Using a roster patch without changing my ratings

[andykeikei]

I edit some of the players' ratings myself.
However, I still want to use some of the roster patch since they have the missing players.
Is it possible to add a roster patch without changing the ratings I edit on the players?
Thanks

[BadWolf]

open players.dbf in excel and save it as players.xls
then open players.dbf from updated roster in excel
copy everything from players.xls file to players.dbf file
save

[el badman]

open players.dbf in excel and save it as players.xls
then open players.dbf from updated roster in excel
copy everything from players.xls file to players.dbf file
save

Sorry about the noob question but I never managed to do that...
I opened my players.dbf and another current roster dbf with excel (didn't even know I could that after all this time ), but I found out that I can only modify existing data and have my changes saved, but not add anything to the table.

Example: I modified Dallas' Pops Mensah by adding his "-Bonsu" part of the last name in excel (that I couldn't input when creating him in the game), and just like with dbf commander where there is no need to "save" the changes (they're saved automatically by pressing the enter key, at least with my trial version), I closed excel without saving and it did save the "-Bonsu" part when I opened it again.
(hope I'm not being too confusing )
Then I tried to add a new line at the bottom of my dbf (still in excel), by adding the entire line for V. Spanoulis (found in Jimmy's roster ), but this time I couldn't find a way to save this change...
Basically, here's my Q: once a change is made to a dbf file converted in excel, how can I save it and possibly convert the .xls file back to a .dbf file?

[andykeikei]

actually I am not sure too...
if I just copy my rating and paste it in the new roster file,
will the game get crashed?
Since from what I understand,
there will be 2 people having the same name on the same team but different ratings...
can someone help me out? thanks!

[andykeikei]

Can somebody help me?

[ScottyInsane]

no way to do what you ask, you're gonna have to write down your own stats and modify the stats of the update you download two ways :
- you do it through the game (very long but easy)
- you do it by editing the DBF (faster but harder if you are not sure of yourself regarding dbf editing)

[mchakko]

Do it like this:

Take the updated files and copy players.dbf and appearance.dbf to players2.dbf and appearance2.dbf or whatever you want to rename them.

Take appearance.dbf players.dbf and the two you just renamed, and open all 4 up in excel.

Count how many players you want to add, and insert that many records in your roster file's players.dbf and appearance.dbf.

When you insert the records, insert them in the middle, not in the end; for some reason they tend not to "stick"; if you insert at the end, save, and reload, for some reason they disappear. I guess this is because .dbf is not completely supported by excel.

Now just copy the the info for the player you want to add from players2.dbf to players.dbf. Find the corresponding APPEARANCEID to the PLAYERID in appearance2.dbf and copy that to appearance.dbf

Paste in all the players you want to add to your roster that way.

Before you finish and save, make sure to sort both players.dbf and apperance.dbf by PLAYERID and APPEARANCEID respectively, otherwise players apperances may get "shuffled", becuase it depends on the order they're in.


Sometimes if there are blank entries in numeric fields, saving them in excel changes the numeric field to a character field, which causes things to crash in franchise/season. If that happens, just open up your players.dbf in something like dbfcommander, and change the fieldtype for those entries back to what they should be.


But overall it's not rocket science. You can do everything using excel, sort whatever you want, copy and paste. If you want to do global edits, copy to another excel file, do whatever mathematical transformation you want, and use "paste values" to dump them back into the original file.

[mchakko]

el badman: I think you are having the same problem with adding lines to the excel I did.

Just put your cursor in the middle of the file, and choose insert row; for some reason they don't stick if you do it at the end.

I think the .dbf file has some kind of flag right after the last entry that denotes the end of the file; so if you add records after it, it ignores them; but if you add them in the middle before it, they get added fine.

but you still need to save it between everything. That's why i couldn't stand dbcommander or anything, I could never figure out if it was saving or not; plus there was no easy copy/paste

Editing rosters in excel is great. Just sort by team/roster pos, you can reorder; use "freeze panes" so that you can keep the names on the left and the names of the fields at the top, then edit roster position, team, whatever you want; before I get started I will sort the entire file by blockrating, etc, to make sure the best guys have the highest ratings and there aren't too many outliers, average players with high ratings for no reason;

just make sure to sort everything by playerid before you save.

[andykeikei]

Woo! Thanks
But I will try it out when I have time.

[Ryan]

I use CDBF and highlight the fields, right click and select copy and go to the last line in the dbf file I want to paste it to click the append button and paste. Easy as pie as long as you update your player id's and appearance id's to match your roster that you are using.

[el badman]

el badman: I think you are having the same problem with adding lines to the excel I did.

Just put your cursor in the middle of the file, and choose insert row; for some reason they don't stick if you do it at the end.

I think the .dbf file has some kind of flag right after the last entry that denotes the end of the file; so if you add records after it, it ignores them; but if you add them in the middle before it, they get added fine.

Okay, that makes sense now.
Thanks for the help man