Playoff format

Reignman
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Re: Playoff format

Postby Reignman » Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:56 pm

I was just wondering this myself the other day and did some tinkering around, and here are my results.

TL;DR ... the real problem is the game refuses to read more than 268 records on the SCHD table. So if you add 2 wildcard games, then you can't play the Super Bowl or the Pro Bowl, and you can't advance to the offseason.

My full report:

Using the Madden Editor I imported a modified schedule before the season began, adding the 2 extra wildcard games. 1 and 6 which is 2 seed vs 7.

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That sorta worked. When the season concluded there were in fact 6 wildcard games, but I can't figure out how Madden chose the 4 additional teams. Initially it had Bengals at Cardinals for both those additional games. The Cardinals were the #3 seed and were already playing, and the Bengals finished 5-11 and are an AFC team. So using Madden Amp, I edited these 2 games so they had the right #2 and #7 seeds from each conference. The other 4 games were already correct.

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I simulated the results (game by game), but the game crashed after I simulated that 6th game. I figured maybe because the #7 Saints won, but I simulated them again but this time I simulated that 6th game first and the Saints won, but this time it didn't crash for whatever reason and auto advanced to the division round.

Where we got to the next set of problems. It didn't recognize the Saints victory and instead had the #5 seed Washington at #1 Philadelphia, and #3 Arizona at #2 Detroit. Yep they brought back the Lions even though they were eliminated in the wildcard haha. So again I had to edit the schedule manually, which you see here. There were no upsets in the AFC so it already had the correct divisional round matchups there.

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As with the wildcard round, sometimes the divisional round would crash too. It seemed to crash less often when I simulated the last game first for whatever reason, but even then sometimes it would crash. Couldn't figure out why exactly. Here it worked even though I had 2 upsets in the divisional round. And every time the game auto advanced to the conference round without a crash, the teams and seedings were always right so I never had to edit the schedule this round. Then again I never had a 7th seed make it this far, so I imagine you'd have to edit it in that case, if that doesn't cause it to crash.

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The game never crashed after simulating the conference games, no matter which teams made it or won, but it would never auto advance to the Super Bowl either. It stopped right here, and there wasn't even a Super Bowl option in the menu. Save/load, nothing worked. So I exported the schedule using Madden Editor to take a look and saw that the Super Bowl and Pro Bowl were gone, as seen here. The red box is the 2 wildcard games I added manually earlier.

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So I used the DB Editor to add the missing Super Bowl and Pro Bowl manually, the way they appear in a normal schedule to make sure I got all the numbers right. Adding the 2 conference winners Washington (25) and Kansas City (8) where it had 1023 for both slots.

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And that gave me this error the next time I tried to load the franchise.

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I had one more trick up my sleeve, but that didn't work either. Using the DB Editor, I removed 2 meaningless games from week 17. I didn't get that last error anymore, but the game still crashed. Perhaps because the 2 games I removed had been played already? Later I'll remove 2 week 17 games before they're played, just to see if it works. I would never go through all this just to get 2 bad one-and-done #7 seeds into the playoffs lol.

Conclusion: Not worth it unless someone figures out an easier way.

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Reignman
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Re: Playoff format

Postby Reignman » Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:59 pm

Reignman wrote:but I can't figure out how Madden chose the 4 additional teams. Initially it had Bengals at Cardinals for both those additional games. The Cardinals were the #3 seed and were already playing, and the Bengals finished 5-11 and are an AFC team.

Ok duh, I just figured it out. On the schedule the Bengals ID is 1 and the Cardinals is 6 lol. Which doesn't make sense because the other 2 wildcard games go by seed and not team ID. So that's another issues that needs to be figured out.

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Re: Playoff format

Postby MikeWest502 » Sat Dec 05, 2020 3:40 pm

Reignman wrote:
Reignman wrote:but I can't figure out how Madden chose the 4 additional teams. Initially it had Bengals at Cardinals for both those additional games. The Cardinals were the #3 seed and were already playing, and the Bengals finished 5-11 and are an AFC team.

Ok duh, I just figured it out. On the schedule the Bengals ID is 1 and the Cardinals is 6 lol. Which doesn't make sense because the other 2 wildcard games go by seed and not team ID. So that's another issues that needs to be figured out.


When the regular season ends, the game assigns playoff attributes (Y & X) for seeding. Using your new schedule method, see if you can assign the two additional playoff teams (7th Seeds) the playoff attribute (X) before you start the Wild Card round of games.

You've made solid progress imo!

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Re: Playoff format

Postby DOLPHINSKINGS1 » Sat Dec 05, 2020 9:11 pm

Great job! But why doesn't my franchise get recognized in Madden Amp? I did exactly as you did EXACTLY. What I am going to do is wait till divisionals if their is a #7 seed upset I will switch it. So I can get to Super Bowl LV. That's all I need it to do anyway because I produce NFL season as like real life on FACEBOOK with my commentary.
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Re: Playoff format

Postby RevanFan » Sat Dec 05, 2020 10:38 pm

Reignman wrote:I was just wondering this myself the other day and did some tinkering around, and here are my results.

Question: What version of the DB Editor did you use? Because adding two games and having two be removed automatically from the end of the file sounds like something that would happen using old versions of the DB Editor. In non-current versions, if you extract a table as a CSV, there would be a number at the top right-most cell that determines how many lines get imported back into the game. You have to either update or delete this line before you import the CSV back into the game.

If you're using the current version, found below, then yeah... it's likely a game limitation.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=21400
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Re: Playoff format

Postby MikeWest502 » Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:13 am

RevanFan wrote:
Reignman wrote:I was just wondering this myself the other day and did some tinkering around, and here are my results.

Question: What version of the DB Editor did you use? Because adding two games and having two be removed automatically from the end of the file sounds like something that would happen using old versions of the DB Editor. In non-current versions, if you extract a table as a CSV, there would be a number at the top right-most cell that determines how many lines get imported back into the game. You have to either update or delete this line before you import the CSV back into the game.

If you're using the current version, found below, then yeah... it's likely a game limitation.

http://footballidiot.com/forum/viewtopi ... 13&t=21400


It is surely a Madden game limitation and not the DB Editor. Madden was only programmed to emulate a NFL playoffs that has 12 games, including the end of season game, the Pro Bowl. So when he added the two WC games, the last two games in the programmed playoff schedule got removed, thus the crash.

Madden program code is looking to activate the Super Bowl code after the conference championships are completed. But because the superbowl game code is gone, Madden can't trigger the coding that goes with the Super Bowl game (franchise crash)! That's inside the programming and required. If he only added one additional game, then the Pro Bowl would be the game that got removed and he may be able to play the Super Bowl!

It's going to be hard to trick Madden franchise programming to do something it's not capable of. That's different than calhoupe scripts. Calhoupe scripts does not add new game code to Madden. It only activates codes already programmed within the game!

Ex. Super Bowl entrance is not new coding, the script activates it so that it can be used for every game!

Madden 08 PS2 has a Tournament game mode (Up to 16 teams). If that code was present in Madden 08 PC, then it would be possible for the script to enable it as the playoff format!

Like I said, the trick is to have Madden assign 14 teams in the playoffs, with only the top seeds getting the bye!

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Re: Playoff format

Postby mee » Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:31 am

TL;DR ... the real problem is the game refuses to read more than 268 records on the SCHD table. So if you add 2 wildcard games, then you can't play the Super Bowl or the Pro Bowl, and you can't advance to the offseason.

I don't think there should be an issue with more games. IIRC there was someone who made a schedule with 17 games (no byes) per team and had no issue.
All across db files the game reads the files in powers of 2. Certain tables have 2 options (0,1) which is 2^1, others have 4 (0,1,2,3) which is 2^2 and so on. 256 is 2^8 and 512 is 2^9. The same is true for the limits on the number of rows in a table, such as the TUNI table which is capped at 512. The default schedule at 268 games means the max number of rows should be at least 512.
Now, as far as getting the game to understand what a 7 seed is.. That much I can't help you with.
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Re: Playoff format

Postby RevanFan » Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:45 am

MikeWest502 wrote:
RevanFan wrote:
Reignman wrote:I was just wondering this myself the other day and did some tinkering around, and here are my results.

Question: What version of the DB Editor did you use? Because adding two games and having two be removed automatically from the end of the file sounds like something that would happen using old versions of the DB Editor. In non-current versions, if you extract a table as a CSV, there would be a number at the top right-most cell that determines how many lines get imported back into the game. You have to either update or delete this line before you import the CSV back into the game.

If you're using the current version, found below, then yeah... it's likely a game limitation.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=21400


It is surely a Madden game limitation and not the DB Editor. Madden was only programmed to emulate a NFL playoffs that has 12 games, including the end of season game, the Pro Bowl. So when he added the two WC games, the last two games in the programmed playoff schedule got removed, thus the crash.

Madden program code is looking to activate the Super Bowl code after the conference championships are completed. But because the superbowl game code is gone, Madden can't trigger the coding that goes with the Super Bowl game (franchise crash)! That's inside the programming and required. If he only added one additional game, then the Pro Bowl would be the game that got removed and he may be able to play the Super Bowl!

I don't doubt Madden's programming is a huge issue. I'm just saying... what Reignman experienced sounds exactly like what happens when you use the old DB Editor and forget to remove the number in the top right cell. I suggest they try using the new DB Editor that I linked and see if the games still disappear. I don't think they will. As mee said, the game uses binary to determine the capacity of most files, so 512 items would be the likely limit (0 to 511). Doesn't mean there won't also be a programming issue (or many), but I think that the game will at least allow 270 listings in the SCHD table.
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Re: Playoff format

Postby MikeWest502 » Sun Dec 06, 2020 1:34 am

RevanFan wrote:
MikeWest502 wrote:
RevanFan wrote:Question: What version of the DB Editor did you use? Because adding two games and having two be removed automatically from the end of the file sounds like something that would happen using old versions of the DB Editor. In non-current versions, if you extract a table as a CSV, there would be a number at the top right-most cell that determines how many lines get imported back into the game. You have to either update or delete this line before you import the CSV back into the game.

If you're using the current version, found below, then yeah... it's likely a game limitation.

http://footballidiot.com/forum/viewtopi ... 13&t=21400


It is surely a Madden game limitation and not the DB Editor. Madden was only programmed to emulate a NFL playoffs that has 12 games, including the end of season game, the Pro Bowl. So when he added the two WC games, the last two games in the programmed playoff schedule got removed, thus the crash.

Madden program code is looking to activate the Super Bowl code after the conference championships are completed. But because the superbowl game code is gone, Madden can't trigger the coding that goes with the Super Bowl game (franchise crash)! That's inside the programming and required. If he only added one additional game, then the Pro Bowl would be the game that got removed and he may be able to play the Super Bowl!

I don't doubt Madden's programming is a huge issue. I'm just saying... what Reignman experienced sounds exactly like what happens when you use the old DB Editor and forget to remove the number in the top right cell. I suggest they try using the new DB Editor that I linked and see if the games still disappear. I don't think they will. As mee said, the game uses binary to determine the capacity of most files, so 512 items would be the likely limit (0 to 511). Doesn't mean there won't also be a programming issue (or many), but I think that the game will at least allow 270 listings in the SCHD table.


This goes far beyond just adding games to a db table! And not as simple as adding a uniform or stadium to a table! Those elements are customizable whereas the franchise is not! The franchise playoff format of 12 teams needs to be patched to assign 2 additional playoff team slots with the 2 additional games for the Wild Card weekend of games! The way you put it states that it would be easy to play more games than the real NFL schedule is programmed for and possibly add more teams to the franchise! Just by modifying a few tables with a DB Editor! :shock: :lol:

The franchise is not scalable nor was the game built to include that type of expansion!
You can create many custom teams within the game, but you can't start a franchise with them (unless you're using the external Madwolf tool)which is outside the scope of the game!

This is EA Sports Madden 08, not Out of The Park Football or even Madden 21! :lol:

Another funny point is, back in 1990 the NFL expanded the playoffs from 10 to 12 teams! Now, 30 years later, they've expanded from 12 to 14. Next expansion will be 14 to 16 teams to make the playoffs. So the old PS2 Madden 08 16 team tournament mode will actually be relevant 20 years from now! :lol:

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Re: Playoff format

Postby lorak » Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:05 am

MikeWest502 wrote:Another funny point is, back in 1990 the NFL expanded the playoffs from 10 to 12 teams! Now, 30 years later, they've expanded from 12 to 14. Next expansion will be 14 to 16 teams to make the playoffs. So the old PS2 Madden 08 16 team tournament mode will actually be relevant 20 years from now! :lol:


You are probably right :lol:


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