Given that the system appears good for having every race you want in your schedule shouldn't we make sure that all the races are on the system correctly, rather than people amending their own schedules?

does that make sense?

Yes it does. I was actually going to suggest a seperate post where we could put amendments and requests for additions?

Fopr example there are 2 novice chases at the Cheltenham Festival that are currently listed as open - the Arkle and the 2.5m one, while I personally would like to see both Cheltenham and Aintree expanded to the full race schedule over 4 and 3 days respectively.

As brilliant as that sounds I doubt if the number of horses in the game and the associated AI, would be enough to make that a reality. I've already seen a number of walkovers with the default schedule.

I'm guessing the walkovers are in novice hurdles? After a couple of seasons, the only novice hurdlers in the game will be juvenile hurdlers, so some novice hurdle races might be left empty.

To be honest, the jumps showcase file and schedule needs to be rewritten completely. I have a spreadsheet already made up with all the graded and listed races for the 2009/10 season, as well as all the notable handicaps and conditions races (such as the new Connaught Chase at Cheltenham's November meeting, and the Welsh Champion Hurdle at Ffos Las in January), so as soon as the schedule editor is fixed I hope to rewrite my jumps showcase file, then create new schedules to test in the game.

As for creating full Cheltenham and Aintree meetings, I believe this will definitely be possible, as long as you're happy to bend realism slightly! For example, at Cheltenham, the Cross-Country Chase would need to be run on the normal course, the National Hunt Chase, Kim Muir Chase and Conditionals Hurdle would need to be open to all jockeys, there is no option for novice handicaps for the Jewson Novices' H'cap, there's no way of defining hunter chasers for the Foxhunter Chasers, and then there is the issue with what to do with your novice hurdles!

How do you do it Panther? I had the spreadsheet for the past game but do you use the same one for SO4?

Yeah, the same spreadsheet works, but the way the schedules work is different in SO4. In this game, you have to amend the showcase file, then when you go into the schedule editor in the game you can use your newly-created showcase file to create and play around with schedules (well, in theory this is what you do, but there are lots of problems with it at the moment, which Mark is looking into and will hopefully fix in the next patch).

when do you think you'll have the showcase done.Would you be able to put in all the grade 1 2 3races from ireland onto the uk version

Isn't that the idea with the new schedule editor on SO4. I know its flawed at the moment but when its put right and ALL the correct races are added to the UK, Irish, French schedules etc it SHOULD be perfect (in a realism sense of course). I realise that will not put right the no of runners issue.

the reason I asked is I tried doing it but when I pasted the data it cam out in lined notes so wont play. Maybe a problem with Vista users?

panther, with the schedule your creating will you have to start a new game to use it or can you update the schedule in a current game?

I won't actually be creating a schedule straight away, as they usually require a fair amount of testing and tweaking. What will be created though is new showcase files for UK, Ireland, France and Dubai, which will allow you to create your own schedule from scratch using thorough, accurate and up-to-date 2009 details.

It will basically be a case of adding the new showcase files along with a blank default schedule file, then you should hopefully (once the schedule editor's fixed) be able to go into the schedule editor and hand pick all the races you want and when you want them, from the full list.