Front Office Football Nine Documentation

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===== Data File Customization =====

Data file customization is an advanced topic. The data files are provided to allow for customers to control a lot of information for a new universe that otherwise wouldn't be practical to set during the process of creating a new universe.

To start, read the information in the file overview.txt in the Installation folder's subfolder, default_data.

When installing the game off of Steam, the installation folder defaults to something like <nowiki>C:\\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Front Office Football Nine\</nowiki>

There are .txt files which correspond to all of the data files that can be customized. Some are easier to customize than others, and we suggest you read everything thoroughly before trying anything and back up the original files. If you find you're creating unstable universes or universes with odd configurations, restore the original files.

Customer support can't help with individual customization efforts.

=== Editing .csv Files ===

.csv files contain readable text. Each data field is separated by a comma, each row in the file is on its own line. The top row is presented in all-caps and contains the column headings.

.csv files can be edited in any text editor, but they are best edited in a spreadsheet application. We always use Excel.

You can edit any data, but leave the number of columns and the column headers untouched. When saving a spreadsheet page, use the save-as command, and save it as a CSV (Comma delimited) (.csv) file.

=== Default Team Nicknames ===

The most common customization is changing the default team names and nicknames when starting a new universe.

There are three universe types in Front Office Football Nine. Each is different in terms of where it obtains default universe information.

  * Game-Supplied Player File: The initial players come from a player file that's provided with the installation. At release time, there's only a 2023 player file with Front Office Football Nine.

  * League Structure Selected, no Player File: The initial players are random. You choose a league structure.

  * User-Created Player File Set: The initial players come from a custom player file. An example of one is given, made up from data from the 2023 player file. These file sets are tied to a particular league structure.

When changing initial team names, you must select the Use Default Team Assignments box when starting a new universe. When this box is selected, the game takes team names and information about a team from the data files. Otherwise, all this information is randomly selected from other areas in the game's database.

With a game-supplied player file, a new universe gets team data from the team_info.csv file. If you want to change information used with the 2023 player file, edit the rows in this file with the YEAR of 2023. To change team nicknames, edit the fields in the NICKNAME column in rows with a YEAR of 2023.

For a universe that starts with a league structure selected (this includes user-created player files), edit the default_teams.csv file instead. Rather than editing rows with a year, look for rows that match exactly the league structure you're working with. For example, to change the team nicknames when starting a league with a structure of 30 teams, 6 divisions and 16 games per team, per season, edit the NICKNAME column in rows with the LEAGUE set to 30_6_16. Note that far less information about teams is set from the data files for universes of this type than universes created with the game-supplied player file.

Once you've saved the .csv file, new universes (not existing universes) will use the edited information.