The Playbook Editing help me thread

Teoita
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The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby Teoita » Mon Nov 07, 2011 12:44 pm

Hello! I am Teoita, creator of many playbooks for Football Freaks mods over the years.

I figured that since the closing of Football Freaks, a lot of the info on playbook editing present on that forum has gone, so it would be useful to open a thread where people can ask questions about playbook editing and merging, and various other things, using the utilities made over the years by the awesome guys at FF (Packfan <3). If you ever have any questions about custom playbooks, post in here and i will answer to the best of my knowledge!
Feel free to PM me for playbook related questions :)

The Playbook Editing help me thread

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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby Administrator » Tue Nov 08, 2011 12:45 am

One thing which was tricky was understanding the handoffs when designing a running play. It became much clearer with the explanation of setting the angle the qb was facing, etc. Newbies to play design might find a guide or explanation helpful.

Did anyone ever figure out shovel passes? Or making a qb other than peyton manning run a no huddle?

And what's a good way to remove plays from a playbook?

Teoita
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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby Teoita » Tue Nov 08, 2011 9:58 am

I personally never found a satisfactory way to implement shovel passes. You can have a normal pass play with the qb and hb running in a very precise route that triggers the shovel pass animation, but the pass has a really low % of completion and the blocking isn't realistic at all. I might have the replays and testing playbooks somewhere, if someone is interested in doing some more testing.

For the Peyton Manning thing, i don't know. I guess you might try the player ID i posted in that thread, but i haven't tested it.

Removing plays from a playbook: i don't think the madden in-game editor will let you do it, so the only way i found is some rather brutal db-editor changes. What you do is keep the plays themselves in the database, but remove them from the list of plays. It's quite ugly and inefficient, but the only other option is to remove every trace of the play from the playbook manually using the db-editor, which just isn't worth it.
The only time i've used it was for my speed spread playbook, when i had to do the empty formations and rather than redesigning every run play i changed a few pass plays, and "removed" the run plays. Here's what i did: i opened the playbook file in the db-editor. The "PBPL" tab corresponds to the plays that show up when you have to choose one in-game; from here you can change the order of the plays and so on. I just brutally removed the record corresponding to the play i wanted to "delete" (right click -> cancel selected record). That way, the play's data (the various player assignements etc) are still in the playbook, but the play doesn't show up when calling plays. It's really ugly and unelegant, but it hasn't caused problems so i guess it's fine. Keep in mind that by doing this, you might go over the play limit (something around 400 ish) without noticing. I also don't know how playbook merging and compression are affected, but it should do nothing.

Handoffs: major pain in the ass to get right. Essentially, all animations and player assignements are controlled by numbers, called PSAL numbers. Each one corresponds to a specific animation; there's an excel spreadsheet included in packfan's editor i believe. In our case, the handoffs are controlled by the 96, 97, 98 numbers for the qb, and 27 for the hb. Each PSAL has up to 3 parameters that can be changed to modify the instruction.
Now, for the hb it's reasonably easy. The 27 psal tells the hb to run a certain distance (first parameter) in a certain direction (second parameter) at a certain speed. The direction goes counter-clockwise, starting from the 3 o'clock position, up to 127: 0 is straight right, 32 straight up, 64 straight left, 96 straight backwards, 128 (or 0) is straight right again; anything in between can give you every direction possible. The speed goes from 0 to 255: 0 means standing still, 255 means go at max speed. Now for the HB it's quite straightforward: tell him to run at about the correct angle at a reasonable speed (depends on what your qb is doing) for 3-7ish yards. If you get the mesh point right, the qb will succesfully hand the ball off and from there the hb will be under your control.
For the qb it's a lot more complex, as there's two codes with different sets of parameters. 96 tells the qb to turn a generic way (first parameter; 0 is left, 1 is right, 2 is dropping straight back), use a certain hand to handoff (0 is left hand, 1 is right hand, 2 is both hands), at a very specific angle (third parameter, works like the direction for the hb handoff; 4 is for madden's shotgun handoff which is actually quite bad and slow; i dont use it in my shotgun spread playbook). 97 tells the qb who has to receive the handoff (first parameter) and what to do after the handoff (drop back or roll out). 98 is exactly like 97, but it's a fake handoff for play action and bootleg-type plays. You don't need 96 if you do the 97-shotgun handoff, but personally i don't like that handoff anyway.
What you have to do is make sure the qb is turning at the correct angle, so that when the hb (or other player) runs there to receive the handoff, the 97/98 code is triggered and the handoff is completed. This requires a lot of patience and testing, as it's quite hard to get right in the first few tries, may work only going one way and not when you flip the play, and sometimes what works in practice mode doesn't work in an actual game (btw, thanks to EA for that. You have no idea how much time that little detail made me waste).

Man, that was an epic wall of text :)
Feel free to PM me for playbook related questions :)

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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby Administrator » Sat Nov 19, 2011 9:14 am

Teoita wrote:
Removing plays from a playbook: i don't think the madden in-game editor will let you do it, so the only way i found is some rather brutal db-editor changes. What you do is keep the plays themselves in the database, but remove them from the list of plays. It's quite ugly and inefficient, but the only other option is to remove every trace of the play from the playbook manually using the db-editor, which just isn't worth it.
The only time i've used it was for my speed spread playbook, when i had to do the empty formations and rather than redesigning every run play i changed a few pass plays, and "removed" the run plays. Here's what i did: i opened the playbook file in the db-editor. The "PBPL" tab corresponds to the plays that show up when you have to choose one in-game; from here you can change the order of the plays and so on. I just brutally removed the record corresponding to the play i wanted to "delete" (right click -> cancel selected record). That way, the play's data (the various player assignements etc) are still in the playbook, but the play doesn't show up when calling plays. It's really ugly and unelegant, but it hasn't caused problems so i guess it's fine. Keep in mind that by doing this, you might go over the play limit (something around 400 ish) without noticing. I also don't know how playbook merging and compression are affected, but it should do nothing.


Yeah, I was actually wondering...if you take a playbook where you've removed these play records, then copy that formation to another playbook via the Playbook Merger, does it take all that unused data with?

Teoita
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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby Teoita » Sat Nov 19, 2011 11:44 am

Administrator wrote:
Teoita wrote:
Removing plays from a playbook: i don't think the madden in-game editor will let you do it, so the only way i found is some rather brutal db-editor changes. What you do is keep the plays themselves in the database, but remove them from the list of plays. It's quite ugly and inefficient, but the only other option is to remove every trace of the play from the playbook manually using the db-editor, which just isn't worth it.
The only time i've used it was for my speed spread playbook, when i had to do the empty formations and rather than redesigning every run play i changed a few pass plays, and "removed" the run plays. Here's what i did: i opened the playbook file in the db-editor. The "PBPL" tab corresponds to the plays that show up when you have to choose one in-game; from here you can change the order of the plays and so on. I just brutally removed the record corresponding to the play i wanted to "delete" (right click -> cancel selected record). That way, the play's data (the various player assignements etc) are still in the playbook, but the play doesn't show up when calling plays. It's really ugly and unelegant, but it hasn't caused problems so i guess it's fine. Keep in mind that by doing this, you might go over the play limit (something around 400 ish) without noticing. I also don't know how playbook merging and compression are affected, but it should do nothing.


Yeah, I was actually wondering...if you take a playbook where you've removed these play records, then copy that formation to another playbook via the Playbook Merger, does it take all that unused data with?


No clue, i've never tried it. I'd say, most likely yes, since you are only removing a small part of the data related to the plays you "removed".
Feel free to PM me for playbook related questions :)

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torontogrudlies
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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby torontogrudlies » Sat Nov 19, 2011 4:22 pm

I just tried a test of this. I had a goal line formation with nine plays. When I copied them to a new playbook with the Playbook Merger, it indicated 142 records (the total of each piece of logic and all other data in these nine plays.) I deleted three records from PBPL as you suggested, then tried to import the formation in question to a new playbook. It still showed the same number of records (142) and it gave me an exception error in the midst of copying the formation to the new playbook...which I took to mean that it was trying to follow a pointer to the record(s) which I'd deleted.

I dug further, and discovered that in addition to PBPL, there is a table called PLYL which also contains a list of the plays, including their names, much as they appeared in PBPL. I deleted the records corresponding to the same three plays in this table as well, then tried the import again. This time, the number of records went down to 97, and the formation in question seemed to copy to the new playbook without a problem.

I'm not quite up to speed on the functions of the PBPL and PLYL tables, but it seems that by following your methodology but applying to PLYL as well, the Playbook Merger skips over the logic for the plays which no longer exist. This will of course need to be tested in-game, but it seems like it may be a decent way to strip playbooks of unwanted plays. I'm also curious to see what this does with a playbook which has been compressed.

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torontogrudlies
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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby torontogrudlies » Sat Nov 19, 2011 8:05 pm

This didn't quite work. The playbook loaded up in-game, but some of the plays were grayed out with unusual route markings. When I tried to run said plays, the quarterback had no logic, just kind of stood there. There must be more to this...

Teoita
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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby Teoita » Sun Nov 20, 2011 7:47 am

I just took a look at my speed spread playbook since honestly it's been so long since i edited it, i don't really remember what i did to remove those plays, and indeed the PLYL list is different too. I don't remember if i did that myself or if it has something to do with merging though :(
Feel free to PM me for playbook related questions :)

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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby petroleum » Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:19 pm

Today I had a hunch about how to make a poor substitute for the shovel passes, or at least a play with the same basic idea. I basically just made a proof of concept: a playbook with 3 plays, I have not changed blocking, motions or alinement and have only tested it in madden's playbook editor which is always on rookie difficulty.

The first play is just a FB sweep. The second fakes to the FB, then pitches forward the the HB (it works ok, unless a DT shoots into the backfield). Then, just to goof around, there is a play with a fake to the FB, then a pitch to the Center--It often ends in a fumble, but if the center does not get bumped around too much it can work.

Like I said, its really just a proof of concept, but I thought that maybe people more skilled than I could take the idea and make something useful out of it. Unfortunately, the play does need to start with a fake to the FB; Faking to some player too far away, or to the QB himself, causes the QB to run backwards then freeze up.
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solarkev
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Re: The Playbook Editing help me thread

Postby solarkev » Mon Feb 20, 2012 6:55 pm

I recently uploaded to FI a defense playbook that included Madden 2012 plays that I made from looking at playart on PrimaMaddden.com. There is a series of “roll” plays included in M12 that have pre-snap defense movement that I didn’t include because I couldn’t figure out how to get all the pre-snap movement. I attached an image of one such play and will refer to this image in the next paragraph.
Roll Eagle 2 playart.jpg
Roll Eagle 2 playart.jpg (21.92 KiB) Viewed 9394 times


The Right Cornerback and both safeties “roll” before the play in Madden 2012 Next Gen. For Madden 08 PC, I can get the Free Safety to come down near the LOS, just outside the linebacker (as shown) by using the Show Blitz command with Packfan’s play editor and then editing the PSAL values from the default x=0,y=0 in the show blitz to values (in this case, say x=-6 yds, y=+3 yds.) However, when I put in values for the Strong Safety corresponding to x=-4yds, y = +10yds. (to get him to slide over to the weak side), no movement occurs (except the player changes stance as if he wanted to show blitz). It seems as though some values in the show blitz location work, while others do not.
Anyone come across this? Any suggestions? I hope that I was clear about the problem.


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