REGULAR SEASON SCHEDULE As always, it is a 16 game schedule, and you can play your games in any order, so long as you keep on or ahead of the pace of playing two games a week. Forfeit deadline is Sunday night!If you're behind, and you don't want to receive forfeits, either show up that Sunday (8 PM EST) -OR- Name a SPECIFIC time when you will be online to play, and you will either receive a substitute opponent or be excused. As usual, this can be an opportunity for people to work off forfeits. For anyone who is legitimately on schedule with their games but can't get their final games in during the last week (for whatever reason) there will be the usual method for getting opponents at the end. However, you must be available at least one night during the final week of the season! If you won't be available, you naturally have to get your games played in advance. Sometimes I am able to make it so that players who receive forfeits can work them off (like at the end of the season as a fill in), but I can't make any guarantees. It is usually easy to find plenty of opponents at the start of the season--someone is nearly always available. Use this opportunity to get ahead and stay ahead! You can start playing as soon as you receive the season schedule.SCENARIO SELECTION Random Scenario Selection, as assigned to you by the IUF program, should be used. Agreements to "reroll" the scenario in the event of an "undesirable" matchup are not permitted. REPORTING GAMES Naturally, if I'm going to keep standings and stuff, all game results must be reported to me. One of the players (if you can't decide, let the winner do it) should send an E-mail to the IUFL mailing list (IUFLmail@yahoogroups.com). *NEW* You can also use the Game Reporter on this website to send in your results! If you are new to the league or have for some reason fallen off the IUFL mail list, you should subscribe at the following website: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IUFLmail Your game report to the mailing list should contain the following: 1) Player name, nationality played, and indicator of whether the player was attacking or defending (if applicable) for each player. 2) Scenario name. 3) WHO WON! 4) Indicate desert or night rules, if they were in effect. 5) Method of victory (squad break, victory condition, victory points, etc. A lot of times, players give write-ups of the games, but there is no reason to feel obligated to do so--just the above information will suffice. Please make sure that you include all of the above items, though! Please do NOT report the games to the Renegade Ratings site--allow me to do it for you. Sometimes I fall behind, but eventually, all games do get reported.TIE BREAKERS (Standings) 1 - Player with fewest forfeits 2 - Head to head competition 3 - Division record (first place ties only) 4 - Conference record 5 - Record against common opponents 6 - Strength of schedule 7 - Coin flipPLAYOFF TOURNAMENT All division winners will receive byes for the single elimination "wild card games." These games will be played by the top four players in each conference who did not win their divisions (eight players total). The four wild-card winners will advance to meet the four division winners in a best two out of three series, the winners of those series will advance to play in their respective conference finals (also best two out of three), and then the conference champions will compete for the IUFL Championship, which in this format is a best three out of five series.IUF FIREWALL ISSUES
The increased prevalence of cable modem internet hookups, along with the added necessity of firewalls that comes with such hookups has brought new problems
to the world of IUF. Several players have reported difficulties either serving or hooking up in general.
For the serving difficulties involved with a router, you must use what is known as "port forwarding": you must forward packets from port 2222 (that is the default
port for IUF) to the local IP address for your computer (what IUF is claiming is your IP). The actual IP that you should give to your opponent to type in can be
obtained by going to a site such as http://www.uchicago.edu/webserver/host.shtml
IUF CRASHES AND BUGS
On now to game crashes and program bugs. The program itself is the arbiter! If IUF does something wrong, consider it a "house rule," and take advantage of it
to your heart's content. Do NOT feel guilty about it, and do NOT refrain from taking advantage for sportsmanship reasons! Other players might unwittingly take
advantage without even realizing it--you should not be at a disadvantage to them.
Of course, you should bring it to everyone's attention (especially mine) that this bug exists. We will start the season with IUF version 4.8, but there will be a version
4.9 coming out shortly.
IMPORTANT REMINDER: If a game is lost during set up (before any cards are dealt), the replayed game should be the exact same matchup (use PlayIUF)!
Otherwise, the matchup should be rerolled.
If a game of yours is "tainted," you have my embarrassed apology in advance, but the game counts. I won't be absolute and say "no exceptions," but a bug will
have to be pretty radical for me to declare the game null and void (and I will never make such a declaration in a game in which I lose as a result of the bug, just
to be fair).
Crashed games are another story. There are two types of crashes: Internet hookup failure, and actual program bugs that cause crashes. Internet hookup failures
generally result in one side or the other (or both) receiving a "saved game." These games can be easily restarted by having the players link up again (careful to have
the same client-server roles, or else the sides will be switched), and answering "Y" to the question of "Do you want to load the saved game?"
Be careful when loading saved games! If you fail to hook up correctly after you've loaded the saved game, it could be lost forever. To avoid the consequences of
such an occurrence, you can copy the "ufsave.java" file to a temporary file by using the DOS copy commend: "copy ufsave.java tempname.txt" will copy the "ufsave.java"
file to a file called "tempname.txt". If something goes wrong, you can reverse the command to copy the file back so that the program knows where to look.
Some Internet problems, though, will result in both games "hanging up," or each waiting for the other to respond. When this happens, just ONE of the players should
quit out the game by doing a <ctrl> <alt> <delete>. This player will NOT receive a saved game, but the other person should. If he doesn't, or if there is another
situation where one person is already out of the program without a saved game while the other person is hanging, the person hanging should disconnect from his
Internet Service WITHOUT quitting the Java Up Front program. In some instances, this will result in the game recognizing the problem, and exiting with a saved game.
Always wait a minute or two giving the program a chance to exit and save the game before you try something new.
If there is no saved game obtainable, there is no way to rescue the game. I can think of no other alternative than to replay the game under these circumstances.
Fortunately, it is very rare that this type of thing happens--most games are salvageable.
The other type of crash involves programming errors on my part. These can usually be identified by the words "Null Pointer Exception" or "Subscript out of range" in
the error messages. When these messages occur, generally both players will get saved games, but if they try to load them up, the same error message will occur.
When this type of error happens, it will require a program fix to finish your game. What you should do is take the file in your "upfront" directory called "ufsave.java"
and "zip it up" in a zip file and send it to me. I will have to investigate what went wrong, and hopefully, I will be able to send you an updated version of IUF that will
allow you to finish the game. Hopefully, this won't happen too often either, but if it does, every effort will be made on my part to preserve your game. If I can't, once
again, a replay will be necessary.