Post a Comment On: The Game Designer

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Football Mogul 2014 has a new feature that lets you adjust the talent level, the talent distribution, and the improvement potential for each of the 15 position types in the game.

This is implemented by the addition of a file called DraftTalent.txt, located in the same folder with FB2K14.exe. If you have trouble finding this folder, you can choose "Open Game Folder" from the Help Menu.

DraftTalent.txt includes instructions, but I will include them again here for convenience.

The first 15 lines of DraftTalent.txt look like this:

  0,  0, 0, // QUARTERBACK
  0,  0, 0, // RUNNING_BACK
-30,  0, 50, // FULLBACK
-50,  0, 0, // TIGHT_END
-10,  0, 0, // WIDE_RECEIVER
 30,  0, 0, // TACKLE
 50,  0, 0, // GUARD
 70,  0, 0, // CENTER
-40,  0, 0, // DEFENSIVE_END
-60,  0, 0, // DEFENSIVE_TACKLE
-30,  0, 0, // LINEBACKER
  0,  0, 0, // CORNERBACK
  0,  0, 0, // SAFETY
  0,  0, 0, // KICKER
  0,  0, 0, // PUNTER

Each line refers to a position (shown at the end of the line, after the '//'). Football Mogul actually ignores all text after '//'. The position names are only there so humans know which line refers to which position. What Football Mogul does care about is the line order. The first line will always modify QB talent, then next line is for RBs, then FBs, and so on.

For each position:
First number = base talent level
Second number = talent level variation
Third number = "potential" (i.e. the difference between "Overall" and "Peak")

The default value is 0. A positive number indicates an increase. A negative number indicates a decrease.

Example #1: Your amateur draft has 10 QBs with the following Overall/Peak talent levels:
60/70, 63/73, 65/75, 67/77, 69/79, 70/80, 71/81, 73/83, 75/85, 77/87, 80/90

Increasing the first number will increase the entire talent pool, as in this example:
65/75, 68/78, 70/80, 72/82, 74/84, 75/85, 76/86, 78/88, 80/90, 82/92, 85/95

Increasing the second number will increase the talent level variation (while the average remains the same):
55/65, 59/69, 62/72, 65/75, 68/78, 70/80, 72/82, 75/85, 78/88, 81/91, 85/95

Increasing the third number will increase the amount that each player improves after the draft:
60/75, 63/78, 65/80, 67/82, 69/84, 70/85, 71/86, 73/88, 75/90, 77/92, 80/95

For overall talent level, changing a 0 to 10 *roughly* equals a 1-point change in the "Overall" rating.
For talent level variation, changing a 0 to 10 *roughly* increases the distance between the worst and best player by 1.

Note that college players are generated for the draft at the end of each regular season (i.e. at the start of the playoffs). So, in order to see your changes to DraftTalent.txt reflected in the game, you will need to make any edits (and save the new file) before the first playoff game.