FPSGM Frequently Asked Questions

Questions

1. What is runtime error 100?
2. What is runtime error 106?
3. What is runtime error 200?
4. When should I Build Salaries?
5. My tagged players cannot be signed, why?
6. I just started a new season, and FPSGM crashes?
7. Why are players showing up as free agents?
8. A coach says he has more money than is shown - how do I fix it?
9. How do I change a deal or wipe a deal?
10. A coach sent a bid, but it did not show in the SIGNINGS?
11. FPSGM crashes when I press submit bids?

Answers

A: This is a file error, meaning you have looked for a salary record that does not exist - you need to BUILD SALARIES. It will not erase any old contracts, just add the needed new records.

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A: This error occurs when you have an invalid value in FPSGM.DAT, or you have upgraded to a new version and have not used the new FPSGM.DAT. Get the latest copy of FPSGM.DAT.

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A: This error is a flaw in the Borland Pascal library, and only seems to happen on fast machines - email me for an upgrade.

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A: You need to BUILD SALARIES whenever you start a new season (to add the new rookies to the SAL file) or whenever you add a player to the league with a 3rd party tool, like FPSFEDIT.

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A: A tagged (franchise or transition) player cannot be signed unless the following steps are used:

• Coach tags a player by tagging and pressing submit, with no deal.
• Commish processes bids as usual, and when reading in the SIGNINGS file that a player is tagged, goes to that player in FPSGM using the online agent, and presses submit - this calculates his new salary based on the rules in the DOC file.
• Commish prints free agents file and coach sees his player as tagged and his new salary.
• Coach submits a new deal for tagged player by REMOVING TAG and in the same bid, sending a salary, bonus and contract length. If the tag is is still checked in AGENT, the rest of the fields (salary, bonus, etc) are wiped!

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A: Build Salaries and read note 4.

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A: By default, a player with no deal is a restricted free agent from rookie until 4th year, then he is unrestricted. These values can be changed by editing FPSGM.DAT

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A: This is advanced - you are warned:

• Start FPSGM with the -debug switch
• print salaries
• go to DOS and look at RET-LIST.TXT. This is a list of retired players who were still under contract. By default, FPSGM counts only pro-rated bonus against a team if a player under contract retires.

            116 1:30 2200000/3

• The first number is player ID, followed by Team ID:League Size, and finally, Bonus amount and the years he signed the deal. So to figure the cap hit to a team for this player, $2,200,000 is divided by 3, rounded off and added to his cap.
• go to DOS and look at DEBUG.TXT. This is a dump of all players and their contracts.

BUF Kelly, Jim FA:0   *sal: 2100000 yrs: 2 sal: 2300000 bon: 1900000
BUF Brohm, Jeff FA:2 !!sal: 393500 yrs: 2 sal: 667000 bon: 120000
         ---FA---  :MIN
BUF Thomas, Thurman FA:0 !!sal: 2465000 yrs: 2 sal: 3780000 bon: 1150000
BUF Bortz, Leo FA:0 sal: 600000

• The BUF is the owning team, followed by the player name, and FA code (0:Under deal, 1:restricted, 2:unrestricted, 3:transition, 4:franchise). Then we have his SAL (salary), YRS (length of contract), BON (bonus amount).

• *sal means there is a coach entered deal.
• !!sal means that the deal was done this season.
• sal means the player has a computer assigned salary with no contract. 
• The ---FA---  :MIN means that Jeff Brohm is under a deal from Minnesota, and they are being hit for the bonus amount. If the deal was done this season (!!sal), then the full bonus amount was taken from MINN's bonus limit and counts against the cap. If not this season (*sal), then MINN is only penalized for the pro-rated bonus (bonus divided by years of contract) against their total cap, not their bonus amount for the season.

• The above sections on retired players pay counting and so on can be turned off via FPSGM.DAT

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A: In FPSGM, go to the player in online agent and then just enter a new deal and hit submit. To wipe a deal, just enter a 0 for years of contract, no bonus and then the plain salary you want the player to have.

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A: Every time you press process bids (if FPSGM is started with -debug switch), a file called DL-DEBUG.TXT is made, which looks like this:

ID 		 FA Tm  OTm Opay Clen Bon Sal    Base Redo rnd pck

1654 Jimmie Jones 1 STL STL 346000 1   0  295000 56   0    0   0

• ID is player ID, followed by name, free agent type (see #8 above), the team trying to sign, the team he came from, the old salary of the player, the contract length, the bonus amount, the new salary amount, the base chance he has to accept the deal, redo code (0 regular deal, 1 restructure an already valid deal) and the round and pick, if a rookie.
• This file is listed in the order that FPSGM offered deals to players, which is highest bids first. If a player has basically blank data, it was an invalid deal. IF a player has free agent code 3 or 4, he is a tagged player, and the coach may need to read note 5 (above).
  

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A: Some email programs somehow add a byte or two to attached files. A CON file is supposed to be exactly 24 bytes per bid in the file, so it always has an even numbered file size. Go to explorer and look at the CON file sizes if FPSGM crashes, and see if there are odd file sizes, like 25 bytes, or 49 for example. Delete these, and re-process. It is a good idea to always backup the SAL file before processing, in case of a time like this, so you can use the backup and safely redo the bids. To totally solve this issue, require coaches to ZIP the CON files before attaching them. Even email programs that appear to not do this can sometimes suddenly do it for a large file.

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