Good news about Frosty Editor and it's Development!

DevPlays

DevPlays

Mr. Perfect
11 January 2021
Hi everyone, I don't know if there's a need to create this new thread on the FIFA Editing section to say this.. But it's a very good news for all FIFA 17, 18, 19 fans that the Frosty Editor and Frosty Mod Manager development resumed! Already making a good progress.. Added many community wanted stuffs like importing meshes of different textures and models, InitFS editor, updated legacy file management and edit etc.. (and even more).. So, what I'm trying to say is, we can finally re-visit the good old working FOOTBALL games and the modding possibilities..

Sorry for the ping mates, but it might be useful for you as well.. @papinho81 @Anth James @Topaz
Hurray!! :)
 
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Would be nice if it's possible to add head models in fifa 17. I'd love to add the icon face models in fifa 17.

Also would be nice if there is a way to access the cloth wrinkle array files and edit them successfully. It was possible to view them before but it wasn't possible to edit the array file containing the normal maps and thus it wasn't possible to make any changes.
 
@papinho81 I tried importing the mesh from a ball from FIFA 20 to FIFA 17. It successfully imports it in, and visibly looks bigger in the editor, but in the game the ball is invisible...no idea if I did it right though, you probably understand the process better than me.
 
Anth James said:
@papinho81 I tried importing the mesh from a ball from FIFA 20 to FIFA 17. It successfully imports it in, and visibly looks bigger in the editor, but in the game the ball is invisible...no idea if I did it right though, you probably understand the process better than me.
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Could you just try doing the same thing but with a FIFA 17 ball? Export and reimport ?
 
There must be something you have to config along with the texture (if there's any hotspots or ini come along with the ball textures to register or something?).
 
DevPlays said:
There must be something you have to config along with the texture (if there's any hotspots or ini come along with the ball textures to register or something?).
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Hmm not sure. I think Pap wanted to check if it was even importing from it's own game and it isn't. I exported the EPL ball out of 17 for example and then dropped it straight back in and it went invisible..
 
Anth James said:
@papinho81 I tried importing the mesh from a ball from FIFA 20 to FIFA 17. It successfully imports it in, and visibly looks bigger in the editor, but in the game the ball is invisible...no idea if I did it right though, you probably understand the process better than me.
Click to expand...

Did you try with the last editor (beta)?
Because what ever the combination I tried to export the meshset, I then reimported it, and I get game crash before the kit selection menu...
 
papinho81 said:
Did you try with the last editor (beta)?
Because what ever the combination I tried to export the meshset, I then reimported it, and I get game crash before the kit selection menu...
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Yeah I did. Try it with a different ball model. I had the crash with certain balls.
 
Anth James said:
Nothing specific really. It would just be great to have access to those files for a game with an already good base. The possibilities would be amazing.
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The Frostbite gameplay files before FIFA 20 aren't stored as EBX files (at least not fully), and haven't been figured out.
 
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Technically they're not encrypted. It's just that no one has figured out anything when it comes to reverse engineering the binary data. It's a big task, randomly changing bytes hoping you'll figure something out.

Just as an example here's me searching for strings in the fifa 16 attribdb.bin file. This would not be possible with encrypted or even compressed files. But completely reverse engineering it, is beyond me.

In fifa 20 (and later I guess) you can extract nice xml files with all the var names and values. That's certainly not the case before that.

1661808436899.png
 
manmachine said:
Technically they're not encrypted. It's just that no one has figured out anything when it comes to reverse engineering the binary data. It's a big task, randomly changing bytes hoping you'll figure something out.

Just as an example here's me searching for strings in the fifa 16 attribdb.bin file. This would not be possible with encrypted or even compressed files. But completely reverse engineering it, is beyond me.

View attachment 175726
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Ah yeah sorry, wrong terminology. But I doubt much progress will be made on them
 
Anyone tried the "InitFS Explorer"? Is it an editor or just a viewer?

I can edit stuff, but if I click somewhere else and go back to that file, any changes are lost. It's a bit confusing as to if you can edit files or just view them.
 
Hi, I don't know if you guys are still marked this thread as watching. But anyway, I thought I need to say this, useful in a way. If you try to import or export textures or files from the Data Explorer (right clicking the files from the left side of the row to do the import/export function), the Editor will immediately get crashed or it won't apply the mod correctly. You have to open the texture file once (left clicking it) and use the export/import buttons from the top corner of the Editor itself to avoid any crashes or wrongdoings. With that being said, you experienced or enthusiast modders should try to export/import the ball meshes and textures and see if it's working now. The editor got some major updates lately, fixing so many bugs. I think it's worth it to test that and see how it pans out.
 
My 2p on Frosty. For what its worth.

I would love to port some stuff to that repo but after forking the code, it made me remember what a dumpster fire FMT was originally.

1) So much of that code is using ancient design patterns and using an ancient framework.
2) The solution doesn't build. Everything is decoupled, for no reason.
3) You have to use "FrostyCmd" to do certain things... Why?
4) Everything there is designed to be complicated for the sake of it
5) Its a ball-ache to "publish" to EXE
6) Stuck on VS 2019
7) Code with if certain game then do certain task hard coded everywhere
8) They kicked/banned me from their Discord, even after I offered to help and gave them pointers for the third time.

So yeah. No thanks.
 
paulv2k4 said:
My 2p on Frosty. For what its worth.

I would love to port some stuff to that repo but after forking the code, it made me remember what a dumpster fire FMT was originally.

1) So much of that code is using ancient design patterns and using an ancient framework.
2) The solution doesn't build. Everything is decoupled, for no reason.
3) You have to use "FrostyCmd" to do certain things... Why?
4) Everything there is designed to be complicated for the sake of it
5) Its a ball-ache to "publish" to EXE
6) Stuck on VS 2019
7) Code with if certain game then do certain task hard coded everywhere
8) They kicked/banned me from their Discord, even after I offered to help and gave them pointers for the third time.

So yeah. No thanks.
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I get it and yeah, I agree. Wasn't their main developer is now an EA Employee (specifically in DICE department?) and left the development of the programme to other guy, who is also an EA employee now?
Speaking of things which are inaccessible, I thought it was because of the engine design. They only moved/ported some of the files to EBX format starting from FIFA 20 (I believe?). So, the gameplay files in particular, was inaccessible. For me, the UI/UX understanding wasn't that complicated. But some of the stuffs leads to major crashes though. Your 8th point surprised me.
 
DevPlays said:
I get it and yeah, I agree. Wasn't their main developer is now an EA Employee (specifically in DICE department?) and left the development of the programme to other guy, who is also an EA employee now?
....
Your 8th point surprised me.
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Correct. "GalaxyMan" was the lead guy. For some reason, he absolutely hated it when someone questioned, talked about, suggested to him anything technical. Considering the fact I earned that team well over 15k in one month after FIFA 20 was released (with the Unofficial FIFA 20 patch), I was completely ignored, then argued with, then muted, then banned. Apparently "Cade" disliked me too, for reasons unknown. I swear there were other things at play too, but I won't go in to that publicly.

DevPlays said:
Speaking of things which are inaccessible, I thought it was because of the engine design. They only moved/ported some of the files to EBX format starting from FIFA 20 (I believe?). So, the gameplay files in particular, was inaccessible. For me, the UI/UX understanding wasn't that complicated. But some of the stuffs leads to major crashes though.
Click to expand...

Yes that's right. FIFA 16 -> FIFA 19 was a huge transition period from Ignite to Frostbite engine. So a lot of the gameplay code (and loads of other stuff) was still sat in random binary files for years. EBX is essentially like a reflection of object instances that exist within Frostbite, its actually a very odd system to occur in a game but for modding / patching / updates, a nice one.

I am actually surprised they never shifted the Career stuff from its batch of chunk files (INI/XML etc) to nice EBX but judging from seeing the leaked source code. Quite frankly, its all a fucking mess.
 
DevPlays said:
You have to open the texture file once (left clicking it) and use the export/import buttons from the top corner of the Editor itself to avoid any crashes or wrongdoings. With that being said, you experienced or enthusiast modders should try to export/import the ball meshes and textures and see if it's working now. The editor got some major updates lately, fixing so many bugs. I think it's worth it to test that and see how it pans out.
Click to expand...

If the latest release is still 1.0.6.1, importing texture files works fine, but mesh import still doesn't work properly. But it's game specific, on other frostbite games which is where they probably test, it works (or so they say), on Fifa 17/18 which is what I've tried, frosty (and the game) will crash. It probably requires game specific fixes. I have sent them the specific error log but a dev has to take some time & interest in fixing it for these older games, so who knows if it will ever happen.
 
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