DraftClasses in progress 1986-2012 THAT DON'T CRASH!

[mrliioadin]

Hello everyone,

I have no idea if others are having the same issue that I am, but I could not, for the life of me, get madden draft classes to work without crashing from BagdadBob's 1986 roster all the way through 2012 and beyond. I would constantly crash around the year 1999 (when you start counting at 1986). After spending years trying to work on this issue and getting very frustrated (I tried a lot of the help forums and other guides, they didn't work), I decided to try to approach this problem with as much austerity as possible.

I worked from the following two premises:

Computer generated drafts do not crash.
The 1986 Roster will play through for 30 years without issue with computer generated drafts.

What I have learned:
--If you enter a bad draft in the first offseason, you will crash down the line. That is, if you use Bagdad Bob's 1987 draft class with his 1986 Roster (and then you only use computer generated rosters after that point) you will crash about 12-15 years later.
--Minor modifications to names, handedness of quarterbacks and skin tone do not appear to lead to crashes.
--Changes to the ability variables appear to lead to crashes. I don't know much about why and I don't know if this is specifically tied to certain variables (Overall value or Awareness).
--substituting ANY computer generated draft into ANY year should work. It doesn't seem to be responding to the data in the franchise file (at least so far as I've been able to test so far).
--After around the year 2003, I think you can add almost any draft class in and you will make it to the end of the 30 year period. This opens up the back half to much more creative freedom in creating classes.

My best guess is that the game decides to remove players from the franchise every offseason and that something about that process is screwed up by modified ability variables in the draft classes. I've seen it posited that too many players in your draft class leads to crashes (and this is consistent with my findings) but I think the issue is multifactorial because simply removing players from my franchises did not solve the problem.

So here's where I'm at: What I tried first (and this is a very basic bare bones first attempt) is to simply replace the names of the existing players in the database. It turns out that this works just fine and you will not have any issue with draft classes created this way. So the first set of drafts that I included are one's in which the players in the real draft are ranked based on Hall of fame, pro-bowl appearances, and Years pro.

The advantage to this first set of drafts is that they work. You can import them and play all the way through without crashing. If you modify the values in these drafts, I cannot assure you that they will still work.

The disadvantage is that these are really poor draft classes for now. Heights and weights are off. The ability values are unrealistic. Some positions are messed up. Skin tones can be way off.

The point of this was to establish a starting point. Here's where I want to go from here: If you use these draft classes, tell me about your experience with them. Specifically, tell me about crashes or the lack thereof. Hold off on telling me about problems with the players themselves. This is a work in progress.

I am building a large database of information of all players who played in the league during this time period. I have the data collected for 2004-2012. I used profootball reference as a source and am getting the data into formats that can be easily manipulated (access files can be exported to excel, excel can read csv easily and you can save in formats that work in madden).

The next thing I want to do is to better use a similar name replace style but to try to fix a few of the issues mentioned above.

First: My metric is poor for establishing which players are better than which others. Profootballreference.com
Second: player positions were sometimes incorrect. I want to try to improve on this.
Third: Undrafted but talented players didn't always get added back into the draft class. And in my opinion, they should be. These players are accounted for in the database and I intend to try to include them.

I may also try to work on ages, heights, weights, and colleges but I need to build an index for some of these and may save it for the next iteration of changes.

-------------------------------------------------

Anyway, this is a starting point. This are something to play with until better is available.

Lastly, not all of the files are mine. EVERYTHING from 1986-2003 was created by me. the files after 2003 are modifications of the files found on this site previously. I am sorry but I don't have the authors for all of these. I am putting them in here as a placeholder until I can get my own versions uploaded. I do not intend to hijack anyone's work and will remove drafts any upon request by any member if they feel that I have misrepresented the work as my own.

More to come. Thanks!

[BuckeyeColt]

OK -- very good thread and very good initiative. So far no replies. So, I have two questions:

1. Can anyone share their experiences with getting past the 1999 season when playing forward from 1986 as is described above? Similar problems? How did you get past them?

2. How are these new draftclasses working for everybody so far?

I'm also stuck at 1999. I save multiple versions in each off-season at each step, and all saved well except for at the final free agent signing. There are no players on rosters without contractors, no players in free agency with contracts. I did see some strange signing anomalies -- Lions with 10 guards, teams with 4 kickers, 10 defensive ends, etc. -- and cut extras to the free agent pool. Most teams have 51+ players signed. A couple have it in the 40s. The Redskins had all sorts of gaps after the second free agency period, but somehow the computer fixed when we got to the training camp stage. But no dice moving forward to start the preseason. I've simmed every step forward from the opening of the offseason, but I imagine that's not a good gauge, since a lot can be screwed up without my manipulation.

Bottom line, I guess, is anybody getting to 30 years using the mod draft classes? And how do you get past the glitches described for 1999?

[Rixster67r]

I am guessing that the issues that you are having is because the 86 roster was created before the EA update 4.0........I am going to try to fix this........

I did some tests and tried moving the roster to a 4.0 but this made no difference.....sorry I could not be of more help

[Yipicya]

I didn't see this when I started my version of this little project, because like everyone else, I'm having problems too.

What I am doing, is just using computer generated drafts, changing the personal data, using NFL.com, Pro-Football Reference and Wikipedia. In some ways it sucks, but at least I get the UDFAs and such.

I'm not sure if that's what you are doing or not, if I can help, let me know.

[DrBrownsFan]

I didn't see this when I started my version of this little project, because like everyone else, I'm having problems too.

What I am doing, is just using computer generated drafts, changing the personal data, using NFL.com, Pro-Football Reference and Wikipedia. In some ways it sucks, but at least I get the UDFAs and such.

I'm not sure if that's what you are doing or not, if I can help, let me know.

Erm... its been almost a year since the last reply in this thread, so I'd assume that the original project is RIP. However, that isn't to say that you can't continue with your version and recruit help for it, especially since there evidently is demand for it. Just don't expect mrliioadin to have it done or anything

[Yipicya]

I really didn't expect much help.... I too am a Browns fan, the heavens have a tendency to abandon us....

I'm kind of doing this in sections, I've got the players for 1995 through 2013 listed, now I'm just whittling the list down to the required 257 needed.

Perhaps one reason the file is crashing is that there are too many players in the actual file, has anyone ever checked this?

[GRAND-AL]

does this thread died ?

[Idabadas]

Hello everyone,

I have no idea if others are having the same issue that I am, but I could not, for the life of me, get madden draft classes to work without crashing from BagdadBob's 1986 roster all the way through 2012 and beyond. I would constantly crash around the year 1999 (when you start counting at 1986). After spending years trying to work on this issue and getting very frustrated (I tried a lot of the help forums and other guides, they didn't work), I decided to try to approach this problem with as much austerity as possible.

I worked from the following two premises:

Computer generated drafts do not crash.
The 1986 Roster will play through for 30 years without issue with computer generated drafts.

What I have learned:
--If you enter a bad draft in the first offseason, you will crash down the line. That is, if you use Bagdad Bob's 1987 draft class with his 1986 Roster (and then you only use computer generated rosters after that point) you will crash about 12-15 years later.
--Minor modifications to names, handedness of quarterbacks and skin tone do not appear to lead to crashes.
--Changes to the ability variables appear to lead to crashes. I don't know much about why and I don't know if this is specifically tied to certain variables (Overall value or Awareness).
--substituting ANY computer generated draft into ANY year should work. It doesn't seem to be responding to the data in the franchise file (at least so far as I've been able to test so far).
--After around the year 2003, I think you can add almost any draft class in and you will make it to the end of the 30 year period. This opens up the back half to much more creative freedom in creating classes.

My best guess is that the game decides to remove players from the franchise every offseason and that something about that process is screwed up by modified ability variables in the draft classes. I've seen it posited that too many players in your draft class leads to crashes (and this is consistent with my findings) but I think the issue is multifactorial because simply removing players from my franchises did not solve the problem.

So here's where I'm at: What I tried first (and this is a very basic bare bones first attempt) is to simply replace the names of the existing players in the database. It turns out that this works just fine and you will not have any issue with draft classes created this way. So the first set of drafts that I included are one's in which the players in the real draft are ranked based on Hall of fame, pro-bowl appearances, and Years pro.

The advantage to this first set of drafts is that they work. You can import them and play all the way through without crashing. If you modify the values in these drafts, I cannot assure you that they will still work.

The disadvantage is that these are really poor draft classes for now. Heights and weights are off. The ability values are unrealistic. Some positions are messed up. Skin tones can be way off.

The point of this was to establish a starting point. Here's where I want to go from here: If you use these draft classes, tell me about your experience with them. Specifically, tell me about crashes or the lack thereof. Hold off on telling me about problems with the players themselves. This is a work in progress.

I am building a large database of information of all players who played in the league during this time period. I have the data collected for 2004-2012. I used profootball reference as a source and am getting the data into formats that can be easily manipulated (access files can be exported to excel, excel can read csv easily and you can save in formats that work in madden).

The next thing I want to do is to better use a similar name replace style but to try to fix a few of the issues mentioned above.

First: My metric is poor for establishing which players are better than which others. Profootballreference.com
Second: player positions were sometimes incorrect. I want to try to improve on this.
Third: Undrafted but talented players didn't always get added back into the draft class. And in my opinion, they should be. These players are accounted for in the database and I intend to try to include them.

I may also try to work on ages, heights, weights, and colleges but I need to build an index for some of these and may save it for the next iteration of changes.

-------------------------------------------------

Anyway, this is a starting point. This are something to play with until better is available.

Lastly, not all of the files are mine. EVERYTHING from 1986-2003 was created by me. the files after 2003 are modifications of the files found on this site previously. I am sorry but I don't have the authors for all of these. I am putting them in here as a placeholder until I can get my own versions uploaded. I do not intend to hijack anyone's work and will remove drafts any upon request by any member if they feel that I have misrepresented the work as my own.

More to come. Thanks!

The file is corrupted, will someone please send me the working files?

[ycleped]

Working file anyone?

[kirk1827]

Here you go: 87-13 Draft Classes I got from this forum or FF can;t remember. They arnt mine just sharing since file here is corrupt. I;ve played up to 99 Draft Class and all is going well.

Hope this helps.