Advertising boards

[Lyngby]

Hello 

Is it possible to ad more advertising board for special competions EFL, EPL and UEFA competisions CL, EL and Conf L ?  I mean both the static and dynamic ad boards.

Henrik

[alian62]

THE CONFIG FILE, OR HOW TO ADD YOUR OWN IMAGES/CLUBS/LEAGUES

Many of you may want to tweak this file and make it your own, by adding your own images, adding even more to your favorite club/league, or adding in a club or league that isn't in the file. Some of you may know how to do this, but here's a little intro for those who may not have done this before....

1. Open the config file, which of course is the fm.xml file in the ads folder. Please make sure that you're opening it in a text editor that can handle xml files properly; some basic ones may not be able to and may render the saved result unreadable by the game. I'm on a mac, for instance, and something basic like TextEdit doesn't seem to work. I use a free software for mac called TextWrangler (now BBEdit), but there are probably plenty of others that are useful.

2. The config file is basically broken down into three sections: 1, an area that gives each image a record id#, and tells the game where those images are located; 2, an "integer value" section, that connects those images' record id#'s to the ID# of the club/competition (ie, the images will connect with the clubs), and finally a smaller long list at the end, which basically tells the game that any club listed can accept video ads if needed, by using their id#. (This year's game needs to be told this, otherwise the video adboards will be blank).

For my file, I've basically given each club about 10 images, sometimes 20, and every now and again 30-40. Usually it's just 10, each named 1-10, because that way it was very easy to simply copy and paste to mass-reproduce the names. 

3. Here's an example of one club, wolfsburg: First the record id's, which tells the game that id#'s 2500-2509 are linked to images 1-10 in the wolfsburg folder. Record ID # 2500 is image1 in the wolfsburg folder, etc etc.

           
                <!-- wolfsburg ads -->
        <record id="2500" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/1"/>
        <record id="2501" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/2"/>
        <record id="2502" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/3"/>
        <record id="2503" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/4"/>
        <record id="2504" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/5"/>
        <record id="2505" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/6"/>
        <record id="2506" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/7"/>
        <record id="2507" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/8"/>
        <record id="2508" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/9"/>
        <record id="2509" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/10"/>

 And then the integer list, with list id equalling wolfsburg club id# in the game: 

            <!-- wolfsburg-->
            <list id="961">
                <integer value="2500"/>
                <integer value="2501"/>
                <integer value="2502"/>
                <integer value="2503"/>
                <integer value="2504"/>
                <integer value="2505"/>
                <integer value="2506"/>
                <integer value="2507"/>
                <integer value="2508"/>
                <integer value="2509"/>
                <integer value="2500"/>
                <integer value="2501"/>
                <integer value="2502"/>
                <integer value="2503"/>
                <integer value="2504"/>
                <integer value="2505"/>
                <integer value="2506"/>
                <integer value="2507"/>
                <integer value="2508"/>
                <integer value="2509"/>
                <integer value="2500"/>
                <integer value="2501"/>
                <integer value="2502"/>
                <integer value="2503"/>
                <integer value="2504"/>
                <integer value="2505"/>
                <integer value="2506"/>
                <integer value="2507"/>
                <integer value="2508"/>
                <integer value="2509"/>
            </list>

If you notice those 2500-2509 image records are repeated several times, in this case to 30 images. The game actually can read up over 100 image lines, or more (depending on the stadium), so in theory you could create 100 or more separate images, then place them strategically around the stadium. Needless to say, this was too much for me with over 700 clubs to work on; also, each stadium has a different layout, so the image #'s in one stadium's north end may be different than another stadiums, and where image #2 or 4 is in one stadium could be in another place with another stadium. It seems accepted that you can have about 30-45 lines for each club. Some of the records even only have 10 lines, one for each image#; this seemed to work as well, though it seemed like it encourage the game to place in more league ads to fill things up. Feel free to play around. You could even tweak it so that you could have images of a Curva Sud in the south end, etc etc. 

ADDING MORE IMAGES TO A CLUB ALREADY IN THE FILE

-So, say you want to add more 10 images to Wolfsburg. You'll need to create more record id#'s, but before that you'll want to make sure that those record id#'s don't already exist. To make it somewhat simpler, I tried to group all the id#'s according to nation or region. You can see it by browsing through the file (8000-9000 has Italy, 2000-3000 Germany, etc), but an easy way is to copy and paste all the record id's into a new document, then sort by line# and numerically. This will give you an easy way to see what #'s are free.

In this case, maybe the easiest way is to just add an extra zero to Wolfsburg's existing 2500-2509 image files, and name the new ones of 2500-2509, 25000-25009. (Simple way is to copy the existing ones, and find and replace "250" with "2500," so it's done automatically). Since we already have 1-10 Wolfsburg image files, we'll want to name the new images 11-20. So here's what we'll have now....

        <record id="2500" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/1"/>
        <record id="2501" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/2"/>
        <record id="2502" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/3"/>
        <record id="2503" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/4"/>
        <record id="2504" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/5"/>
        <record id="2505" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/6"/>
        <record id="2506" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/7"/>
        <record id="2507" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/8"/>
        <record id="2508" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/9"/>
        <record id="2509" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/10"/> (1-10 existing ones)
        <record id="25000" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/11"/>
        <record id="25001" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/12"/>
        <record id="25002" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/13"/>
        <record id="25003" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/14"/>
        <record id="25004" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/15"/>
        <record id="25005" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/16"/>
        <record id="25006" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/17"/>
        <record id="25007" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/18"/>
        <record id="25008" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/19"/>
        <record id="25009" path="pictures/ads/europe/germany/clubs/wolfsburg/20"/> (11-20 new ones)

After that, we'll change the new integer list to this....

            

            <!-- wolfsburg-->
            <list id="961">
                <integer value="2500"/>
                <integer value="2501"/>
                <integer value="2502"/>
                <integer value="2503"/>
                <integer value="2504"/>
                <integer value="2505"/>
                <integer value="2506"/>
                <integer value="2507"/>
                <integer value="2508"/>
                <integer value="2509"/>
                <integer value="25000"/>
                <integer value="25001"/>
                <integer value="25002"/>
                <integer value="25003"/>
                <integer value="25004"/>
                <integer value="25005"/>
                <integer value="25006"/>
                <integer value="25007"/>
                <integer value="25008"/>
                <integer value="25009"/>
                <integer value="2500"/>
                <integer value="2501"/>
                <integer value="2502"/>
                <integer value="2503"/>
                <integer value="2504"/>
                <integer value="2505"/>
                <integer value="2506"/>
                <integer value="2507"/>
                <integer value="2508"/>
                <integer value="2509"/>
                <integer value="25000"/>
                <integer value="25001"/>
                <integer value="25002"/>
                <integer value="25003"/>
                <integer value="25004"/>
                <integer value="25005"/>
                <integer value="25006"/>
                <integer value="25007"/>
                <integer value="25008"/>
                <integer value="25009"/>
            </list>

(repeating 1-20 twice to have 40 lines).

After that, just make sure to add in the new 11-20 image files into the wolfsburg folder, restart the game, reload the cache, and you should be good to go. Images should be png files, NOT jpgs, as the game won't recognize jpg files. Feel free to add as many as you'd like. 

Adding a new club is a similar thing. The first record ID section will give your images a record ID, and then a pathway to find them. Say we love the team Bishop Auckland in the UK (id#610). First we'll create a folder called "bishop auckland" with 10 png images of the team, named 1-10. Make sure that the folder name DOES not have any capital letters; for some reason the game won't read them correctly.) We'll place that folder in the pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs" area. Then we see that in the UK config file, all the UK clubs have #'s from 4000-6000, though there are a few gaps with room for new clubs, including all the 4700's. So let's choose 4700-4709 as the new record id's for bishop auckland, and create this text....

        
        <!-- bishop auckland ads -->
        <record id="4700" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/1"/>
        <record id="4701" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/2"/>
        <record id="4702" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/3"/>
        <record id="4703" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/4"/>
        <record id="4704" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/5"/>
        <record id="4705" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/6"/>
        <record id="4706" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/7"/>
        <record id="4707" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/8"/>
        <record id="4708" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/9"/>
        <record id="4709" path="pictures/ads/europe/england/clubs/bishop auckland/10"/>

PS The video ads are located in a different spot, in the simatch_viewer_uncompressed folder: here is their "route".....

<record id="4710" path="video_ads/england/clubs/bishop auckland/team ad" animated="true"/>

Same with the integer list, making sure to add the correct club id# for the team....

    
            <!-- bishop auckland  -->
            <list id="610">
                <integer value="4701"/>
                <integer value="4702"/>
                <integer value="4703"/>
                <integer value="4704"/>
                <integer value="4705"/>
                <integer value="4706"/>
                <integer value="4707"/>
                <integer value="4708"/>
                <integer value="4709"/>
                <integer value="4010"/>
                <integer value="4701"/>
                <integer value="4702"/>
                <integer value="4703"/>
                <integer value="4704"/>
                <integer value="4705"/>
                <integer value="4706"/>
                <integer value="4707"/>
                <integer value="4708"/>
                <integer value="4709"/>
                <integer value="4010"/>
                <integer value="4701"/>
                <integer value="4702"/>
                <integer value="4703"/>
                <integer value="4704"/>
                <integer value="4705"/>
                <integer value="4706"/>
                <integer value="4707"/>
                <integer value="4708"/>
                <integer value="4709"/>
                <integer value="4010"/>
                <integer value="4701"/>
                <integer value="4702"/>
                <integer value="4703"/>
                <integer value="4704"/>
                <integer value="4705"/>
                <integer value="4706"/>
                <integer value="4707"/>
                <integer value="4708"/>
                <integer value="4709"/>
            </list>

(make sure that last "</list>" is there after each team section, otherwise the ENTIRE FILE will not work. Trust me). Also if you have a video ad, you only need to add it once, preferably at the beginning.

Finally, in the last section of the config file, add this line....

            <record id="610" led_force_flag="false" concatenate_next="true"/> 

610 is bishop's club ID. force_flag "false" means that it won't normally show video ads, but will (concatenate_next="true") if the team ever makes it to a competition that requires them, like the EPL or the Champions League. Or you could do true/true, so they always showed them, your call.

Finally, adding images for a league or competition is similar. The leagues/competitions are listed before the clubs, usually A-Z by nation. (I tried, anyway). If a league already exists and you want to add more images, it's the same process as adding images for a club. Just remember that for static ads, the club takes precedent over the league, so any club with static ads will show those instead of league ads. If a league has video ads, though, they will show along with the club static ones.

That's it. A simple way to do all of this is to copy a prior teams records, say barnsley (which has records of 4200-4209), do a find-and-replace of 'barnsley' to 'bishop auckland,' and "42" to "47," which will change all the 4200-4209 to 4700-4709, quickly. This is why I chose the 1-10 # system, as a quick way to reproduce everything.