First of all, I want to point out that I haven't discovered anything new/special or the like. I merely used the same method people use to replace some kits with others, but for the stadiums. I know some of you already did this successfully, but since many users might not know exactly what to replace and which programs to use, I thought I might make a guide when I'll have some free time to spare, and it seems I do now.
This thing came to me mostly as a desperate method to change the stadium I play in the career mode. Same as some folks, I like to sign a small team with like 2, 2&1/2 stars and take it to the path of glory, become the best team in the world and the like. Sure, this is a process that should take few seasons at least. Anyway, I always had this thorn in my flesh with the stadium I play on. Its a no brainer that most of these small teams have some small, generic stadium as a home ground, and unless you change it at the beginning of the career, you're stuck with it forever. Nevertheless, even if you do change it at the beginning and choose some fancy arena, it is also extremely unrealistic, specially when all your staff upgrades are like level 1-2, 3 at best.
So far, Rinaldo didn't yet manage to crack the algorithm EA uses to encrypt their saves for this year FIFA for PC, thus the delay with Internal Master 11 (and as we know the only version Rinaldo released lacks a Save option as of the reason I just pointed out) or Creation Master 11. Therefore the only option left is to simply replace the files for the (old, now) stadium with the ones for the new stadium. And since I didn't see any custom stadium created yet (again, unlocking games takes time) what's left are stadiums which already exist in the game.
Now, obviously, this implies that every other team which uses the same stadium will use the new one as well, I think this is self-explanatory. So if you're playing a career and you're so tired of your generic 1k seats stadium even though you won UCL countless times and you really want to play on a new arena, this is the compromise you'll have to make.
Alright then. If we're good so far, I'll make a list with the programs we'll need to make this work and get to the bottom of it.
You can find Texture Editor 1.0.2 here/here (32/64), Fifa 11 Regenerator here, DB Master 11 here and optional, Internal Master 11 here.
Basically, we'll use Texture Editor to extract the textures for the stadium of our choice, then rename those textures accordingly. We'll need Fifa 11 Regenerator to update the references within the *.bh files, so that Fifa won't ignore our changes. DB Master 11 will gives us the stadiums IDs and some other important informations we might need, and Internal Master 11 could prove useful if we chose a different stadium at the beginning of the career than the one it is originally linked in the database.
First step is to find out the ID of the stadium that is currently assigned to the team. If you're in a middle of a career, you can use Internal Master 11 (regardless of you choice of stadium at the beginning of the career), otherwise you can use DB Master 11.
For Internal Master 11, after you load the save, you'll see 4 sheets (which means the save has 4 databases). In DB4, browse for you team in teams and retain the teamid (for instance, Arsenal has teamid 1, Chelsea has teamid 5 and so on). Then browse teamstadiumlinks for your teamid and you'll find the stadiumid (Arsenal plays on stadiumid 156, Chelsea on stadiumid 28).
DB Master 11 has only one big sheet, but the same fields teams and teamstadiumlinks to browse and the process is the same. Here you can also find more details in stadiums. See, Arsenal plays in stadiumid 156 which is Emirates Stadium, Chelsea plays on stadiumid 28 which is Stamford Bridge etc.
Now that you retained the stadiumid for the stadium you're currently having as a home ground, you need to decide which new stadium you're going to use instead and search for its ID as well. Lets say I'm manager of Crystal Palace, which has the teamid 1799 and stadiumid 180 (which is Ivy Lane, a generic stadium). I'm bored to death with Ivy Lane: it's ugly, mostly empty, small, people barely cheer for a goal, etc. I want to play on, say... Delle Alpi instead, since nobody is playing there anyway
and it's a gorgeous arena. Alright then, Stadio Delle Alpi has the stadiumid 8 (again, stadiumids are in stadiums). So basically these two stadiumids, 180 and 8 (for Ivy Lane, the one to be replaced, and for Delle Alpi, the one to be the replacement) are what interest me the most.
Before we move on to Texture Editor, there's one more thing we have to do. Since we're going to replace Ivy Lane with Delle Alpi, it is better to replace the reference within the database as well, to avoid any problems that could arise. Obviously it would be a great ideea for you to do a backup of the database first. Now, I will select the row 180 in stadiums (rows should be sorted by stadiumid by default) , delete it, select row 8, copy, then insert (you'll probably find it now at the end of the table) and modify its stadiumid cell with the value 180 (of course, you can also change the name, countrycode etc if you really want to). And, ofc, save.
Good. Open Texture Editor. We'll have to extract various textures from different *.big files, textures belonging to Delle Alpi stadium, and then rename them to fool FIFA 11 to believe those textures actually belong to Ivy Lane.
First, the stadium itself. On the File menu of Texture Editor, choose Open *.big, then browse for your Fifa 11 installation folder, then open its subfolder named Game, and here choose the file data2.big. This huge archived file contains the textures for the stadiums in Fifa 11 PC. You'll notice all these files are named into an intuitive manner such as to understand which files belong to which stadium, by their IDs. For Delle Alpi you'll find 3 files here, with the name format such as *stadium_8_x_container_0.rx3, where x is in this particular case either 1,3 or 4 (and 8 is obviously the stadiumid of Delle Alpi). For different stadiums you may find different numbers, or even less or more than 3 files. We'll need to extract each of these files to their GamePath, which means to click the second icon from left to right beneath the menu (its name is ExportFileToGamePath) and choose the Game folder within the FIFA 11 main folder. Again, for each file separately.
After we do that, we have to rename these files. You'll find them in *\FIFA 11\Game\data\sceneassets\stadium\ and you have to rename them from, say stadium_8_1_container_0.rx3 to stadium_180_1_container_0.rx3 and the like.
Next big step: the crowd, which has separate textures. You'll have to open data3.big this time, and search for files of format *#crowdplacement#crowd_8_x.dat. Again, same story for the numbers, only this time the files format is *.dat and are preceded by #crowdplacement# which is actually a part of the GamePath where these files will be extracted. I mentioned this part so as to not mess with other files which contain crowd in their names but aren't the one that I need. In this particular case, there are 3 of such files.
As before, you have to extract these files to their GamePath, and then rename them. You'll find them in *\FIFA 11\Game\data\sceneassets\crowdplacement\ and you'll change crowd_8_1.dat into crowd_180_1.dat and the like.
Now, the lights, or glares. Those are in data3.big as well. The format is *#fx#glares_8_x.rx3 AND*#fx#glares_8_x.lnx (there are 2 glares files for each number). Again, same story with numbers. Export them all, in this particular case should be 6 files (3x2). Then browse *\FIFA 11\Game\data\sceneassets\fx\ and rename them, same way.
Finally, you can change the UI too, if you want (you'll see the right picture of the stadium in the matchday, instead of the old one of Ivy Lane). You'll have to open data1.big this time, browse for *#stadium#stadium_8_x.big then export. In this particular case, 3 files as well. Then browse *\FIFA 11\Game\data\ui\artAssets\stadium\ and rename, same way.
There might be some other files I didn't pay attention to, but so far I didn't notice any missing or inappropriate textures, so I assumed these 4 steps should do it. Of course, you're free to experiment and let me know if I missed anything important.
At the very end, after all these changes, we'll have to let the game know of our work by regenerating the *.bh files with Fifa 11 Regenerator (else the game will still use the same files within dataX.big and not the ones we exported). The program is very simple, I don't think any other extra informations are required.
So, this is pretty much it. I didn't expect such a wall of text, lol. If I missed anything, I'll drop by here and then and update. Hopefully you'll find it useful until Rinaldo will ease our work, and who knows, maybe new stadiums will be ported/created in the future.
This thing came to me mostly as a desperate method to change the stadium I play in the career mode. Same as some folks, I like to sign a small team with like 2, 2&1/2 stars and take it to the path of glory, become the best team in the world and the like. Sure, this is a process that should take few seasons at least. Anyway, I always had this thorn in my flesh with the stadium I play on. Its a no brainer that most of these small teams have some small, generic stadium as a home ground, and unless you change it at the beginning of the career, you're stuck with it forever. Nevertheless, even if you do change it at the beginning and choose some fancy arena, it is also extremely unrealistic, specially when all your staff upgrades are like level 1-2, 3 at best.
So far, Rinaldo didn't yet manage to crack the algorithm EA uses to encrypt their saves for this year FIFA for PC, thus the delay with Internal Master 11 (and as we know the only version Rinaldo released lacks a Save option as of the reason I just pointed out) or Creation Master 11. Therefore the only option left is to simply replace the files for the (old, now) stadium with the ones for the new stadium. And since I didn't see any custom stadium created yet (again, unlocking games takes time) what's left are stadiums which already exist in the game.
Now, obviously, this implies that every other team which uses the same stadium will use the new one as well, I think this is self-explanatory. So if you're playing a career and you're so tired of your generic 1k seats stadium even though you won UCL countless times and you really want to play on a new arena, this is the compromise you'll have to make.
Alright then. If we're good so far, I'll make a list with the programs we'll need to make this work and get to the bottom of it.
You can find Texture Editor 1.0.2 here/here (32/64), Fifa 11 Regenerator here, DB Master 11 here and optional, Internal Master 11 here.
Basically, we'll use Texture Editor to extract the textures for the stadium of our choice, then rename those textures accordingly. We'll need Fifa 11 Regenerator to update the references within the *.bh files, so that Fifa won't ignore our changes. DB Master 11 will gives us the stadiums IDs and some other important informations we might need, and Internal Master 11 could prove useful if we chose a different stadium at the beginning of the career than the one it is originally linked in the database.
First step is to find out the ID of the stadium that is currently assigned to the team. If you're in a middle of a career, you can use Internal Master 11 (regardless of you choice of stadium at the beginning of the career), otherwise you can use DB Master 11.
For Internal Master 11, after you load the save, you'll see 4 sheets (which means the save has 4 databases). In DB4, browse for you team in teams and retain the teamid (for instance, Arsenal has teamid 1, Chelsea has teamid 5 and so on). Then browse teamstadiumlinks for your teamid and you'll find the stadiumid (Arsenal plays on stadiumid 156, Chelsea on stadiumid 28).
DB Master 11 has only one big sheet, but the same fields teams and teamstadiumlinks to browse and the process is the same. Here you can also find more details in stadiums. See, Arsenal plays in stadiumid 156 which is Emirates Stadium, Chelsea plays on stadiumid 28 which is Stamford Bridge etc.
Now that you retained the stadiumid for the stadium you're currently having as a home ground, you need to decide which new stadium you're going to use instead and search for its ID as well. Lets say I'm manager of Crystal Palace, which has the teamid 1799 and stadiumid 180 (which is Ivy Lane, a generic stadium). I'm bored to death with Ivy Lane: it's ugly, mostly empty, small, people barely cheer for a goal, etc. I want to play on, say... Delle Alpi instead, since nobody is playing there anyway
and it's a gorgeous arena. Alright then, Stadio Delle Alpi has the stadiumid 8 (again, stadiumids are in stadiums). So basically these two stadiumids, 180 and 8 (for Ivy Lane, the one to be replaced, and for Delle Alpi, the one to be the replacement) are what interest me the most.Before we move on to Texture Editor, there's one more thing we have to do. Since we're going to replace Ivy Lane with Delle Alpi, it is better to replace the reference within the database as well, to avoid any problems that could arise. Obviously it would be a great ideea for you to do a backup of the database first. Now, I will select the row 180 in stadiums (rows should be sorted by stadiumid by default) , delete it, select row 8, copy, then insert (you'll probably find it now at the end of the table) and modify its stadiumid cell with the value 180 (of course, you can also change the name, countrycode etc if you really want to). And, ofc, save.
Good. Open Texture Editor. We'll have to extract various textures from different *.big files, textures belonging to Delle Alpi stadium, and then rename them to fool FIFA 11 to believe those textures actually belong to Ivy Lane.
First, the stadium itself. On the File menu of Texture Editor, choose Open *.big, then browse for your Fifa 11 installation folder, then open its subfolder named Game, and here choose the file data2.big. This huge archived file contains the textures for the stadiums in Fifa 11 PC. You'll notice all these files are named into an intuitive manner such as to understand which files belong to which stadium, by their IDs. For Delle Alpi you'll find 3 files here, with the name format such as *stadium_8_x_container_0.rx3, where x is in this particular case either 1,3 or 4 (and 8 is obviously the stadiumid of Delle Alpi). For different stadiums you may find different numbers, or even less or more than 3 files. We'll need to extract each of these files to their GamePath, which means to click the second icon from left to right beneath the menu (its name is ExportFileToGamePath) and choose the Game folder within the FIFA 11 main folder. Again, for each file separately.
After we do that, we have to rename these files. You'll find them in *\FIFA 11\Game\data\sceneassets\stadium\ and you have to rename them from, say stadium_8_1_container_0.rx3 to stadium_180_1_container_0.rx3 and the like.
Next big step: the crowd, which has separate textures. You'll have to open data3.big this time, and search for files of format *#crowdplacement#crowd_8_x.dat. Again, same story for the numbers, only this time the files format is *.dat and are preceded by #crowdplacement# which is actually a part of the GamePath where these files will be extracted. I mentioned this part so as to not mess with other files which contain crowd in their names but aren't the one that I need. In this particular case, there are 3 of such files.
As before, you have to extract these files to their GamePath, and then rename them. You'll find them in *\FIFA 11\Game\data\sceneassets\crowdplacement\ and you'll change crowd_8_1.dat into crowd_180_1.dat and the like.
Now, the lights, or glares. Those are in data3.big as well. The format is *#fx#glares_8_x.rx3 AND*#fx#glares_8_x.lnx (there are 2 glares files for each number). Again, same story with numbers. Export them all, in this particular case should be 6 files (3x2). Then browse *\FIFA 11\Game\data\sceneassets\fx\ and rename them, same way.
Finally, you can change the UI too, if you want (you'll see the right picture of the stadium in the matchday, instead of the old one of Ivy Lane). You'll have to open data1.big this time, browse for *#stadium#stadium_8_x.big then export. In this particular case, 3 files as well. Then browse *\FIFA 11\Game\data\ui\artAssets\stadium\ and rename, same way.
There might be some other files I didn't pay attention to, but so far I didn't notice any missing or inappropriate textures, so I assumed these 4 steps should do it. Of course, you're free to experiment and let me know if I missed anything important.
At the very end, after all these changes, we'll have to let the game know of our work by regenerating the *.bh files with Fifa 11 Regenerator (else the game will still use the same files within dataX.big and not the ones we exported). The program is very simple, I don't think any other extra informations are required.
So, this is pretty much it. I didn't expect such a wall of text, lol. If I missed anything, I'll drop by here and then and update. Hopefully you'll find it useful until Rinaldo will ease our work, and who knows, maybe new stadiums will be ported/created in the future.