David, about resetting leagues and patches and such

[garysorrell]

I was wondering, if you can see a point where there shouldnt be a need to reset a league to bring it up to snuff with a patch.

Reason I ask is that I was tinkering with the league file to our online league, and found that the remote out/remote in feature acts wonky when I tried it on a team. I tried it on the updated MIL and it worked fine.
Im well aware that our league file is probably 1 or 2 betas old...at least 1 beta ago. So I expected there to be some issues.

Anyway, dont take this as complaining. Im behind you 100% on all you do with MaxFB, just curious about this part.

[David Winter]

Hi.
 
 I would recommend not using un-reset databases from previous builds with newer builds. You're very likely to experience problems.
 
 But to your specific point. Unfortunately I really can't ensure that the databases don't change from build to build. Bug fixes, occasionally cause for a change to a database, but not very often. It's the new features that almost always require database changes. For example; many people have asked for more granularity in player positions. Which is something I'm working on. Unfortunately, that means a lot of changes to the league databases. That's one major example off the top of my head. There are many others, but I think you get the idea.
 
 It's not so much the structure of the databases changing that is the problem. I upgrade databases to the new structure from build to build without any intervention from the end users. It's the data in those new tables and fields that I can't fill in. And that's why a reset is required. 
 
 For example, if a change is made to the stats table, or some other table that requires data to have been filled in during game play, the game is going to expect there to be data there for any games recorded into the database. However the games played prior to the update would not have filled in the data. If that makes any sense.. basically, the game would be looking for data in the new tables and fields that isn't there.. and that causes problems. The problems can be minor, where a value simply isn't displayed. They can be more important where stats don't add up properly because some values are NULL. And other times, that missing data could even crash the game.
 
 It's an unfortunate side effect of having a 'living game'.. by that I mean that it changes, and evolves over time as users give feedback.

[garysorrell]

Understood. That pretty much answers my question.

Thanks for the quick reply, and keep up the good work.