All of the pages linked to from this one were generated using either F2K5DUMP, F2K6DUMP, F2K7DUMP or F2K8DUMP – programs of my own devising that read FIFA 2005, FIFA 06, FIFA 07 or FIFA 08 database and saved data files (career, manager or tournament mode) and produce the HTML reports that you will find here. The 2005 version of the program had a small public beta test (see the forums at SoccerGaming for more information) back in April of 2005, but unfortunately just days after I started the beta my wife Janet fell off a horse whilst out on a hack and did herself some severe mischief, including cracking three lumbar vertebrae. This meant that I spent several months being nursemaid, mother and trying to do my own job, so things like playing FIFA went out of the window for a while.
In November 2005 I was contacted by Brian Hambley (Hambo at SoccerGaming) who asked if I was going to produce a version of my dump routine for the 2006 iteration of FIFA Football, and thanks to his good offices (in supplying data and career files) I was able to start working on a new version despite not having the game at that time. Unfortunately I had to buy a new rig to play FIFA 06, so work on the full version was rather delayed and some aspects of the new version never did reveal themselves fully to my empirical approach to decoding what is going on (eg. I can't get the team chemistry calculation spot on, in spite of using the CAREER.INI parameter values, and I've no solid idea of how player attributes are adjusted over time, especially with regard to the influence of factors like form, morale and fitness). Given those facts, and no time to work on the GUI front end, the FIFA 06 version of the program never got out of early beta, sadly.
Things went a little more smoothly with FIFA 07, since I had a machine powerful enough to run it from the get-go and also interest from William Kendall (BillyK at SoccerGaming) to prompt me into swift action, and so far have moved reasonably quickly for FIFA 08 too, mainly due to the generosity of Dave Witts of Sweetpatch who kindly provided me with my own copy of the game when I expressed reservations about wasting money on what I saw (and perhaps still see) as little more than a minor update.
The GUI front-end, now christened EAFFAnalyser, has been updated to handle all four versions and the whole shebang is now available for general use via the good offices of Sweetpatch, where you can now find an EAFFAnalyser mini-site which will shortly be updated to include the beta version of FIFA 08 support.
FIFA 08 has really not caught my imagination, but I decided to try and take control of the weakest team in League Two, which left me with a coin toss between Dagenham & Redbridge and Morecombe. I finally settled on Dagenham, since they are considerably closer geographically, and whilst my career hasn't really left the ground yet, I'm including what I do have as evidence of support for the new version.
Follow these links for more details, all of which, barring the current one, are from immediately before my team's last game of the season (since the game still gives you no way to save between the end of one season and the start of the next):
For FIFA 07 I decided to try and take an English League Two team to the pinnacle of the game, and chose Wycombe Wanderers since they are the closest team to where I live (and one of the lads at our local cricket club is a rabid fan). Thus far I have completed seven seasons, having won promotion in all of the first three, just scraped to the Premiership title in my fourth, won everything other than the ECC in the fifth, although I got cleaned out by AC Milan in the ECC final, and finally grabbed that ECC title in season six along with the FA Cup and Premier League double for the third season running.
The first season and a half was played at Semi-Pro, switching to Pro for the better part of a season, and finally to World Class after my career had been put in abeyance in the middle of the third season whilst I sorted out fixture congestion (see below). All games were played on normal speed with a half length of six minutes, until the sixth season when I switched to two minute halves (partly to keep the scores reasonable and partly to speed things along)
Follow these links for more details, all of which, barring the current one, are from immediately before my team's last game of the season (since the game still gives you no way to save between the end of one season and the start of the next):
As part of my investigations into match XP growth handling, and to try and complete two challenge regions as quickly as possible in order to unlock Legendary difficulty, I started a new career where I intend to flit around from country to country completing the tournaments playing on World Class using two minute halves and normal speed. Because of the XP growth investigations I did end up playing the last four regular season K-League matches and the following playoffs using a half length of six minutes, but the rest are all two minutes (hence the low scoring). Follow these links for more details, all of which, barring the current one, are from immediately before my team's last game of the season (since the game still gives you no way to save between the end of one season and the start of the next):
The utility will also process tournament data files, and just as an example here is the final state of an Americas Club Championship (with Corinthians), the first half of which was played at Pro, with the second half at World Class (which you almost certainly wouldn't be able to tell by looking at the results).
In addition to the usual reporting I've also branched out into 'editing' for FIFA 07, inasmuch as I have added the ability to tidy up the fixture list for the manager's team, eliminating two fixtures on one day and games that are too close together. For those of you interested in seeing what the utility can do, here are a few pages from the version that was released for general consumption, as a demonstratation of what is going on:
Whilst this feature was still in beta testing I also produced the following example pages that also illustrate updates in 'nearest' mode:
With FIFA 06 I had only the one career to my name, which started out at Crystal Palace and then saw me move to FC Seoul in Korea before grinding to a halt at Chicago Fire in MLS (I was trying to complete two zones in the Challenges). I got as far as a fifth season, still stuck on the Pro difficulty level despite a couple of attempts at moving up to World Class. Follow these links for more details, all of which, barring the current one, are from immediately before my team's last game of the season (since the game gives you no way to save between the end of one season and the start of the next):
I've also discovered that tournaments are saved in a virtually identical format to careers, and I'm working on adjusting the output (it is fine for single player tournaments but there are some things that need reworking for multiplayer) but you can see the final state of play in my Americas Club Championship (with Corinthians).
With FIFA 2005 I also had only the one career to my name, which started out at Southend United for a single season and saw me in charge of Crystal Palace thereafter. I got as far as my eighth season, the second that I'd played on the World Class difficulty level. Follow these links for more details, all of which, barring the current one, are from immediately before my team's last game of the season (since the game gives you no way to save between the end of one season and the start of the next):