Still plowing through PLA setup - got the 3rd level done and I'm 1/2 way through level 4. I'll post the DB after I'm done with that - it will still need levels 5 and 6 to be "americanized" with team names, but no other detail since they are unplayable.

So am I counting this right? You're making 412 American teams?

I'f I'm lucky. I'm acutally only creating the playable teams, so that is 14+16+(2x16)+(6x12)=134 minus the MLS teams already in place - so about 120. The rest of them will just be city names to fill out the unplayable leagues - unless you want your lower levels to read like an Ikea catalog.

:D

C'mon Toddzilla its been over an hour..are you done yet??

FYI...My Israeli League swap crashed after 2nd season, I spent all night last night trying to figure out what the hell I screwed up.

Starting fresh tonight on N.Ireland/Ireland swap with Canada/USA...

But I am really looking forward to yours...

Are you sure about needing to switch them to Canada in this version? I was playing around and it looked like the league I switched over to US retained their own rules and there was none of the wacky MLS crap involved.

I can confirm this also....But , I did have a crash that I cant explain.

Have you played through two full seasons yet?

Right, I guess I meant city names. How are you deciding on what city names to use?

So far, I've just picked familiar ones to me. When I get to the lower recesses, I'm going to lean heavily on Wikipedia and any other source that will hopefully have a list of cities sorted by population. At that point, I'll just pick em, probably leaning on the easy to spell and short ones.

Not *positive*, but that little detail seemed to the be the enabler last year, whereas the league didn't work correctly unless we used Canada as the home country.

It will be interesting to see if Sweden's 3-non-EU rule will cause any bad stuff to happen.

Keep your pants on - 12 teams to go ;)

Quadruple Dola - God Bless the WARN Act :D

How much do I need to campaign to get Grand Rapids in a playable league? Eh, don't worry about it -- if it's not, I'll just put it in myself.

Yeah, I'll just put teams where I want them once I get my hands on it. I'm excited about it, it's the only league I bother to play with anymore, because it's so much better than MLS.

:) AC Grand Rapids is in - the Whitecaps (from a local sports team I believe) - the American Second Division Great Lakes.

Stop posting and wrap it up Todd.:)

Has anyone played with the patch applied yet? Are closing down and too many goals/ disallowed goals fixed?

Have not played but from what I have read both are fixed.

Only new "major" bug that has popped up is a financial bug that is has been noted and fixed for offical patch.

Anyone tried the patch with a copy of WWSM?

Moderately curious if it's just a matter of renaming the executable.

I remember for Boxed version of WSM2005 I used a FM patch and worked fine.

Well, I'll be the guinea pig. Let you know momentarily.

And that would be a negative on it working.

PLA step one is done, but it is UNTESTED. I have no idea if it will fire up, so download and install at your own risk. Drop it in the c:/your documents/SI/WWSM/db folder. The DB is named PLA, and you'll need to select Canada to play - if it works that is.

I've tried to give some semblance of financial parity among the levels, so I've given the level one teams on the order of $10M, $1M to level 2, $100K to level 3, and $10K to level 4. I've also added ticket prices to give the teams a source of income. All of these may need to be adjusted to keep the teams afloat.

Also, I haven't done anything to the unplayable levels 5 and 6, so they still have Swedish teams. Again, think Ikea catalog.

If anyone has any ideas for improvements, please post them here. I'll continue to tinker and post results. Have fun!

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/65440689/PLA.zip

Anyone else simming some "history" of the league(s) they plan on running, while waiting for the first official patch? I have been on holiday in my game, and just reached the year 2011. I think I will probably sim to the year 2050 before taking over as a manager somewhere.

The recommended setup given to me for my computer when I clicked on that button on the new game screen was England (top 4 leagues), Spain (top 2 leagues), Italy (top 2 leagues), Germany (top league), Mexico (top 2 leagues), and USA (MLS), for 12 leagues in 6 countries. I deleted the 2 Mexican leagues and the MLS, and then added a second German league and the top 2 French leagues. So, my game has 12 leagues in 5 countries using a small database.

It took 6 and one half hours to sim 3 and one half years, so my guess is that it will probably take somewhere around 100 hours to sim 40 more years as each year will probably take a little longer to sim then the last one.

I have also been running a test league where I have been getting use to the interface and controls, since this is the "first" version of Football Manager I have purchased. The last version I purchased was CM03/04.

BAH! Canada isn't a selectable country in the PLA - let me see if I can find the bug.

I'm downloading it now. I'll take a look at it too.

I usually sim to about 2022 or so as none of theoriginal players are there or they are up there in age.

I usually sim to about 2022 or so as none of theoriginal players are there or they are up there in age.

I think it may be the fact I didn't touch the unplayable leagues. I'm going to swap all of those teams now - make the 50 or so Canadian unplayables Swedish and the 400 or so Swedish unplayables Canadian.

Point-Click-fest underway.

ALL teams that were formerly in Sweden are now labeled in Canada and vice-versa. Uploading the updated DB to the same place. Canada still, however, cannot be selected.

Any tips on how to troubleshoot this? I've followed "Dave's" rules to the letter.

Well, one troubleshooting tip I've discovered is the ability to view all of the worldwide clubs, then filter by country. If you filter for Canada, only a handful of teams show up, so there's got to be something wrong with the other teams not to be recognized. For example, most of the MLS teams swapped over show up, but San Jose doesn't.

Trying to figure it out now, too.

I just made the Champions League final winning 6-5 on aggregate against Barcelona, drawing the first leg 2-2 at home and then winning the second leg with a stunning 4-3 win in the Nou Camp.

You'd figure the fans would be delighted, but no, the end of the month has come and the board has just informed me that it's going to take the fans some time to get over the 2-2 draw in the first leg :D

They seem to take the League Cup a little bit too seriously as well, hopefully this is tweaked in the patch even if it doesn't have a huge effect on the gameplay.

Carlos Tevez is such a hero, his Nou Camp hat-trick has him up to 26 goals and 19 assists on the season. :cool:

My thinking on the PLA is this...

If we can't work out the bugs that are keeping Canada from being selectable, I've got a backup plan that gets us 99% there.

I can edit the DB to do everything but swap Canada and Sweden. That is, change the competition names, award names, add the extra US teams, and then just use an .edt file to swap the teams. The upside is no worrying about if the league will be selectable - the .edt file doesn't affect that. The downside is the PLA will be in Sweden. That means Swedish regens and Swedish rules. We may be able to work around some of that, but this is all a Plan B if we can't get my original PLA DB worked out. Shurg.

I played around with it last night and noticed that the original Canadian leagues were still in Canada. I moved them to sweden with Canada's TLA, but that didn't make it playable.

Dave on the SI boards said that it works for him, but that some countries simply don't work.

But this solution you propose is a good middle ground. And we can always change the language for Sweden to English, Spanish and whatever so that the PLA's future players don't sound they're coming out of the Swedish Parliament.

I was going to attempt a different nation to make sure the whole thing works at all in the meantime.

Sounds good - it is really acting odd, but there has got to be a pattern we are missing - to bad Quiksand isn't interested in the PLA, he'd sniff it out in a hurry:

When I start a game with the PLA database, Canada is not a selectable nation and neither is Sweden. So I'll start a game with another country, Scotland for example, just to get the game going. I take over a team and then go to World -> Major Clubs - View All. That brings up every club in the game. Then I'll filter on Canada, and lo and behold, some of the teams are visible. Most of the former MLS teams, a few teams I created, and an odd lower division team. Going back into the database, I'm unable to decipher the difference between a team that was visible like DC United and one that isn't like the Grand Rapids Whitecaps. I'll keep testing to see what I edit and how affects what teams show up. I think getting every team visible to the game is what will allow the country to be selectable.

Dola - Never mind that....

Pulling up a game with the original database does the same thing - only some of the country's teams show up. There doesn't seem to be a pattern as to what clubs are viewable. Drat.

What is everyone using for FM08 graphics

Toddzilla - I looked at yours and could not figure out what issue(s) are. I will take another look at tonight.


After my Israel swap not working and now Toddzillas, I decided to try a true Canada swap ( leaving all USA leagues alone) as a test to see if there are other issues with the editor. I found the South African with two playable divisions , 4 Cup competitions & 87 total clubs and it seemed like the best and quickest swap to test. There are 44 Canadian clubs in the database, so I had to create 43 Canadian clubs which was not to bad.

I simmed 4 seasons with no crashes, hooray!!

After thinking about it, I am truly looking forward to MLS in this latest version. The Superliga, new playoff format and DP slot has potential for fun. I think after some patching the MLS will be a solid challange and immersive. So, I am going to fine tune my Canadian league to be a "lower" league to MLS.

I spent most the day, wife and kids at inlaws, tweaking . All I am left with is creating rivalries & a few stadiums for non playable divisions. I will upload probably tomorrow or monday and you guys are free to do what ever you want with it. I prefer lower league play and have it set up as such.

Note : I do not plan on filling rosters with players for created teams. So a few seasons of simming will be required for clubs to sign and fill out their roster.

Found an error with WSM Editor, it saves your edited database under FM2008, you'll need to move it to the WSM2008 directoy to be able to choose it.

Not sure exactly what you're saying, but I have WWSM08, and the databases I create and save are put in the proper WWSM08 directory.

The CD version is putting them in a FM2008 directory

Ordered my copy today!

I'm patiently waiting for my copy from Amazon, even though i could DD it from SI. I wanted to support the American CD version.

Either way you're getting WWSM instead of FM right? Amazon don't deserve the business with such a shambolic release IMO.

Plus, not having to put the CD in each time you have to play is nice.

There's ways around that. Besides, I just like having a hard copy -- and I can't play until 11/6 anyway.

I think you will notice more than "a little" slowdown when you get a few years in. The slowdown seems to increase exponentially.

I've always had elicensing issues in the past, first time I got the CD version.

FWIW, I'm working through the second shot at a PLA in Sweden, and I'm saving after every couple of steps, firing up the game, and verifying that Sweden loads. So far so good.

My WWSM CD showed up today. Not yet having a patch, I decided to fire it up and just fiddle around a bit. Started off unemployed, sunday-league footballer experience. Went on holiday until offered a job. First offer? Racing (La Liga). Ugh.

amazon can blow me with the way they've tooled this up. Not that i'd play without the patch, but I want my goddamm cd

It has nothing to do with Amazon (at least if you pre-ordered). Somewhere between SI and Sega, the ball was dropped (probably by Sega). Amazon did not even have stock until the 24th. Why? Because someone somewhere thought the 23rd was the "ship" date. The date to ship to costomers? NO! The date for Sega to ship to retailers! At least that's my understanding of the situation per one of the SI guys on their message board. Now, If Amazon is still sitting on your recent order, then that's their fault.

Cool. I messed around with some stuff earlier. I noticed in your earlier league, that the original Canadian leagues were still in Canada. But other than that, I couldn't get my league swaps to work either, though I didn't try very hard...because last year, the whole process made my head hurt and I just wasn't up for that today.

But I'm glad you're all over it. :)

OK, something is screwy with starting off unemployed in this version. My holiday finally stopped again when Recretivo offered (another La Liga team). I then saw that 2 jobs in Blue Square N/S were open, and had been for several days, and the "apply for job" button was still available. The holiday mode did not put in for these jobs for some reason -- jobs that are much more realistic for a "sunday league footballer," unless that doesn't mean what I think it does. Maybe I'll try automatic experience next time.

When you guys say PLA, I'm assuming you mean a way to organize a countries soccer like the English Football leagues I'm assuming, with promotions, correct? Sorry, I'm out of the loop, I haven't played since '05 edition. And if you do find a way, will it be made downloadable?

Hey guys can anyone send me to a site that kinda explains the whole UEFA football setup?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uefa

Check the links at the bottom for more info on the Champions League and UEFA cup.

Icy,

Have you seen FM 2K8 at kiosks yet?

I asked the one guy at one of the larger kiosks in Granada and he had no idea what I was talking about.

With my recent paternity i had no time to check it, but i see it for sale in the www.game.es website so for sure it is in their chain of games shops, i see there is one in Granada and it has FM in stock, here is the map to go there, as you can see it's pretty close to your residence:

http://www.game.es/tiendas/Tienda.aspx?l=041&sku=051443

I'm gonna make the goddamned PLA work before the end of the week. Put it in the book.

Sports sims are screwing with my head too much. I clicked that link, then went to CONCACAF from there, and then clicked on the link talking about qualifying for the 2010 World Cup. I then started looking for who was qualified, and how could I have missed it, the World Cup is this year for crying out loud.

After several minutes of looking I realized it's not 2010, that is the season we just finished in the Imperial League (FOF MP league). :confused:

Hey guys,
quick question - I'm jonesing for some FM, and I'm way too lazy to wait (and download the FM 2008 when it goes) - I'm just to buy WWSM 2008 (digital) right now. As it stands, just wanted to confirm the 3 things people have mentioned:

1) There's an editor included with the game
2) Other game content (skins, save game editors) should be able to work, as long as we change the .exe name from "wwsm" to "fm"
3) There's an option (as discussed earlier) for "English", as opposed to "American".

If anyone could confirm these, I'd be grateful. :D

I can confirm 1) and 3), people a few pages back posted that 2) was true as well for prior versions, but I don't know if any FM08 utilities are out yet to test.

Thanks Big Fo.

Other fun now - I downloaded the Boonty installer, and it told me to turn off my firewall. I did so (Zone Alarm - I have the XP firewall off by default), and when I click "Buy it Now", it tells me that the "Connection Failed". I've tried restarting, nothing - I wonder if this is Comcrap (like with BitTorrent), but otherwise, its a hell of a bummer.

There's another distributor you can use - Direct2Drive.

So using the .edt file to swap teams seems for the PLA to work very well - I've tried it with the top two levels and all is good to a degree. You need to make sure you load all of the players from the U.S. or you'll get a team of scrubs.

Which brings me to an issue. For the teams that I have to create - the San Jose Earthquakes for example - they do not have a roster of players in the database. I assumed that in that case, the game would take the team's reputation and fill the roster accordingly. What is actually happening is that the teams w/o a roster in the db get their regen youth team as their active roster. Is there a way around that so I don't have to fill in the roster of 130 teams of varying levels?

Also, is there a workaround so that I get American regens and not Swedish? Languages seemingly have nothing to do with it.

Awesome, thanks :)

I'll try and pick it up tonight, if it's not open when I head back.

I made the jump. Bought WWSM from Amazon. Really impressed that it was only $30.

i also just ordered it from amazon. got the free shipping too since the patch wont be out for several weeks. cant wait to start my Carlisle career going

No luck. I submitted my order, and it told me it would take "additional time to process my order" - and that they would send me an email. I think the world is conspiring against me. :D

Picked it up, but haven't cracked into it yet, cuz I was playing CK.

One of the things that annoys me a little is when the board complains about me needing to "justify" bringing someone in when they are actually just on loan and not costing us anything plus contributing to the team. Just sounds like the board is looking for something to complain about to me. :D

So I may have missed it but is SI not offering the try before you buy option this year with the download? I know last year we could play for up to 6 months before having to purchase it. When I downloaded the installer this weekend it is telling me to buy before downloading.

they have a gold demo.

PLA-3 had been uploaded to rapidshare. I've changed the name of Sweden and the competitions and awards, created the level 2 and 3 American teams, and the .edt file to swap these teams into the Swedish structure.

Sweden will show up as U.S.A. in the country list, America as U.S. You'll need to load all players from the U.S. in order to get the MLS teams to populate, but the other teams still do not have any players, and the game isn't generating teams for them. Also, the regens are all straight outta Ikea.

Play around with this and I'll keep plugging.

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/66107904/PLA-3.zip

Gah, beta patch still not out yet (for WWSM download version I mean). I want to wait for that to start season two of my career. I might start up another one just to screw around.

The graphics are a pain in in the ass for this edition, and I can't even edit the attributes colors

The white background is annoying to me, hoping there are some fan based skins that will help with it.

Just got mine in the mail today, going to wait for the first patch to get going.

I'm pretty steamed with their whole distribution on this version of the game. I'm US military deployed to Eastern Europe in a place the game is currently unavailable. There's no download option for me either. I posted about this on their webpage, which was followed by a bunch of other guys in a similar situation posting. We're being ignored. For the life of me I can't understand why they don't have a European download option and have shown zero concern for people's business they are losing because of it. Just bad business.

I wonder if they could add the U.S. military IP address to the list of IP's that are allowed to download the North American version of the game? You would think that could be something that would fix the problem rather easily.

Hey Sunny i finally picked up a copy of WWSM. I played around with the demo and wound up getting sucked in like you said i would.

I agree that the support and distribution sure doesn't seem to have been well thought out. The support and general discussion message boards are also terrible for help. I posted 2 weeks ago trying to get a license issue worked out and have yet to get an answer.

I believe that this is to do with getting retail distribution accepted in some countries (ie. some of the marginal brick and mortar countries would simply not take the game if they felt they'd lose some of their sales to downloads in that area) - but bear in mind I'm not a business bod and don't know the ins and outs of things.

With regards to getting the game - I'd be surprised if one of the sites which does 'world-wide' delivery wouldn't post the game to you.

Going to start up a dynasty sometime tonight, or at least hoping to.

Marc:

Can you tell us what the deal is with the WWSM patch? Or at least tell your boys to update us on the beta patches for the download versions.

Marc Duffy posted twice. Once he said we would get a beta patch the other time he said we would have to wait for release.

We just really want to know.

I can't play the game untill the pressing issue is fixed and the disallowed goals. Oh and the MLS fixes are big for me also.

Communication is the key to success in any business. Normally you guys communicate pretty well, but this release and this patch sequence hasn't been very smooth for WWSM customers. I think the FM guys are pretty happy though and they are your main customers.

I wanted to wait for the patch but couldn't stand staring at the box any longer. I'm starting a game now, and hoping that the major issues will be fixable without starting a new game.

PLA
 

OK, I'm pretty much done with the PLA for a while. I've created all of the American teams, put an .edt together, and renamed the Swedish comps and awards. The issues which you may or may not care about are:

- all regens are Swedish.
- all teams except the former MLS teams have an empty roster which is not filled when the game starts. You need to load all players from the US to get the MLS guys.
- the top unplayable league is full of Swedish teams, so some will be promoted to the lowest playable division after year one.
- I haven't simmed at all, so this whole thing could crash for all I know.

I cannot get any information out of the SI forums for these issues, so I may go back and fill in some rosters, but that's over 100 teams.

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/66344729/PLA-3.zip

Oh, dear........the game just arrived. I'm not sure I'm patient enough to wait for a patch. Think I'll bust it open and give it a whirl.

More: I can not even get the translucent jersey template thats behind me downloaded kits to work. It's so frustrating. I might just go back to 08. I feel so frustrated.

ARGH!

Does anyone know what needs to be set so that the game will generate a roster based on reputation for a team with no players? I'm pretty sure I'm not dreaming this up, but the game is supposed to fill a roster with guys appropriate to the team's reputation if there are no players on the roster.

Toddzilla - My experience in the past and currently with my Canadian Swap is that any team listed under *country* Lower Division will not generate players until they are "promoted" to a *country* third divison,etc... The division they are promoted to does not have to be playable it just has to be anything but "lower division".

Also, make sure you edit the teams in all lower divisions to have youth academys (low rated) and give them a little cash so that they can also purchase some players to fill out roster.

I will upload my Canadian League this weekend, I am having a blast with it.

Thanks -- but what about higher level teams? For example, If I wanted to make the "Colossal Squids" in the MLS with a rep of 7000, I thought I could just leave the roster blank, and the game would generate a roster for them appropriate to the reputation. In practice for me it isn't working that way (the main roster gets filled with the youth team regens) so I don't know if thats just the way it is, or if I've missed something in creating the team to allow for a generated roster.)

Okay, my Canadian league did not "generate" anyone either. They should have a few "youth" players but the game will not fill out any rosters. However, make sure you "load all players" from respective country. This will help with created clubs filling out their rosters with free transfers. When all is said and done the higher division teams should have 12-20 players before begining of league matches. The rest of the lower division teams will fill out over time.

Again, give all teams a decent amount of cash (I gave all premiere teams between 1mill & 200k based on reps) and make sure they have "youth academys" and they should fill out their rosters rather quickly.

For my league, I simmed ahead 3 years and everything looks great roster wise.

Hope this helps.

I just caught this ..."all regens are Swedish" - This should not be happening. I will download yours tonight and look at. I will also upload my Canadian League for you to look at, as mine is working properly.

I know you are following Daves guide but basically all you have to do for the Swap to Work is , for example:

1. Change South African Leagues to Canadian and vice versa.
2. Move all South African Teams to Canadian unplayable league(s).
3. Move Canadain Teams to appropriate South African league(s).
4. Change all South African cup competitions to Canadian and vice versa.
5. Change TLA from South Africa (RSA) to CAN & vice versa.

I state "move" teams because there have been problems in the past with the "swap" feature which included the editor changing the TLA of the country with out you knowing.

The above will work with out flaw as long as the leagues both playable and unplayable have same # of teams prior to swap. This is where you may or may not have to create teams.

Firstly I can try to help you and I can also explain.

The situation you describe is not necessarily unique (in that you are from country X but based in country Y) but the basic digital operation is to restrict purchases to people whose IP matches one in the available country list ... which yours currently doesn't.

I've not seen your posting on your forums but I wouldn't want you to think you are being ignored - I hope you can see the issue.

That said, please email me directly and I'll see what I can do for you.

Marc

Posted where? Can you email me a link please. I can sort these kind of things out for you (and if I can't I can push you to someone who can)

I communicated this on our forums already but there wont be a beta patch for WWSM you guys will get the final version though at the same time as the FM guys get it.

I'm sure it's nothing you haven't heard before, but I have to reiterate: there is absolutely zero incentive to ever buy WWSM over FM, aside from saving a few bucks. I understand the limitations you're under, but under no circumstances should ya'll be urging people on this side of the pond to order a version of your product that is less supported. If you want to expand the North American version of the game, you absolutely have to commit to supporting both versions equally, otherwise you have no business asking consumers to support it.

I've seen the level of support differ between versions for a couple releases now, and in my book, it's unacceptable, especially if you're trying to expand your market over here.

I apologize for bitching, and I honestly am not all that concerned with waiting for the real patch. But the impression of WWSM being a second-class citizen is there, and it's not a Good Thing.

+1

Seems they've changed everything about how the editor worked last year. How frustrating.

Or at least, what the end results are.

+2