I must announce some delay in the development of the tools for FIFA 12, I have been very busy with my job and my family and I had no time for moving forward with CM 12 and the other tools. I hope you can understand. I will let you know more when I will make some progress. Thanks for your patience and your support. I appreciate.

I just want to let you know that the next step will be a tool for converting rx3 files fromf FIFA 11 to FIFA 12 or viceversa.

What I am doing right now is to analyze the new files for describing the competition structure of FIFA 12. I have to say that, this time, EA did a very good job and the new structure looks very flexible and well designed, I am not yet at the end of the analysis but many things are already clear.

Btw I want to thank Luca Piol and fifaccittiu for the tips they sent me about this argument.

 

Let’s start our analysis from the file compobjs.txt. It contains one entry for each competition object. A competition object may be:

 

• the main FIFA entry
• a confederation
• a country
• a competition
• a stage
• a group

 

Each line contains 5 fields

1. The unique id of the competition object
2. A numeric type identifier of the entry

·        0 = the  FIFA world

·        1 = confederation

·        2 = country

·        3 = competition

·        4 = stage

·        5 = group

1. A string type identifier
2. A Description
3. A Parameter

The meaning of the parameter depends from type of the entry

If the entry is a confederation the parameter is the main FIFA entry

If the entry is a country the parameter is the belonging confederation

If the entry is a competition the parameter can be the belonging confederation or the belonging country

If the entry is a stage the parameter is the belonging competition

If the entry is a group the parameter is the belonging stage

 

A stage entry normally has at least one group but there are some cases of stages without group, I still have to figure out the reason why. A stage may require to play some real games or can be just a draw stage. In the second case it is marked as a SETUP stage. According, a group may represent the result of real games or may represent a pot to be used in a draw. In any case, at the end of a group execution you will have a standing, ordering the teams.

 

The file compids.txt is just a list of all the competitions reporting the unique id corresponding to a competition in compobj.txt. This is actually a redundant information, I guess it is used to speed-up the processing of the data.

 

 

The file advancement.txt contains information for moving teams from one group to another.

The four fields must be interpreted in this way:

• The unique id of the group moving from
• The rank in the moving from group
• The unique id of the group moving to
• The rank in the moving to group

The advancement.txt file can use only groups, not stages nor competitions.

 

In the file standings.txt, for each existing group, we must have a standing here representing the N teams in the group listed from 0 up to N-1.

 

The file schedule.txt contains information for creating the schedules of the games.

Each entry contains 6 fields

• The unique id of  a stage or of a group object (see compobjs.txt)
• The day to play (count the days after a starting date maybe 26/12/2010)
• The progressive week
• The minimum number of games to play
• The maximum number of games to play
• The time

If a stage is referred the schedule applies to all its groups. Only the stages (and groups) that require to play real games can be referenced. A Setup stage and its belonging groups cannot appear in the schedule.txt file.

 

The file weather.txt contains information about the weather condition in the different months for the countries.

Each entry contains 8 fields

• The unique id of  the country object  (see compobjs.txt)
• The month
• The probability of having a dry day
• The probability of having rain
• The probability of having snow
• An unknown value – maybe the probability to have a overcast day
• The sunset time
• The dark night time

 The file tasks.txt contains information about to determine the teams participating to a competition.

• The unique id of the competition (see compobjs.txt)
• When the action happens (may be start or end)
• The kind of action
• The id of the group affected by the action
• Param 1 first parameter of the action
• Param 2 second parameter of the action, if any
• Param 3 third parameter of the action, if any

 

This file allows to define the rules for accessing a competition in a very flexible way. Here is the list  of the rules with their parameters

FillFromCompTable                                CompetitionId, N teams

FillFromLeagueMaxFromCountry             League Id, N teams, Max teams

FillWithTeam 0                                      Team Id

FillFromSpecialTeams                            N teams 

FillFromLeague                                      League Id 

FillFromCompTableBackup                     CompetitionId, Backup CompetitionId, N teams

FillFromCompTableBackupLeague           CompetitionId, League Id, N teams

UpdateTable                                                  

UpdateLeagueTable                                League Id 

 

The last file settings.txt files contains a list of attributes that are assigned to an object. Each type of object may have different attributes some of them are very intuitive, some other looks a little bitt obscure. Anyway this is the argument I am working on and I will post more details as soon as possible.

 

 

Here we are with the second tool; DB Master 12 allows to edit the main database of FIFA 12 as well as the the language databases. You can download it from the download section.

Before you can edit the databases you have to extract them from the .big files. Use the Menu “File\Extract from .BIG”.  This operation will extract the files and hide the original files in the .big. You need to do this operation only once, after this operation FIFA 12 will start to use the database extracted and any change takes effect in game.

 

Be aware that modifyng the main database file you are going to loose any career you are playing with an older database. So, if you want to continue your career and also start modifying the game, you can create a backup of the main database file located in "Game\data\db" subfolder and restore it every time you want to continue your career.

 

A long trip starts with just a step... and this is the first one! I have just uploaded the first beta version of File Master 12. This program will allow to navigate the file system of FIFA 12 opening each single file. The package includes Rx3 Master, a tool that opens any rx3 file and shows the textures present in the file, if any, and allows you to modify the images and save the file.  File Master also have the function of regenerating the bh files. My recommandation is that you do not remove or add files to the original big files (though you could, but they are quite big and the access is slow) but rather you can add your own files directly in the proper subfolders of FIFA 12 and the bh regenerator will hide the original files, without removing them, so FIFA 12 will use your new files. Another important thing to know is that rx3 file structure is changed from FIFA 11 to FIFA 12. Rx3 Master can open both formats but if you try to use an old format for FIFA 12, the game will not recognize it.

Hi mates, many of you are asking for the release dates of the new version of my tools for FIFA 12. As you know I do this activity just for fun so it is difficult for me to make accurate plans but, when I can, I will try to anticipate something. Recently I did good progress and, sometime during the next week, I will release the first Beta version of File Master 12, that will also include the possibility to regenerate all the .bh files, Together, I will release also a new version of  Rx3 Master for editing the textures of all the Rx3 files. As you know DB Master 11 can be used for FIFA 12 too, anyway I am planning to release soon also a DB Master 12,  just to make it easier to work with FIFA 12. Then I will start to adapt CM 11 to FIFA 12, stay tuned !

It is a fact that FIFA 12, with its “impact engine”, consumes a lot of  computational power more than FIFA 11. So I think it is quite normal for all the owners of a “some years old PC” (like I am) to have performance problems. The game stutters and  becomes impossible to have an enjoyable playing time. According to my experience, it is not a matter of  graphic GPU but of CPU perormance. From a grapichal point of view FIFA 12 is more or less like FIFA 11 so if your GPU worked fine for FIFA 11 it will work fine also for FIFA 12. This is confirmed by the fact that the replays are very fluid so, when the CPU doesn’t have to spend time to compute what is happening on the field in real time, the GPU makes its rendering work pretty well. I verified the situation looking at the CPU load using  the Task Manager. This is the report of the CPU load of my dual core processor while playing a game, as you can see there are many points where the core reaches the 100% of its capacity and, at that points, the game doesn’t work well.

 

 

Here there are some suggestions about how to improve the situation.

 

The most effective action is to change the priority of the process running FIFA.

Start the Task Manager pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del and then FIFA. Then, using the Task Manager select the process fifa.exe and, clicking the right mouse button, select priority and choose  the value “high”.  Now the game should work better.

 

Unfortunately every time you start FIFA again the priority returns “Normal” and you should repeat the operation… but there is a very useful free program http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html that allows to save the priority that you want to assign to a process so you have to do the job only once and it will do the job for you every time you will start FIFA again. I definitely recommend to try it.

 

There are other actions that you can do for improving the performance, I tried them and I obtained some improvements but they were not enough until I changed the priority of fifa.exe. But maybe they can be enough for you so I will report them here so you can try yourself.

 

In fifasetup.ini be sure to have:

RENDERINGQUALITY = 0

This has the main effect to keep the rendering frequency at 30Hz, otherwise the game tries to achieve the 60Hz when it has enough computational power. In my opinion 30Hz is a very acceptable frame rate (consider that the phisyologic limit of human eye is 25 Hz ). Doing this, you limit the CPU load drained by the rendering task and it helps.

 

You can then create a rna.ini text file in the Game subfolder and add the following lines:

 

[]

 

// Threads priorities

GAME_THREAD_PRIORITY = 0     // original was 0

RENDER_THREAD_PRIORITY = 1   // original was 0

INPUT_THREAD_PRIORITY = 2    // original was 2

AUDIO_THREAD_PRIORITY = 3    // original was 2

FE_THREAD_PRIORITY = 3       // original was 1

MAIN_THREAD_PRIORITY = 3     // original was 3

 

These lines change the priority assigned to the threads of the fifa.exe process. There are 4 levels available: 0 is the highest priority, 3 is the lowest.

My choice is different from the original and, in my opinion, generates a more smooth gameplay with the side-effect of some audio imperfections and a slower response of the menu (but both the effects are almost not perceivable at all)

 

In theory, there is another possibility to try, though I was not able to see any difference in the behaviour of the game so my guess is that the best choice is to keep the standard configuration. Anyway, if you want to try, these are the instructions:

Always in the rna.ini file add the following lines and uncomment the one corresponding to the kind of processor that you have:

 

[]

 

//---------------------------------------------------------

// Bitwise mask of which cores to allow running (so 3 for core 0 & 1)

//THREAD_AFFINITY_MASK = 15      // quad core

//THREAD_AFFINITY_MASK = 7      // tripple core

//THREAD_AFFINITY_MASK = 3      // dual core

 

In my case, cause I have a dual core,  I uncommented

THREAD_AFFINITY_MASK = 3        // dual core

 

Then you can change the processor assigned to each of the following threads, replacing the –2 value with 0 or 1 if you have a dual core, 0, 1, 2 or 3 if you have a quad core. But as I said you before, I was not able to appreciate any difference in the game.

 

// Threads to run processes on and priority..

// -1 on a given processor means it isn't run as a thread, instead its run off the main loop

// -2 on a given processor means it isn't tied to a particular one, instead schedules itself on any available

//    positive values tie us to a specific processor (generally not desired on PC)

AUDIO_THREAD_PROCESSOR = -2

FE_THREAD_PROCESSOR = -2

INPUT_THREAD_PROCESSOR = -2

RENDER_THREAD_PROCESSOR = -2

MAIN_THREAD_PROCESSOR = -2

 

Last I want to mention a patch done by Doctor+, it changes the setting

 

AUDIO_CPU_LOAD_LIMIT = 10 // original was 30

 

I tried but it didn’t solve my problems but maybe can be helpful for you. You can find more stuffs from this guy at this thread http://www.soccergaming.com/forums/showthread.php?t=170667