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Found the salary cap data for franchises.

DB_TEMPLATES.dat file #4 (franchise template)

Table SLRI
Field = SCAD

Changing the Cap number

NEEDS TO BE TESTED

Attach is an edited
DB_TEMPLATES.dat file #4 (franchise template)

And

Here are instructions on how to change the number if you want to do it yourself.

Create copy of DB_TEMPLATES.dat in a temporary folder

Open the copy of DB_TEMPLATES.dat with the Dat File Replacer 3.0 (DFR)

Select File #4

Click "EXTRACT Copies of SELECTED Files from DAT"

Close the Dat file and exit the DFR


**************

Open the file with The Madden DB Editor 2.0

Open the temporary folder
Find the file

00004DB_TEMPLATES.dat.File00004.copy001
Open

Find and Select the Table

SLRI

Select the Row (only row in table)

Right Click and "Edit Value in Selected Row"

Find and select the field

SCAD

Copy the Old Cap Amount and Paste it into new value box
Edit the number - changing the first 3 digits.
I made the number 116000000

Note: I had issue at this point if I just typed in the amount.



click OK the file will get saved.


Close the file and exit.

***************

Open the copy of DB_TEMPLATES.dat with the Dat File Replacer 3.0 (DFR)

Click "SELECT REPLACEMENT File

Navigate to the temporary folder
Find the file

00004DB_TEMPLATES.dat.File00004.copy001
Click Open

Select File #4

Click "REPLACE SELECTED Files With REPLACEMENT File" (let it do it's thing)

Click "Save DAT File"

Close the Dat file and exit the DFR

***************

Copy or move the DB_TEMPLATES.dat you have edited to the

"My Documents\Madden NFL 08" folder.


Start Madden. Start a franchise and notice if the CAP has changed.


(if any of the instructions are wrong or unclear please let me know)

~

Attached File ( Number of downloads: 58 )
 00004DB_TEMPLATES.dat.File00004.copy001

OK, tried it out. Worked fine once I got past the .NET installations, which took longer than anything else.

Some observations/comments:

- Took cap up to $185M, so to make sure teams were acting within the bounds of the extremely high cap. They did, after the first season, a couple teams got up to cap amounts in the $125M range.

- The $185M cap did limit the amount of salary I could take on. It would not let me go above that amount.

- After the first season, the cap automatically increased from $185M to $207M. I guess I can't recall how the cap behaves normally, but I remember it increasing. Anyone want to confirm how the cap progresses from year1 to year2 without any mods? Is the percent increase in-line with how it should behave? I could look into this later, but can't tonight, at least.

- I assume this is a given, but it did not retroactively change the cap in existing franchises -- only those I created after editing the file.

- When I saw the SMAD value (16000000) after the SCAD value, I was hoping that was the max contract amount, given it could represent 16,000,000 and the max value of any contract = (years*16M)+0.1M. Unfortunately, It did not seem to have any effect when I changed it.

If I think of anything else to tinker around with, I'll try to give it a shot.

Nevermind, the SMAD value is actually the max yearly contract amount. I had forgotten to copy the DB_TEMPLATES file back into the right directory after modifying the value.


Perhaps this was already known??? I haven't done any testing of mods before, and while I try to read what I can on the boards, I certainly don't know too much about the various values in the .dat files.

After some more tinkering, here's what I've been able to figure out for the SLRI table in the file:

RFA1 - 1st year player restricted free agent tender amount
RFA2 - 2nd year player restricted free agent tender amount
RFA3 - 3rd year player restricted free agent tender amount
RFA4 - 4th year player restricted free agent tender amount

SCAD - salary cap (as Rexpage already stated above)

SMAD - maximum yearly contract value

SAIP / SIIP - I can't find that changing them has any impact on anything

SAMU - I'm calling this (SA)lary (M)onetary (U)nits, because it's the amount by which contracts can be changed. As is, contracts can be given in increments of $10,000, changing this to $20,000 will then make contracts differ by this amount. However, doing so will cause every team to go over the salary cap. Seems to be OK if you reduce it to say $5,000.

-----------------------------

The SADP table contains some of this same information:

SRFA - I believe this is related to restricted free agents, given the RFA designation as well as the fact that it has only four possible values (1, 2, 3, 4).

It has SMAD, which before was the maximum value amount, and here ranges from $350,000 (related to players with a 1 value for SRFA) to $14,000,000 (related to players with a 4 value for SRFA).

It also has a SMID, which I assume has something to do with a minimum amount, given that it's always less than the SMAD value, and ranges from $200,000 to $6,000,000.

SBID & SIDO - My hunch is that they relate to some kind of bonus amount, but that's 100% speculation.

SBLA & SBMA - Always $10,000, which I assume it related to the SAMU above, but again that's a complete guess.

SRRI & SDRP - They've got me completely stumped. As far as I can tell, there's no combination of SRFA/SRRI/SDRP that ever repeats. If you start by sorting by SRFA, and then by either of the other two, you will see that ss all three increase, the corresponding dollar amounts also increase. I noticed there is a clear 1 to 16 incrementation in the SDRP field, but can't figure out what there is 16 of in the game. Similarly, values for SRRI are from 1 to 12, and I can't figure out what there is 12 of.

I'll probably give up on there files, as I'm not sure what they could add at this point. But if someone has an idea of something related to salary that needs to be researched for the mod, post it and I'll see if I can take a look.

Also, I'm curious as to why the DBeditor won't let me edit the SBLA and SMBA values above 10,000. I can go below, but not above. If I import via CSV, all the values above 10,000 change to 3616 (or something like that). Anyways, probably not important, more curiosity than anything else.

-----------------------------

The SAYP table appears to be yearly minimum salary for players.

PYRP - Years of experience

SMID - Minimum salary allowable; which pretty much confirms my belief that I had after looking at the SADP table. I'm assuming that SMID is (S)alary (MI)nimum (D)ollars.



This post has been edited by rageon on Aug 23 2008, 11:07 AM

Wow, you've really been helping, rageon!

Can you download the NHL Editor (an older DB Editor that I did not create) and see if it is possible to "edit the SBLA and SMBA values above 10,000" with that editor? And if you do the changes, and it works, try opening it in the DB Editor and see if the change is there. If it doesn't change in NHL Editor, then that means that the value is an x bit integer and cannot have a value above 10,000. If it does work, and it shows up in DB Editor, then that means that something in DB Editor is causing it to not work. If it does work, and it doesn't show up in DB Editor, then I'm going to have to figure out why.

I might be able to give that a try later this weekend -- will let you know what i find.

I assume knowing the values aren't terribly urgent in terms of finishing the mod in time. Do you or anyone else know of some other values that need finding more urgently?

These actually are sort of important. This way, we can change the cap to match what it should be for the 2008-2009 season. Also, I think this may make it possible to use a roster from a converted franchise. Does anybody know if after expanding the salary cap you can use a converted franchise roster?

Where do I find the NHL Editor?

I assume all the 10,000 values likely relate to the fact that everything increments by 10,000 in the game, so I believe it won't have much impact on whether the game works or not after changing the cap. However, I can give it a shot if I can get my hands on the NHL editor.

A couple other quick things:

The OWTS field represents training staffs:

TFRC - Recovery
TFID - Training Staff ID
TFKN - Knowledge
TFPN - Prevention
TFOS - Cost (measured in $10,000's)

I think the TFOS is important, as it is measuring itself in terms of $10,000's. So the TFOS is being multiplied by a 10000 value someone else. I'll see if it's maybe referencing any of the values I found before, such as SAMU perhaps.

I'm probably done for tonight, as my wife will kill me if I don't get some real work done. Perhaps I'll have some more answers tomorrow.

OK, a couple more discoveries I found after some more looking into stuff:

First a quite note -- trying to view the pPyr & the stlN fields in DB Editor crashes the program. Not sure if it's just my installation or everyone's, but I can't view them at all.

Now, as to more important things, my hunch after seeing the TFOS value measured in terms of 10,000's was in fact correct -- it was dependent on the SAMU value. I think this is significant because I was able to know that the game was using SAMU for things other than simply incrementing possible bonuses and contracts. For example, changing SAMU from 10000 to 5000 has the following effects:

- Existing player contracts are 1/2 of what they normally are. Instead of being signed to a 60M+ deal, Champ Bailey's contract is now $30M.

- Free agents expectations are about 1/2 of what they normally do. Therefore, whatever algorithm Madden is using to calculate a player's value likely returns a value no higher than 1000 or so (and more typically maybe 100 to 300), which is then multiplied by the SAMU value to give the salary they intend to receive. However, it was not exactly 1/2, so I assume there must be some sort of adjustment for salary cap.

- However, RFA tenders are still the same amounts hard-coded into the RFA1 to RFA4 fields.

- Both the cost of training staffs and coaches salaries are decreased by 1/2. For example, Mike Nolan typically is signed to a 1.8M contract, but if you change SAMU, his contract then appears as 900K. Thus, there has got to be some other values ranging from maybe 300 to 50 or so that represent coach salaries.

- On a team's "balance sheet", the assets, expenses, player salaries and staff salaries will all be decreased accordingly, which is not really surprising, given the effects of other things changing SAMU.

Conclusions:
- SAMU is probably more accurately labeled (SA)lary (MU)ltiplier, as it is the value of which many others are dependent upon.

- SAMU effects most existing contracts, including signed coaches, players, and trainers. It also effects the salary expectations of free agents.

- Therefore, SAMU is best left unmodified, as I cannot see any good coming from changing the value. It simply breaks too many things. However, I do believe it's important to understand that because many things do rely on that value, it is likely that many others do as well. It simply appears that much of the financial calculations in franchise mode depend on a multiplier of $10,000, which is the SAMU value.

What tables where crash the program? I think I made a fix for it but I'm not sure, and I'd like to test it out first?

Sorry, I meant the pPyr & stlN tables (not fields) crash the program.

I'm editing this post and moving everything about coaches into a new post under rosters, as it's straying from the original discussion of the salary cap.

This post has been edited by rageon on Aug 25 2008, 09:11 AM

ok, everytime i try to open the newly created dat file, i get this error message and im givin the option to either quit the program or continue, if i continue, nothing shows up???? im completely lost now

Please post the details in the error.

This post has been edited by yourwindow on Dec 25 2008, 01:59 PM

ok i figured it out, i just needed .net framework 3.5...but the roster file i made with the roster converter crashes madden when i try to load it, i thought this whole process would fix tht but it does not?? how do i go about fixing this?

Well sometimes there is nothing you can do the converter can cause crashing sometimes. Look here and your problem should be resolved.

http://football-freaks.com/forums/index.ph...topic=26020&hl=

i already have the editor, but how do i fix the salary issue using it with the roster, do i have to go through every single player and fix it like tht, or is there an easier way to do it, every person has a contract but the salaries per year are all set to 0 in the editor??

....and i cant check the roster breakdown or nething like tht, cuz as soon as i load the roster it crashes madden

This allowed me to recreate the financial landscape as it existed in 1986, including minimum salaries for players and FA's, maximum yearly salaries to accurately reflect the time period, and a salary cap that was appropriate for the era (though it didn't exist until 1993)

Thanks to all who worked to acheive these ends!!

Never thought I'd see that day where something like the above was possible.