This would be the simplest way, yes please.
Let me lay out a rough outline of the process, then I think I've figured out some of the weird stuff with players disappearing.
You need:
Madden Xtreme DB editor
https://www.footballidiot.com/forum/...155945a6a15e41
A roster (or franchise I think) in gci format (from dolphin)
A hex editor
1. Get a madden 08 pc roster (like rogers i linked to above)
2. Open the file in the xtreme db editor and save the PLAY table as a csv.
3. Make required changes to the csv: Reduce the number of total players by reducing the FA pool carefully (I just now found out all gamecube rosters saves are 31 8kb blocks which is why the PLAY table has a max for 2048 records - even though xtreme db editor can grow the table dolphin says it cant open the save file at all and the game doesn't even see it on the card). Change player portraits to cartoons (PSXP->0) change player role 1 and 2 to 45 i think for no role. Scale all salary related values down (2021 salary is 180 and back in 06 it was like 102?)
4. Take your gci file and open it in a hex editor. Find the ascii text for 'DB' (note some text after this is reversed, this is an endian-ness issue and the key to opening gc saves -xtreme db editor seems to handle it as does madden 12 roster editor). So anyway take everything including 'DB' to the end of the *data section* (right before all 0s) and save it as a new file.
5. open this new file in xtreme db editor and import the play table from step #3.
6. save in xtreme db editor
7. in your hex editor replace everything *you copied* with the contents of your file new saved from step 5.
8. open the new save in dolphin and re-order all depth charts.
9. profit?
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Notes: Players are disappearing as madden 12 roster editor was what i used prior. And it was cutting off entries past 2000... so random players just weren't making it to the roster. I am confident we can push this limit to 2048 actually but it may be worth sticking closer to 2000? I am open to any and all help and i'm super tired so i'm sorry about this not making enough sense. Will try to clean up the post tomorrow. Edit: In this article i found where the number of blocks are stored in a gc save:
http://www.surugi.com/projects/gcifaq.html. But upon modifying the value from hex 1F (31) to hex 29 (what i needed for a test file), the game still wouldn't read the too-big file
. But this only impacts having a huge play table. We can still make this work with less players.