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

[scooter]

Originally Posted by lungs

Is it necessary to do anything in recruiting after your scholarships are filled with guys that have LOI's?

I only had one scholarship open and filled it quickly. Is there anything I'm missing? I just kind of ignored recruiting after that.

You also have to make sure that the guys that you have letters of intent from get the minimum test scores they need to get into your school. If they don't get the minimum score, you are going to need to have a backup to fill the slot (or go for a transfer later on). I think the test scores come out January 28. So staying in contact with a couple guys that didn't get offers the first time around may pay dividends later.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by scooter

You also have to make sure that the guys that you have letters of intent from get the minimum test scores they need to get into your school. If they don't get the minimum score, you are going to need to have a backup to fill the slot (or go for a transfer later on). I think the test scores come out January 28. So staying in contact with a couple guys that didn't get offers the first time around may pay dividends later.

Excellent point - there's nothing like the heartbreak of landing the kid only to have him ripped away later on because he comes up short in the grades department.

[rjolley]

Gary, when a high school senior doesn't make grades, do they show up 1 or 2 years later as a JC recruit?

[Capital]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

Yeah if you look in the navigation bar at the far right end there is a book icon. Click on that and you will get a page that shows you the following about each individual team

- record recap of every season
- school records held
- historical w/l record vs every school
- player history of every season of every player to ever play at the school

Thanks for pointing that out to me. I'm not sure I would have found it since I was looking in the almanc. That's a good amount of detail but I'm a little surprised that it only (and the almanac) only displays the top 10 in each category. If all of that data is stored, would it be possible to display more than the top 10? The design looks like it could show 20-25 players before one would have to resort to scroll arrows.

Anyway...definitely enjoying the game...

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by rjolley

Gary, when a high school senior doesn't make grades, do they show up 1 or 2 years later as a JC recruit?

No he just gets deleted at the end of the season when the new batch of recruits are made. Might be a fun idea for a future version though.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Capital

Thanks for pointing that out to me. I'm not sure I would have found it since I was looking in the almanc. That's a good amount of detail but I'm a little surprised that it only (and the almanac) only displays the top 10 in each category. If all of that data is stored, would it be possible to display more than the top 10? The design looks like it could show 20-25 players before one would have to resort to scroll arrows.

Anyway...definitely enjoying the game...

It's not an issue of screen space - the records are stored as individual data variables in the code separate from the historical stat information stored in an outside database. If I tried to pull the records from the full historical database it would take a significantly longer amount of time as each season went by rather than just storing the top ten in a category somewhere else.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

Yes it would, a considerable one(there is a large home-court advantadge effect). Exactly how large depends on the team you are playing -- CSF's is not as big as, say, Duke's.

Well, CSF did their damnedest, and made quick work of my lead, basically eliminating it in 10 minutes. Stupid on my part -- I thought the TOs we get are for each half, so I wasted most of mine in the first half. We ended up pulling away in the last couple minutes, though.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

No he just gets deleted at the end of the season when the new batch of recruits are made. Might be a fun idea for a future version though.

Darn. I thought that was where the future JC's came from in the game. I really hope you add that in the future.

[Capital]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

It's not an issue of screen space - the records are stored as individual data variables in the code separate from the historical stat information stored in an outside database. If I tried to pull the records from the full historical database it would take a significantly longer amount of time as each season went by rather than just storing the top ten in a category somewhere else.

Gary, thank you for the honest and realistic response. FOF shows everything in their team almanac but there's only 30 teams in football as opposed to 300+ in D1 college basketball. I could understand that being a resource issue for some computers.

[Passacaglia]

Is the game freezing a ton for anyone else? It started out fine, but it's getting more and more lately.

[Icy]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Is the game freezing a ton for anyone else? It started out fine, but it's getting more and more lately.

Are you on Windows Vista? I have never had a freeze in XP, but there are some reports about it freezing on Vista. Have you looked at WS forums to see if your problem has been reported?

[Sgran]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Is the game freezing a ton for anyone else? It started out fine, but it's getting more and more lately.

I had problems for a while, but if I keep my computer tuned up and keep the other apps to a minimum I'm fine. I do save regularly however.

[Passacaglia]

I'm on XP, not Vista. I think the problem might be on my end, since BBCF froze at one point today, too. I'm running an anti-virus scan now.

[Passacaglia]

Typo alert -- "The ref is waiving off the basket.."

[WSUCougar]

Is there any way to change or toggle the "view limited ratings" option once you've established an association?

[Gary Gorski]

There's not but if you've got an assocation going that you like and would rather play with the ratings off just send me a PM. I'll give you instructions to send me some files and I'll use the code to edit your league files and change that for you.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

There's not but if you've got an assocation going that you like and would rather play with the ratings off just send me a PM. I'll give you instructions to send me some files and I'll use the code to edit your league files and change that for you.

You're becoming one of my favorite developers.

[Neon_Chaos]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

There's not but if you've got an assocation going that you like and would rather play with the ratings off just send me a PM. I'll give you instructions to send me some files and I'll use the code to edit your league files and change that for you.

Gary, have you figured out what causes the bug to basically stop me from viewing replays of my games? It's really dampening the fun factor for me, since I'm more of a "sim now, watch later" type of player with DDS:CB.

[Gary Gorski]

yes, I figured out the reason for the crash but there's something that is not triggering properly in the replay of the game causing things to happen differently at points in the game. I'm continuing to work on a patch for this issue.

[Alan T]

I finally broke down and bought both this game and the Pro Game. Not sure why exactly as I have never found a pro Basketball game that I enjoyed (I'm not a huge Basketball fan), and even better I bought one and then the other seperately instead of taking advantage of the bulk discount buying them together

Anyways, tried playing the Pro version a bit and then shelved it and focused mainly on the college version. Tried 3 or 4 times to get into it, and only once made it through the summer to the games before I got bored. I just feel there is way too much stuff going on that I don't care too much for.

Radii recently got me hooked on playing alot of FBCB, and I probably played about 200 seasons of it. I find when I play a game that I am part of an online league though that I end up doing more disecting of the game to try to understand how it works than playing of it.. so I was looking for a newer replacement for FBCB. I think in the end I'm much more of a fan of the simpler recruit approach in FBCB where it allows for more quicksimming. I guess when time is limited to play, I like being able to play for 2 hours and see some progress instead of just finally getting through recruiting.

I spent probably most of the day at work in between work reading the wolverine forums, trying to see what others posted to get some other's perspective and even pick up some hints to make it feel less of a chore for me, but just didn't find much that did the trick. I fear in the end, what I would love is a game that has FBCB's engine and design with DDS:CB's look and feel on top of it.

I think I am going to shelf both games for a bit and perhaps come back to them again later. (After all I bought FBCB years ago and shelved it and only started playing it just recently, so maybe the same will happen here for me)

[Groundhog]

I haven't given Gary's college game much of a try mainly because I'm still caught up in the same FBCB dynasty I've had running since 2003, but I bought the pro version a couple of days ago because HR's pro sim is so dated.

Definately think DDS:PB is a very nice looking sim with some great features, though I wish it had a more userfriendly player/draft file creation built in to the program (with ratings generated from stats, like FBB has), rather than needing to fill in database fields yourself. Still eagerly awaiting the addition of European (and maybe Oceania )leagues though. I notice that they are buried in the database, so hopefully we'll see them in the next version.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I think I am going to shelf both games for a bit and perhaps come back to them again later. (After all I bought FBCB years ago and shelved it and only started playing it just recently, so maybe the same will happen here for me)

Well, I guess it didn't take me years to come back to it, but was close to a year later and I am giving DDS: CB a second shot. Just like most of my other text sims, it is the desire to be in a multiplayer league that has sparked my interest in trying to "get into" the game again. I've played through a few seasons just to give it a shot and so far it feels like it is sticking a little better, but there is one really annoying thing... It crashes way way way too much.

I think on average I am having at least 2 crashes per season, where I have to go back to the previous save (at the start of the month) and pick it up again. It seems to mostly happen when it is running some end of week process and I inadvertently click on it while it is "thinking", that seems to almost always create a crash. Am I the only one having this issue?

I looked briefly on their forums and see dozens of crash reports with various crash codes, and don't recally what any of mine were. I guess if I get more invested into this game I can always report one and try to post there for help.. just curious if this is a pretty common issue with this game, or I just am unlucky?

[FrogMan]

I don't keep track of how often the game crashes but it's happened a few times, yes. I now save it manually about every couple of weeks instead of waiting for it to save automatically at the start of a new month.

Having fun with the game though, in my second season at Vermont. First go at recruiting was very rough, but I just had a guy ranked in the 40s nationally verbally declare for us in my second season.

FM

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

I don't keep track of how often the game crashes but it's happened a few times, yes. I now save it manually about every couple of weeks instead of waiting for it to save automatically at the start of a new month.

Having fun with the game though, in my second season at Vermont. First go at recruiting was very rough, but I just had a guy ranked in the 40s nationally verbally declare for us in my second season.

FM

I took a job at Yale myself here now and am going to try to get more into it. We'll see how that goes!

[Alan T]

If there is some way to change this resolution for the game, someone please tell me. I've spent at least 20 minutes looking and have found nothing either in files in the game install directory, nor in the game interface itself.

The current resolution is really difficult on my eyes and actually have started causing eye strain/fatigue. Now I am remembering why I gave up on this game before..

[DaddyTorgo]

yeah it'd be nice to make it a lil bigger

[Alan T]

My first month at Yale was somewhat shaky, but (un)luckily a crash wiped it out. So I get a second chance now to try to win some games

[WSUCougar]

Few if any crashes here.

[mauchow]

I had a career ending crash last month. I sent it into Gary for some help but I haven't gotten a response back yet, which I really don't expect to since he's got better things to do than help my Charlotte 49ers complete their most epic journey ever in close to 20 years. We've never won a championship and we just closed out our first undefeated season ever and I can't advance into the NCAA Tournament.

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

Having fun with the game though, in my second season at Vermont. First go at recruiting was very rough, but I just had a guy ranked in the 40s nationally verbally declare for us in my second season.

gah, catastrophe has hit us. That guy, as well as the other who had verbally declared (ranked around 160 and 190) have all fell short with their SAT. Our school requires 940 and wouldn't you believe it, two of them scored 930 and the third 900... No money left in February and I have to find three new recruits. ouch.

FM

[weegeebored]

Originally Posted by Alan T

If there is some way to change this resolution for the game, someone please tell me. I've spent at least 20 minutes looking and have found nothing either in files in the game install directory, nor in the game interface itself.

The current resolution is really difficult on my eyes and actually have started causing eye strain/fatigue. Now I am remembering why I gave up on this game before..

I think the rez is fixed at 1024x768. So if u run it at a higher rez than it is harder to view. I run 1280 x 1024 natively on my monitor and it's somewhat hard to see but not too bad. The only solution would be to change your monitor's resolution to 1024x768 when you play the game, and then change it back. Maybe someone else has a better solution.

I have had only one crash so not disastrous. Same with TCB -- a lot of people complained about that game as well, but I had very few problems.

[Capital]

I remember changing my desktop resolution when I played this game. Although 1280 x 1024 was not all that bad either, but that didn't help me much when I went to a widescreen monitor - which is now a must for me.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by mauboy1

I had a career ending crash last month. I sent it into Gary for some help but I haven't gotten a response back yet, which I really don't expect to since he's got better things to do than help my Charlotte 49ers complete their most epic journey ever in close to 20 years. We've never won a championship and we just closed out our first undefeated season ever and I can't advance into the NCAA Tournament.

By last month do you mean a couple days ago at the end of March or quite some time ago? If it was a couple days ago then I just haven't had a chance to pull it up yet. If it was longer than that then I profusely apologize - I must have missed it and will check all of my email folders when I get back tonight to see if I can find it and fix it ASAP.

[Alan T]

The constant crashes in this game is making it pretty close to unplayable unfortunately. I wanted to try to get into it, but the game is just not very enjoyable when you lose most of your work constantly in it.

If there was an ability to change how often it auto-saves that could help, but that doesn't seem possible either (if it is, can someone tell me how to do that?)

Looks like the issue I am having has been going on for years, and several others have had this problem. I didn't find any resolution to the issue either other than people saying they manually have to remember to save every few days. I posted in the thread to see if I could get any help ---> Wolverine Studios - View Single Post - Crash

I guess I'll wait and see if there is a fix for it, otherwise it will have to go back to the closet for me, since playing it in this condition is a huge waste of time.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Alan T

The constant crashes in this game is making it pretty close to unplayable unfortunately. I wanted to try to get into it, but the game is just not very enjoyable when you lose most of your work constantly in it.

If there was an ability to change how often it auto-saves that could help, but that doesn't seem possible either (if it is, can someone tell me how to do that?)

Looks like the issue I am having has been going on for years, and several others have had this problem. I didn't find any resolution to the issue either other than people saying they manually have to remember to save every few days. I posted in the thread to see if I could get any help ---> Wolverine Studios - View Single Post - Crash

I guess I'll wait and see if there is a fix for it, otherwise it will have to go back to the closet for me, since playing it in this condition is a huge waste of time.

weird. system-specific crashes suckass.

[gstelmack]

If the window you get is the typical Microsoft error one (does it have the report to Microsoft option?), then there should be a minidump on your system that can be used to debug as it can be loaded up in Visual Studio to get a stack, etc. You can search the system (usually somewhere in Windows) for *.dmp. I've got one in C:\WINDOWS\Minidump, for example.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

If the window you get is the typical Microsoft error one (does it have the report to Microsoft option?), then there should be a minidump on your system that can be used to debug as it can be loaded up in Visual Studio to get a stack, etc. You can search the system (usually somewhere in Windows) for *.dmp. I've got one in C:\WINDOWS\Minidump, for example.

Yep, it is the Microsoft error/debug that pops up, not any in-game RTE message. I'll do a search for *.dmp on my system to see if/where mine are located. If I find them, though it won't help me out much.. but just in case they ask for it from their technical support.

[gstelmack]

It won't help you, but it might help Gary.

[Alan T]

I did not find any *.dmp on my system anywhere. When the Microsoft debug/error box pops up do I have to hit the debug button or anything? I have just been hitting "Ok" each time. I am pretty sure that the game will crash again some time soon, so if I need to do something different when it pops up, should be easy enough.

[gstelmack]

You may have to do the "send a report to Microsoft" button to get the minidump generated, I'm not sure (I pretty much always do that).

[Alan T]

If I can ever get past all of these stupid crashes to the point where I could actually get into this game, boy I would have a long list of things that would make the playing experience much nicer

Just to reduce all of the extra carpal tunnel inducing extra clicking:
- Liberal usage of select/unselect boxes for all of these check boxes everywhere
- Being able to multiple select mail messages to delete them at once
- Being able to multiple select players in recruiting to apply a similar action.
- Being able to use shift+arrows instead of having to use the mouse in places such as recruiting lists

I am finding this game is pretty rough on both my hands and my eyes to play. (I stopped playing most any game requiring alot of movement such as warcraft/first person shooters, etc because of how it hurt my hands).

My personal pet peeve in this game that just riles me up (other than the constant crashes) is every time I redshirt a player, it completely resets my depth chart to AI suggest, undoing all of the clicking I had to do the first time. (Perhaps I am just not understanding the purpose of the depth chart in this game though, but that seems to be more annoying than useful)

[JPhillips]

I hate that when I open a recruit card, select an action and return to the recruiting screen the lists doesn't save my scroll point. I have to rescroll the list to where I left off every time.

Along with that, why does the game need to reload recruits every time I change screens? Why isn't the current list saved until I make a change in parameters or the week advances?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

You may have to do the "send a report to Microsoft" button to get the minidump generated, I'm not sure (I pretty much always do that).

Yeah this time when it crashed, I hit the debug button and it placed the file in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson folder.

A Dr Watson.log file and a user.dmp file. So now if they ask for it, I'll have it at least to provide.

I think after 6 crashes today though I'm done trying this game until they are able to provide some help. At least on my laptop for the short term. I have a Saturday free day that looks like it will rain all morning, so I might try installing this on my desktop and seeing if I have the same crash issues there or not.

[Alan T]

Looking through microsoft's knowledgebase, I found a few things that might be causing this issue...

Multiple versions of Comctl32.dll may cause both Windows XP style and Windows Classic style windows to appear in Windows XP

Guess I'll do self-tech support for a bit. It beats working anyways

[Alan T]

Just in case anyone else was having the constant crashes like I was, I wanted to give a status update. It seems applying Microsoft hotfix 884883 has stopped this problem from occuring. Where before it was crashing at least once a month (sometimes more, sometimes less), I haven't had a single crash in 2 1/2 seasons of play now.

I obviously can't say for sure my problem is fixed, but for now at least the game is playable. I sent the dump to Gary as well in case he can see anything in it to fix the game in the future to prevent this from happening.

[jbergey22]

Most frustrating game Ive ever bought.

It would be some much fun if it just worked correctly. Between the microsoft errors, random crashes and the duplicate recruits I gave up on it awhile ago.

Some people say it works fine which is great for them. Ive just never had a game I couldnt find a fix for until this one. Most of the time people dont have everything on their computer UTD so they blame the developer which is unfair with this game I have asked for help from microsoft, Gary, and other computer geeks with no solution in site.

I was having some of the similiar issues with the Pro Basketball version of this game I believe the a lot of the errors come from the program Gary designed the game with doesnt work well with Vista. The problem is I never upgraded to Vista because I just dont like it as well as XP.

Total College Basketball and the pro version of the earlier game worked just fine for me that is why I dont understand this.

[Young Drachma]

I like that there is an editor for the game to make changes and such alike. Now we'll see if the game works for me.

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

Most frustrating game Ive ever bought.

It would be some much fun if it just worked correctly. Between the microsoft errors, random crashes and the duplicate recruits I gave up on it awhile ago.

Some people say it works fine which is great for them. Ive just never had a game I couldnt find a fix for until this one. Most of the time people dont have everything on their computer UTD so they blame the developer which is unfair with this game I have asked for help from microsoft, Gary, and other computer geeks with no solution in site.

I was having some of the similiar issues with the Pro Basketball version of this game I believe the a lot of the errors come from the program Gary designed the game with doesnt work well with Vista. The problem is I never upgraded to Vista because I just dont like it as well as XP.

Total College Basketball and the pro version of the earlier game worked just fine for me that is why I dont understand this.

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.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Just in case anyone else was having the constant crashes like I was, I wanted to give a status update. It seems applying Microsoft hotfix 884883 has stopped this problem from occuring. Where before it was crashing at least once a month (sometimes more, sometimes less), I haven't had a single crash in 2 1/2 seasons of play now.

I obviously can't say for sure my problem is fixed, but for now at least the game is playable. I sent the dump to Gary as well in case he can see anything in it to fix the game in the future to prevent this from happening.

Guess I spoke too soon. After 3 seasons I hit the same crash again. Looks like more issues with comctl32.dll Guess that hotfix didn't help any.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Guess I spoke too soon. After 3 seasons I hit the same crash again. Looks like more issues with comctl32.dll Guess that hotfix didn't help any.

Exactly what happened with me and the hotfix when I installed in over a year ago. Worked fine for awhile and the crashes arent as frequent but they still show up.