CM 03/04 Question?
 

I know you can't be the manager of a USA team because there is no MLS league active. My question is, can you at least be the manager of the USA National team?

The USA national team is indeed in CM 03/04 despite the MLS league not being there, so you should be able to take control of it. Hope this helps.


Tell

I don't think you can manage USA with the default settings because there are not enough active players in the database. You make be able to take control if you use the Retain Nation or Retain Players command line options. I haven't tried this myself yet though.

You can manage them through Retain Nation. A lot of the US players in the game are fictional though.

Is the Retain Nation option in the game, or is there some file I need to download in order to do so?

You have to start a new game to do it. You edit a text file to add the players of various nations whose filenames you include in this text file. I cannot recall the name nor the syntax of the text file, but I think that is how you do this. It has been discussed on this forum, as recently as a thread started by QS, I think. You should be able to search there to find your instructions.

Good Luck.

EP4 for CM03-04 added a command called "RETAIN_PLAYERS". This command is used to make the game load all players from a team.

To use this simply create a file with a .ddt suffix and place some keywords within the file.

Example to .ddt file:

#Saudi Arabia:
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Ahli (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Ansar (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Arabi (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Faysali (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Hilal (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Ittihad (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Khaleej (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Nahda (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Nassr (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Qadisiya (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Shabab (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Taawun (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Urooba (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Wahda (KSA)"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Ta'ee"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Ittifaq"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Shoala"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Riyadh"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Ra'ed"
"RETAIN_PLAYERS" "Al Nijmeh"

This file would retain all players from the teams whown in the list.

http://community.sigames.com/6/ubb.x...2&m=5601918166

Contains a useful list of teams and their associated nations in .ddt format.

Finally the hints and tips document I wrote contains details on all the various text configs that you can edit within the game (there are quite a few ranging from media source ones (which allow you to enter newspaper sources into the game for news reports) via. picture configuration edtiing to ddt files (which allow retention of players from particular clubs and nations).

I believe the file is kicking around on sigames.com for download somewhere, if not most CM websites carry it.

Hope this helps,

Marc

Thanks guys. Although this is another reason to eagerly await FM 2005!

Marc forgot to talk about the "RETAIN_NATION_PLAYERS" that was added in CM03/04 with EP3

e.g :

"RETAIN_NATION_PLAYERS" "France" <-- all french players of the database will be in the game
"RETAIN_NATION_PLAYERS" "United States"

and you save this in a .ddt file.

and for clubs ddt, you can find them Here just unzip the files in your /data/db/ folder and you can activate them in the game in game options->edit preferences->custom edit file settings. Those files only activate the "RETAIN_PLAYERS" for clubs of a particular country (so including foreigners playing in those clubs) if you want more players on free transfer or be available to manage the country, create your own ddt with the "RETAIN_NATION_PLAYERS".

Yeah - sorry my bad ....

Assuming time allows I'm planning to integrate the ddt files into the UI for Football Manager so you won't have to edit files in this manner for that game (which will be much friendlier and less obscure for people).

Marc,

ddt file are supposed to work with CM4, EP5, right? Any way to know it did work, I tried going "game options->edit preferences->custom edit file settings" like BreizhManu said, but there's no such menu.

It's not a real biggie, I was just wondering...

FM

They're talking about CM 03/04, which last I knew you didn't have FM. In CM 4 the original, those options are indeed not there in the format described above.

Tell

thanks Tell, that's what I meant, in CM4. I did a ddt file for when I started my game, but I could never go the route presented by by BreizhManu. Now, you're telling me it's not possible to go that way in CM4, answers my question...

FM

If I remember correctly there were some commands you could input using an .edt file extension, or something similar, but I'm not sure how many commands there were. I think there were at least 4, such as BIG_BALL, though I can't recall any of the others offhand. It's been awhile since I played the first CM4 and learned to do that, wish I could offer more help.


Tell

in CM4 you had to put the ddt files in the data folder, I think they were automatically activated (can't remember) so don't put them all there :)

and the Retain nations, wasn't available.

Else for "ARSE", "BIG_BALL", "INCREMENTAL_SAVE" and "GROUND", you put them in a Init.cfg file saved in your data folder. Here is one (without incremental save)