djdan94
11 years ago
3 months ago
6
First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm djdan94, 21 years old. I've been doing editing stuff for a few years now, mainly for Pro Cycling Manager and Football Manager. I'm one of the main developers of the PCM.daily Expansion Pack (known as haasje33) for Pro Cycling Manager. For FM I've done some personal projects before, but I've never gone public with them. This time I'm planning an even bigger project and I'm going to need help to make it as perfect as possible.

The idea is to create the entire Dutch football pyramid, from the Eredivisie down to the Vijfde Klasse (the lowest amateur division for first teams). This means I want to add competitions to a total of 152 active divisions containing 2166 clubs.

For now I'm concentrating on adding all teams and creating the divisions with realistic promotion/relegation. After this I will add a few youth divisions and add some key players to the more important teams. Ideally I will have at least one real player in each team.

The stuff I need help with is mainly the graphical stuff. I want to add the logos of all divisions and teams, but I fear that my motivation will be down to 0 by the time I get to that point. Also, many clubs won't have the right kits, so that's something that needs attention as well. Does anyone want to help me with this?

There's one other thing I'm struggling with at the moment. In the Netherlands we know 6 different districts in which the competitions have sub-divisions. What I've been trying to do for a while is making sure that teams from one district don't end up in a competition from another district. I haven't succeeded in this yet. Does anyone have an idea how to solve this?

I've attached a preview with the first 6 tiers done.
djdan94
11 years ago
3 months ago
6
Does anyone have an idea how to solve the problem with the districts?
Timetxu
14 years ago
2 years ago
6
Hi Djdan,

First of all, great you're trying to tackle this problem! I am Dutch myself too, so I'd love to have the entire pyramid playable. I tried having a go at this as well, but after I had created all existing amateur teams in Limburg (as I'm a Limburger myself), I completely lacked the motivation to do the other 11 provinces and ended up creating an extra nation in the game with a national Limburgish league, cup etc.

I do have some tips for you:

- If it comes to the colorrs of the shirt, I've always found the sites www.voetbalnederland.nl and www.hollandsevelden.nl very helpful. As a graphical touch to the site they have added a little home shirt and shorts next to all the team names, which gives you a pretty accurate idea of the home kits. For the away kits, I've always used the exact opposite colour pattern, or a white version of the shirt with their primary colour in there as the second colour. It would be a ridiculous amount of work to find accurate away shirts, so I suggest you to drop that idea.

- If it comes to the districts and the promotion/relegation: From the Topklasse downwards to the 3e Klasse, everything is pretty straightforward as most districts have one Topklasse, one Hoofdklasse, one 1e Klasse, 2 2e Klasses and 4 3e Klasses. Below, some districts have not enough teams or there are more or less leagues than the league above, which makes creating promotion/relegation rules a bit tricky. For example: the Zuid II Sunday district has 8 4e Klasses and 9 5e Klasses. You'd have to find a common denominator to make promotion and relegation work, but the first denominator is 72, which would mean that a ridiculous amount of teams have to relegate and promote at the end of every season. I suggest you just try and put 8 or 16 relegation and promotion spots between the two leagues and click Test Nation Rules and let FM do the thinking for you (or maybe add an extra playoff system, as exists in real life as well).

- I have seen this project tried before and to more or less make the district system work on a geographical basis, it would mean that you have to add all the preferred leagues in the teams information screen in case of promotion or relegation. For example, for my hometown amateur team, EVV (playing in third tier Topklasse Sunday), you would have to add Eredivisie, Jupiler League, Topklasse Sunday, Sunday Hoofdklasse B, Sunday 1e Klasse D, Sunday 2e Klasse G, Sunday 3e Klasse Zuid II C, Sunday 4e Klasse Zuid II C, Sunday 5e Klasse Zuid II C. If you add that, FM will automatically calculate the ideal leagues (geographically) for all the teams at the start of the new season as you have also had to put longitude and latitude for the stadium's location and FM will try and find the teams together which are the least distance apart. If you want to have a good geographical idea of which region encompasses every single league, I suggest you visit www.hollandsevelden.nl , as they included a map of the spread of the teams of every league when you click on the league's page (very helpful!). I've seen the problem been tackled succesfully this way in earlier attempts to create the Dutch league structure, so it'll eventually pay off.

If you have any other questions, I'd love to help and think this plan through. I'm always happy when people try and install the Dutch structure as my editor skills are good enough, but not THAT good.

djdan94
11 years ago
3 months ago
6
Status update
I've been busy for the past few weeks, so I haven't made the progress I wanted so far. However, I did manage to finish creating the teams and leagues today, as well as creating the rules for all leagues.

Next, I'll be creating all kits. I've done the kits up to the Eerste Klasse, so I still have to do most of them. Using voetbalnederland.nl is a great tip, thanks for that! Also, creating the league preferences is quite a big part to tackle. Hopefully I can pull this off in the next few days before Christmas.

If I have the time to do it, I'll create the youth leagues up to the Vierde Divisie (fourth division). But again, Christmas is my deadline for the database editing, because I want to spend the second week of my vacation actually playing the game.

After the holidays I will try to add as many logos as possible. I will probably be able to release a pack by the end of January.

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