Overview

ConManager is the owner side of the FPS:Front Office program which is used to implement Free Agency and a Salary Cap. It is meant to be used with Sierra’s Front Page Sports:Football Pro. Currently, it only works with the 97 & 98 version of the league files. Support for other versions of the games will be coming soon.

ConManager is used for managing Contracts and creating offers for players.

This document just covers how to use ConManager. Details on the concepts and philosophy that is used for contracts and Free Agency, including technical info, are in a separate document that is (will be) included with this distribution.

Requirements

FPS:ConManager only reads FPS:FBPro 97 & 98 versions of the league file. ConManager can be installed in any directory. If your commissioner has included a file called 'salreg' with the program, this file must be in the same directory as the program.

ConManager also requires the 'Salary File' provided by the league commissioner. This file is called 'LEAGUENAME.FRO' and must be in the same directory as your league file.

ConManager runs under Win95/98 and requires a set of 4 DLLs that are available from the ConManager Web Page.

Starting the Program

When you first start the program, it will prompt you for a league file. You can navigate to any directory and choose your league. After choosing your league, you will be prompted to choose your team.

!!The team you choose is the team offering any contract offers you make in this session of the program!!

If you choose the wrong team, or wish to work with another league, go to the LEAGUE menu item. If you wish to change team choose CHANGE TEAM. You will be presented with the list of teams again from which to choose.

If you wish to change the league you are working with, choose OPEN from the LEAGUE menu item and you will be given the opportunity to choose a new league.

Once you choose your team, the status bar on the bottom of the program will show your team, the Bonus Money spent this season and your teams Current Payroll. Your team roster is also loaded by default.

The Display

On the left side of the screen is where you can navigate through all the players in the league. Player lists are divided into two categories: Teams and Free Agents. When Teams is chosen, the drop down list shows all the teams in the league. When Free Agents is chosen, the list shows the Free Agents grouped by their generic position and it will show the College Draft Pool when it exists.

When you choose a player, all pertinent data is shown in the top half of the screen. All this data is not editable.

The players Name, Current team Age and Position are listed, along with the Actual and Potential Ratings for the player.

The lower half of the screen shows all the contract information.

The 2 lines of text show when the player was signed, when it expires and what type of Free Agent he will be when it does.

Original Signed by – Team the originally signed the player to the current deal.

Length – Length in years of the current contract.

Declines – Number of times a player has declined a contract.

Franchise, Transition and Tender – These check boxes show if the player is under a specific deal. Only one of these can be checked at any time.

CGS – The players Computer Generated Salary. This gives an estimate of what the player is worth.

Base – Base amount of the contract divided over the life of the contract.

Bonus – Bonus amount of the contract paid up front.

Accepting % - The percent chance that the player will accept the deal. Anything below 60% is shown in red and will not be offered to the player. A deal must have an Accepting % of 60 or greater for it be offered to the player. Anything 60% or greater will be shown in green. Any number over 100% is automatically accepted.

Cap Hit – Gives a year-by-year listing of how much this contract will count against your salary cap.

Current Year Base and Bonus – This shows the breakdown of the current year Cap Hit.

Program Options

As stated above, there is an optional file called salreg that can be included with the ConManager program. This file contains the options that your commissioner set with regards to contracts and how Free Agency works in your league. If this file doesn’t exist, the default options will be used and can then be changed through the League->Options menu selection.

If you wish to modify any of the options and a salreg file exists. Run ConManager 1 time, and then move or rename the salreg file from the ConManager directory and any changes made will be saved.

Making Offers

When offering a player a basic contract, only 3 fields can be edited on the screen: Length, Base and Bonus.

The Length must be between 1 and the maximum (up to 7) set by your league (default is 4). You can then enter a Bonus and Base amount and the Accepting % will be generated, along with the Cap Hit distribution for this contract.

When you are happy with the offer, press Submit Contract. A new window will open showing the offer and it will show how you Payroll and Bonus Spending are affected. You may move to a different player and offer another contract. However, if you move back to a player for which you made an offer, his original contract (or blanks if unsigned) will now appear instead of your offer.

If you are making an offer to a player that is on your team and already has a contract, it will be regarded as a restructuring offer. You may not attempt to offer a deal to a signed player on another team.

Remember, if you wish to change the signing team choose League->Change Team and select your new team. The offering team is displayed on the left hand side of the status bar.

If you are making a player a Franchise or Transition player, just check the appropriate box and press Submit Contract. All other information entered will be disregarded.

If you are making a tender offer, check the Tender Offer box and put the amount in the Base Amount and press Submit Contract.

The Current Offers Window

Once you have submitted a valid contract, a new window will be displayed that shows all the offers you have made in this session and what your payroll and bonus spending would look like if all contracts were accepted.

Each contract description has a check box on the left of the offer. Checking and unchecking this box has the effect of including or excluding the offer from the calculations.

Once you have a list of contract offers that you are happy with, press the Save button a dialog box prompting you to for a file name to save the offers is present. By default the name of your team is used to save the file. Once you choose the file name and press OK, all offers that are checked are saved to a file. All offer files are given an extension of .OFF and must be name as such so the commissioner can read it.

Double clicking any offer in the list, will bring up the player and the offer in the main Player Display.

If you wish to go back an edit a saved offer file, once you are in the program and have chosen your team choose Contract->Load and pick your OFF file from the dialog box presented. All the offers in that file are then listed in the Current Offers window. At this point, you may submit new offers, check and uncheck any offers you like, and when satisfied click Save and re-save the offers to a new or existing file name

At any time you may choose Contract->Clear or press Cancel and the Current Offers window will close and all offers will be discarded.

Free Agency/Contract Philosophy

Since there are many ways to deal with Free Agents and Contracts within the scope of FPS:FBPro, there is a separate document that deals with the Commissioner side and all the options available to the commissioner as well as some technical information on how the program is designed to work.

Finally

This program was designed and written with the rules of the WLCF (www.wlcf.com) in mind but hopefully with enough openness to allow other leagues to adapt it to their own rules.

A special thanks to the owners of the WLCF who had no choice but to adapt it as it was being written and Beta tested during the off-season of the WLCF.