Steve Pitts' EAFFAnalyser v2.1 released into the wild

[StevePitts]

Folks,

After more than two years in various stages of beta testing EAFFAnalyser - a tool for extracting information from FIFA 2005, FIFA 06 and FIFA 07 data files - was finally unveiled to the general public earlier today, thanks to the good offices of Dave Witts at Sweetpatch. There is a brand new Sweetpatch mini site dedicated to the utility - where you can view information on what the tools can do, installation instructions and some sample outputs, or grab your very own copy from the Download Boutique.

Ever wished you could:

• get rid of that ridiculous run of three games in two days
• see all of your team's fixtures on a single screen
• see the fixture list in tournament mode
• export all of the player statistics (eg. goals scored) to a database or spreadsheet

Well, with EAFFAnalyser you can do all that, and a whole lot more!

(My apologies if any of the above is a little over the top, but I am understandably excited at finally getting my creation into the public domain after a lot of hard work and some major hiccoughs along the way)

 

[mrliioadin]

This is excellent man. I'm not exactly sure how I will use it but I assure you I'm just as excited to see it as you are to release it. Thanks a ton Steve... I don't have a ton of time yet yo check it out but I will be reading about it downloading it and trying it out soon enough!!!

 

[mrliioadin]

Hmmm.... So this won't work with friendly mode at all? I was hoping I could get it to track results, goals, and cards in friendly mode.

I play every game of my tournamets and I play as both teams every game (Home in the first half, Away in the second half). This means I have to play in friendly mode or I would exceed the 8 allowable teams. Anyway, I have a tough time keeping track of who should be suspended for the following match, or tracking goals for golden boot winners and was hoping this program might be able to record some of that info. Basically I was looking for a way to extract the match facts from the end of every game I suppose.

 

[pfk505]

This program is an absolute must-have for anyone using manager mode or playing tournaments. Without EAFFAnalyzer and Steve's help I would have abandoned FIFA a long time ago! Cheers Steve.

 

[Tizmo]

This looks very nice! Does this fix the problem of the random sorting of teams for the Champions League and other cups?

 

[Ultra_Blue]

Will I be able to play online with it ?

 

[StevePitts]

So this won't work with friendly mode at all?

It simply reads manager and tournament mode data files. It can report on the fixtures, results, stats etc. from tournaments with multiple human controlled teams, but it doesn't do a good job with any other than the first 'managed' team (mainly because I rarely play such events - outside of the occasional visit from my nephew or a group of my son's mates - and so have very little in the way of test data and even less in the way of motivation). If you have a requirement for that feature then can I add it to the wish list, but an email with a handful of (either complete or in-flight) tournament mode data files featurung multiple players would be a boon.

I was hoping I could get it to track results, goals, and cards in friendly mode

Since there is no data file to hang my hat on in that context, then I'm afraid not. I've never tried ripping data out of the executing game, but I can't imagine it would be particularly easy to do

Does this fix the problem of the random sorting of teams for the Champions League and other cups?

Not as far as I'm aware - the only data structure I mess with currently is the fixtures table, and if I'm correctly interpreting your question you want it to mess with the team_lookup table too to force some particular structure to those competitions (I've never perceived a problem in that area, but I may have misunderstood the issue)

Will I be able to play online with it ?

Absolutely - it isn't a patch and it doesn't touch any of the game data (other than correcting fixtures in the manager mode data file, if you set the options so to do) so it has no impact on online play whatsoever. Having said that, it doesn't do anything useful in relation to online play either, so if you don't also play tournament or manager mode offline then you would be unlikely to get a great deal out of it (other than player details from the patched rosters, which are almost impossible to get using the traditional editing tools)

 

[Tizmo]

The thing with the random sorting is that I sort the groups in CM to how I want them, but in-game, they are totally different.

This team_lookup table, where is this located and how I open it and edit it?

 

[kontakos]

Thank you Steve,

I enjoy especially the overview and fixture table. Now I can plan better ahead without much trouble to look up the data.

 

[StevePitts]

The thing with the random sorting is that I sort the groups in CM to how I want them, but in-game, they are totally different

Okay, I think I see your problem. You would like to fix the assignment of teams to groups (and qualifying slots) but the game shuffles things around each time. Personally, I'm delighted that it does because previous incarnations have not done so and if you always qualify through the same slot in your league then you end up playing similar teams all the time. Have you made the competitions accessible in tournament mode or are we simply talking about manager mode??

The only way to deal with this would be to update the team_lookup and fixture tables in the saved data file itself, after the fixture scheduler has generated them. This would probably be workable in manager mode, because there are often other fixtures before the ECC/EFA games start, but could present a problem with respect to games that have already been played before the manager's team's first game.

Either way it would be a non-trivial task to keep everything in sync, and would probably require something akin to CM 07 to handle properly (in fact, the existing logic related to the team_lookup table in CM 07 would probably help greatly)

This team_lookup table, where is this located and how I open it and edit it?

There is a version in FIFA.DB, which you can edit directly with DB Master, but CM 07 will be updating that table when you make your changes there, so the problem is not that data but what happens to it once it is processed by the scheduler in game. I am not aware of any tool that will read the manager mode data file and present you with a GUI that allows you to edit it, either DB Master style or in full CM 07 mode. There is a so-called 'trainer' for manager mode data, but the documentation is not in English and I chickened out of installing it when I didn't even understand the installation instructions let alone what it purported to achieve, so I can't tell you what capabilities that has (other than the occasionally trumpeted ability to update your budget, which doesn't interest me at all).

I enjoy especially the overview and fixture table. Now I can plan better ahead without much trouble to look up the data

Funnily enough the fixture list is the part of the output that I use the most too. I run the command line version on a separate networked PC, whose screen and keyboard are adjacent to my gaming PC, and can therefore see any changes without even leaving the game.

 

[Rinaldo]

My congratulations Steve. Excellent job.

 

[B9Goal]

Cep

Will this work with CEP 4.0 installed?

 

[StevePitts]

Will this work with CEP 4.0 installed?

To be honest, I have no idea. It works with v3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 but whilst I've DLed the relevant parts of CEP v4.0 I've not yet found the time to try and install it into a test environment where I can figure out what has changed (my own FIFA 07 installation is exactly as installed off the original DVD, without even the official patches installed)

Have you already installed it or are you asking a theoretical question?? If you have installed it and have a manager mode data file then I'd be grateful if you could ZIP it up and email to me (click on my name in the panel to the left and there will be a 'Send email to' link to select) as that will help greatly in upgrading EAFFAnalyser/F2K7DUMP should that prove to be necessary (and it has for each new version so far)

Edit: your post prompted me to pull my finger out and get a copy of the CEP data to process. As expected v2.1 of EAFFAnalyser (and more importantly v1.3 of F2K7DUMP) is not compatible with v4.0 of the CEP (you will get an error about the header of FIFA.DB not being in the correct format) but I have an updated version that is. I was not intending to release a new version so soon, but if you'd like to be able to process CEP v4.0 data then please drop me an email and I'll send you an updated version of F2K7DUMP that will cope. Sadly, the data in the database is even worse than the previous versions - Ockham obviously hasn't been using my utility to check things - and still has tournament definitions that will result in cup finals appearing on the schedule before the semis {sigh}

 

[Zefilio]

Ockham obviously hasn't been using my utility to check things - and still has tournament definitions that will result in cup finals appearing on the schedule before the semis {sigh}

You can't ask God to double check his perfect creation with a mere mortal made tool, now can you?

 

[brfifa07]

You can't ask God to double check his perfect creation with a mere mortal made tool, now can you?

Okay, Steve, I hope you don't mind me interrupting the discussion about the tool you've released, which, by the way, is great. Be sure I am going to put it to good use here and congratulations for the idea!

I just felt a sudden curiosity about the last post... this must be like the tenth post I see from Zefilio. In, like, five of them he calls Ockham "God". In all of them, he tears Ockham's work to pieces... I mean, gee, what has happened between the two of them guys that he only posts to unleash his hatred at everything the guy does?
Moreover, if there was such a serious reason for all this irony, why doesn't he try to square things straight with Ockham? Lastly, as part of the CEP project, I'd like to thank you, Zefilio, for the constructive criticism in the CEP topic itself. I'm sure we're going to be able to solve much of the mess you pointed out based on the many solutions you came up with!

Sorry again, Steve, and, once more, congratulations on the amazing program.

 

[Platini10]

Hi Steve,

This is a great tool.

Thanks for sharing and making the game a lot more enjoyable with Stats!.

 

[StevePitts]

Firstly, my thanks to all of those that have posted positive words about my tools. I am delighted that others find them useful.

You can't ask God to double check his perfect creation with a mere mortal made tool, now can you?

Funny you should mention that, but once upon a time Ockham did enquire about the possibility of extending the FIFA 06 version of the program to do a more complete job of checking the integrity of the database. We never pursued it because I preferred to spend the limited free time that I have on the tools that I use rather than one that I would have no personal use for, but I am quite certain that he is just as aware of the limitations of his (erstwhile??) 'baby' as you, or indeed I.

I'd like to thank you, Zefilio, for the constructive criticism in the CEP topic itself

Shame that. You raised a couple of good points and then queered the pitch by adding an ad hominem attack of your own

 

[brfifa07]

Shame that. You raised a couple of good points and then queered the pitch by adding an ad hominem attack of your own

Again, Steve, sorry for "queering the pitch" a bit.
The point is: saying a piece of work is crap because one hates one of the people involved in the work is, to say the least, annoying for those who participate in it and have their work cut down just because of personal differences. So the queering thing came up in "a momentary lapse of reason".

Awesome work, man, and once again my apologies for all that.
Take care!

 

[bacchus99]

Dear Steve,
I have noticed that you have done a lot of work on figuring out how Fifa functions and would like to ask you something if that's okay. Could you tell me anything you know about the fifa.db file and the fifa.fat files and how changing these affects the running of the game and in particular the gameplay. I have been experimenting a lot with the game, trying to find out why the gameplay becomes scrambled when one edits the game. I cannot work out whether it is if you change the fifa.db file or regenerate the fifa.fat file. Using CPU v CPU games I have noticed that the gameplay isnt very good when one adds patches, stadiums and /or kits.
One thing I have tracked is that the pure game, without any patches at all, definately has a strong home advantage and scores/results generally go according to the strength of the team (at least in friendly mode). The away side gets more cards and makes more mistakes. After adding patches and kits, small teams win away at mega teams even if the game is repeated, the home team gets more cards. Anyway, I am going on a bit here, but my basic question remains, what affects the change, the fifa.db alterations or the fifa.fat alterations? Do you know?

 

[StevePitts]

Could you tell me anything you know about the fifa.db file and the fifa.fat files and how changing these affects the running of the game and in particular the gameplay

I'll start by saying that I know absolutely nothing about FIFA.FAT and the related data. My utilities process FIFA.DB, ENG.DB, PC_CL.BIN and the squads, manager and tournament data files. Secondly, I run the game exactly as it was installed (barring a handful of parameter tweaks in a USER.INI file, and most of those are inactive because I only used them to test theories about how manager mode works) and therefore know next to nothing about actually editing the supplied data (and what I do know is all second-hand wisdom).

I'm sure you can guess what is coming next on the basis of the previous paragraph.

my basic question remains, what affects the change, the fifa.db alterations or the fifa.fat alterations? Do you know?

I'm afraid I have no idea