NCAA 06 PS2 Dynasty Save File Editing

[minotauri]

First off, on the game disc, in the DATA folder, are a series of DAT files. DAT files are storage container files, much like a common zip file. They contain more files within them. For reference, DAT files are also known as TERF files. This is the official EA terminology for it, but they are typically named with the *.DAT file extension.

Our good ol' friend @JDHalfrack created a DAT read/write tool in the mid 2000's that was originally designed with Madden PC games. It's called DAT File Replacer (DFR) and has up to 5 released versions now. Version 3 may be the most useful for most things as it seems to work the best for all-around usage.

With the use of DFR, we can open DAT files, extract contents of it, and also replace contents with mods, or even append to it and add more data to the DAT containers. This is how we achieved a lot of the NEXT mod features like new teams, modifying stadiums, cloning uniforms for unique gears, and a wide host of other interesting things.

JD's wonderful DFR is very well designed. It makes life easier. So version 3 is the most useful? Is that the one that allows you to add more data to the DAT containers? I've been using 5.0, but that one doesn't seem to allow you to add more files into the .DAT, only to import / replace existing files. If version 3 allows you to add more slots to a DAT, then that is good to know. I thought maybe 5.0 added more compatibility to working with the NCAA files or something. What about version 3 makes it for useful for you? Is it just the ability to add more slots? And on the flip side, are there any issues with version 3 that were fixed in version 4 or version 5?

DFR 3's Adding/Deleting slots works. Thats the main advantage. I told JD about the issue and I think he was working on a new version but its probably not going to be out for a while. The new version has a lot of fun and interesting new features related to uniforms and gears

[minotauri]

I've been lurking this project and board for quite sometime and it's time to end my silence. One of the projects I've been doing is working on is having a 120 team 1AA/FCS dynasty. I mainly play NCAA 06, 11, and 08. I have 40+ team skins that I worked on in Adobe Illustrator that I can share, if anyone wants. They are not 100% accurate, but, can used for place holders. I did a redesign for Bryant and I did some NCAA teams that didn't have a Div 1 football team (St Johns, Marquette, Creighton, Vermont, etc) and I made a custom one (Hawaii State Humpbacks) and I am working on more.

Some of the things I discovered that I hope can help:

1. TLGL on TEAM is Team logo, this includes the custom teams generic logos. This leads to hundreds of placeholder logos for the Texture packs. In my roster saves I changed the historic teams to my 1AA custom teams to test the unis and the players and because the 1AA roster saves can only have a certain amount of players. When you create a dynasty you have to swap the regular 1AA teams and manually add the custom teams. This does lead to a lot of glitches and problems. I did try one save where the 1AA and 1A team rosters are swapped and IMGBURN, but that save did not work. I believe I must've brainfarted somewhere.

2. For some placeholder UNIFORM dat files I used the unis for the other NCAAs instead of reusing Air Force. I did this for less confusion for me. For example I used NCAA 11's Norfolk State for my NDSU unis. And there's alot of repetitive uniforms like All-Alabama can be used for extra new slots. What's cool is that you can use the same code names for every NCAA, so you don't have to dump every texture 100x and can reuse the same UNIFORM dat file for all of the NCAA games.

3. If anybody's interested in putting your 1AA/FCS saved draft classes into Madden and want their college name to appear in the game for players, instead of manually editing every player, you can edit COLL in strmdata. Yes, you can even put your custom college in there (you can edit the team names). Match the NCAA TGID (located in TEAM) with COTI in COLL in strmdata and use the IMGBURN program to burn the Madden PS2 game you want to do this in. I did have some glitches with this, in some saves I had to subtract 14 in the COTI number and if the COTI number is 0, it will not appear. I try not to add any extra slot, just change the names of some of the schools (For example changing Hastings College to Creighton etc). New college names do not appear in Madden Amp or any madden editing programs, so, don't think they disappeared they just have the previous college name from that slot.

Nice. Yea, a couple of us have been using these infos for a lot of the NEXT mods already. Great to hear another enthusiast cracking away at this game! Would love to chat with you if you're on Discord. We have a public server geared around NCAA 06 mods, and some private channels with a small development team working on making the game better. If you ever decide to join, give me a ping and we can chat and maybe add you to one of our private dev channels where we discuss a lot of random topics around making the game better.

One of the guys on the team is also a front-end dev and he's made a lot of templates for uniforms, helmets and accessories that we are using daily.

[grabursock55]

how difficult is it to change team names and colors? I looked into it a bit without much success. I'd like to make HS mod before my twins are born... One last hoorah!

[minotauri]

how difficult is it to change team names and colors? I looked into it a bit without much success. I'd like to make HS mod before my twins are born... One last hoorah!

You can do this by either editing the game's League.DAT file or by editing your dynasty save file. If you do the League.DAT, you'll need a special decompressed version, which is in our NEXT Mod. If you just want to edit your save file do this:

You want to go to the TEAM table in DB Editor.

In there, the fields you are looking for are TFRD, TFFG, and TFFB. These the RGB values for the team's primary colors. Then, you want to find the fields TFOR, TFOG, and TFOB. These are the RGB values for the team's secondary colors.


Credit goes to JDHalfrack

[grabursock55]

how difficult is it to change team names and colors? I looked into it a bit without much success. I'd like to make HS mod before my twins are born... One last hoorah!

You can do this by either editing the game's League.DAT file or by editing your dynasty save file. If you do the League.DAT, you'll need a special decompressed version, which is in our NEXT Mod. If you just want to edit your save file do this:

You want to go to the TEAM table in DB Editor.

In there, the fields you are looking for are TFRD, TFFG, and TFFB. These the RGB values for the team's primary colors. Then, you want to find the fields TFOR, TFOG, and TFOB. These are the RGB values for the team's secondary colors.


Credit goes to JDHalfrack

Thanks for the specific reply. When I tried it before, I changed Air Force to something random, but it didnt show up on the team select screen. I'm sure it changed something else that I just didnt locate. Thanks SO much for this concise reply!

[minotauri]

how difficult is it to change team names and colors? I looked into it a bit without much success. I'd like to make HS mod before my twins are born... One last hoorah!

You can do this by either editing the game's League.DAT file or by editing your dynasty save file. If you do the League.DAT, you'll need a special decompressed version, which is in our NEXT Mod. If you just want to edit your save file do this:

You want to go to the TEAM table in DB Editor.

In there, the fields you are looking for are TFRD, TFFG, and TFFB. These the RGB values for the team's primary colors. Then, you want to find the fields TFOR, TFOG, and TFOB. These are the RGB values for the team's secondary colors.


Credit goes to JDHalfrack

Thanks for the specific reply. When I tried it before, I changed Air Force to something random, but it didnt show up on the team select screen. I'm sure it changed something else that I just didnt locate. Thanks SO much for this concise reply!

Just to be clear, you are editing the Dynasty save file and it does not show up in the Dynasty mode correctly?

[Harry97]

You can do this by either editing the game's League.DAT file or by editing your dynasty save file. If you do the League.DAT, you'll need a special decompressed version, which is in our NEXT Mod.

Yeah I noticed the files inside League.DAT can't be decompressed like other compressed files. It's a different compression, which you/JD obviously figured out somehow. Thanks for releasing the decompressed League.DAT files in your NEXT release. I guess we don't need to know how you figured out the decompression of that, since you already did it, but it would help to have some unedited versions of the those decompressed files from League.DAT, since the decompressed files of League.DAT from your NEXT Mod would be heavily edited to work with your mod. I would like to start from square one with those decompressed League.DAT on an unmodded NCAA 06 if possible.

I'm also trying to understand what specifically the League.DAT file edits that can't be edited elsewhere. Is that where you can make edits to the team colors that show up when you scroll through Play Now, or do League.DAT edits only make changes inside Dynasty Mode?

If you just want to edit your save file do this:

You want to go to the TEAM table in DB Editor.

In there, the fields you are looking for are TFRD, TFFG, and TFFB. These the RGB values for the team's primary colors. Then, you want to find the fields TFOR, TFOG, and TFOB. These are the RGB values for the team's secondary colors.

Credit goes to JDHalfrack

A team's primary and secondary colors don't affect anything in-game related to the artwork or textures, right, those only set the colors of the team when they are displayed in the front end, like in the stat screens, etc, correct?

And by any chance, have you found a solution to the custom team names / audio problem I described in the 2nd post of this topic (1.)? I don't know if you or JD had a chance to investigate this, but if you have figured out how to get custom team names in there without the commentator / PA announcer audio announcing them as Air Force, that would be huge.

Maybe there's some list somewhere, maybe in League.DAT or somewhere else where you can edit what the default team names are so the commentators don't call custom team names Air Force anymore?

With a Create-A-School team, surely the commentators / PA announcer doesn't call them Air Force, but a custom or generic name. I could take a look at this and try to hack this somehow in Cheat Engine if you or JD haven't found a solution to this issue yet.

[grabursock55]

You can do this by either editing the game's League.DAT file or by editing your dynasty save file. If you do the League.DAT, you'll need a special decompressed version, which is in our NEXT Mod. If you just want to edit your save file do this:

You want to go to the TEAM table in DB Editor.

In there, the fields you are looking for are TFRD, TFFG, and TFFB. These the RGB values for the team's primary colors. Then, you want to find the fields TFOR, TFOG, and TFOB. These are the RGB values for the team's secondary colors.


Credit goes to JDHalfrack

Thanks for the specific reply. When I tried it before, I changed Air Force to something random, but it didnt show up on the team select screen. I'm sure it changed something else that I just didnt locate. Thanks SO much for this concise reply!

Just to be clear, you are editing the Dynasty save file and it does not show up in the Dynasty mode correctly?

Sorry if my previous reply was unclear. I meant I was digging around trying to figure it out weeks ago, before I asked for help here. I'm sure with your directions I'll be able to figure it out without any problems!

Sorry again for any confusion!!

[minotauri]

Yeah I noticed the files inside League.DAT can't be decompressed like other compressed files. It's a different compression, which you/JD obviously figured out somehow. Thanks for releasing the decompressed League.DAT files in your NEXT release. I guess we don't need to know how you figured out the decompression of that, since you already did it, but it would help to have some unedited versions of the those decompressed files from League.DAT, since the decompressed files of League.DAT from your NEXT Mod would be heavily edited to work with your mod. I would like to start from square one with those decompressed League.DAT on an unmodded NCAA 06 if possible.

I'm also trying to understand what specifically the League.DAT file edits that can't be edited elsewhere. Is that where you can make edits to the team colors that show up when you scroll through Play Now, or do League.DAT edits only make changes inside Dynasty Mode?

A team's primary and secondary colors don't affect anything in-game related to the artwork or textures, right, those only set the colors of the team when they are displayed in the front end, like in the stat screens, etc, correct?

And by any chance, have you found a solution to the custom team names / audio problem I described in the 2nd post of this topic (1.)? I don't know if you or JD had a chance to investigate this, but if you have figured out how to get custom team names in there without the commentator / PA announcer audio announcing them as Air Force, that would be huge.

Maybe there's some list somewhere, maybe in League.DAT or somewhere else where you can edit what the default team names are so the commentators don't call custom team names Air Force anymore?

With a Create-A-School team, surely the commentators / PA announcer doesn't call them Air Force, but a custom or generic name. I could take a look at this and try to hack this somehow in Cheat Engine if you or JD haven't found a solution to this issue yet.

League.DAT compression quotes from JDHalfrack, copied from our discord chat.

Yeah, and it’s important to note that the whole file is compressed this way: header, table info, and field data.
And, it’s just the zeros that are compressed. This is why things like string data is readable and other information

Screenshot 2022-11-23 194845.png (32.84 KiB) Viewed 333 times

Im going to attach a copy of a decompressed League.DAT file-1 as well as the League.DAT with the file1 already in it. You can open this directly in Xtreme DB Editor and it'll load that first database automatically.

If you choose yo use the league-file-1 db instead, you have to manually hex edit copy-paste into the league file.


As far as the commentary goes, I havent found a solution yet.

[Harry97]

Im going to attach a copy of a decompressed League.DAT file-1 as well as the League.DAT with the file1 already in it. You can open this directly in Xtreme DB Editor and it'll load that first database automatically.

If you choose yo use the league-file-1 db instead, you have to manually hex edit copy-paste into the league file.

Thank you for this. I know the decompressed League.DAT file was in the NEXT release, but that file's values were heavily edited to work with your mod, right? This is the original un-edited (decompressed) file that you posted here, correct?

Also can you give a general overview of what you can edit in this file, anotherwords is this file what allows you to edit the team colors when you scroll through Play Now (outside of Dynasty)? Given the name "League" .DAT it would sound like it would only edit stuff inside Dynasty Mode. But if this edits aspects of the game outside of Dynasty, like the team colors in Play Now, that would be good to know.

As far as the commentary goes, I havent found a solution yet.

OK just checking.

In an effort to solve this issue, I think back to the "intro sequence" jersey name glitch, and when I brought that to your attention, how you explained that if you put the roster in Template.dat or wherever you put it (instead of just on the memory card) then the glitch wouldn't occur. But if the roster on the memory card didn't match the one in the .DAT, the glitch would happen. I wonder if the same concept can be used to solve this custom team name / commentary Air Force reference issue. Perhaps the "custom" team name needs to be in the TEAM table in the .DAT as well, not just in the Dynasty save. If there are several different places where the TEAM table is, then we need to make a change to a team name in all the various TEAM tables throughout the .DATs and see if any of them causes the commentary to announce the team correctly with a custom name.

And if that doesn't do it, then perhaps take a closer look at how the commentary announces Create-A-School team names.