NCAA 06 PS2 Formation Editing (DAT)

[Harry97]

Since we now are able to get edits to the .DATs to work for NCAA 06 by deleting the .QKL files, I have been making some edits to the formations in NCAA 06 by editing the Master Playbook File and rebuilding the disc. In this topic, I'm going to be giving some instructions on how to do that for anyone interested. Without a dedicated playbook editor for NCAA 06 that edits the formations, at present, this can only be done through the Madden DB Editor and with Excel by editing the .csvs in File #5 in GAMEDATA.DAT. It's a pretty straight forward process, but I'll walk you through it as best I can.

The first thing you should do is extract all the csvs from the File #5 of GAMEDATA.DAT so you can open them up in Excel. I suggest opening these csvs up in Excel because then you can use the Excel Filter feature to isolate the relevant entries to quickly and efficiently make edits. As I explained in the other topic, formations can be edited by editing the SETG.csv inside File #5 from GAMEADAT.DAT by editing the x, y, and fx, fy columns. Each entry in SETG.csv contains the coordinates (x and y) for a specific player's starting position from a specific formation. fx and fy are the position coordinates of the player for when you flip the play. negative y values pertain to offensive plays while positive y values pertain to defensive plays. x values can be negative or positive for offense or defense plays (left or right of the ball).

The first thing to look at is FORM.csv and SETL.csv, which between the two show the Formation Names of Each formation. FORM.csv lists the 1st part of the formation (i.e. Ace, I-Form, Shotgun, etc) while the SETL.csv lists the 2nd part of the formation (Normal, Slot, Twins, Tight, etc). Between these two csvs you can track each formation name by the FORM and SETL values. So lets say we want to edit formations in the Ace set. From the FORM.csv, you can scroll down and see that the Ace set has a FORM value of 64. So when you're in SETL.csv, you look for all entries in the list that have a FORM value of 64. Each of those FORM values of 64 have their own SETL value (223, 224, 225, etc) which are each of the various Ace sets (Ace-Slot, Ace-Normal, Ace-Spread, etc). All of the Ace formations are not all grouped together in the list, most are but some of the FORM values of 64 are near the bottom of the list if you scroll all the way down.

Once you have all the SETL value for the various Ace formations, you go into SETP.csv. In that list, you locate all those SETL values for the various Ace formations (223, 224, 225, etc) to get the SETP values for each of those. For each SETL value within the SETP.csv, there should be 11 entries, which represent each of the 11 players for each specific formation. Within each formation (SETL value) player positions should be listed in order by SETP value. The SETL value for Ace-Slot for example is 223. In the following screenshot, you can see that the SETP values for that formation are 2191-2201. 2191 is the QB, while 2201 is the last O-linemen. So the player positions are in order in terms of SETP value, but they are out of order within the SETP.csv entry list. Note the "poso" column which stands for player position, within each SETL they'll be listed between 0-10 for every player within the formation. (QB is 0, RB is 1, FBs/TEs/WR are 2-5, O-lineman are 6-10) In SETP.csv, the poso values are out of order in the list of entries, but they'll be in order when you view them in SETG.csv.

With your 11 SETP values for the formation you want to edit, you go into the SETG.csv. To edit Ace-Slot, you use the Excel Filter again, and you list only the SETP values 2191-2201. You should get about 25 entries. But you only need to worry about 11 of those entries, the 11 entries which have the same SGF_ value. In this case, in Ace-Slot, the entries you need to concern yourself with is the SGF_ values with a value of 1306. (see screenshot) In the screenshot at the right, I noted which position each entry refers to. So to turn Ace-Slot into a Shotgun, for example, you edit entry 1071 (SETP 2191) which is the QB and you change the y value of -1.6 to something like -6. (-6 is the standard QB y value for the Shotgun sets) If you want to turn it into a Pistol formation, change the y value to -4 or something. If you only make that change, then the QB will be right in front of the RB, who has a -7 y value. So you should move the RB to the left or the right of the QB who's now back in Shotgun by editing the x value(s) of the next entry 1072 (SETP 2192) the RB. As you can see his x values are 0 because he's right behind the QB and the ball. Change his x value to -2, 2, or -3, or 3 and he'll be to the left or right of the QB who's now in the Shotgun when you go into Ace-Slot. You can edit any of the other players within that formation in the same manner.

So the only csv you need to edit to make formation changes is SETG.csv, but you need to go through all those other csvs starting with FORM and SETL, to "find" the formations so you can locate the entries in SETP.csv and then in SETG.csv so you can make edits to the formation you want to edit.

Some notes :
-This post doesn't cover changes to the artwork for the formation at the playcall screen. So it will still show the default formation artwork with the QB under center, but you'll see the changes to the formation when they break the huddle. Next I need to figure out how to edit the artwork at the playcall screen for the formation edits.

-This SGF_ value within SETG.csv seems to be the main "Formation ID" that you need to keep track of to make Formation edits inside SETG.csv. You use the information from the other csvs to find those values. I'm not exactly sure what all those other SGT_ values are for SETP values 2191-2201, but it's only entries that have the same SGF_ value (1306 for Ace-Slot) that edits the formation. So once you know what the SGF_ value is for a given formation, then you can make a list of which SGF_ values pertain to which formation so you won't have to go through this process every time. That's what I intend to do in this topic, to find out what each formation's SGF_ values are so we can just use those to go directly into SETG.csv to make formation edits. Perhaps that's what JD will do if he incorporates formation editing into his playbook editor. Just keep track of those SGF_ values.

-I am aware that there is a separate SGF.csv where the SGF_ values are also located. I'm not sure exactly what else can be done with these SGF_ values but they seem to represent the specific formations and may have other uses. (as opposed to FORM and SETL which contain the formation names but only appear to serve as references) Also don't get confused between SGF_ (from SETG.csv) and SGT_ (from SETP.csv) which is something different. If anyone is able to identify what SGT_ or any of the other column abbreviations from any of these .csvs do, I would be interested to know. The SGF_ values may have something to do with AI specific to each formation, but I'm not exactly sure. Maybe @MikeWest502 can help us discover what else can be done with the SGF_ values.

-I noticed there is also a poso column in the SETL.csv. We know the values in the poso column in SETP.csv identifies the player position within each formation. But I'm curious as to what this poso values do in SETL.csv. I thought perhaps it might determine which player the ball is hiked to or something, since most of the offensive formations have a poso value of 0 here (the QB). For some of the Fake Punt "formations" it has a value of 1 which has me thinking maybe those are the Fake Punts that get hiked to the upback. I haven't tested it yet, but I'll be looking into it.

If you have any questions about any of this, or if you have some information to add, please don't hesitate to ask questions to join the formation editing party. With this tutorial, you should able to edit formations in NCAA 06 in no time.

[minotauri]

Not sure if you're aware, but JDHalfrack already created a playbook editor for this game:

https://forums.operationsports.com/foru ... ditor.html



also PlaybookGamer (Al) created 200+ new plays and released it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... e=emb_logo

https://playbookgamer.com/resources/#Playbook_Editor

[Harry97]

I know about the playbook editor but it does not edit formations. Packfan's 2.5 offensive playbook editor for Madden would be useful if it can work with the NCAA playbook files / data. It would require files from the NCAA 06 master playbook file instead of the Madden PC playbook files. This tutorial is showing you how to make custom formations the barebones way, through the DB in Excel. There's also a lot of unknown fields in the Master Playbook file which I am researching.

Another test I did was to put the Master Playbook File from NCAA 08 PS2 into NCAA 06's GAMEDATA.DAT. With that in there, you can go into game and it will work as long as you only choose formations and plays that are in NCAA 06. When choosing your custom playbook inside NCAA 06, you can select and view all of the 08 formations. But if you select formations that aren't in 06 it will show blank plays and crash if you select them. So the 08 formations are selectable in-game to an extent but there's definitely an incompatibility to the plays that makes the 08 formations and plays unusable. For the 06 plays that have been updated in NCXA 08, those changes are apparent in NCAA 06. Like if there is the same pass play in NCAA 08 that was in NCAA 06, when you scroll to it in-game with the 08 GAMEDATA.DAT File #5 in there, you will see the new routes and play art that are in the updated play for NCAA 08, but when you run the plays, the players with the updated routes will stand still instead of running the routes.

So getting the 08 formations and plays into NCAA 06 is probably going to require a lot of manual work. My approach may be to use the formation data (SETG.csv) from the NCAA 08 playbook file and replace some of the NCAA 06 formations with those formations since we would likely be limited to how many formations we can have in NCAA 06. This is going to require doing something I was already planning on doing, which is making a list of all the formation data for each formation in NCAA 06 in SETG.csv by SGF_ value then doing the same with the NCAA 08 formation data, then just swapping the NCAA 08 formation data with my least favorite NCAA 06 formations. That way I can get some of those 08 formations into 06. Getting the 08 plays into NCAA 06 is surely going to be more difficult, but first thing's first, formations.

[MikeWest502]

Harry97, when you pair your work with JD's PBE, it will work until JD codes the formation modifications into his editor. The only issue I see with that is, every team using that set will now be using an update, which in some cases be wrong. However, currently you can start by editing that file#5 formations from NCAA gamedata with you're "barebones" method, import them back into the dat, then use JD's editor to update the routes per play.

Thinking further, JD did make the Playbook Merger. So technically the base work to import a set into another book is already in place. We need that to work with the NCAA dats. That way, I could make a 30 play set and simply merge it into the #5 file.

Good work with your editing find 97.

[Harry97]

OK so I managed to get a custom formation into a stock (individual team) playbook file. As we know, File #5 in GAMEDATA.DAT is the Master playbook file where all the formation and play data is. File #6 is apparently some kind of placeholder playbook file with only defensive plays, no offensive plays. This File #6 doesn't appear to be selectable as a playbook in-game. However File #7 is where the team playbooks start, so File #7 is the first team's playbook, Air Force, and from there it appears to go in alphabetical order by team name. So File #8 is Akron's playbook, File #9 is Alabama's playbook, etc. Both Akron and Bama's playbook have Ace-Slot, so I've been editing those files since I already know where the Ace-Slot formation data is. What I did was I took the SETG.csv entries posted above from the master file for Ace-Slot (the 11 entries I isolated), I made some additional edits to the formation, then put them into Akron's playbook into the blank SETG.csv section. (making sure that the first row is the abbreviations like in the master file and editing the # of entries in excel listed at the top right in the first row, to "11" in this case since I'm only making changes to Ace-Slot in the Akron playbook)

When I rebuilt the disc after importing this .csv into Akron's playbook, I went into the game, selected Akron's playbook, went to Ace-Slot, and when I selected a play inside Ace-Slot the custom formation for Ace-Slot was apparent, but for other teams or playbooks using Ace-Slot, it would have normal default Ace-Slot formation as it is in the master file #5. This is pretty cool because this means we can truly create unique formations for every team's individual playbook. So you can have, for example, one team with a modded Ace-Slot formation and the opponent playing on another playbook with a different Ace-Slot formation. So even if we're limited to a certain # of formations or sets within the Master playbook file, we can still expand on that by adding formations (or variations of the same formation) in each team's individual playbook by adding the relevant formation data found in the master playbook file to the "blank" SETG.csv in any team's individual (stock) playbook.

Presumably you could do this with plays as well, adding custom edits to plays through a stock playbook, without having to change any of the default plays in the master playbook file, so that your cpu opponent, for example, doesn't have to use your new plays or formations that would be specific to the stock playbook file your team is using but not to any other playbook or if a team isn't set to a specific playbook. And just from a testing standpoint, it make it easier to test new experimental plays through a stock playbook without it affecting the cpu opponent's playbook. This ability to add variations to formations or "edits" to plays through individual teams stock playbooks opens up a lot more possibilities. We can just take specific entries from the master playbook file that we want to edit for a certain team's playbook and add them to the blank .csv's in a team's playbook.

What I'm trying to figure out now is how to edit the playbook art that you see at the playcall screen. I think I may use Packfan's 2.5 editor to help me understand how it all works. I have an idea of how it works by looking at the ARTL, PLYL, PSAL csvs but it's a little confusing. From what I can tell, those fields edit the artwork, routes, and formation displays for each individual play within a formation. (because there's 18 options for every poso value within a specific SETL) But I'm specifically trying to figure out how to edit the diagram of the formation at the playcall screen when you are selecting the formation, before you go to the play selection. If anyone has any info on where to edit the formation artwork at the formation select screen (before you go to the play select screen) that is what I'm looking for. It seems to me that the ARTL.csv is a list of the formation artwork for each play itself, but I'm looking to edit the position of those rectangular boxes when you are choosing the formation at the first page of the playcall screen. Maybe that selection of the formation diagram at the formation screen is in ARTL.csv as well in addition to the plays within a formation but I'm still trying to figure all this out. Any help would be appreciated.

[Harry97]

Harry97, when you pair your work with JD's PBE, it will work until JD codes the formation modifications into his editor. The only issue I see with that is, every team using that set will now be using an update, which in some cases be wrong. However, currently you can start by editing that file#5 formations from NCAA gamedata with you're "barebones" method, import them back into the dat, then use JD's editor to update the routes per play.

Yes I can create my own plays or formations, with help from JD's playbook editor for routes or by referencing Packfan's 2.5 editor, but I'm trying to figure out how to "convert" the NCAA 08 plays as best I can into NCAA 06. There's some compatibility issues between the two GAMEDATAs. NCAA 08 not only has a lot more plays and formations, but it also has different play "features" like pre-snap motion that doesn't exist in NCAA 06. I don't know if you would be interested in researching this with me, but we really need all hands on deck here. The first thing I wanna do is try to add some of the NCAA 08 formations into an NCAA 06 "stock" playbook file, so that way we won't have to erase any of the default formations in the master file. To do that, we need to decide which formations from NCAA 06 we want to use to create a "variation" of in an individual team's playbook. Then copy the formation data from the NCAA 08 playbook into a stock playbook with the relevant entries from the master playbook file which should be pretty straight forward. Then we need to rename the formation to what it's called in NCAA 08, which we can do in the SETL.csv, adding the entry we want to create a variation of then renaming it there in the stock playbook, then we need to try and import the formation/play artwork for the playcall screen. The formation/play artwork seems to be a little tricky, because in addition to editing the formation art for every individual play within a formation, I also would want to edit the formation art for the formation itself (you know the rectangular boxes at the first page of the playcall screen when choosing a formation). It's different than in Madden because each formation set in NCAA 06 is its own "selection" rather than in Madden where there's a sub-category within each base formation that you can scroll through the various sets when choosing a formation.

Thinking further, JD did make the Playbook Merger. So technically the base work to import a set into another book is already in place. We need that to work with the NCAA dats. That way, I could make a 30 play set and simply merge it into the #5 file.

It's really just the compatibility issues between the NCAA 08 playbooks and the NCAA 06 playbooks that I'm trying to sort out. I can only really do that by examining each playbook file and each specific csv to see what differences there are. The first thing I'm going to do is like I said try to get some of the NCAA 08 formations into an NCAA 06 stock playbook, and what I'm trying to figure out is how to change the artwork on the first page of the playcall screen where you select the playbooks. So we can customize the positions of those rectangular boxes that represent the players when selecting a formation. That data should be somewhere in the NCAA 08 GAMEDATA.DAT file, probably in the ARTL.csv, that we should be able to copy and paste over into the NCAA 06 stock playbook. I just gotta find it for the formation I'm creating a variation of in the master file while searching through all the "specific play" formation art.

I tried changing the FORM value on the SETL.csv, like changing Ace-Slot's FORM value from 64(Ace) to 67(Shotgun). That doesn't seem to do anything that is noticeable. The ARTL.csv from what I can tell seems to change the formation artwork for the individual plays, but not necessarily for the overall formation boxes on the first page of the playcall screen. Though it may be there as well scattered between the specific play formation art data, I just haven't been able to isolate that yet if it is.

If you have any idea on how to move those boxes around that represent the player positions on the formation selection screen, that's what I'm trying to edit presently. It must be either scattered throughout the ARTL.csv in the midst of all the "individual play" formation artwork which would seem to make up the majority of the entries in there. Or, if the rectangular boxes for the formation art are not in the ARTL.csv (if that's only limited to the individual play formation art) then it would be in one of the other csvs. That's what I intent on finding out. We really need to identify what all the csvs in the playbook files do.

One thing I'm going to look into is the fact that in NCAA 08 there are several defensive playbooks called "base defense" that you choose before you enter a game. In NCAA 06 there is only the one singular defense playbook for all teams, which is perhaps that File #6. This would explain why there are more "stock" playbooks in the NCAA 08 GAMEDATA.DAT than in the NCAA 06 GAMEDATA.DAT and perhaps why it crashed when I put the NCAA 08 GAMEDATA.DAT in there. Perhaps the crash was due to the game trying to load one of those base defense playbooks from NCAA 08 as if it was an offense playbook. I still have my doubts that the NCAA 08 playbooks would load correctly in NCAA 06 even if they were in the correct slot #, but it's worth a try to try and re-arrange the offensive playbooks from NCAA 08 to fit into the correct slots in the NCAA 06 GAMEDATA.DAT. The goal is to get the formations and plays from NCAA 08 into NCAA 06 as best I can. Whether that would be best accomplished by adding their data to the blank csvs in a stock playbook is anyone's guess, but that seems like a logical approach.

[Harry97]

Using Packfan's 2.5 as a reference, I've confirmed that fmtx and fmty in SETP.csv are what set the formation diagrams at the playcall screen. What had me confused about what those do was I tried changing this through a stock playbook and the changes didn't show up.

After doing some further testing, here's what I discovered. As I said earlier, I was able to make changes to the formation itself through a stock playbook (Akron's playbook, file 8) by adding entries to the blank SETG.csv that made up the Ace-Slot formation. Those changes work when applied to an individual team's playbook and override what's in the master file for the formation when playing on Akron's playbook. However, when I tried to do the same thing with the formation diagrams by changing fmtx and fmty in SETP.csv for Ace Slot in Akron's playbook, it didn't work.

This was unexpected after getting formation changes to work in a stock playbook through SETG.csv. For some reason, I can only get changes to the formation diagrams at the playcall screen to work by editing fmtx and fmty values in SETP.csv in the master file directly.

So adding entries to SETP.csv in a stock playbook does not seem to work like it does with SETG.csv. I don't know why this is, but as it stands, changes can only be made to the formation diagrams at the playcall screen by editing the master file. So while we can customize formations in any stock (individual team's) playbook, we can't actually change the formation artwork in that custom formation through the stock playbook, we would have to change it in the master file which would affect all versions of a specific formation.

So to import a formation from NCAA 08 into NCAA 06, and get the playcall screen formation diagram correct, it looks like we're going to need to make changes to the master file. That's very doable, but if we want to create variations of a formation for individual team's playbooks, we can do that by editing a stock playbook and importing SETG.csv entries, but we won't be able to show the adjusted formation for that individual team's playbook in the formation diagram at the playcall screen. At the playcall screen, it'll only show what's in the master file for a given formation. So we can make the formation adjustments to stock playbooks, which is very useful, but the adjusted formation will be hidden until you brake the huddle unless you update it in the master file for all versions of a formation.

[Harry97]

I also did a comparison between NCAA 06's GAMEDATA.DAT and NCAA 08's for reference.

In NCAA 06, the playbooks go from File 5 to File 133.

File 5 Master Playbook File
File 6 Defensive playbook used by all teams (no offensive formations)
File 7 Air Force
File 8 Akron
File 9 Alabama
etc
File 131 Last "Team" Playbook
File 132 A-B Playbook
File 133 A-B-C-D Playbook

In NCAA 08, the playbooks go from File 5 to File 138.

File 5 Master Playbook File
File 6 First "Team" Playbook, and this does not appear to be Air Force's as there are no Flexbones
etc
File 130 Last "team" playbook with offensive plays
File 131 3-3-5 defensive playbook (only defense formations)
File 132 3-4 defensive playbook (only defense formations)
File 133 4-2-5 defensive playbook (only defense formations)
File 134 4-3 defensive playbook (only defense formations)
File 135 Balanced defensive playbook (only defense formations)
File 136 Rushing Attack Mini-game playbook
File 137 A-B Playbook
File 138 A-B-C-D Playbook

So:
The normal "team" playbooks in NCAA 06 are from File 7 to File 131
The normal "team" playbooks in NCAA 08 are from File 6 to File 130

So both games have the same exact # of team playbooks, it just starts 1 file later in NCAA 06. Also, in NCAA 08, the first team playbook is not Air Force, the playbooks in NCAA 08 seem to be completely randomized within GAMEDATA.DAT and not in Alphabetical order like in 06.

UPDATE : I managed to get some formations and plays from NCAA 08 working in NCAA 06.

The first thing to understand is that if you just put the 08 master file in the 06 GAMEDATA.DAT, you'll be able to view all the 08 formations in the custom playbook feature in the Main Menu of NCAA 06, but it'll crash if you try to assign any of the 08 formations to your Profile and the plays will not show up. So as far as I can tell, using the custom playbook feature with the 08 master playbook file in there doesn't seem to work properly, except that it lets you scroll through all the 08 formations at once so you can see the formation art for every formation from 08. Long story short, don't try to use the custom playbook (profile playbook) feature in 06 if you have the 08 master playbook file in there unless you just want to scroll through the 08 formations. You won't be able to see the plays in each 08 formation that way. The way to see which plays are in which 08 formation and run the plays is to use the 08 stock playbooks, put them in an 06 slot, and then load that team's playbook in-game. This of course limits you to certain 08 formations and plays, the ones that are assigned to each team's playbook by default. Now, you might be able to go into NCAA 08, create a custom playbook file in 08, load the formations you want, save the profile, then find the plays by opening up the profile in a DB editor.

I know that in NCAA 08 you can't actually choose all of the available formations that are in that game through the custom playbook feature. There are certain formations that can only be loaded (in NCAA 08) when you select a certain team's playbook. You can use the 08 master file to load any formation from 08 you want into a stock playbook, but that requires some manual work, because you have to figure out which plays are assigned to the specific formation you want to use as part of a team's stock playbook, which can only be done by digging through the 08 master file, finding the PLYLs, then assigning them to PBPL.csv instead of the plays that were there for the formation you'd be replacing it with. Because the stock playbooks already has the plays chosen in PBPL.csv for the formations that are in each team's playbook. If you choose a new 08 formation to replace a formation with, which you can do by editing PBFM.csv and PBST.csv, it won't automatically generate the plays in the formation you want, you have to find them by going through the PLYL table and doing some manual editing the PBPL.csv. It's a little tricky at first but once you figure out how it works, it's not too bad.

It just so happens that in the 08 stock playbooks there are 3 more formations in each team's playbook than 06's. This may or may not cause a problem in NCAA 06, I'm still investigating whether this causes problems. On the surface, it seems to load the 3 additional formations per playbook in-game, but it's possible that this causes some problems when you select certain plays. Also some formations in 08 have more than 18 plays, whereas in 06 there only seems to be 18 plays in each formation.

The problem is that some 08 plays are broken when you try to run them in-game in 06.

Examples :

"16 power 0" is an NCAA 08 play that's in several formations. When you try to run this play in 06, it ends up being just a QB sneak, but it's supposed to be a handoff to the RB.

Plays like FK Dive Fl Sweep or HB Dive Fl Sweep are completely broken and create a soft crash when you run them in 06. WR Quick, a play in Ace-Big is also broken. These are plays that utilize additional features from NCAA 08 like pre-snap motion that just aren't compatible with 06.

The good news is that some 08 plays work in 06. For example, the Pistol formations and plays from 08 seem to run fine in 06. Also the new plays in the Near and Far formations from 08 seem to run well. I say new plays because in some of the 08 formations, like Near and Far, which aren't in 06, there's a handful of unique plays in those formations, like 3 in each, but the other plays apparently are already in 06 and used in other formations.

So what I'm in the process of doing is figuring out which plays from 08 work in 06 and which plays don't, and I'm going to try and put together some stock playbooks with the 08 plays that work and formations. For the plays that don't work, I can still use the formation and just edit the plays that don't work to other plays that work from 08 in other formations or some of the plays from 06.

Whether you use the 06 master playbook file or the 08 master playbook file, it really depends on what you want to do and how many formations you plan to add. I managed to manually add formation and play data from the Near and Far formations from 08 to the 06 master playbook file (going through all the csvs in the master files of 06 and 08 and adding relevant data from the 08 master file for Near and Far that wasn't in the 06 file to the end of each 06 csv). Then I added those formations into an 06 stock playbook (Alabama's playbook) replacing two other formations that were in there and I got it to work that way, which was pretty cool.

I will say that getting 08 formations and plays into 06 is really fun and satisfying, but there's a lot of formations and plays to go through, to find out which plays work in 06 and which don't. I'm going to try to and edit the 08 stock playbooks a little more now, to test more formations with the 08 master file in there. In the end I think I'm going to work from the 06 master file and just take my favorite 08 formations, put them all into a couple of stock playbooks, and only add the formation data that that I need to the 06 master file. That way I keep the master file as close to the original 06 as possible, and just add my favorite 08 formations (and plays that work) in 06.

I just think NCAA 08 is a great GAMEDATA.DAT to go through, because they added a lot of formations and plays to NCAA 07, then a lot more to 08. In 09 they added a lot more plays with pre-snap motion, which would be incompatible to NCAA 06. There are some pre-snap motion plays in 08, but not as much as 09. And I don't think there were many new formations in 09 after all the formations that were added for 08. There's a ton of cool formations in NCAA 08 and enough new plays from NCAA 08 that work in 06 to expand the 06 playbook substantially. It requires a lot of work but it's fun to do, especially if you just focus on one formation at a time.

What's encouraging is there doesn't appear to be any limits to how many different formations you can have in the master file at once. I mean, the 08 master file, is 3x the size of the 06 master file, and NCAA 06 doesn't appear to have any problem loading all the 08 formations and plays when you put the 08 master file in there. You just have to use the stock playbooks to select which formation and plays you want, which requires manual DB editing. There's a lot of potential here, to use the 08 playbooks to expand the 06 playbooks. Seeing the pistol running in 06 is very cool, and I have no doubt that I can get a lot of the other formations and some of the plays to work given enough time. The plays that don't work, I can just delete from the stock playbook, or replace it with a play that works. If it's an 08 running play that doesn't work in 06, like "16 power 0" the main thing is just to replace it with another running play from the same base formation, even if it's in another formation within that set. If it's Ace for example, a running play in Ace Normal or Ace Slot should work just as well in Ace Big or Ace Jumbo Heavy, or any of the other Ace formations. You just gotta find out what running plays those other Ace formations work then apply the play from another formation to the one you are working with to replace a non-working play with.

Some of the formations from 08 I'm going to try and get into 06 :

Ace Emory Henry
Ace Slot Flex
Ace Big Bunch
Ace Wing Trips
Ace Slot Wing
Ace Big Flip
Ace Bunch Spread
Ace Bunch Regular
Ace Tight Slots

Shotgun Split Y-Flex
Shotgun Triple Stack
Shotgun Flanker Close

If some of the 08 plays in those formations don't work in 06, I'll replace them from other Ace or Shogun plays from other formations that work.

I'm already running plays from the Pistol and plays from the Near and Far formations.

I'm off to the races expanding the NCAA 06 playbooks with formations and plays from NCAA 08. This is awesome. Now wouldn't it be fun if we can get plays from Madden PS2 or Madden 08 PC into NCAA 06.