Gameplay Lab for 17/18/19 - could it be done?!

[Anth James]

Ok guys, so it's looking like we might be in all sorts of trouble with FIFA 22/efootball. I think it's time to start looking at some options going forward...

Obviously we have FIFA 16

In terms of access to gameplay files though, Frosty gave us great access to these but unfortunately it was only from FIFA 20 - the same year as the dreaded 1v1 feature was introduced (and one of the only things we couldn't mod out). I've just turned on my old gameplay mod from 20 and while it has plenty of shortcomings, the impact these files can have on gameplay is still quite promising. It allows us to mod so many aspects of the game in a way we haven't had access to before.

With Frosty dead for FIFA 21, we've seen the introduction of Paul's editing tool as well as the FIFA Editor tool - both with gameplay files access - so it's obviously possible. I'm wondering what would be involved/how difficult it could be to get access to Frosty gameplay files for 17/18/19? I wonder if either of these two creators might be persuaded to help us out. I know Frostbite certainly has issues, but having access to those files WITHOUT a 1v1 elephant in the room would surely give us a decent shot at developing something worth playing....

The idea of a new Gameplay Lab for 17/18/19 with everyone on board could be great...

 

[manmachine]

With Frosty dead for FIFA 21, we've seen the introduction of Paul's editing tool as well as the FIFA Editor tool - both with gameplay files access - so it's obviously possible. I'm wondering what would be involved/how difficult it could be to get access to Frosty gameplay files for 17/18/19?

It's the gameattribdb file in all versions of fifa, isn't it?

It's just that in 21 you can extract all the different text files, in older versions you just have the gameattribdb binary file and good luck finding what's in there. 😅

Is it encrypted? A special format? Can someone hack it? I don't know.

I do believe that easier to read and edit conf files as seen in 21 is something that the devs themselves are converting to at their leisure and the further back you go more stuff was just hardcoded in the exe or encrypted in some other exotic way. For example there are some gameattribdb xml files available in 17 but not the ball related stuff so we could fix the ball size, it's something they added/converted to an xml file later. Bummer. It's certainly a value in memory...

 

[Anth James]

It's the gameattribdb file in all versions of fifa, isn't it?

It's just that in 21 you can extract all the different text files, in older versions you just have the gameattribdb binary file and good luck finding what's in there. 😅

Is it encrypted? A special format? Can someone hack it? I don't know.

I do believe that easier to read and edit conf files as seen in 21 is something that the devs themselves are converting to at their leisure and the further back you go more stuff was just hardcoded in the exe or encrypted in some other exotic way. For example there are some gameattribdb xml files available in 17 but not the ball related stuff so we could fix the ball size, it's something they added/converted to an xml file later. Bummer. It's certainly a value in memory...

If it's all in the gameattribdb file, then that makes sense as to why there is no such file for 20/21. I didn't realise it was something the developers themselves were changing - that might complicate our chances of having it done for older titles. Do you know where the xml files are for 17?

 

[Topaz]

I believe paul2k4 have the second most expertise when it comes to reverse engineering the gameplay files as he has made his own version of Frosty Tools for editing gameplay files. If the format is actually the same and no new encryption technique was introduced after FIFA 17, then we should be able to use the same decrypter to decrypt the file. The good thing is that both Frosty Tools and Paul's modding tools are written in .NET. So they can easily be decompiled on their Common Intermediate Language then recompile back in C# allowing us to see the decryption logic and write a tool for FIFA 17. However if the DLLs are injected through .NET C++ then it will be harder to reverse engineer the decryption logic. I wish I had time to do this as it's very time consuming. And this is only possible if they didn't change the encryption logic or makes the gameplay as configurable in FIFA 20 as it was in FIFA 17.

 

[manmachine]

If it's all in the gameattribdb file, then that makes sense as to why there is no such file for 20/21. I didn't realise it was something the developers themselves were changing - that might complicate our chances of having it done for older titles. Do you know where the xml files are for 17?

Or rather 2 years ago that I was trying to find the ball related stuff in 17. And 1 since we've been experimenting with 20?
Oh god, I don't remember anymore.

Maybe these are an older version of what's available in 20?



That vlt/bin stuff is some seriously legacy format though, not sure about the xmls anymore, maybe I do remember wrong and it's a totally new thing that they "opened up" these files in 20? I only have 17 installed right now.

 

[FIFER Mods]

Very late, but thought I'd explain the actual situation here.

From whatever FIFA (at least FIFA 16, probably earlier), to FIFA 19, gameplay code was stored somewhere, but not easily accessible. Probably in the attribdbgameplay legacy files, which are encrypted in some way.

In FIFA 20, gameplay files became EBX files. This is the fundamental format of Frostbite, and it also controls hotspots, or LOD stuff, etc, so we were able to edit it. So it doesn't have anything to do with Frosty/FIFA Editor Tool/Paul's tool specifically (you won't get anything useful if you try to reverse engineer the programs), EA just changed how the files were stored.

So, basically, you can't really do much gameplay modding in FIFA 17, 18 or 19 outside of locale.ini adjustments, unless you decode the attribdbgameplay which would be very complex, and even then maybe that file wouldn't be too useful.