Working with Tournament Master part one
Ok,
Now first of all, please keep in mind that this is a BETA version, hence it is not ready for release yet. I have the privilege to beta test this software and I congratulate Rinaldo for making such a great program.
Is it perfect? In it's current state certainly not, but as someone who tried to edit the fifa.db "by hand" I know that the slightiest error makes your game crash again and again till you bang your head against the wall, so it takes courage and perseverance to make something like Tournament Master.
I started the program and was eager to import my custom Russian League (one I imported through creation centre as .c05 teams) into Tournament and Career Mode. Most of the fields you have to edit in Tournament Master are quite self explanatory but I recommend reading the help file at least a couple of times and leave it open as you edit your tournaments, then nothing can go wrong really.
So I imported my Russian League carefuly into Tournament Master. Note that I have the dutch version of Fifa but the screens are clear enough I think: (click the links to see the next screenshots after this one)
Since the Russian League is basicaly a new league from scratch with no links to other existing leagues I started with this one to not complicate things too much in the begining. Note that I added the Russische Competitie (Russian League in dutch) to Region 4 of the career mode (see lower left corner of the screenshot) and that my asset id "100" is a custom asset I put into my fifa2005/data/gui/assets/trophies folder.
Also note that I didn't respect the actual results of the 2004/2005 season, since this is a test run, I just entered the teams as I remembered them by mind.
When all this was entered, I saved, and fired up Fifa 2005, first I went to the tournament menu mode and this is what I saw :
http://users.skynet.be/venom/TM0502.GIF
Great, the Russian League just appeared in the rest of the world menu!
Fair enough I select the new league and press enter :
http://users.skynet.be/venom/TM0503.GIF
Yep, all my custom teams are there
yay, let's select Dynamo and try to start the tournament then, ok all goes well my first match is against Samara so let's hit the pitch :
http://users.skynet.be/venom/TM0504.GIF
and
http://users.skynet.be/venom/TM0505.GIF
Green grass, the right names :P the right teams ect, Great but I must remember to use the snow patch when it becomes winter in Russia!
I play some matches, no crashes, no glitches, so tournament mode for new custom leagues so far so good, grats Rinaldo this works perfectly.
After this succesful test run I fired up career mode, and here I saw the first error :
http://users.skynet.be/venom/TM0506.GIF
Although I added the Russian League to Region 4 in Tournament Master it doesn't appear ingame, there must be a problem with the language.db at this point
However, I don't let this setback discourage me and I fire up a new career in region 4 and oh miracle :
http://users.skynet.be/venom/TM0507.GIF
Yep, that's right, right under the dutch league (see PSV on top of screenshot) there are my Russian teams! Ok, now since I was fired from Juventus for sabotaging their nets I think FC Rostov will be safe enough to hide in the first year of my new career so I select them :
http://users.skynet.be/venom/TM0508.GIF
Uh oh, something weird happened, when I selected Rostov there was a bar filling up as when a normal career starts, but instead of finding myself at the start of my competition (3d week of august) I wake up as you can see in the screenshot on June 1st 2004 with only two choices in my menu : either "start new season" or "options", options is a no go so I try start new season hoping it will take me to august at the start of the league but instead seeing the menu again after the blue bar fills up for the second time I :
http://users.skynet.be/venom/TM0509.GIF
crash to desktop
After this I tried fixing the problem for several hours by changing the region I imported the russian league in, moving the teams around, opening the fifa and language.db in good old unidb to see if I could find the error but alas I found nothing conclusive that provokes this error. As now I am tired after writing this little report I'm going to catch a good night of sleep and try again, stay tuned.
P.S. : Rinaldo and Donovan, if you want I can mail you my fifa.db containing the modifications, maybe you'll have more luck than I had locating the cause of the crash...