button next to the randomize button. Select another conference and then select the Big Plains 12 conference again to update the display. Is Missouri now listed as playing in Columbia, SC instead of Columbia, MO.

This also happens with Ohio in the Mid-National conference. They end up playing in Athens, GA instead of Athens, OH. Oh, and you will also get the error "Please remove all non alpha-numeric characters from the school names.", when you click the save next to randomize for this conferece. But, that is because of the () around OH in Miami (OH), and is a separate issue.

Basically, I started a new game, but had to end up placing Missouri and Ohio in other cities to get them to play in their correct state. Oh, and don't try placing Missouri in Jefferson City, MO it will end up in Jefferson City, SC.

[Arles]

You can always edit your pstats.dat file directly if you have any issues prior to starting a league.

[twothree]

Originally Posted by Arles

You can always edit your pstats.dat file directly if you have any issues prior to starting a league.

What would I need to change in the default pstats.dat file, dated 3/28/2006, so that, when I create a league and click the save button for the Big Plains 12/Mid-National conference, Missouri/Ohio does not end up changing states?

Would I need to delete all cities named Columbia except Columbia, MO and all cities named Athens except Athens, OH?

I have not messed with changing the default pstats.dat file. I have been using the in game create league function to change college names, nicknames, etc. And, everything has worked wonderfully, except for this issue.

[Arles]

You could open up the Teams and Conference tables and set the nicknames to what you would like them to be.

[Vegas Vic]

I recently purchased this game, and overall I’m very impressed.

I can understand the difficulty in getting the polls to be realistic, as there are a number of challenges in writing an algorithm to mimic human voters. What is puzzling and frustrating to me is that the game does not use the correct procedure in selecting the BCS bowl games. Here are three examples:

Florida and Alabama play in the SEC Championship game, then they get paired again in the Sugar Bowl. This would never happen in real life (unless it was a national championship game). If this was a real life scenario, Florida would be in the Orange Bowl and Pittsburgh would be in the Sugar Bowl.



We all know that the SEC is the most awesome force since the Hiroshima bomb, but BCS rules prohibit three teams from the same conference playing in BCS bowls. Here we have Florida, Auburn and LSU scheduled for BCS bowls. That’s a big time no-no, and it should not be that hard to program.



Once again, here’s a rematch that would never take place in real life. UCLA and Purdue would have swapped places.



As I mentioned up front, the polls themselves are very difficult to accurately represent in a sports simulation, but the BCS selection rules should not have been that difficult to accurately incorporate into a game.

[Arles]

I agree with most of what you have said. The issue is often related to two situations: When a conference champ is in the national championship, it is possible to get 3 teams in the BCS (shouldn't be allowed). The second is there needs to be more checking to remove conference matchups. The at-large bids (or a conf bid if the champ is in the national champ) sometimes drop based on actual finish instead of "realistic bowl game". I will be doing a small update when I get closer to finishing the pro game and this is one of the items that will be included.

[st.cronin]

schedule editor, please

[CraigSca]

Originally Posted by Vegas Vic

As I mentioned up front, the polls themselves are very difficult to accurately represent in a sports simulation, but the BCS selection rules should not have been that difficult to accurately incorporate into a game.

I still disagree with this. I think polls are pretty static and that most developers have it backwards.

From what I've seen, most developers attempt to do some kind of points system - hey, you get this many points for this type of win, you lose this many points for having this type of loss. Ok, now let's quicksort the list and voila, a new poll!

Voters don't work this way. Voters will say, ok, the #1-#4 teams won impressively, so they'll stay there. The #5 team lost to an unknown, I'm going to drop him...let's say 9 spots. If the #6 team won, he moves up to #5, #7 moves up to #6, and so on. You can then sort by this new list, starting with the #1 team in the country...(it's a little more difficult than this, but this is the basic idea)

This prevents the crappy "one week I'm #13, I win my game and the next week I'm #17, I win again and I'm #5" garbage you see in some of these games.

[Flasch186]

Alright, I want to like this game but I think it's my fault that I dont and perhaps you all can teach me a formula or a way to like it so here is what I would like to know:

When I start a game with school X, I feel completely overwhelmed by the amount of information that there is. so much so that I cant grab the connection I want. I am overwhelmed by the amount of players and who's who and what's what....

What is the order and how you do things to slowly get to know your onion? What section do you tackle first? Is there something you print out to help? Is there a way to break things up that works best? Is there something to ignore?

Please help and I really appreciate it because as of now, its just a logo on my desktop.

[st.cronin]

Flasch:

When I start a game, the first time I look at the roster is when I'm deciding on an offensive/defensive philosophy. At that point, I hit recommend for my depth chart, open up a notepad, and make a little two-deep list, noting what class each player is, how good they are, and how well they fit a particular philosophy.

When it comes to recruiting, there's a little list on the player recruiting screen that looks like this:

qb 2 (3)
rb 6 (3)
etc...

The number in parentheses is the number the game recommends you have on your roster - the number prior to that is the number of players actually on your roster, + the number of players you have offered scholarships to. This is a good place to start when making your list of what positions to recruit.

I hope that helps.

[st.cronin]

For example, in our newly formed league this is my first look at my roster:

qb	Perkins, 3.0/4.0 (so)	Armstrong, 2.0/3.5 (fr)
rb	Pearce, 3.0/4.0 (sr)	Johnson/Hill, 2.5/3.5 (sr)
fb	Bailey, 3.5/4.0 (sr)	Lopez, 2.5/4.0 so
wr	McGill, 3.5/4.0 sr	Evans, 3.0/4.5 jr
wr	Nelson, 3.5/5.0 jr	Busby, 3.0/4.0 jr
te	Sample, 3.0/5.0 jr	Harvey, 2.5/4.0 (fr)
ot	Bond, 3.0/4.5 jr	Williams, 1.5/3.5 (so)
ot	Adams, 2.5/4.5 so	
og	Hargrove, 2.5/4.0 (jr)	Arteaga, 2.0/4.0 (so)
og	Griffith, 2.5/3.5 jr	
c	Johnson, 3.5/5.0 jr
de	Jimenez, 3.0/4.0 jr	Johnson, 2.5/4.0 (so)
de	Wills, 3.0/4.0 jr	
dt	Burnette, 3.5/4.5 sr
dt	Nelson, 2.5/4.5 jr
ilb	Briggs, 3.5/5.0 jr
olb	Hawes, 2.5/4.0, sr
olb	Ramirez, 2.5/4.5 so
cb	Jewell, 3.5/4.5 sr	Hagan, 2.5/4.5 (jr)
cb	Willis, 3.5/4.5 jr	Campbell, 2.0/4.5 (jr)
fs	Page, 3.5/4.5 sr	Wells, 2.5/4.5 jr
ss	Bailey, 3.0/3.5 sr	Green, 2.0/4.0 so

This is actually post-season, but pre-recruiting - the blanks are where I don't have anybody good on my roster.

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by Arles

I will be doing a small update when I get closer to finishing the pro game and this is one of the items that will be included.

Would it be possible to update the game to the current BCS format, with the four rotating bowls plus the championship game, or would that be too much work for an update?

[Raiders Army]

I'm gonna try to play this game again. Bought it when it first came out but didn't play it at all.

[Passacaglia]

To piggyback on st.cronin (hubba hubba), I do something similar. I don't know if this will format properly, but here's my roster from the same league:

EDIT: Yeah, that didn't work at all. Anyway, I kind of look at what I've got, and what I need. For example, in cronin's league, we're starting before recruiting, so I've got a chance to fill some holes, and do some position changes if that helps.

[Passacaglia]

I think the key is to go slowly, though. When I play solo, I'm always tempted to just blow through the first season, and get in a recruiting class of my own before I'm interested. With multi-player, though, you've got some time to think about things.

Anyway, it's hard for me to give advice, since I'm not sure what it is that gets you stuck -- I pretty much play through the season a lot like FOF.

[cartman]

In addition to the schedule editor, I'd also love for an update to include a way to manually set the post-season. This was something we were hoping to do from the beginning with FOFC-BBCF.

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by cartman

In addition to the schedule editor, I'd also love for an update to include a way to manually set the post-season. This was something we were hoping to do from the beginning with FOFC-BBCF.

That would be a great addition to the game. I would like to have the opportunity to go in and manually fill in the bowl teams after the conference championship games (by editing the stats.dat file). That might not be as extensive of an update as reprogramming the logic to select the bowl matchups.

[MrBug708]

*sigh* The game keeps crashing on me when I go to save and says run variable something. When I go to load that game back up, it just closes automatically on me. When I go to the BBCF folder and check out the save games, I dont find anything.

[Ben E Lou]

So I picked this game back up this past weekend. I started out in the normal universe, in the Sun Belt Conference, with a fictional team, in 2007, with Prestige of 20. (Lowest of any other team is 25.) I am getting CREAMED year after year, to the point that it really isn't even any fun. No recruit class higher than #106, and last in the conference the last three seasons. I'm playing at defaults, and have gained a lousy 5.2 Prestige points in 9 years, up to 25.2. Any tips, or is it even possible to build something at a bottom-tier program any more?

[Passacaglia]

No tips, but to add some gloom, if you've gone from 25 to 25.2, you've only gained 0.2 points. Sorry.

[Ben E Lou]

Typed that wrong. I started at 20.

One thing that would help would be for Troy to leave the conference. They've gotten their Prestige up in the upper 40s, and have won five of the last six conference titles. I'm on "Normal" conference movement. They seem like they'd be a candidate to move up. They're 35-7 in the Sun Belt over the last six seasons. What does it normally take to get a team to move?

[Arles]

You need to have a team that's good enough to move up and one bad enough to move down (with a regional component as well). Once both align for a couple seasons (usually 3 on normal), you may see the teams move.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Arles

You need to have a team that's good enough to move up and one bad enough to move down (with a regional component as well). Once both align for a couple seasons (usually 3 on normal), you may see the teams move.

So, any tips for getting this crappy team a few wins? The game seems to have gotten a LOT harder since the last time I played it.

[twothree]

Skydog: To answer your question about adaptability, that you asked about on the Greydog forum, read this thread.

http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum...ad.php?t=18233

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by twothree

Skydog: To answer your question about adaptability, that you asked about on the Greydog forum, read this thread.

http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum...ad.php?t=18233

Yeah. I found that when I had time the next day to do a search. Thanks.

I think what I'm looking for now is an "expectations check" of sorts. If Arlie (or someone with a good bit of experience running a bottom-feeder with the latest patch) tells me that 5.2 points in 9 seasons is average or better, then I'll just keep plodding along to see if I can make something out of this team. But if it turns out I just really suck and should be able to build this team up faster than that, then I need to re-evaluate my strategies, or get a little help.

[Ajaxab]

I've found the same kind of challenge in the Big 10. I took over at Iowa in 2017 and it is extremely difficult to make any kind of traction. This season (2019) five Big 10 teams were ranked in the preseason top 10 and another at #11. Going .500 in-conference is cause for celebration at this point.

[Ben E Lou]

Can someone verify that this savegame gives a repeatable RTE91? When I advance to the next stage, my game gives the dreaded RTE91 and crashes. This is repeatable on my machine, but I want to check if it's a global problem of some sort. Here's the savegame:

http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/bbcf/rte91crash.zip

[cartman]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Can someone verify that this savegame gives a repeatable RTE91? When I advance to the next stage, my game gives the dreaded RTE91 and crashes. This is repeatable on my machine, but I want to check if it's a global problem of some sort. Here's the savegame:

http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/bbcf/rte91crash.zip

Hey SkyDog,

I was able to replicate what you were seeing on my machine. I think it has something to do with the offers you currently have out there. If I switch the user controlled team to a team other than Columbus State, it will sim past the final week of recruiting. So the CPU is correcting the invalid settings when it takes over the team. Maybe that will give you a clue as to what is causing the crash.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by cartman

Hey SkyDog,

I was able to replicate what you were seeing on my machine. I think it has something to do with the offers you currently have out there. If I switch the user controlled team to a team other than Columbus State, it will sim past the final week of recruiting. So the CPU is correcting the invalid settings when it takes over the team. Maybe that will give you a clue as to what is causing the crash.

Thanks, man! None of my offers in the final week are that critical. I'll play with them for a few minutes, but if I can't figure out what it is, I'll just switch teams, sim past the crash, and switch back. At least that's a workaround. *shurg*

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

I still disagree with this. I think polls are pretty static and that most developers have it backwards.

From what I've seen, most developers attempt to do some kind of points system - hey, you get this many points for this type of win, you lose this many points for having this type of loss. Ok, now let's quicksort the list and voila, a new poll!

Voters don't work this way. Voters will say, ok, the #1-#4 teams won impressively, so they'll stay there. The #5 team lost to an unknown, I'm going to drop him...let's say 9 spots. If the #6 team won, he moves up to #5, #7 moves up to #6, and so on. You can then sort by this new list, starting with the #1 team in the country...(it's a little more difficult than this, but this is the basic idea)

This prevents the crappy "one week I'm #13, I win my game and the next week I'm #17, I win again and I'm #5" garbage you see in some of these games.

I haven't seen a game with polls that has ever gotten this completely correct. Then again, I've yet to see the real NCAA get this completely correct. So, I'm not sure what you base this ease on?

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Yeah. I found that when I had time the next day to do a search. Thanks.

I think what I'm looking for now is an "expectations check" of sorts. If Arlie (or someone with a good bit of experience running a bottom-feeder with the latest patch) tells me that 5.2 points in 9 seasons is average or better, then I'll just keep plodding along to see if I can make something out of this team. But if it turns out I just really suck and should be able to build this team up faster than that, then I need to re-evaluate my strategies, or get a little help.

I would put your prestige on very high. I play bottom feeders and I really enjoy it with prestige set to Very High.

I would suggest for a bottom tier school to try and get a fast QB and run the option. That works well for me. Once you get up a bit you can divirsify your offense, but the option seems to work best for me when I'm down low.

Readshirt - alot. I usually redshirt all of my freshmen.

[DeToxRox]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

So, any tips for getting this crappy team a few wins? The game seems to have gotten a LOT harder since the last time I played it.

I took Wake Forest in the ACC and it took 11 seasons but I won a NC. Basically I'd suggest running a gimmick offense (Run 'n Gun or Option, gee, which will you pick? ) to get you some wins. Since you're a cupcake, it's tougher but try scheduling other bad teams OOC to get you up to 5-6 wins.

The big thing is recruiting. Don't offer a pitch right away. I'd scout them, then you get an e-mail on the reccommended pitch, then use that to help you.

The last thing is hit transfers hard. These guys for sure can turn you around.

[st.cronin]

20-40 prestige teams in this game are probably the toughest challenge in any text sim I've ever played. I echo some of the comments here:

- take care with your recruit pitch

- stick with a system, and recruit to it

- look for 1 or 2 star players who might have potential at other positions -
I've had success turning nothing special qbs into special wrs, and vice versa, as well as blah rbs into good cbs; pay attention to all the scouted ratings, as well as their size and combine numbers to get some idea of whether they might make sense at another position

- definitely look for transfers, especially from the nearby schools - at that prestige level very few players will express any interest, but some of them will transfer in anyway

[Ben E Lou]

OK. All of that sounds good. I've been doing all of it, except for being in one system (and setting the prestige at Very High..that seems too artificial/impatientl). I've gotten a good feel for what transfers I should go after. I'm position-switching, and scheduling bad teams. It sounds like I need to get a system, but other than that, I'm growing as fast as I can expect. As I said, that's the biggest thing--knowing whether or not I'm on the rigtht track. I'll echo the comment that this is the toughest challenge I've had in a text sim. Thanks for the input!

[Ben E Lou]

This should help: Troy (45 Prestige now) finally moved, to Conference USA. They were replaced in the Sun Belt by Memphis (27). I did make Troy our rival in the initial setup, so I assume we'll still play them, but at least we won't have to fight that uphill battle to win the conference.

[Kodos]

So basically, with Indiana in multiplayer, I can expect a long slog to get good.

[Ben E Lou]

I dig a little digging this morning into some real-life results of some traditional bottom-feeders, and I'm reminded of how uneven the real-life college football landscape is...

• Kentucky just finished their first back-to-back winning seasons in 24 years.
• Northwestern has 6 winning seasons in the last 40 years.
• Vandy has 3 winning seasons in the last 40 years.
• It has been 60 years since Indiana had 3 straight winning seasons.

Basically, teams like this have a good season or two when they sign a great player or two, or have a great coach, at a time where they have a favorable schedule, or a few of their conference rivals are in down years. Every now and a again, a school rises from the heap and changes its status, but that seems to be more uncommon. So, if BBCF (or any college football game) is going to be realistic in this regard, I guess what I'm experiencing with Columbus State is what I *should* be experiencing.


Incidentally, I recall someone having mentioned FSU as a bottom-feeder school that rose from the heap to national prominence. Looking at their history, and the history of the times, that appears to be simply not true. They started playing football in '47 (in a football hotbed state), but only started playing a major college schedule in '52. They had three winning seasons in the 50s, six in the 60s, and three of the six pre-Bowden years in the 70s were also winning ones. '76 (5-6) was Bowden's only losing season. Point being, they were a rising program in a state loaded with talent (very, very important).

[Ben E Lou]

Oh: it'll be interesting to note what happens with Kansas, owners of only 10 winning seasons in the last 40 years, and a team that hasn't done it three straight times in 45 years. I suspect that this sesaon is just a blip on the radar, and they'll be back where they belong within a couple of years from now.

[Ben E Lou]

Double dola:

Bottom line: I certainly can't fault BBCF or Arlie; it sounds like it's doing a good job in this regard. However, as I've stated before, I do tend to have my doubts, Kodos, that Indiana will be fun. I'm not sure if your league is at "high" or "very high" prestige change, but in my playing around a bit with "very high," I found that it didn't help the bottom-feeders all that much, because even after the 7-4 season with a win in a minor bowl that gave a nice prestige bump, the 3-8 season that followed soon thereafter would also give a significant negative hit. It appears that even at Very High, you have to be able to string together a handful of winning seasons, or you'll just go up and back down, with a near-zero net effect.

The difficulty with Indiana (assuming default Prestige starts) is that even if they go 7-4 and Purdue and ND both go 5-6 one year (at VH prestige change) they're still a long way behind both of them for in-state recruiting, not to mention Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa for regional recruiting. Quite frankly, it sounds like your best hope is to have asleep-at-the-wheel humans during recruiting for a few of those teams. It looks like the AI would still cream you in recruiting if you lowered your Prestige disadvantage from 20-35 points to, say, 15-25 points.

[hoopsguy]

I can vouch for the difficulty of playing Indiana in single-player or multi-player, having taken a couple of runs with Illinois. The Big Ten is a very tough conference to play with a bottom-of-the-barrel program.

Incidentally, I would be very interested in reading a dynasty with someone taking IU, UI or Northwestern up to the top of the Big Ten. I think it would be more likely to end in tragedy than as a feel-good story. Particularly multi-player, but single-player is no joke either.

[MrBug708]

I had a RB run for over 10000 yards in a career unofficially (no stats saved in bowl gams for records keeping) but officially he's at 9600 yards for his career

[Comey]

Small school player? I'm assuming so because if he were a BCS kid, he'd have gone pro after his junior year.

That's awesome. I know our record in GG is 6300 yards, and is in danger if a RB from Miami comes back for his senior year. Seeing as how he's possibly the best RB we've ever had, I doubt he will (he's #1 on my Big Board right now...I can't see how he'd drop, either).

[MrBug708]

Nope. U of Maryland and he came back for his senior year surprisingly. His single season high was 3000 yards his junior year. His career average per game was 178.8 ypg

[GoldenEagle]

If a player does not play at all, is he automatically red shirted?

[GoldenEagle]

So recruiting is not until after the season, right? However, I need to go ahead and make decisions about where to spend money recruiting before the season? That does not make much sense.

[twothree]

Originally Posted by GoldenEagle

If a player does not play at all, is he automatically red shirted?

No.

[twothree]

Originally Posted by GoldenEagle

So recruiting is not until after the season, right? However, I need to go ahead and make decisions about where to spend money recruiting before the season? That does not make much sense.

Except you already have all the information you need (or will be getting) before the season starts. The number and quality of the recruits is shown and your current roster is shown. Also, you can click on the season button during the preseason and see the list of all the recruits that will be available at the end of the season. And, you need to set the budget before the season, because several budget items apply to the season.

Edit: Hmmm, I guess you don't know who will be transfering to other schools or going pro early, but you can influence the transfers by giving them playing time. And, you would not know how the players on your roster will develop during the season, but besides that...

[Ben E Lou]

Yeah, given the info that we have, I haven't had a problem with the timing of budget-setting.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

I can vouch for the difficulty of playing Indiana in single-player or multi-player, having taken a couple of runs with Illinois. The Big Ten is a very tough conference to play with a bottom-of-the-barrel program.

FWIW, after 25 seasons, both Illinois and Indiana have dropped into the upper 20s in Prestige in my career, and have been relegated to the MAC. Bowling Green (now 56) and Northern Illinois (now 64) replaced them. I didn't write down details, but it's obvious based on records what happened when:

Northern Illinois went from 2007-2016 without a losing record in the MAC, had nine straight postseason appearances, and were a combined 31-8 in 2014-2016. They went 1-7, 2-6, and 3-5 in their first three seasons in, and have been a middle-of-the-road Big Team ten in the decade since then. Indiana, in 2016, had not had a winning season overall or in the conference, had 2 or fewer conference wins in 9 of their 10 seasons, and had no season with more than 4 wins. They've been right in the middle in the MAC in most seasons since.

Bowling Green went in after the 2022 season. Prior to that, they'd had 15 straight winning seasons in the MAC, and were coming off three seasons where they were a combined 18-11 overall, and 25-1 in the MAC. The Illini dropped at that point. They were coming off of three seasons where they were 1-10, 1-10, and 2-9, and a combined 1-23 in the Big Ten. They've been a mediocre MAC team, too.