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[FM12] American Soccer League Pyramid (Nne Tiers, Twelve+ Cups, Fictional)


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I would seriously love to give this database a shot. Unfortunately I have downloaded it but can't seem to figure out how to add it to Football Manager through Steam if someone could give me a step by step blow on how to go about this I would really appreciate it. Cheers!

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I would seriously love to give this database a shot. Unfortunately I have downloaded it but can't seem to figure out how to add it to Football Manager through Steam if someone could give me a step by step blow on how to go about this I would really appreciate it. Cheers!

Not difficult at all. You have to place the .dbc file in your Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2012/editor data folder. It doesn't matter whether you got the game from Steam or not. Good luck :)

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Found an annoying issue I ran into myself. The American Premier League has some kind of goofy name in the game, that doesn't appear in the database (I checked, and you have it named correctly). I had this same issue, and could never figure out where this value is hidden. Accept for that, I am having a fun time trying this out. I let it play a year, with no players created, just to see what talent the game would get. The top league has gotten some pretty varied international talent, with some good American younger players showing up as you go down the tiers. Just took over an abysmal Patriot league team that got relegated from select to league one, so I will have fun attempting to rebuild them to something other than the mess the last manager left me with.

I also changed the playoff structure a bit in the multi division league to make all the teams play in one league wide promotion playoff. I just like doing that, hope you don't mind. It hasn't broken anything, but could cause more "league churn" which you may have been trying to avoid.

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What name are you getting? I'm not seeing that on my side. I am starting to think there will be a lot of various issues because I started the data work on FM 2011 and crossed it over. But there was no way I was going to do all the leg-work twice.

I don't mind any alterations people make, I welcome it.

A side note there, though, that if you do create your own club, you will also have to manually make changes to some of the cup competitions(that is, if you want to be involved in the Youth National Cup and Regional Cups) which had all teams added manually. Same with Youth and reserve leagues, that you would need to alter the format a bit. Sorry it's that difficult, but the editor isn't very flexible when it comes to adding teams to and from cup competitions. It may very well be better just to alter an already existing club in a region you'd like to play in if you don't want to go through all that hassle.

Also, you had no problem editing? I've already gotten several messages of people unable to open the database in the editor. Glad to hear that it's not happening for everyone.

As for the adding fictional players or not. I'm torn on the issue more that I trial games. If you do, the top clubs don't sign near the level of players they do if you give them a blank slate. If you don't, it takes a good couple years for everything to really flesh out. For my own game, I've Added staff but no players, and simmed ahead 10 years. The only issue there being it took a good half of a day of my computer running to get it there.

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If you put it in your editor data folder, I believe the default is that it will automatically load the file on a new game start-up. When you are starting a game, is the game still defaulting to MLS?

When you start a new game and are selecting the database, at the bottom of that pop-up it should say that there is an editor data file enabled.

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I had no issue opening the file in the editor. It did take a bit to process, but it opened fine and I had no issues saving it (I did a save as to preserve your original file). I didn't create any other teams, there are more than enough already! :) The name of the Premier League in my game is Regional Division 2 for some reason, very strange. It doesn't effect anything like prestige, just the name.

I know what you mean about the game taking a bit to flesh out using non-created players. I took over a team that got relegated out of Patriot League Select, and they only had 4 "real" players, the rest were grays! This is not the case for most teams I find, it just happens here and there, and less as the game progresses. I find it a challenge to rebuild this team and make something of them, so I have no issue with it. Looking forward to some US internationals "coming home" and playing in this league.

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Great information. As I've said before, I have no problems with people making any changes to the database. So feel free to rename or change any thing you desire.

If you do rename them, let me know what you go with, and I'll make the changes before any future release so others will have a more aptly named team.

I actually have a backlog of name changes I need to implement.

And a more general comment because I've been asked this a couple times. I do ask that people do not release this database on another site or an altered one without clearing it with me first.

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I'm impressed with the amount of work put into the details. Seriously?! over 1,000 stadiums created!!...that is ridiculous! lol I can't imagine how much time that took on just that task alone. Any tips on how to speed up the process of data entry like that...like stadiums, city, jerseys? That by far is the most boring, agonizingly slow process of all this database stuff. I'm too embarrased to disclose on how much time i've spent on my unfinished database in just half a month, but then I see this and WOW. I need to step my game up! good luck, and look forward to seeing the finished product

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My thoughts exactly! Still playing around with this edit, because it is such a nice "base." I've now replaced the lowest tier with "state leagues" which hold teams from every state that are not in the current active leagues. The "fun" part here is to make sure that teams relegate to the correct state, which I think can be done with the regional league settings, but I have not tested this. I have created the state leagues, and will set the regional leagues on them and the division above and test a year to see if this works. While some of the states with low population have rediculous 2 team leagues, I think it would be fun to basically be any team that has been created here and try to bring them to the top. Was motivated to do this when I saw my town was in here, in the lower leagues. I am also planning on creating state cups, which will then feed into the regional cups already created, and then possibly feed into the US cup. Obviously this all needs to be tested, and I will not release it as this work is mostly not my work, but just shows the types of things you can do when somebody creates a great setup like this one. Thanks again for all your work!

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For my personal use: to the existing 800+teams, I've added another 2000 new teams, 500+ cities and 2000+ stadiums (all with Lat/Long) over the past few days - using .NET to add to the .XML file (I'm a programmer) - teams, cities and stadiums generated randomly from my database of US Cities and nicknames. All teams have kits with random colors/styles, stadiums have random settings/parameters. 1 stadium per team.

I have all the details worked out and a template file working nearly 100%. I'm in the process of converting Milo's file using the Advanced Panel. I've added a new top level (Level 1) - replicating the NFL when they had 30 teams, 6 divisions, 2 wildcards each league - all teams have kits and colors matching their NFL jerseys. All existing levels will be pushed down 1 (American Soccer Premier will become Level 2) with promotion/relegation into the NFL, readjusting the Reps and prize money and $. I also may create a separate file with the current 32 NFL teams and 4 divisions each league, but my ideal league structure is the 30 teams with 6 divisions (3 each league) - so working on that first.

I am changing the Soccer America Cup to include just the inactive teams (will include the 2000 new teams), with the winner of this Cup up for promotion into the lowest league level (Regionals). The Regional divisions will have a tournament of last place teams, with the loser of this tournament playing the Soccer American Cup winner for promotion/relegation.

I also will probably create separate .XML files - replicating MLB, NBA and NHL - replacing the NFL for Level 1. NBA and NHL would have 5 wildcards each league. For MLB, I may use the minor league system for levels 2, 3, 4.

I've got all of the details with the Advanced Editor hammered out and it's just a matter of recreating from my working template on this huge database.

Again, I'm working on this for my personal use only, but will share if OK with Milo. Would never make available without Milo's permission.

One drawback is, since SI is determined to put an end to the advanced panel, can only save advanced panel files in .XML. Compressed files with the advanced panel will no longer work in the game (since need to change a line of code after saving in the editor). I'm looking into ways around this with a hex editor. In the meantime, the .XML file is very large and takes a long while to load in the game.

I really like the idea of having thousands of teams, with promotion/relegation and with the possibility of rising up through the levels. But I'm also American and also really enjoy our playoff systems with separate divisions and unbalanced schedules. Playoffs at the top level really don't suite a single table structure very well. Playoffs are more suited for multiple divisions and leagues. Single tables are fine, but they get boring to me at times. I really like the postseason playoffs in American sports and the huge magnification of each game.

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No word of a lie, this database has reignited my love for FM.

I absolutely love the size and depth of the pyramid structure, and it's got just the right balance between reality and fiction for me to get immersed in it. It's very easy to convince myself that these teams could exist, with the stadium names, accurate regionalisation, kits etc. It's got me keeping one eye on Google for one reason or another, to learn more- even just looking up our stadium name, and finding what you based that on, put a smile on my face. Kudos to you, as the manager of the mighty Aurora Arrows, it's got me totally hooked, when I was already starting to fall out of love with FM12.

From an editing standpoint, the only real issue I've come across is an incredibly minor one- the colour scheme (black/dark grey) for Topeka Bison's name makes it very difficult to read. I only have a glancing knowledge of the editor, but since the colours don't match the badge/kit (yellow/green), I guess their headline text was just missed by accident when the kits were added. Easy enough to fix myself, but I figure it doesn't hurt to highlight it if there's a future version released on your end. Otherwise it's things which may well stylistic choices, rather than serious issues- Charlotte Bobcats S.C. & Henderson Transit S.C. being used as both long and short names for those teams, for example.

Thank you again for all the time and effort you've put into this, it's amazing.

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@Mike

It took a lot of coffee, MatchDay Live hooked up to my TV, FSC/GolTV, and a netflix subscription.

It took awhile and it was a grind. I'm not sure there's any other way to get around that, at least not with zero programming skills. I first filled up about two composition notebooks full of info, starting with the initial cities list broken down by states, their would be population bracket in FM, and their longitude/latitude. That was at the beginning of last summer. Basically, I just did one thing at a time, one state at a time, one region at a time which keep the process more fresh and quicker feeling than fleshing out each club one by one. The whole process took shape over time. At first I just had a bunch of cities, then those cities had clubs, then those clubs had stadiums, etc.

@Heath

Glad to hear you are finding a way to use it. I was fearful when I was getting all these messages about editing problems. Sounds like an ambitious and rewarding project if you get it all functioning. I'd certainly like to see it.

@dim13

Heck, with 2000 clubs, I think maybe even my hometown would represented.

You mentioned converting data into a file useable by FM. I saw one similar that added a wealth of American names by census data. Is that still possible? I think it would compliment a database like this and other American databases that expand past the normal parameters of MLS. Also would love to hear if it would be possible to match those names up to a newgen's ethnicity.

@Lawlore

Thanks for the catches. I'll look into them later this week when I finally sit back in front of the editor since the initial release.

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WARNING, I found an annoying niggle in the current editor. Some of the cups have more than 256 teams, which is fine, BUT, if you try to add a team, and then increase the NUMBER OF TEAMS number in the editor, it sets it back to 256! I had to basically throw out alot of work and reload from a previous save because of this, as I could find no way around it. Not sure if SI put this in to limit cup complexity, but it is annoying.

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Hey man.

Just a heads up- I've hit a conflict between your league and cup competitions which has brought the current game to a halt (not crashed, just unable to continue) and means I'll have to load a previous save to get around the situation. It's no biggie for me, but I figure I best make you aware of it in case anyone else encounters the same issue.

Basically, the league requires registration, whereas the cup (specifically, the Lamar Hunt Trophy) does not. This means that, as I've come to play a cup game, I've included unregistered players in my matchday squad (due to rotation, injuries etc.), and submitted a matchday team that the game has accepted as the confirmed matchday team. In doing that, however, these unregistered players do not have squad numbers, so I'm taken to the Squad Number assignment screen. As my registered squad consists of 25 players, I don't have any spare numbers to assign them, nor can they be changed out for other, registered players. I can't go forwards to the match without assigning squad numbers, nor can I go backwards to de-select the unregistered players from the matchday squad.

As the rules are different from the league in other respects (ie, youth player requirement), I'm not sure what your intention with the cup competitions was, whether they were due to use the same league-registered squad or not, or whether this is true of all of the cup competitions- I've not checked the rules for each individual one. As I've said previously, I'm unfortunately not overly familiar with the editor, so have no idea whether this could be rectified by allowing more squad numbers in cup competitions, not using squad numbers in cup competition, or simply forcing selection from the pool of registered players. For now, I'll go back to a previous save and then select solely from the registered squad for the game.

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For my personal use: to the existing 800+teams, I've added another 2000 new teams, 500+ cities and 2000+ stadiums (all with Lat/Long) over the past few days - using .NET to add to the .XML file (I'm a programmer) - teams, cities and stadiums generated randomly from my database of US Cities and nicknames. All teams have kits with random colors/styles, stadiums have random settings/parameters. 1 stadium per team.

Wait you wrote a program that generates all of that at random. Where could one get this program (along with this epic database)?

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I've seen the AI work strangely with registered squads as well. If I go to one of the squads that requires registration, I see alot of players with the tag "cannot be registered for next game" next to their name, even when it is within the registration window. I will admit I don't fully understand registration, so maybe this is normal. For now I will leave it alone, and work around the problem as Lawlore did, as this sounds like an SI issue and not an issue with the database to me.

Also kudos, for naming the Carmel, IN team "The Roundabouts." Made me actually laugh out loud, since that is where I live and I drive through several roundabouts daily!

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Wait you wrote a program that generates all of that at random. Where could one get this program (along with this epic database)?

Yes.

I haven't made the .NET program available. Up until this year it was much simpler, the ID#s for new teams, cities, stadiums, etc used to generated sequentially, but this year SI changed to generating ID numbers randomly. It's not as plain and simple as just running the program - I need to do some manual steps. Since the new ID# are now random, first I needed to create 2000 blank IDs (just hit the ADD new club button 2000x, and ADD new stadium 2000x). Then I ran the .NET script to read in the newly generated ID# to a database, the program created random teams, kits, cities, stadiums, etc from these new IDs and generates a temp.xml file with new XML code. I then copy and paste the temp.XML into the live.XML file in the appropriate location (in the "dbch" section) and reopen the live.XML file with the editor. The most time consuming part was manually creating the blank IDs - took me about 45 minutes to create 2000 blank IDs with the editor.

I have an Access database of 45,000+ US Cities with Lat/Long and population I've compiled over the years - I've downloaded data from various websites and loaded into my table, and another table with 2200+ nicknames. These 2 tables are part of a sim game I've been working on over the years - Dodgeball Manager. Haven't worked on the game in a long time and may or may not ever finish it.

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This is one of the most ambitious American projects I have seen! A recommendation I would make is to have leagues based first on in state rivalries (or near the border of an adjacent state) with compatible population levels a secondary consideration. There are very little potential derby matches in this setup which here in the US means any team within a 150 mile (300 km) radius. Also, the creation of team rivals in the future would be an excellent addition.

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Just a quick update. I have created State Leagues and cups now. The state leagues are not perfect, as the game will keep the original league size no matter what, so I had to add some rudimentary state borders to at least keep silly things happening like an Illinois team in the California state leagues. The state cups do not have this problem as I individually put each team in the cup per state. I also changed the regional cups to be pre-season, and consist of the winners of the state cups for that region.

Some other small changes I made was to put a playoff in the American Premier league for the championship, and some extra money, and give all the premier league teams in cold weather areas a stadium with a retractable roof. I am testing things now, and plan to begin playing soon. I of course will not release this, as most of it isn't my work.

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Hi !

I have a problem. When you choose this add-on, gives me an error.

Beztytuuj_rrphanp.jpg

Please help :(

Thank You :)

Did you try and upload the league with any other custom databases? Through testing I found that my database doesn't play nice with others, particularly with those databases that created other clubs?

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Great work Milo Bloom!!!:thup: Wow I can't believe you even have my town which is a small place. I'm definitely gonna give this a go. Thank you so much, I always tried and create my own USA league in each new FM but this my friend is fantastic work.

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As expected the state leagues tend to "re-balance" over the years as teams go up and down, so a team in a different state tends to only be a one year thing, which I can live with. The retractable Roof idea seems to not work, however, as the teams seem to leave it open even when it is snowing/sleeting! I guess I will just live with teams having to play in crappy weather. I did put a break in the state leagues that are in cold weather areas so they do not play in Jan/Feb, however.

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Milo, if you give me permission to release it, I'd be glad too. Just don't want to "step on your toes" so to speak. Let me know if you give me permission, and I will create another thread, and credit you for all the team and league work you have done. That way people will have a choice of playing either version. I'll check this thread for your permission.

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Milo, if you give me permission to release it, I'd be glad too. Just don't want to "step on your toes" so to speak. Let me know if you give me permission, and I will create another thread, and credit you for all the team and league work you have done. That way people will have a choice of playing either version. I'll check this thread for your permission.

bump. Milo ?

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Just a quick update. I have created State Leagues and cups now. The state leagues are not perfect, as the game will keep the original league size no matter what, so I had to add some rudimentary state borders to at least keep silly things happening like an Illinois team in the California state leagues. The state cups do not have this problem as I individually put each team in the cup per state. I also changed the regional cups to be pre-season, and consist of the winners of the state cups for that region.

Some other small changes I made was to put a playoff in the American Premier league for the championship, and some extra money, and give all the premier league teams in cold weather areas a stadium with a retractable roof. I am testing things now, and plan to begin playing soon. I of course will not release this, as most of it isn't my work.

How do you do the retractable roof?

As for your illinois team in cali, alter the clubs' regional divisions and change the regional divisions to have a low minimum and a high maximum in terms of clubs

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Sorry. It's a busy time for me.

As long as I'm given credit for my work and the file made remains free of charge for anyone to download, then I'm okay with altered versions being released. A link back to the original thread would be nice, not because I prefer my database over others, but that I put in hours upon hours of work, and selfishly I would like some credit for it.

That said, I still would like a PM/message here before a release like Heath has done. Again, please don't release without asking me.

Take this as your permission, Heath. Can't wait to see it.

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  • 8 months later...

Don't know if it's of any interest to anyone but myself, but I am putting together a logopack for this pyramid. At the moment, I'm working my way from top to bottom, and am about half-way through the second tier (ANL), so there's a fair way to go yet.

2jerdvp.jpg

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The link doesn't work, re-up, please..

@Lawlore: i'd like to have your logo pack for all the team of this release, please ;)

P.S.: I'm Italian, sorry for my not perfect English ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just back from a holiday, will crack on with the logopack and get it posted once I've completed the third tier. I'm currently working my way through the third tier.

2nizls8.jpg

With Milo's permission, I'll update another slightly modified version of the database alongside it.

The major DB changes are stylistic ones, mostly relating to team names:

- I have removed all short names which include state names in parenthesis, which had been kept by Milo in the case of two places with the same name. Now, teams with a significantly greater reputation receive the town name as a short name, while the smaller team receives their full name as their short name. For example, Portland Stumps, based in Oregon, are in Tier 3 and have a short name as "Portland". Portland Phoenix, based in Maine, are in Tier 9, with both their short and long name the same.

- All FC, SC and AC were removed from short names.

- In terms of the six-letter name field, all teams with a three-letter uppercase abbreviation were replaced by a standard one. For example, Houston's changed from "HOU" to "Houst" .

- A few lower-league teams have been renamed for various reasons, usually as a result of the parenthesis abolition- they either look unwieldy as short names (Rochester Mountaineers became Rochester Lilacs), or there were a number of teams from towns with the same name (e.g. Springfield).

- The highest profile renaming was Nashville Wranglers becoming Nashville A-Team, to provide a link with the city's musical background.

- Any necessary fixes that I'd stumbled upon during my save relating to things like clashing text colours or minor typos have been fixed.

- I have not touched anything to do with the competitions, nor have I relocated any existing teams.

Although this version of the database would not include them, I have also made a start to adding rivalries between local clubs. At the moment, I'm going state-by-state, but that's gonna be a longer-term project, methinks.

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Of course.

I'm currently waiting for the new editor to be released to see if this work will be usable in FM 13. As the patches/db updates came, I started seeing more and more errors. And it was impossible to get any other DB to run alongside it. It was frustrating because I did little altering. Most of the work was created from scratch.

Fingers crossed.

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Of course.

I'm currently waiting for the new editor to be released to see if this work will be usable in FM 13. As the patches/db updates came, I started seeing more and more errors. And it was impossible to get any other DB to run alongside it. It was frustrating because I did little altering. Most of the work was created from scratch.

Fingers crossed.

I'm with ya :)

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This is the coolest thing I have yet to see for Football Manager. What an effort! I'm torn between playing the beta and firing up 2012 to try this out.

Here's to hoping for a smooth transition between FM12 and the FM13 editors. I have a feeling quite alot of additional work would be needed with the DoF and DoYD roles added though.

Very well done guys!

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