Balls

In career mode, if I began with Leyton Orient (a CC Football League Two side) am I stuck with that lame Mitre ball forever or does it change to the EPL's Nike ball when I get to the EPL? Can I change that Mitre ball?

Thanks muchly!

Many of the leagues ahve different balls so you don't have to worry, they change when you move leagues.

Thanks DJH. I got the scare when I played Chelsea in the League Cup (FA Cup?) final and still had that plain Mitre ball.

The team you play have a ball id,and the ball don't change if u play another league!
if u play away game the ball will be the one that the home team has as it's id
so u will be stuck with the mitre ball on your home games for ever!!
unless u change the ball id with creation center,but that will proberly mess up your career! (i think)

The English Second Division id is 2. So u might want to change the ball for that id, and it's sure to be a different ball ingame.

zidaner said:

The English Second Division id is 2. So u might want to change the ball for that id, and it's sure to be a different ball ingame.

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It doesn't work like that, every team has it's proper ball id inside the database, I imported 55 different balls and assigned them to each team depending on sponsor brand, league ball or ball they use in real life.

Billy1969 said:

It doesn't work like that, every team has it's proper ball id inside the database, I imported 55 different balls and assigned them to each team depending on sponsor brand, league ball or ball they use in real life.

Click to expand...

Oh really.. How can i get a list of the id's without downloading CC?

zidaner said:

Oh really.. How can i get a list of the id's without downloading CC?

Click to expand...

The references to the balls are inside the table_teams of the fifa.db in the column ball_id, I imported 55 balls (max 61) inside the zdatas with utilities working and changed the id in the column per team accordingly.

I use UniDB 4.0 to convert the fifa.db to Microsoft Access format and back again, I do not use the CC this year as I installed the CEP patch, and those two don't work together.

EDIT : btw, this is the same procedure for the adboards, there I imported 146 so far and still have a bunch more to import (in new created zdatas, I have 37 instead of the standard 30 so far)

You can see the Ball ID inside CC06 too.
Then use Working Utillity 06 to change the ball texture when ever you think it is to lame...

That was my next question. Can't I just change the ball texture outside the CC. Aren't ball textures in one of the zdata files? And I don't think that shouldn't mess up a career mode since you can change other texture files without doing that (kits, etc). Am I right there? And does anyone know which zdata file has ball textures in it and how I go about exporting them out of that file? Finally something I have a ton of confidence in I edit graphic files like a mad man for the NHL series games. Actually I create arenas for that series too...but you can't do that without messing a career mode up in FIFA I think :/

EDIT: Okay I found that BigGUI opens and imports/exports items into the zdata's. So the only remaining question would be (as I assume it's safe, and have backed them up) that is is safe to import graphics files into those zdata's, right? Then I can just replace the Mitre with the Nike texture when I get to the Prem.

thanks.

Sjostrom said:

That was my next question. Can't I just change the ball texture outside the CC. Aren't ball textures in one of the zdata files? And I don't think that shouldn't mess up a career mode since you can change other texture files without doing that (kits, etc). Am I right there? And does anyone know which zdata file has ball textures in it and how I go about exporting them out of that file? Finally something I have a ton of confidence in I edit graphic files like a mad man for the NHL series games. Actually I create arenas for that series too...but you can't do that without messing a career mode up in FIFA I think :/

EDIT: Okay I found that BigGUI opens and imports/exports items into the zdata's. So the only remaining question would be (as I assume it's safe, and have backed them up) that is is safe to import graphics files into those zdata's, right? Then I can just replace the Mitre with the Nike texture when I get to the Prem.

thanks.

Click to expand...

The balls consist of 3 files, but only the t99_xx.fsh contains the texture of the ball (replace xx with the ball id), if you just change them without intervening in the fifa.db, just in the zdata your career will not be harmed, the problem however is that more than half the teams inside fifa have been assigned ball number 10, so to change that you'll need to adapt the fifa.db anyway.

Originaly the balls are either in zdata26 or zdata30, I don't remember but it's one of those 2 (I switched so many files around in the zdatas that I don't remember exactly lol), anyway remember to not put more than 500 to 510 files max inside per zdata or your game could crash, for additional graphics, create new empty zdatas.

So if I understand correctly I can basically import the ball file itself into the zdata and simply replace it. I found that they are in .fsh format (or from what I read it seems they are). So I can just create my own .fsh graphic for a ball and import that right into the original zdata ball file (which I think is actually zdata25, but I'll check 26 and 30 for more balls)?

That would be a very similar structure to NHL2001 if that's how they're doing it. For NHL06 you have to create a .bat file and import graphics that way. The importers don't create certain files you need to prevent game crashes.

And I'm not sure I understand why it matters if a ball is assigned to multiple teams. If I get this right (or if it's like other games) I'd simply replace the graphic and the ball ID would remain the same. So the ball ID would now simply have a new graphic. If I replace the Mitre ball with a Nike ball, all English Div 1 and 2 teams would now just use the new (imported) Nike ball. But the game would still associate each team with that specific ball ID.

EDIT: I also just found that the .fsh's in FIFA are an older format and can't be opened with fshX. Does anyone know a better editing program for opening the .fsh files? Thanks.

Okay I was able to switch balls fairly easily. All I did was the fast, gery-riged way. But it works.

What I did was find each ball file in the zdata25 and 26 files. Then I found the .o files that correspond to that ball. I wanted to change the Mitre Red ball out for the Nike winter ball. So I exported all the files associated with the Nike ball (so the texture and the shape, etc). Renamned those to match the Mitre red ball and imported back in. If you try that, just make sure you're importing them into the right zdata files since some of the balls are spread out over two zdata's.

Someone dropped me a message about the questions I had with balls so I am trying to make it as clear as I figured out how to easily do this. If someone has already posted how to do this, drop a post and I'll delete this one all together.

I only used the program bigGUI that I know can be found at http://www.nhldepot.net/

Basically I exported the files associated with the ball I wanted to use as a replacement, renamed them to fit the ball I wanted to replace, then import them back into the zdata files. All the ball files were in zdata25 and zdata26. Once I imported the files back in I ran fatbhbuilder. I also made backups of zdata25 & 26.big and zdata 25 & 26.bh in case I messed it up.
I've played a couple of games with no issues so I don't think there are any crash/career mode issues with doing it this way. This way was easy if you didn't want to spend a lot of time creating an o structure file or new graphic texture for a ball. So if you simply want to change the ball your boys use in career mode, this way seems to work as a very fast solution.

Here's a nice list of each ball and the file number it's associated with:
*Remember that some balls have different shapes, so simply importing an image won't work. That's why I used all three files for one ball.*

t99_xx.fsh is the ball texture itself
m222_xx.o and m316_xx.o are files I think associated with the shape and design of the ball structure.

1980's style red ball: 55
1980's style yellow ball: 54
1980's style black ball: 56
Adidas Olympic: 6
Black and white wacky thing: 51
Adidas Fevernova: 0
Globe: 57
Mitre red 2:
Mitre red 13:
Mitre blue: 12
Nike blue circle: 16
Nike red circle: 15
Nike winter hi res ball: 14
Puma: 3
Puma Italy: 9
Smiley face: 58
Umbro black: 8
Umbro blue: 4


Again, someone asked me to post what I found and this was it. Hopefully it helped.