unknown player growth in career mode.

[vtec]

this bug has existed since at least fifa 07, maybe even fifa 06, i can't remember. the problem is that now, with the addition of scheduled training, this bug has become more of a nuisance.

essentially, what happens is that for players either scouted or recruited from the youth ranks, the player growth bars are replaced by question marks once they are signed to the team. the problem with this is that, say the player is a midfielder, when you train midfielders, the game crashes because it does not recognize the player's growth potential. this means that you either can't train any of the players in that position, or you can't have any players from youth teams or scouted talent.

has anyone else encountered this bug? is there a fix for it or a way to avoid it?

thanks.

 

[CanedToad]

hmm. This may be my problem then.

I am in my second season and whenever a game finishes, at the "Simulating Training" screen the game crashes, a popup comes up telling me about an unhandled exception. I've just stopped playing because I don't want to continue without training. I had youth and scouted players in the first season though, although the problem may have started after I just signed another youth player. I thought maybe it had something to do with how many players I had out on loan, about 4 I think with 29 in the squad.

I have been thinking about seeing if I could narrow it down to a particular training group, but couldn't be bothered. Now it seems more likely that it might work I'll see if I can for now.

 

[CanedToad]

Yes indeed, I checked and I have 2 midfield players exhibiting this phenomenon and only midfield training crashes the game.

So I tried playing them (simmed) and after the game Player name is blank, match XP is 0 and +0, ovr is 0 and match rating is blank (blank, not dash (-) like non-playing subs).

Can't figure out how to edit the save files, nothing decipherable viewing in a hex editor, so unless someone has an editor....

 

[StevePitts]

has anyone else encountered this bug? is there a fix for it or a way to avoid it?

Yes, and yes.

The bug is another manifestation of the 30 player issue when you have players out on loan. The 31st (or more) player that you sign to your team does not get entries in three of the tables, because the areas in the manager mode data file are only large enough to hold 30 records, and this messes up their growth (although it does also mean that you don't have to pay them any wages!!). In FIFA 07 this only caused a crash at the start of the new season and only then if you ended up with more than 30 players on your team (retirements or non-renewal of expired contracts might mean otherwise) but obviously from what you say the problems are more immediate in FIFA 08.

Avoiding it is obvious - don't sign more than 30 players, including those out on loan - but fixing it is more difficult. The only way to do so in game is to sell the affected players, but I have repaired two FIFA 07 manager mode data files for people affected by the start of season crash, so it would certainly be possible to do so during the season. However, the fix can only involve disconnecting affected players from the manager's team, although in the manually fixed files I added the players to the shortlist so that they could be re-signed once others had been sold. Adding such a fix to my EAFFAnalyser utility is on my 'to do' list but it has never reached the top of the list, mainly because the only time I've been hit by the problem I fixed it manually (which took a lot less time than developing the code to do so) and since then I've simply avoided it.

 

[vtec]

ahh, very interesting. thanks for the response. i also found a way to bypass the problem while "keeping" the affected players. once i reduced my squad size to below 30, i sold the players, then bought them back as soon as i could. when brought back into the team, their growth bars returned allowing me to train them once again. you will probably make a small loss on the players, but if they are worth keeping, then it's a small price to pay.