Historical Database Editing

[fgtr3]

Hello! Hopefully someone's still around that may have some experience with this. I've been messing with the historical data as my favorite mode to do is the historical shuffle and I've been trying to add more recent players.

 

Now, if I edit a player, the edited player shows up no problem in the mode. However, if I add a player, they never show up. Furthermore, if I add someone and try to use the 2015-17 version (without shuffle), they show up with all 0's as their attributes despite having ratings in the database.

 

So I'm asking if there's something else I have to edit in order to get adding players and 2015 and later players to work.

 

Also, is there something to edit to add more years to the historical database past 2017?

[fgtr3]

Alright so I played around and figured it out a bit.

 

When adding players where they'd have all 0's despite ratings, it was a simple solution: The override ratings for a newly added player start at 0 instead of -1. Change them to -1 and they appear as they should.

 

In order to start a season past 2015, you have to go into the public documents folder (mine was at):

 

C:\Users\Public\Documents\GDS\Fast Break Pro Basketball 3\Historical Leagues\North America\Leagues

 

and edit USA1 to have data for the years past 2015. USA2 is d-league if you'd want that as well. I just copied everything for 2016-2021.

 

And then you also have to do each individual team much the same way. This part is time consuming. They are right next to the league file under:

 

C:\Users\Public\Documents\GDS\Fast Break Pro Basketball 3\Historical Leagues\North America\Teams

 

And then once these are done, the league will load successfully for the extra years, and the league(s) under available leagues will be updated with the new seasons added.

 

And now there's an interesting development. When I was adding 2021 players, the historical database does not allow the birth year to be past 2000. You can put them in as 2000 (or whatever you want) and then after loading change it to 2001 or later with no issue.

 

I'm not sure how the game handles potential for young players. Some seem to actually get potential past their current ratings but some will be a 2nd year player with seemingly 0 potential. Of course that can be changed through the override, but I'd rather the game try to do it rather than me trying to predict players.

[fgtr3]

Alrighty, will be doing an update up to this season and will post it here for anyone to use if they want. It's pretty early on (5 teams complete, as in 2016-2020 and a blank 2021 added) but I imagine I'll finish it eventually. It will have pretty minimal overrides from me, relying on the game's rating generation.

 

For rookies, I think I'll sim a NBA 2K season and use those stats to generate ratings for them. That is, if I finish before the season is far enough along to just use their real life stats.

 

I'll also try to do the historical modifiers for each year, but that's to revisit after completion of the players. I did play with it a bit by copying the values that matched or were close to matching from years that had matching figures (for example, if the league avg in 2017 was a 46 FG%, and it also was in 2004, I'd copy the 2004 FG% value to 2016). Unfortunately, they don't seem to be independent of one another and instead I'll have to do the good ol' manual sim, compare, adjust method. Darn.

[Rated M]

Would be great if you could share this!

I plan to do this myself but for now I only add the missing seasons for players who are in the upcoming draft in my league (which is the 08 draft now), so it will take a while

[fgtr3]

Going smoothly so far. I did email the developer to ask for an update to the historical database's restrictions in the 2000 birth year being the most recent allowed and to allow the yearly filter in the historical database to go past 2017. Fat chance since, you know, 8 year old game but you never know.

 

Never heard back unfortunately.

 

Also want to try my hand at a WNBA mod, but that would probably just be the 2021 season and fictional beyond. Very curious to see if it can sim it well. That won't be until after this is finished though.

 

Focusing on 2021-22 teams as those take the most time. Figure after 2021 is done for every team, the rest will be fairly quick since adding new players will be limited to those who debuted 2016-2020 but are no longer in the league for 2021-22.

 

Progress wise, did 2016-21 4 teams, 2016 and 2021 for PHX, 2016-2017 and 2021 for Detroit, and then 16 additional teams for 2021. No rookie ratings yet though. If I placed a percentage on the progress, I'd expect to be past 50% for the inputs.

 

Then it's just double checking each season's players for mistakes or duplicates, and then simming each season and doing the historical modifiers. Feel like that will be pretty quick in comparison.

 

Another thing I noticed with the game and its historical database is that it would assume Klay Thompson was trash his more recent years due to 2 years straight of 0 games (injuries). For now, I moved the career stats around to not have them consecutive which fixed that. I notice Joel Embiid is fine, so I figure having the later stats helps against that and he could be switched back with 2021-22 stats eventually.

[fgtr3]

Alrighty so I posted the file in the mods section here: http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2515814#post2515814

 

I'll go through it some other time and make sure there are no duplicates or missing players, but it's pretty much in a finished state.

 

The current 2021 draft is too deep, I'll go back and tone it down a bit some other time as well. Nothing game-breaking, just a lot of good role players.

 

I figure it's good enough to release now though.

[Rated M]

Thank you very much! I really appreciate the work you put in the historical database.

 

I'll probably add in the real team names and update the color schemes in the .csv files and also change the salary cap to the real values.

I will share that when it is done if anyone is interested.

[fgtr3]

Oh yeah salary caps! Meant to do that, just forgot because I always customize it to a soft cap + hard cap.

 

Also if anyone wants to get around the 2000 birth year thing, loading an unrandomized league and then using the current league editor you can export the league and draft files, and then change the birth year there (draft file change the age). While it won't load in the historical database, it will load from the player and draft files perfectly fine.

 

If I ever want to update the game further as time goes on, I'll have to utilize that instead of the historical database. Probably just update the stats in the database, but only add new players through the excel exports.

 

Unfortunately kinda screws over those (like me) who like to play the historical shuffle mode, but it at least allows further updates.

[fgtr3]

Also if anyone is actually interested in the WNBA mod, I have input everyone for 2021 and simmed it a ton and I'm not sure it's ever seeing the light of day.

 

I can get realistic stats in all but passing numbers pretty easily. If I lower the ERA, I can boost the passing numbers up but it needs to be too extreme to reach real-life numbers. Once it's set to that point, nearly every player in the league has 90+ defensive rebounding and stealing. The numbers sim right, but it just bothers me too much visually to be comfortable with it.

 

My second solution would be to use the excel export and attribute distribution page to adjust everyone to where the overall ratings are closer (WNBA overall 71.4 avg, NBA overall 98.5 avg) and that would probably allow me to fix it.

 

Problem with that 2nd solution is that the game seems to generate the strength of fictional draft classes based on the strength of the players in the historical database. If you have a really strong league file that you start with, but the players in the historical database have low ratings (as they do with the 2021 WNBA players), the generated draft classes will be way, way below the quality of the league files.

 

EDIT: Actually, I'm not certain what's changing the quality of the fictional draft classes. I tried with no historical database as well as the men's while loading the WNBA league file, and the generated rookies (past the initial) weren't noticeably different talent-wise. I figured it was the database since I felt that it matched up really well with the 2021 women talent-wise, and when you do all fictional everyone is a lot more skilled. Hmm.

 

And then third and last, I could just aim for in between in terms of passing numbers. Not at real-life numbers, but not as low as it is with a higher ERA like the NBA file. Which doesn't appeal to me much.

 

So, it's interesting.

[Rated M]

I uploaded the changes I made in the Mods section. Again, really great foundation you made.

 

WNBA is very interesting. I know someone who would probably use it. I think I would try the second solution and adjust the ratings to the NBA numbers. 100% realistic ratings are probably not reachable with the game so you have to take some shortcuts. And if you play with the WNBA you probably do it exclusively.

[Tomato Can]

Thank you both for all of your hard work! I downloaded both files (logos, historical leagues), where do I place the historical leagues file? Also, where do I put player photos so they will show up in game?

 

Thank you both so much!

[Rated M]

The historical leagues folder, on my PC, is located in

C:\Users\Public\Documents\GDS\Fast Break Pro Basketball 3

 

Logos and photos go in the image folder in the directory where you installed the game.

So for me that would be:

C:\Program Files (x86)\GDS\Fast Break Pro Basketball 3\images

 

There are folders for logos and photos

[fgtr3]

Sorry, meant to post this here instead of the actual mod thread. Just a copy paste.

 

Alright, plan on updating this again. I plan on having 3 updates:

 

#1) Add the 2021 stats and adjust some potentials accordingly. Will also add current 2022 player team status, but won't be used for a 2022 start yet, just to get more accurate ratings. Player placement will not be updated as I have tried to make every season be a pre/early-season roster. I also have around 30 or so missing players I never added that will be included. If you were wondering where NBA household names like Adam Mokoka and Juwan Morgan were, well they'll be there next time!

 

#2) Pre-FA.

 

#3) Preseason/early season.

 

With the latter 2 having separate historical databases to allow for more accurate FA/preseason starts, though only the latter will be maintained for future updates if I update it again the season after.

 

And then finally, I'll start including excel exports for these updates to get accurate ages as well as the historical database for the shuffle/low maintenance play with the older players. One solution I had in mind to counter this specifically for JUST the shuffle mode would be to move every player who's born after 2000 into an older draft to get accurate ages since nba debut year doesn't really matter for it. That's probably more work than I want to do though (maintaining a completely separate file again).

 

I also may look into the historical modifiers for older seasons if I'm not sick of this by then. Don't know how accurate they are, but if they mostly are then I'd just leave it be.

 

Lastly, I forgot I added a few non-NBA players in the earlier seasons before I ever did this update, so sorry if you were caught off guard by that. I only had 3. Oscar Schmidt (1984), Len Bias (1986), and Hank Gathers (1990). Feel free to edit them out if you feel like it.

[fgtr3]

I also wanted to post something I played with a little. Brought to my attention by xandelle on the fbbgames forum, the FBB.ini file allows for much more 3PT attempts among other things that I was struggling to reach before.

 

So, in the same folder as the regular mod, I posted a new folder that includes a new yearlystats.csv and a FBB.ini for JUST 2021 and beyond so anyone can try it out. It brings down the jumpshot numbers as well as increases the 3PT attempt numbers. I didn't spend as much time on this one as I just wanted to mess with it for now, but it's fairly accurate-ish in terms of league-wide stats and efficiency. The FBB.ini file copies to the same location as the yearlystats.csv.

 

With that, I also posted the original FBB.ini in the program files so you can jump back to it in case you copied the new one without backing the old one up.

 

It does give me hope that I can revisit the WNBA mod I was trying to do earlier as I only slightly adjusted it before.

[MMADog]

Hi,

How can I edit historicaldata outside from in-game editor? It gets slow with the amount of data