moving players in Finn's editor

[puja21]

the first one (with no asterisk) is a nameslot reserved by the game for the game-generated draft class prospects that appear every season in franchise

the second one is an unoccupied slot you won't find these in the default roster as every first & last name has a unique slot... unoccupied slots appear when someone edits an existing player-- like Aaron Schobel for example-- but instead of overwriting the first name "Aaron" by typing a new name into the edit box, they point to a different existing name which is already occupied by another player (they share this nameslot). The first name Aaron thus become unoccupied. The font for "First" & "Last" next to each name editing box will turn red if that name is shared by two or more players. If you mouse-over that red font, a popup will display all the players assigned to this nameslot.

the third name is a "regular" unshared nameslot; if you opened up the default roster in Finn's editor, all 1937 first names & 1937 last names would look like this.


**another note on shared nameslots; if you overwrite a nameslot shared by multiple players into a different name, this will change the name for ALL players sharing it.

[puja21]

Assuming the last post made sense to you (since you edit PES), when you see this:

Aaron=[]*

that does not necessarily mean that there is only one unoccupied instance of the name Aaron. The editor will show one example of each identical unoccupied nameslot... so for example, if there were 5 unoccupied slots all named "Aaron," you would still only see this one "empty aaron slot" shown in the name database.
^if you were to assign 5 players to that name, however (with the last names Smith, Jones, Williams, Davis, & Johnson for example), the unoccupied name "Aaron" would then disappear from the list after the 5th one was assigned, & it would be replaced by 5 new lines in the DB to represent each of those players:
Aaron=[Aaron Smith]*
Aaron=[Aaron Jones]*
Aaron=[Aaron Williams]*
Aaron=[Aaron Davis]*
Aaron=[Aaron Johnson]*

instead of this
Aaron=[]* (which really represented 5 empty Aaron slots
^there is no way to know how many unoccupied slots remain

hope that makes sense

[puja21]

if you DL my latest roster (test 6.2) from my discussion thread, you'll see there are ZERO unoccupied nameslots, ZERO shared slots, & ALL the uneditable draft class nameslots are unassigned.

Ditto if you download dan77333's rosters.

This is because we always just overwrite a player's first & last name when editing them into new guys rather than point to existing names. In the past, there had been a worry that overwriting every name would cause file instability, in-game freezing during franchise play etc because Finn's Editor was new & there just hadn't been enough experimentation to know what caused those problems. As such, if you read the help docs associated with Finn's editor you will see he recommended pointing to an existing name like "Johnson" & sharing it among players, rather than overwriting names & creating unique examples of the same name repeatedly.

This has changed now. Although we don't know with 100% certainty, the general sentiment is that this assumption on freezing was incorrect & renaming in this fashion of overwriting every single slot appears to be safe (i would recommend frequent saving however & keeping backup files). So, on newer roster files you are less likely to see players sharing nameslots, players occupying uneditable draft prospect slots, or empty nameslots

I realize this is a lot to digest-- I should probably make a detailed FAQ on renaming past & present. Let me know if you have any questions about any of these post, DWEvans.

PS: i just realized in typing your name there, that i used to play w/ your option file for WE9 back in 2005 before i got hooked on the Watson World Cup files
That was a well done file

[dwevans]

wow that was a long time ago now i think..about 3 ago years maybe. anyway thanks for the help with that. i understand all of that now. much appreciated