DB Master testing

[exerslow]

I cracked open Database Master by Rinaldo this evening and like all of Rinaldo's utilities, it seems fantastic.

One thing that was bandied about here on the forum by Keegan was that one could use DB Master to alter perhaps some small things about a currently-in-use database (used in a career) and have the alterations take effect without ruining the career or crashing FIFA.

So I made a copy of my career database (important always) so I could test this out as stated by Keegan.

In my instance, I was most intrigued by altering some of the team-stadium links so that I could use more stadiums fabricated recently that weren't available when I started my career. Before I began my career I set a dozen or more team-stadium links to Bollaert(16) so that I could import special stadiums on an as-needed game by game basis, and there were several that occur regularly since I play in the EPL with United (ie. Riverside, Reebok, Goodison etc.).

Recently, more stadiums were released and there were a few other teams in other leagues with fifaECP/Dusy84 fabricated stadiums that I had forgot to set to 16 as well and would love to correct this so as to use these fantastic stadiums.

Long story longer I used Rinaldo's DB Master, changed a dozen or so more team-stadium links in my three-year career database (just now about to begin year4) and replaced it in the data/cmn folder. Fired it up and voila! The career loaded.....it seems to have worked though I won't know for sure until I play a team with a special stadium like Southampton, who was promoted in the second year of my career and managed to stay up. I did not have their stadium link set to 16 so I changed that now with DB Master and I'll see if it works when I play them in a couple games.

Fingers crossed,
Dave

UPDATE: It is now CONFIRMED!, the team-stadium link editing does work with DB Master on an EXISTING career!! The first team I ended up playing whose link I had editied was Stuttgart in the Champions League......and so I imported the Daimler stadium and it worked!! You CAN edit team-stadium links with DB Master on an existing career!

 

[exerslow]

Confirmed above with more testing. Perhaps more fifa.db editing could occur without corrupting career.

Dave

 

[mutiger]

Hey Dave...great news...

Do you need Access as well...or can you just use DB master?

Also, can you give me a link to DB master?

Thanks,
mutiger

 

[exerslow]

Only DB Master. I don't have a link but there's a thread on this same page of the forum that should under DB Master, started by its creator Rinaldo (genius).

Dave

 

[Keegan]

Yeah... I tend to accurately bandy.

 

[msilk17]

I change Stadiums for teams in CC during my career all the time and everything's fine. I change numbers, colars etc etc... all in Creation centre..

Only thing i cant do is add kits (as in add a third, or GK kit) and i cant swap players around..

 

[exerslow]

Creation Centre is too buggy for me. Why don't you just add kits manually whenyou want to use them, just like the stadiums....thats what I do.

Dave

 

[msilk17]

I find it a pain to go through all db coverting everytime i want to change something. CC is quick and easy.

This DB Master sounds good, though... might give it a go..

 

[OckHAM]

Dave, do you think you can realize a list of stuff that can be changed with DB Master without having to restart a career? Thanks

 

[exerslow]

I'm going to try some stuff this weekend Ockham and then I'll give a report. I'm going to see if I can transfer a few players first.....any suggestions as to what other changes might be beneficial if they could occur. I will try to just add a player as well. We'll see what happens.


BTW Mitchell, with DB Master there is no converting, it operates right on the existing DB. When I want to use a third or fourth kit with my Man United team I just import the files manually into some new zdatas I made and run fatBH. Same basically with the stadiums anyway so its not a real hassle IMO.

Dave

 

[StevePitts]

I'm going to see if I can transfer a few players first.....

Does DB Master read the career file?? If not, then there is no way that you can affect players within the career by fiddling with the FIFA.DB because (unlike FIFA 2005) FIFA 06 stores all the player information in the career file. I suspect that a lot of the wariness about updating player data and messing up a career stems from last year's version.

 

[OckHAM]

Well frankly me too think that changing lines in players, playerwrite, teamplayerlinks and this sort of stuff will not allow to keep the career, but maybe some changements in stadium tables, and kits ones will let the career work again. But it's just for testing purposes of course.

 

[exerslow]

Steve, when you say "in the career file" you mean the actual "Manager" file that loads the career?

What do you think will happen when , for instance, I change Micheal Ballacks team-player link from Byaern Munich to Chelsea? Will this affect the career ? Or because I have not directly altered the "Manager" file it won't effect it?

Dave

 

[exerslow]

WHat we may need then is A Manager or Career file editor?

What kind of file is it?

Dave

 

[StevePitts]

when you say "in the career file" you mean the actual "Manager" file that loads the career?

Yes, sorry - I guess that 'career file' is FIFA 2005-speak It is the file in 'My Documents\FIFA 06\B. Manager - xxxxxx' with the same name as the folder.

What do you think will happen when , for instance, I change Micheal Ballacks team-player link from Byaern Munich to Chelsea? Will this affect the career ?

Definitely not. As I said in my previous post, all of the player related data is stored in the manager file for FIFA 06. As Ockham points out the players, playerwrite and teamplayerlinks 'segments' (no idea what EA call them, but that is the term I've adopted in all of my code) all exist in FIFA.DB, but they all also exist in the manager file, along with playerstats and career_extra_user_team_info (the former is obvious, but the latter holds wage information for the manager's team).

It is my suspicion (although I've no proof, my tools are all geared to reporting not editing) that any changes to FIFA.DB players will have no impact, positive or negative, on the manager file (but equally I can envision ways in which EA might have written the code, say to expect the player counts to be the same, and to construct information about the manager file using those numbers rather than the ones actually stored in the manager file. Indeed, my own code assumes that the player counts in FIFA.DB will match the manager data, and some aspects of the 'shape' of the data in the manager file depend on those counts, so it is quite possible that adding players will mess up a career).

WHat we may need then is A Manager or Career file editor?

My suspicion is that that would be fairly difficult Dave. When I was decoding the structure of the data files for both FIFA 2005 and FIFA 06 it became obvious that there are several fields near the start of the file that seem to change every time the career data does (eg. assign a different jersey number to an individual player and, in addition to the segment that holds that data, eight bytes at offset 0x00000010 change in unpredictable ways) so it looks as if there is some sort of CRC or other hash check of (some aspect of) the data.

What kind of file is it?

It is a fundamentally different structure to the other files that I've processed (primarily the .DB files) and unlike the .DB data does not seem to have an internally consistent layout. It took me quite a long time to figure out where all the data was in the FIFA 2005 career file, and some aspects of that ended up having to be hard-coded into my logic (whereas the .DB reading logic only uses information from the headers of the files themselves). Some of that then broke the first time I tried to process a career file that wasn't just based on the default FIFA.DB data, and again when I added a couple of players (using the built-in features of the game) and started a new career. The logic needed a fair bit of updating for FIFA 06, and I've still not managed to process a CEP derived career file (although that was due to errors in the FIFA.DB in whichever version of CEP it was that I tried out, so I never even got as far as seeing what effect it had on the manager data).

I am quite happy to share what I've learned, but I don't really have the time to devote to a lot of explanations (too busy playing Oblivion at the moment, even FIFA 06 is on the back-burner). If you understand vanilla C then I can let you have the relevant routines out of my career analyser program, but the whole thing is 16,000 lines of code, so I can't imagine anyone wanting to dig through the whole thing to figure out what is going on

 

[exerslow]

Gotcha. BTW, really enjoyed using your F2K5 Analyzer last year. I kept all my career stats for each year and it was great. Fantatsic work.

EA really needs to address the ability to do "whatever" a user wants to do a la some of their other games such as Madden, especially regarding player movement. FIFA has been so fragile in this regard the last few years you would think they would have addressed this by now.

Unfortunately, programming is not my hobby, and while I have picked up a fair amount of knowledge in that regard, I'm sure I don't really have the time to pour through that much code. Thanks though.

Dave

 

[exerslow]

What about setting the stadium link for the Champions League final? I would like to set it to Bollaert so I can choose which stadium I would like to use for the final each career year...but which link is it?

Also, is it possible to have the Champions League music play before each CL game. I have the audio file but is it possible to attach it to champions league games only?

Dave

 

[StevePitts]

What about setting the stadium link for the Champions League final? I would like to set it to Bollaert so I can choose which stadium I would like to use for the final each career year...but which link is it?

There is a 'finalstadiums' segment, which includes a league id and the stadium id. The league id for the Champions League is 223 (decimal), I believe. After that you're on your own - as I said I don't do editing only reporting

 

[StevePitts]

really enjoyed using your F2K5 Analyzer last year. I kept all my career stats for each year and it was great. Fantatsic work

Thanks - I do a similar thing, as you can see from my web site. I have a very similar routine 90% complete for FIFA 06, but problems calculating player attributes in manager mode have prevented me from producing a finished product that I'm happy with, and this year's version is a command-line only utility (ie. I haven't gotten around to updating the GUI front-end to cater for the differences between versions). I can let you have a copy if you'd like, but you have to be happy creating batch files or running things from CMD.EXE (or equivalent) to get anything out of it.

EA really needs to address the ability to do "whatever" a user wants to do a la some of their other games such as Madden, especially regarding player movement.

I think I'd disagree with that to some degree in relation to career/manager mode, because if you can cheat your way to the squad of your choice then what is the point of them putting effort into making the mode more interesting (and to me it is the single most important feature in the last three iterations - I wouldn't have played the game anything like as much without it, and probably would have missed out at least one of the versions). You can already use the transfer system to set up the team of your choice before you start manager mode, so allowing unlimited movement within manager mode would just put us back to where we were in FIFA 2004, where you could basically transfer whoever took your fancy as long as you had the 'money'

Unfortunately, programming is not my hobby, and while I have picked up a fair amount of knowledge in that regard, I'm sure I don't really have the time to pour through that much code. Thanks though

Perhaps I should join Rinaldo's 'university' and let others loose on what I've worked out to date??

 

[firefan98]

Steve,

I would like a copy of your reporting tool. I don't mind that you feel it is not complete yet.

If you don't mind, can you please e-mail it to me at [email protected]?

Thanks, I really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Firefan98