WC98 Patch Plans

[kevinfunk2003]

First of all I wanna point out why I gave up FIFA98 WCR06. That's all because of complicated and twisted player db structure. I was using FEd98 to edit NTs one by one. When I skip to UEFA zone, it was all a mess. Many other country's players appeared in European teams. lol

That was really disgusting. But today I found out that making a patch for WC98 is feasible. Since there are only 32 teams with no club transfer problems in it, patch makers only have to worry about editing reserves of each national team. One of the following two scenarios are the possible theme of patch:

1) Asian Cup 2007 + Euro 2008 Tournament

2) South Africa 2010

Please post your suggestions about this newly born project for World Cup 98,thx.

 

[kevinfunk2003]

Nah, sorry it's 32 world cup teams plus 8 good national teams all around the world.

 

[galah]

Great idea!

 

[kevinfunk2003]

Final Decision

Patch Name: South Africa Patch for World Cup 98, shorten as 'SAF Patch'

Brief Description:

This patch will be my last efforts for patching Electronic Arts' 98 series (FIFA 98 and World Cup 98 titles), so I will do my best working on it.

After many attempts and failures I'm still in a determined way to design good patches - even though for the ones that nowadays few people would play.

In my plan all 2010 World Cup South Africa teams shall be included. But at this moment I'm just trying to collect data and will start it in mid-2008. Just wait and see guys.

 

[kakico]

I am making a patch for wc98 with all wc2006 teams. If you want to contribute please enter to http://wc98-ea.blogspot.com/

 

[kevinfunk2003]

Wow, nice to see someone come to this thread.
I think now I must point out 'the issues' - that may only could be solved by RE technology(oops.)

1. National Reserves editing
2. Play by Play speeches modification
3. National anthem BNKs editing

Later I will post an explanation to them.

 

[kevinfunk2003]

EA World Cup 98 Patching Difficulties

Written by [email protected]/forum (20080112 version)
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I. Preface

EA SPORTS(R) World Cup 98(TM) has been published for almost 10 years. In a decade, there were numerous advances in EA's FIFA Series - like more vivid graphics, gameplay improvements and lots more. Even though newcomers to FIFA community are likely the ones playing the titles named with a '0', there is somebody who still don't trash those old-fashioned titles yet. For now, patching this kind of game can be viewed as an attempt to revive memories of old days, with a newly set challenge.

Back to 2006 when I got the WC98 retail compact disc from a Yahoo seller, I was totally fascinated with it. For me, the only one good reason that I still possess an idea to develop a new patch for it, is because of the player attributes system implemented within the game. With all the eleven kinds of player attributes, we can make a true-to-life football team and run it realistically in-game. Thus we obtain more fun and, a sense of achievement.

However the work is not easy: first, how could you set it at once, that all the values you've entered into the database files will be performed well in-game, as you've arranged? After 2 years of research I still couldn't figure out a 100% perfect method to overcome these values, but in my experiences I could only tell everyone it may require many, many tests. If you're lucky, just once a try and you'll see Brazil X-0 China (sorry for Chinese members... I'm just taking a quick example.) What's worse, we can't edit the national reserves straightforward! That means you have to type in player data one by one. My goodness, that would take ages of work!

Hey, don't worry guys, in this document I'll state out some general guidelines to WC98 patching. Hope my words can do some help when you get stuck with the issues.


II. Tools I Used

• WEd98 (FIFA Editor "FEd" 98 - WC98 edition)
• EAGraph, gfxpak (for the in-game graphic files editing)
• File Monitor (optional, just for some explorations)
• PhotoImpact (optional, to make well-designed jerseys)
• InnoSetup, WinRAR (optional, just some tools that can optimize your patch installing)

III. Issues - Player Data

Chau Le's WEd98 program allows users to edit the ingame 'official' 23-man squads with just some touches of keyboard and mouse. However it can't be used to edit the 20-man national reserves. A traditional approach to this is to run the game, then get into the Team Management window; Change to the team you prefer to make some changes, and click on Customize; Find the slider bar at top right position, click the arrow to switch it to Team Edit window; Finally select one player from each side. Press the button in the middle of the screen to exchange them. By doing so we make the reserve player data changeable within the game.

Recently my new discovery shows that there is another way to edit the reserves data by replacing "FCDB_ENG" and "FCDBPENG" DBI files with the ones come in FIFA 98(TM): Road to World Cup. When done, get into the game and you'll see all the teams' data in a mess. Take it easy, with some inspection you'll find out that the player names are now based on FIFA 98 itself. Thus we can edit the two DBIs with FEd98 first, then "import" (copy) them to WC98. This method still needs much paper work because you have to write down the corresponding in-game player names in a team, and open WEd98 to edit the uncovered* team player entries. Nonetheless, you have to type the attributes data manually except the player names. Altogether, none of the both solutions above really enhances the way we edit the national reserves data.

* Though the two FIFA 98 database files are copied, WEd98 still shows the 'old' names appeared in WC98 game.

IV. Issues - Audio

All the play by play speech files (shorten as PBPs later) are located in AUDIO\PBP, AUDIO\PHRS and AUDIO\PLRS. The first one has the commentaries for World Cup mode, all for group standings explanation and prediction speeches. The second one only has a file in it, but it's the most essential component for WC98 ingame speech audio - "PHRS.PBK". The third one contains thousands of player commentary files, all in PBK format.

Most files in EA's FIFA 98-series can be swapped, including the player speech PBPs. So it's not troublesome for the player speeches part, excluding the situation that you want to generate a new PBK file by yourself. WEd98 documentation has more suggestions about player speeches implementation for your WC98 patches.

Files in PBP and PHRS folders are mostly related to some ingame events when playing in World Cup mode. Like 'A lost this match but they still have chances' or 'A needs a win. Their next opponent B, who already lost a match, needing a three point to qualify for the next round'... ,etc. This part looks like not a problem, but the real issue is that the commentators always don't report the second team's name based on the files located in AUDIO\TEAM. It uses the files packed in PHRS.PBK instead.

There are more issues around the PHRS file. One annoyance made by the file is that when a player scores the commentators won't say the changed name but the one originally integrated in PHRS file. Take the player "Klinsmann" for example, if you change his name to "Ballack" and has renewed its PBK file, you will hear the game still insisting on saying 'Klinsman scored!' Well, ridiculous isn't it?

In addition to PBP files, the BNKs located in AUDIO\ANTH directory are used as in-game national anthem playback. It seems that these files can be reproduced by Tom Wilen's 'sndview' program. However I've tried both the 0.22 and 0.42 versions, but all in vain. So if Montenegro are qualified for the 2010WC, they will not get any national anthem here in WC98 world.

In general, the audio issues come with this game is somewhat the biggest difficulty when making a good patch. And without any available tools, we can do nothing 'bout it.

V. Conclusion

Analytically we can divide game patches into two catogories: official patches and community patches. The later one is inspired from FireFox(R) browser developers's naming of the releases which are not from their official website - as 'community editions.' Community patches are usually consisted of much little work, contributed by many users on the web. I believe someday there's a person who can get thorugh these issues, that's why I wrote this article. Good luck to all WC98 patch makers!

 

[galah]

Mate its a great idea, but is it worth all the work?

I once attempted to do something similar with Fifa98RTWC and the database got out of wack after hours apon hours of work which all ended up as wasted time and effort.

If you are patient you can achieve good things... but in the end only a handfull of people will ever play it.

Personally you'd be just better to use the ingame editor to modify the top 32 teams so the names, attributes, jersey styles are updated then just share the contents of your USER folder.

Anyway, don't mean to be so negative. Just giving you a heads up.


If you do publish an update, I'd be sure to give it a go

 

[kevinfunk2003]

I think I got a breakthrough in player commentaries' implementation.

First, edit the player data with WEd98... BUT DON'T FORGET TO PUT A "*" IN THE END OF EACH PLAYER NAMES. Second, head into the game and open Customize, the in-game editor of WC98. Then remove each "*" mark from the names. Third, investigate how many players in your team to include the commentary. Finally, insert the proper player PBKs for your team BY USING THE NON-COMMENTED PLAYER ENTRIES IN ORIGINAL DATABASE TO PLACE THEM; Use WEd98 to know which player name has no commentary support, the next replace it with the one you prefer to be sounded in-game.