PC Edition Team Creation

Recently we announced that Canadian Football 2017 would include an option for a subset of American rules and from there one of the most often asked questions was; "How many teams does the game support?" Well there are two answers to that;

1. The XBox One edition will support the nine current teams in the game. For a large number of reasons, we're not adding team editing or creation to the 2017 edition.
2. On the PC edition, you can create as many teams as you like. Well, almost, there is actually a technical limit of 2,147,483,647 teams. Although I suspect that covers 99% of game players (because you know there's always going to be one guy that tries it.)

Creating new teams on the PC edition is actually pretty easy but there are multiple steps to do it.

Adding a 10th Team.

Most of the work will be done in the following folder on your Window's PC;
 
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Canadian Football 2017\CFB2017_Data\StreamingAssets\Teams

Inside that folder you will see additional folders titled Team1 through to Team9 each team in the game is made up of 3 parts;

1. The team Folder.
2. The team data file - teamdata.xml.
3. The team roster. All players for all teams are included in the single file called roster.xml.

The best way to start the process of adding a team is to simply copy and paste one of the existing team folders;

1. Select the folder titled Team1 and copy it.
2. Paste that folder into the same location then rename it to Team10 (no spaces!)
3. Run the game and go to 'Play Now'. You should see 10 teams available to you on the team selection carousel. Team10 will have the same logo and name as Team1, but we'll change that now.

Exit the game and go back to the folder you just copied (Team10) and using XMLNotepad (available from here: https://xmlnotepad.codeplex.com/ ) open the file named teamdata.xml. You can also use the standard Windows notepad if you wish but it's a bit more difficult to maintain the formatting.

You will need to change the following items;

1. Change the TeamID from 1 to 10 - The TeamID MUST match the folder number and you can not have any duplication of TeamID amongst the teams.
2. Change the team city and name to whatever you wish.
3. The Primary and Secondary colours are in HEX format (web friendly) and must be proceeded by a pound sign.
4. There are only two divisions in this edition of the game: DivisionID 0 or DivisionID 1. If you use DivisionID's other than 0 or 1, the team will not be shown on the season standings screen.
5. The StadiumID must be a value between 1 and 9 as there are 9 stadiums in the game.

Also inside the Team folder, you will find the artwork files for team logo and uniforms. These can be edited how you see fit but they must be in png format and support transparency. 

Roster

Once you have the team data you will need to add a team roster. All players in the game are found in a single roster file (roster.xml).

The fastest way to add a roster to your team is copy and paste the players from one team to another. Select all the players in the roster with TeamID of 1, copy and paste them into the same file, then change the TeamID value of those players to 10. This will now assign those copied players to team 10. From here you can change names and various other values as you see fit.

A Few Other Notes

The XML data files have a very specific formatting. Field names are case sensitive, which means that FIELD_NAME is not the same as field_name. Incorrect formatting of xml or png files can cause problems for the game - it expects things to be in a specific format.

Ensure that you have all the team data and roster information correct before trying to play Play Now or Season games. You will need to reset your current season to make new teams appear in the game's season mode.

Keep Backups. Always keep a copy of the shipping Teams folder in a separate place so you can roll back if something doesn't work. It's also a good idea to keep copies of any teams or rosters that you make set aside as well. Game Updates do not check for custom teams or roster files so your work may get overwritten. Keeping a backup allows you to keep your data available to put back.

Canuck Play can not be involved with any projects that are adding teams to the game.

thanks and enjoy the game.