NCAA 17 (FieldBuilder) v3.1

[pick6]

THIS MOD IS NO LONGER IN DEVELOPMENT.
FINAL RELEASE (v3.1) AVAILABLE FURTHER DOWN THIS POST.
CONDITIONS FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT BY OTHERS IN MY FINAL POST

=============================================================================================

Sample screenshots using calhoupe's awesome "no replay limits" script that allows a much wider view:

OHST wide.jpg (393.3 KiB) Viewed 2312 times

OHST, now using two TrueTurf half-fields back-to-back to give dark/light either side of the 50 and in front of each goal-line, 2 endzones, plus BIG10 logos facing home sideline. Endzones were lovingly hand-built from scratch and care was taken to ensure everything measures the same (heights and widths of various components etc). Spent a lot of time on this, which makes it even sweeter to play on...

LSU wide.jpg (371.71 KiB) Viewed 2312 times

LSU: note the different colored borders around each endzone up to the 25. Clouding effect used through all colored paint (as this is on grass). Lots of detail in this one.

TENN wide.jpg (344.34 KiB) Viewed 2312 times

TENN: Sidelines are obviously different but my favorite part of this is the fact that the endzones are not identical! The left endzone runs white-orange along the goal-line, while the right endzone runs the opposite way (orange-white). I never noticed this before building the field, and my hunch is that only fans physically in the stadium would ever notice it. I think it's kinda neat though. Adds to the realism!



This mod is aimed at folks who want to play Madden using wider NCAA hashes, plus sweet TrueTurf fields, AND who want to contribute to its development! It currently has only 10 teams, and there's much that is unfinished and needs help. If you just want to know "when will this mod be finished?" then this isn't for you! But if you enjoy creating something that looks great, and feels great to play on, then there'll be something that you can help with!

As usual, there's a lot I need to get through, so please read the first 3 posts fully before asking questions.

The first post explains what it is, conditions of use, and the download link.
The second post explains how to use it, and current limitations.
The third post has fieldart-specific info.

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SECTION 1 OF 3:

This mod currently features just 10 teams: Alabama, Baylor, Clemson, Florida State, LSU, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.

It uses elguapo's Madden NCAA 17 as a base, but my FieldBuilder instead for fields and field art. Essentially that means wider NCAA hash marks can be utilized, which along with Calhoupe's NCAA scripts completely change the feel of the game.

It also includes some .dat's from the Heisman 14 mod, and is fully compatible with the Heisman uni's (which have to be downloaded separately). However, this should not be thought of as a new "Heisman" release; just as BelieverInTeal has requested that the Heisman name is not re-used on someone's elses work, I'm also keen that the tag "FieldBuilder" is included in the name. I see this as a smaller spin-off from elguapo's full 128-team mod, and this particular mod will always be FieldBuilder-based. (That means TexMod too folks, but I've simplified the process. )

It also includes the FF mod's playbook file (GAMEDATA.dat), and moonbax has scouted all 10 teams and re-assigned playbooks to give the closest match to real-life. Each team now uses a different offensive playbook, which means greater variation with just 10 teams. I've also re-named the playbooks themselves so that duplicates can be spotted more easily.

There is scope to expand and include more teams, but that will not be considered until these 10 teams are finished out first. And that of course completely depends on others' input. If you want to have "your" team added later, your best chance is to contribute to some of the grunt work first! Personally, my own goal is to have a smaller (but high-quality) mod that is more complete (ratings, uni's, stadiums, etc) than to have more teams but all in an unfinished state.

THANKS TO:

• elguapo for creating the Madden NCAA framework,
• BelieverInTeal for permission to include .dat's from the Heisman 14 mod,
• RevanFan for permission to include the GAMEDATA.dat from the FF/FI XV mod,
• calhoupe for updating his NCAA Scripts and permission to include it,
• moonbax for assigning playbooks to NCAA coaches,
• 1312qohelet for permission to include his Updated Equipment & Gear .dat's, and also for tailoring individual players' likenesses and equipment,
• ycleped for updating player names and attributes (all teams), and ratings (2 of his teams included),
• Littleware for ratings (3 teams done so far),
• GeneralSilent for intro music help, feedback, and beta testing, and
• mee for out-of-the-box thinking and general help.

Please note that permission has not been given to convert the Heisman uni's to .dat, and while it's not what I hoped for, I'm completely ok with that. I expect others to fully respect that decision also. And before anyone asks, just because it's been done before without permission, that doesn't make it ok to re-use that now! Anything that others contribute must be their own work.

CONDITIONS OF USE:

Use of this mod is subject to the following conditions:
1) You must be a current member of www.footballidiot.com to have permission to download it. The site is free to join, so get involved!
2) You must not post the download links or files anywhere else, or pass them on to anyone else.
2) It is not to be sold, either in part, or in whole.
3) It is not to be re-released on any other site, either in part, or in whole.
4) If you wish to re-release any part of it on www.footballidiot.com, you must request permission first, as not all of it is mine.
4) If you wish to help with further development, you must only submit your own work.

Please note, these are my own conditions. I have not been asked by anyone else to include them.

QUICK NOTE ABOUT MY NAMING SYSTEM
"full release" means just that, while "update only" contains just the parts that have changed since the last release.
You can download the latest full release here: N17FB v3.1 full release.7z (336MB)
or the latest update here: N17FB v3.1 update only.zip (16MB)

Start the download now, and then continue to the next post for SECTION 2: HOW TO USE IT

[pick6]

SECTION 2: HOW TO USE IT

Next, you'll need 7-zip to unpack the files, which you can get here:
http://www.7-zip.org
Unpack the files into one folder called "N17FB v2.0 full release".

To install the .dats:
Go into your "Documents\Madden NFL 08" folder and move all loose files to a separate temporary folder (so you can retrieve later). You can leave madden.ini and MATCHUP.DATE where they are though.

Go back to the "N17FB v2.0 full release" folder, and copy and paste all the files from the .dat's folder to your "Documents\Madden NFL 08" folder.

Move the music "Fight" folder to "Documents\Madden NFL 08\Music\Fight".

To install the roster:
Copy and paste the roster to your "Documents\Madden NFL 08\Rosters" folder.

For compatible uniforms, download the Heisman 14 mod (not my work). You don't need to install it, you just need to locate the following 7 uniform files. Copy and paste them to the TPF's folder within the "N17FB v2.0 full release" folder and then rename like this:

Code: Select all

Heisman name             generic name
--------------------------------------------------------------
ACC Atlantic.tpf         uni CLEM, FSU.tpf
Big 12A.tpf              uni OU.tpf
Big 12 Alternates.tpf    uni BAY jerseys.tpf (note the difference here)
Big Ten Leaders.tpf      uni OHST.tpf
Big Ten Legends.tpf      uni MICH.tpf
SEC West.tpf             uni BAMA, LSU, MISS.tpf
SEC East.tpf             uni TENN.tpf

Then do the same for the relevant Heisman stadiums, so that they look like this:

Code: Select all

Heisman name             generic name
--------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama.tpf              stadium BAMA.tpf
Clemson.tpf              stadium CLEM.tpf
FSU.tpf                  stadium FSU.tpf
LSU.tpf                  stadium LSU.tpf
Michigan.tpf             stadium MICH.tpf
Ole Miss.tpf             stadium MISS.tpf
Ohio State.tpf           stadium OHST.tpf
Oklahoma.tpf             stadium OU.tpf
Tennessee.tpf            stadium TENN.tpf

(Please note the Baylor stadium.tpf is not needed.)


When you go to add them in TexMod, the folder should look like this:

add textures.jpg (85.91 KiB) Viewed 2312 times

Note that there are 4 different groups: fields, NCAA base, stadiums, and uni's.

TIP: If you hold down CTRL and click on each file you want to load, they will remain highlighted as in the screenshot above. Then you just click the "Open" button, and they will all be loaded in TexMod at the same time, AND in the correct order for this mod to work as intended!

TEXMOD LOAD ORDER: (IMPORTANT!)
Only one field .tpf should be loaded at a time, and always at the TOP of the list in TexMod.
The "NCAA base.tpf" should be loaded next, below the field.
The "stadium.tpf" should be loaded next (if needed).
The two uniforms you need should be loaded last, and at the bottom of the list.

TIP: Easy way to remember the order is by alphabet: field, NCAA, stadium, uni's.

load order.jpg (36.31 KiB) Viewed 2312 times

Then click on the RUN button in TexMod to launch Madden.

Load the roster in Madden, select your teams, and then start an exhibition game.
After the coin toss, pause the game, and press ALT-TAB to return to your desktop.
Launch calhoupe's NCAA Scripts, and enable whatever scripts you wish ("Enable All" works fine for me).
ALT-TAB back into the game, and enjoy!

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NOTES ABOUT INDIVIDUAL STUFF:

PLAYER RATINGS:
All players on all teams now have correct names, jersey numbers, & height/weight attributes.
They also all have correct skin tone and individual equipment.
Additionally, BAMA, CLEM, FSU, LSU, and MICH have correct ratings. The other teams currently have Madden-generated ratings.
Needs completion, but not my strong point, so need help here! Currently Littleware is working on this.

ROSTER:
I didn't use elguapo's 128-team roster as I found it too big to manage, so I used my own custom-built roster. I did use elguapo's TGID's for the teams, but I had to change BAMA and CLEM (to avoid having to include a settings.db which would mess newbies up!). They use TGID's of 1 & 10 respectively. What all this means is that any further editing of players or ratings would need to be done in this 10-team roster. It is possible to transfer them across from the 128-roster, but that usually means more work re-doing tweaks again.

If you do make any changes to the roster, PLEASE DO NOT UPLOAD THE ROSTER DIRECTLY TO THE THREAD!! I've worked very hard to make sure it's bug-free, and therefore I'd prefer to receive the roster privately by PM, where I would import just the changes into my own current working roster, and then release myself. If multiple folks make changes at the same time and release themselves, then changes will get lost or need to be done twice!

STADIUMS:
Currently, all teams are assigned the Barcelona Dragons' stadium, as it is the most generic-looking. More specifically, they are assigned one of 3 variations of that stadium, which have different ST35 values (for creating the field art). Ideally I'd like someone to go through them and assign the closest-looking NFL stadiums. Don't just copy what the Heisman mod did; they may well have the best match, but there may be better alternatives out there if you go through all NFL stadiums. If you tell me what stadiums suit best, I can make those changes in the roster, but someone else will then need to finish the actual stadium art (removing NFL team logos etc). 10 different stadiums would really enhance this mod!
EDIT: All teams have been assigned the stadiums used by the Heisman mod, meaning the Heisman stadium .tpf's are now compatible. These are necessary to change the stadium art from the original NFL team to an NCAA team. Ideally I'd like to re-do these textures and merge into the field .tpf's, so that only one field/stadium .tpf is needed at a time.

FIELDS:
BAY, CLEM, LSU, OHST, and TENN are finished (although some have minor details left). MICH and MISS have had a lot of additional work done to them, but currently have temporary endzones. Also working on FSU at the moment.
I'll re-check all I've done and add to them as I watch games over the next few weeks. Others are more than welcome to contribute here, but there are certain things that must be included! Specifically, I want all grass fields to have "clouding" in the paintwork in this mod from now on, and endzones should use avoid generic fonts as much as possible. I'll happily share what I've learnt over the next few weeks and help others, but please don't take offense if I offer some constructive criticism over the first draft! I don't mean to sound like Hitler here, but I've seen enough good field art here recently to want to keep raising the bar. I've got a ton of info to share on this.

There's also a generic field present in the "NCAA base.tpf" which is visible if you don't load any team-specific field. This has a playoff midfield logo, and diagonal lines in the endzones. I've also included 2 plain practice fields for folks who like the stripped-down look.

PLAYBOOKS:
Moonbax did a great job scouting the teams and re-assigning up-to-date playbooks. No team currently uses the same offensive playbook, which makes for more variety with fewer teams. However, I thought it was pointless to use the names of NFL coaches in an NCAA mod, so I renamed them by playbook number instead. Instead of "SF - C.Kelly" (which of course was actually "SF - M.Nolan" in default Madden!), it now reads "SF - Bk.14" which is the actual playbook number that you see in NZA Editor. Additionally, moonbax pointed out that many of the defensive playbooks are identical, so I grouped them further with a letter at the end. Instead of "SEA - P.Carroll" you now get "SEA - Bk.27/C", meaning Playbook #27, group C. You'll spot which playbooks are identical quicker like this. Potentially those duplicate slots could be used for completely different playbooks in the future, but it's not a goal of this mod right now. I also updated "STL - " to "LA - ". Please note that the playbooks themselves have not been altered though, and are taken from the FF mod.


BAYLOR UNIFORMS:
In the Heisman mod, there were separate .tpf's for Baylor's helmets, jerseys, and pants, so that you could mix-and-match. Personally, I prefer having hard-wired combinations to choose from in-game, so I included a total of 6 uniform combos for Baylor that you can access by just loading the "uni BAY jerseys.tpf".

However, if those combinations aren't enough for you, I specially configured the BAY Alt1 & Alt2 uniforms so that they work with the original Heisman helmet and pants .tpf's! That means you can also load a different helmet and pants, but they must be loaded above the "NCAA base.tpf", while the "uni BAY jerseys.tpf" must go below the "NCAA base" as usual. Please note the quality varies here, as I used a combination of CustomArt pants and .tpf helmets. Ultimately I could do more with this if I had permission to convert the Heisman uni's to .dat, or if someone else could make a full set of Baylor uni's for me. Turned out nice though!

UNIFORMS IN GENERAL:
Ideally I'd love to get the uni's in .dat-form, but that means making a brand-new set of uni's for any or all teams. Some are already out-of-date (although minor, such as TENN all, MICH away.) I've never made a uni, so this won't be my area. Failing updates, this mod can continue to be compatible with the Heisman uni's though.

CROWDS:
I threw a template together quickly based on Bulldwg34's original template. It's usable, but not really where I want it to be. If anyone thinks they can do a better job, please let me know. It should be a template that can be quickly and easily altered to any colors, fans wearing 80-90% primary color, and with less white than in mine. No visible "patterns" in the crowd.
EDIT: Arden05 is currently working on a custom crowd template that looks awesome! Check out the screenshot HERE

MAIN LOGOS:
Elguapo sourced a set of excellent logos from foxsports, and my plan was to tweak them just a little. I wanted exact official colors (like in my Logo Mod), but it turned out they needed more work. TENN have a slightly different shaped block T now, the BAY colors were off, and I didn't want the basic "LSU" wordmark as logo. I tried to keep the awesome shine that was present in the original set, but struggled. So the main logos are unfinished, and I want to revisit them. They'll do for now.

More info in the third post...

[pick6]

SECTION 3: FIELDART-SPECIFIC TIPS & TRICKS

N.B. This section assumes that you've read my toolbag and methods thread, as well as section 2 of my TrueTurf FAQ. If you haven't read both, please do that now before you read any further!!

It should be obvious by now that fieldart is the area I enjoy the most! However, a ton of stuff has come along and gotten in the way since I first created my TrueTurf, and so I never seem to be able to spend any decent amount of time actually creating fields. It's quite possible that others may have even spent more time creating fields with my TrueTurf template than me (as I've spent much of the time tweaking it etc).

Anyway, what all that means is I want the fieldart in this mod to be great. This mod was created with the sole intention of making the highest quality fields possible through hex-editing and .dat-manipulation, and so it seems crazy that I should let any ole sh*t through now!

I'm joking; chill!

I don't want to freak folks out by thinking I'm gonna call them out over every tiny detail or make them feel small. On the contrary, I'd like to encourage folks to expand on their fieldart skills, and regardless of whatever their skill level was before, to aim just a little higher now, and make something just a little better.

I don't have all the answers, but what I intend to do is explain in detail how I myself go through the process, and give some tips that will be easy to follow and will give great results. This post may turn into another long one btw (I have no idea just yet!)

So, first up is turf v grass. In real-life, turf fields tend to take the paint pretty well, whereas grass doesn't. The colors on a grass field often appear faded, patchy, washed-out, and uneven. So if you just slap down the team's official colors on a grass field, it doesn't look right. It needs extra work to look more "worn" and for this spin-off mod at least, this is something that I feel absolutely must be done with every grass field from here on in. We've come a long way on this forum and collectively our graphics are way better than the graphics that the EA professionals included in default Madden. I don't feel we should be standing still, but looking for new ways to improve what skills we have.

So how do I go about scuffing up a grass field? With "clouding". This is a simple effect in Paint.NET that does just that; creates a cloud effect. In the colors window, set your primary color to white 255,255,255 and then the secondary color to the same. However, in the bottom-right hand corner of the colors window, you'll see "Transparency - Alpha", which is usually set to 255 (full color). If you drag that to 0, then it will have full transparency (i.e. invisible). So your primary and secondary colors should be the same, but primary transparency is 255, and secondary transparency is 0. Then go to Effects -> Render -> Clouds. Set scale to 14, and roughness to 0.01. These are the numbers I always use but I no longer have any idea how I picked them! I probably experimented with different settings, and randomly ended up on these. Yep, 0.01 is actually very close to 0, so you could just use scale 15 and roughness 0 and it would probably look pretty much the same, but I've always used these numbers for my clouding, and you can't make me change now! Feel free to experiment yourself, but it might be worthwhile to start off with mine for now.

Anyway, with transparency 255 & 0, you get "full on" and "full off" color, meaning the layer underneath will show through completely in places. (TIP: I always use 97,123,54 as my working "green" color, as it's the average of the dark and light areas in my "default grass" layer. You can permanently add this color to your color palette in the colors window by clicking on the color square above black (it also has a tiny green plus). Hovering over it brings up "Add color to palette". Click on this, and then any square in the palette below to always have access to this shade.) So, create a new layer and fill it with "avg green". Then create another layer above it and fill it with white clouds as above. With secondary transparency set to 0, the green below will show through in places and look a little weird. So there's one more step. Create another new layer, above the green, but below the clouds. Fill this layer with pure white (255, 255, 255) and transparency 255. Your image will now be (temporarily) completely white and the clouds will be hidden. Then in the Layers window, click on the Properties box for that layer (bottom-right corner; a pencil icon writing on paper), and change the Opacity to 160. What you now see is how I create all my clouding.

"But wait!", you say. "You're setting the secondary color's transparency to 0, but then putting a solid white layer underneath the clouds layer, and then changing the opacity (transparency) for that whole layer to 160!!! Why not just set the secondary color's transparency to 160 to start off with??" That would give the exact same effect, yes. But sometimes I like to make the clouding effect stronger or weaker, and it's quicker to just slide the white layer's opacity up or down from 160 than it is to create a whole new cloud layer every time.

If you check the TrueTurf template, you'll see the clouding effect in my sideline area. For turf fields, the lower white layer is set to opac255 and no clouding effect is visible (strong white paint in-game). For grass fields though, the lower layer is always set to opac160. I also use that setting for all other colored parts of the field that need clouding too (midfield, endzones, 25yd logo etc), with one exception; if I need a white clouding effect anywhere on the field of play, I use opac176 for slightly more definition.

So to summarize: all my white gridiron lines are opac255 (no transparency), as they need definition and sharpness. My sideline white uses clouding above a white layer of opac160 for a faded look. Everywhere else uses this setting except for when I need white in a midfield, endzone, or 25yd logo. And then I use opac176 for that white, but the other colors around it use opac160. Got it?

Here's a cropped part of my LSU field that shows just the 25yd logo area. Note that 7 different layers are used to create the logo; purple clouds and purple opac160, gold clouds and gold opac160, white clouds and white opac176, and a full-color "border" that has the fading from one color to another. Note also that the 20yd lines were created the exact same way. Admittedly much of the clouding won't be visible in-game in these narrow lines, but it achieves the same overall color on-field. Worth also pointing out that the official school colors were used as starting points here (70,29,124 & 253,208,35).

LSU 25yd screengrab.jpg (72.02 KiB) Viewed 2312 times

"Ok cool, so how do I get to 7 different layers?" I'll now talk you through it from start to finish.
Download: SEC template (LSU).zip to join in at home!

I started off with the SEC template that I included with the TrueTurf templates. This was in the official SEC colors, so first thing was to re-color it to LSU colors. Not by just using "paint bucket", but going to Adjustments -> Levels instead. (I've covered that already in section 2.8 of my TrueTurf FAQ.) The only tip I'd add to that is that if you're working with a light color, go to Adjustments -> Invert Colors so you can still use the Black input/output points instead of the White.

So now my SEC logo contains only official LSU school colors, I need to re-size it down. But before that, I have to remove the empty space around it, so that the logo touches all 4 edges of the canvas. Select Magic Wand, and Tolerance at 0%. Then Edit -> Invert Selection (or CTRL+I), and then "Crop to Selection" button (or Image -> Crop to Selection).

I can then re-size down to 135 pixels, which is the exact width of 5 yards in my TrueTurf field (Image -> Resize). Next, I tidied the straight edges, so they were nice and sharp (full white pixels). Using the Magic Wand tool here again helps (Tolerance 0%), as you can see the bits that are hard to spot with the naked eye (on the S, the base of the part that hangs down from the top. On the E, all around the central lug). Once this was done, I saved as .pdn, then rotated and saved as .png, and pasted into my TrueTurf template.

(Two things here: for painted-on 25yd logos, always rotate 90 degrees CLOCKWISE, so that it will look correct in practice mode. Rotating counter-clockwise will make this the opposite orientation to the midfield logo in practice mode! Second thing is, it's slower working on this in the TrueTurf template, but I needed the 2 different shades of dark/light grass underneath the logo. An alternative would be to copy the dark/light area of grass and paste it underneath your working 25yd logo .pdn instead. Make sure you don't resize the dark/light grass though or it will lose definition.)

To create the cloud & opac160 layers for each color, work like this: use Magic Wand to select inside the gold ring (Tolerance 0%). Cut and paste into a new layer, and set that opac to 160. Rename that layer in Properties. Color pick that color, set primary and secondary colors to same, and set secondary transparency to 0. Select the area just pasted, then create a new layer above, and then create clouds in the empty layer (which will fill just the selected area). You should then have 3 layers that contain gold; clouds, opac160, and border. Repeat by cutting purple from the border area, and then white.

I do the exact same for my midfields and endzones. Additionally, I ALWAYS tidy straight edges making sure they give nice crisp lines (sometimes time-consuming but worth it). With an endzone wordmark that has a border, I always make sure the border is the exact same width/height all the way round. I also use Magic Wand (Tolerance 0%) repeatedly to select every different part of it, to make sure ALL my straight edges are as crisp as they can be. Then I do the clouding, which is usually much quicker.

EDIT: Jump to this post on page 13 for very detailed info on how I go about tidying a texture. It's real important to the way I work, and the single biggest secret to my success!!

One final point to mention was a minor deviation with the purple outline around the LSU yard numbers. I did try the clouding/opac160 approach but found it looked too blurry. Since the numbers cover dark and light areas of grass, I wanted to use a single, solid purple that would look best over both dark and light grass. I created an endzone template 1441x263 and pasted one half dark grass, and one half light grass. I then did the usual clouds/opac160 with official purple above, flattened it, and took the average color of the whole thing. I ended up with 73,45,109 as the single color that best represents the faded, clouded purple on the field, and used that as the yard numbers outline for increased clarity.


I'm leaving this for now, but will come back to it again. If any of this is new, I strongly recommend you try following these steps yourself with my attached templates. Much of how I create my fields is repeated again and again using these basic steps!

[Sibbs]

Very much looking forward to this coming out tomorrow.

[pick6]

V1 RELEASE!

Please read the first 2 posts fully before asking any questions!

[GeneralSilent]

V1 RELEASE!

Please read the first 2 posts fully before asking any questions!

I'm actually more excited that Calhoupe's NCAA Scripts were updated (don't take it the wrong way, just disabling them before every CPU XP attempt is annoying).

[pick6]

Yes, his scripts are absolutely crucial to all of this. He also removed the 25 sec play clock at my request (which used to KILL me on 1st downs!). When he told me he had done that, it completely made my day!
(It's now at 40 secs btw)

[elguapo]

Looking forward to installing it later tonight pick6. Unlike the user before, I stayed up untill midnight like if it was Christmas for the mod.

[arden05]

Great! Can't wait to check it out. Any screens of the mod in action?

[ycleped]

I've been extremely busy and as a result, the roster part is not complete. I assure everyone, however, that I am doing the best I can and it will be finished this week with all updated player names, heights/weights, attributes, and depth charts.

A bonus however is that I'll have time to tweak things according to how these games are going.