EDT and DDT files?

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C O N T E N T S
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FM01: EDT FILES

FM02: DDT FILES

FM03: FAQ SECTION


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FM01:
=========================================
E D T F I L E S
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Intro
=====

EDT files, or 'Extra Data Files' are pretty powerful things - they can be used
to easily update your game data with new promotions & relegations,
international retirements, and more.
You can even make your own "Superleagues" - all without the need for a dodgy
unofficial patch or the use of an editor, and there's no risk of corrupting
your game data. And if you later decide to scrap all the changes you've made
and go back to the original you don't need to re-install CM, just delete or
de-activate your EDT file and start again.

The other, more sinister use for these files, is to cheat, and you can cheat
big time with these files. But cheating is BAD, so don't do it


How To Make An EDT File
=======================

All you need, in order to make one of these files is Windows Notepad, or any
other plain-text editor (MS Word and similar word processors don't really work
as they sneakily add formatting to your text, and this can stop the EDT file
from working).
It is simply a list of commands (one per line) telling the game to change
certain things about the game data when it creates a New Game. Instead of
saving a file as "whatever.txt" its needs to be saved as "whatever.edt" (I
usually call mine something like "update.edt". To do this remember to change
the "File Type" option to "All Files" on the Notepad save screen.


Here's a quick example of what the text inside an EDT file looks like:

"SWAP_TEAMS" "Celtic" "Wolverhampton Wanderers"
"BOOST_TEAM" "Aston Villa" 50000000 9000 75000

I'll explain what all that means and what it does later, but first here is a
list of the 5 commands that can be used, and what they do.

"SWAP_TEAMS" - This simply swaps two teams around. For example,
you can swap Celtic with Crystal Palace, so that
Celtic Will play in the English Premier League.

"BOOST_TEAM" - This boosts the reputation, bank balance and
stadium-size of any team. It can also be used to
decrease those things.

"CLUB_DEBT" - This sets a loan (either from the Bank or the
Club Chairman) for any team, and specifies how
long the loan lasts for.

"INT_RETIREMENT" - This command retires a player from international
football.

"STADIUM_CHANGE_FOR_COMP" - This tell FM to move a clubs home games (within a
specified competition) to a different stadium.
For example, some Israeli teams have to play
their home Champions League games in Cyprus.

"FUTURE_REGEN" - This lets you "put yourself into the game". In a
way.


Those Commands In Detail
========================

"SWAP_TEAMS"
------------
This is the simplest of all the commands but is very useful if you want to
add/remove the newly promoted/relegated teams in the leagues.
Another interesting use for this is to create "SuperLeagues" (more on those
later).

Examples:

"SWAP_TEAMS" "Rangers" "Crystal Palace"
"SWAP_TEAMS" "Celtic" "Norwich"
"SWAP_TEAMS" "AC Milan" "Boca Juniors"

Use:

For the team name you can use the full name or the short name from FM2005 - but
whichever you use it must be spelt EXACTLY as it is in the game itself,
including special characters, accents, etc.
So to avoid spelling problems you can use the "Unique ID" of the teams instead
(see Q2 & Q3 of the "FAQ Section" for help).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"BOOST_TEAM"
------------
This command is very useful if you want to give a team a helping hand. You can
give them extra money, change their reputation and change the size of their
stadium.

Examples:

"BOOST_TEAM" "Everton" 100000000 9500 75000
"BOOST_TEAM" "Arsenal" 1000 250 5000

Use:

Note that the command and the team name are in quotes ("". The numbers are
Bank Balance, Reputation and Stadium Size - without quotes.
The most you can set the bank balance to is 2900000000 (2.9 billion).
The reputation has to be a number between 100 - 10000 (100 is the reputation of
a tiny non-league team and 10000 is Real Madrid.
The stadium size can be any number you want. I've tried it with up 120000 but
I'm sure it would work with more.

If you want to leave any of the things as they are (e.g. change bank balance
but leave reputation and stadium-size as normal) just type in -1 for that
thing, e.g:

"BOOST_TEAM" "Everton" 100000000 -1 -1

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"CLUB_DEBT"
-----------

This command doesn't actually change the bank balance of a club (you need to
use BOOST_TEAM for that). It actually sets up a loan for the club (either from
the Bank or from the Club Chairman) which is paid back monthly over a set time.
It's mostly used to simulate real life loans that teams have but which are not
included in the game.

Examples:

"CLUB_DEBT" "80000000" "Leeds United" "5" "Bank"
"CLUB_DEBT" "20000000" "Bradford City" "10" "Chairman"

Use:

Unlike the BOOST_TEAM command above, all the parts of this command must be
enclosed in quotes ("" like in the example.
The money can be any amount up to 2.9billion (2900000000).
The team name must be spelt exactly as it is in the game (using either the
short name or the long name), or you can use the Unique ID numbers instead of
the names of the teams.
The number after the team is length of the loan (in years) - the maximum for
this is 20 years.
The final part of the command states where the loan has come from. This must
be either "Bank" or "Chairman".

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"INT_RETIREMENT"
----------------

As you can probably guess, this command makes a player retire from
international football (like England's Alan Shearer did a few years ago).
This can be useful if you want your player(s) to focus totally on playing for
the club and not be whisked off the South America, or wherever, for a friendly
every other week.
All you need to put is the player's name and his current club, but as the
example shows, you have to type the name in a pretty strange way.

Example:

"INT_RETIREMENT" "Ashley" "" "Cole" "Arsenal"
"INT_RETIREMENT" "Ahmed" "Mido" "Hossam" "Tottenham Hotspur"

Use:
The part with the club is simple enough - just type the club name or its ID
number.
The player name can be a bit more tricky if you've never used EDT files before.
It has 3 parts: First Name, Common Name, Last Name. The Mido example above
shows how this works for a player that has a common name, or nickname like
Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Adriano, etc. The nickname goes in between the First Name
and the Last Name.
For players who just have a 'normal' 2-part name you just put "" for the common
name, like in the Ashley Cole example above.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"STADIUM_CHANGE_FOR_COMP"
-------------------------

The realistic use for this command is to make it so that a team with a very
small stadium will temporarily move to a bigger stadium for big games, like
Champions League or UEFA Cup games.
But you don't just have to use it for that, you can make it so that Arsenal
play all their home Premiership games at the San Siro if you really want to.

Example:

"STADIUM_CHANGE_FOR_COMP" "Birmingham City" "1301394" "680"

Use:

The example above moves Birmingham City's home Champions League games (don't
laugh!) to Old Trafford.
Again, you can use the name of the club or the Unique ID number for the team
part. The next part is the Unique ID number of the league or cup that you want
them to move for. And the final part is the Unique ID number of the stadium
you want them to play at.


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"FUTURE_REGEN"
--------------

This command tells Fm to use certain details to create a re-generated player at
some point during the game. You can use this trick to put yourself and your
mates into the game - but how good the players are, where they play, when they
appear in the game and most other details will be totally random. If you want
control over that kind of stuff you'll need to use the data editor.

Example:

"FUTURE_REGEN" "Hank" "" "Jones" "09-04-1979" "United States" "FC Dallas"

Use:

The first 3 parts of this command are the player name (see the "International
Retirement" section above if you are unsure about player names).
The next part is the player's date of birth - which is pretty useless as the
date of birth will be totally random when the player is actually created - but
put one in anyway, just in case.
Next is the nationality of the player. Just make sure you spell the country
exactly as its spelt in FM2005.
And the last part is the player's favourite team - so if you're putting your
own details into the game just put the team you support here and it might just
increase your chances of playing for them one day.

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FM02:
=========================================
D D T F I L E S
=========================================


Intro
=====

DDT files are not as powerful as EDT files as they only really have one use -
to make more players available in you game.
If you play Football Manager on an old or slow computer you probably have to
set the database to one of the smaller sizes to make your game run fast enough.
The down side of this is that a lot of those young star players you've heard so
much about, probably wont appear in your game. DDT files give you a way around
this as they can tell the game to keep certain players in the game, no matter
what size database you play with.


How To Make a DDT File
======================

You do this in pretty much the same way as with EDT files (see 'How To Make An
EDT File' above). The only difference here is that the filename has to end with
".ddt" for example, "players.ddt".

There are only 2 commands for a DDT file, but you can use any many of each one
as you want in each file. The 2 commands are:

"RETAIN_PLAYERS"
----------------

With this command you specify the name of a club and then when the game loads,
it makes sure every single player (including youths and reserves) from that
club is loaded into the game, even if you play with a "Small" database.

Example:

"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Kaiser Chiefs"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Santos FC"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Wollongong United"

Make sure you spell the team name exactly as its spelt in the game and make
sure you put quotes ("" around the team name and the command like in the
example.

"RETAIN_NATION_PLAYERS"
-----------------------

Does pretty much the same as above except this time you specify a nation and
then when the new game is created, every single player of that nationality will
be loaded into the game.

Example:

"RETAIN_NATION_PLAYERS" "Turkey"
"RETAIN_NATION_PLAYERS" "Mexico"
"RETAIN_NATION_PLAYERS" "Guatemala"


What's The Point?
=================
Some people use these commands to make it so that every player in the entire
FM2005 database is loaded into their game, but you need a seriously powerful
computer to get away with that.
Most people just choose a few clubs or countries that have their favourite
star youngsters in, and load them into the game.

Also, in FM2005 there are a lot of national teams that you can't be the manager
of. This is because there has to b a certain amount of players from that
country in your game otherwise that country can't be managed by a human player.
You can use DDT files to load up all the players from a certain country and
make it more likely that you can become the manager of that national team.

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FM03:
===============================
F A Q S E C T I O N
===============================


Q1: Will EDT & DDT files work on my saved games?
A1: No. You have to start a new game for the commands to have any effect.

Q2: What is a Unique ID?
A2: Everything inside the Football Manager database is numbered. Every player,
stadium, league, award, club, city, etc they all have a unique ID number
and you can use this instead of the thing's name, in EDT files.

Q3: How do I find out the Unique ID of something?
A3: There are 2 ways. Firstly, you can load up FM2005 and in the game options
screen, tick the box that says "Show Unique ID's" ??? - then when you click
on a player/competition/club/etc its unique ID number will be displayed on
the title bar of that screen.
The second way is to load up the Official Data Editor, search for whatever
you want the number of, and when you select it the number is displayed in
the top-right corner of the screen. E.g. "(ID = 603)".

Q4: There used to be more commands than this in previous versions of the game -
where did they go?
A4: Yeah, there used to be a few more commands, like "FUTURE_TRANSFER" and
"LOAN", but as far as I know these are not supported by FM 2005. If I'm
wrong please let me know and I'll add them to this guide.

Q5: Where do I save these files to?
A5: Any EDT or DDT file must be saved in the "data\db" folder of your Football
Manager 2005 directory... (usually: "C:\Program Files\Sports Interactive\
Football Manager 2005\data\db" if you installed the game to the default
place).


If you have any questions that I haven't covered here just email me at:
[email protected] and I'll be happy to help.