It is still a bit of a work in progress but I wanted to share this to allow people to see what can be done with customization in DDSCF20. It really is a huge step forward allowing customization - at least for someone like me who wanted to play a slightly smaller college league as I have a solo league in the pro game using a 1960s format and felt it made sense to have less college talent coming in. I also greatly prefer an old style alignment with the Big Ten having only 10 teams, a Southwest Conference, a Pac 8 and a Big 8 so I made a mod based on the early 1970s. (what can I say, I am both old and old-school).

It is an 82 team league setup like college football was in 1973. I then took the real 1973 and 1974 schedules to make schedule files. Each school plays 11 games except the Ivy League schools only play 9. Right now I can only get the first schedule I import to work but I am sure that will be fixed. The issue is at this point in the open beta the game seems to be requiring a 12 game schedule for each team in order to import so I am just posting 1 schedule here right now.

All of the teams in a conference play an equal number of games against their conference opponents however there is perhaps a small issue with overall games having a larger difference between home and away contests. An example in the first schedule is Colorado State of the WAC plays 8 home games and just 3 road contests. That is because I had to manually replace real-life games against smaller independent teams and other non-included schools in this file to get each team to 11. It is something I will try and work on going forward but for my first attempt I just wanted to be sure everyone plays the porper number of games - both in and out of conference. The home/away disparity is somewhat addressed once all 4 schedules can be used as sked3 is a reverse of 1 and 4 is a reverse of 2. I did this figuring the 2 year format would have every in conference foe meet at least once and by duplicating the first two but reversing the home team got me up to 4 different schedules. You can do a ton with schedules and I will likely use some other years of the era as a template to create some others so the non-conference foes can get mixed up a lot more.

It might still need some tweaking but I roughly estimated prestige for schools to begin with to try and mimic the era. My top 25 of the first test regular season is here.



Finally, I deleted a number of bowl games from my bowls.xml file (Made a backup of original first) but that still needs work. I will wait and see if a 0 team playoff option makes final release before I tinker with this too much. I am not sure if you need to do this or not. I did it because I was worried the game might have an issue with too many bowl games since I am using just 82 teams. I will post a modified bowls file once a zero team playoff becomes available. I did sim out 5 test seasons with this file and had no issues.

Biggest limitation right now is graphics. I pointed the path to the real team graphics made in the real world mod but for missing schools like the Ivy League I created some very basic logos that are really not of the quality to be shared at this point. Hopefully that can be addressed going forward and at some point I will try. The other issue (which may be my fault but also may be beta related) is when you start the game the player pictures do not have a jersey, but rather the logo superimposes over the player face. It is an easy fix but takes a few minutes. Just go to each team's school info menu and select reset just under the Jersey option and problem is corrected.

To use it is very simple: just select Custom game in your initial league setup and choose the teams and schedule files that you saved from this post.

If you try it out and notice anything else needing fixing please let me know. It is a first version but very playable so I am sharing it here. All I ask is if you can improve on it please do.

Thanks and enjoy.

EDIT - use this link instead.
Just learned without logos you can not see the Ivy League teams in the display so here is the file again with some basic Ivy League team logos. I also added the other 3 schedules you can swap in and out once the next beta patch is released.

Here is the new link.


EDIT 2

I found a couple of issues with two of the schedule files so here is a new link. It also includes a couple of extras such as the Bowls file I use (remember to back up your original before replacing it in your main DDSCF20 directory,(My Docs\Wolverine Studios\DDSCF 2020 folder instead of in Program Files. Otherwise as you update you'll lose your changes). as well as a second option on teams.xml with initial prestige a little closer for all teams. More details are in my January 1st reply below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/12b5j08g44svx ... d.zip?dl=0

That's really cool CF. It will be great to see what people come up with.

Good work, I noticed alot of Independent and no Ivy league teams though

and @Dev we def do need 0 team and 2 team playoffs for these historical leagues.

Just learned without logos you can not see the Ivy League teams in the display so here is the file again with some basic Ivy League team logos. I also added the other 3 schedules you can swap in and out once the next beta patch is released.

Here is the new link.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/egwqkn7xtw2au ... e.zip?dl=0

To add to this file and give it a retro type feel I gathered a bunch of era specific logos and compiled them for each team. I am not the best with paintshop so there may be some minor errors but overall I think it works out pretty well and adds to the league.
Here is a look at some of them I put together.




And here is the download link for the images. Just be careful you don't put them in the same folder as your main logo files to be sure they don't overwrite any logos you don't want to lose.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/le0qj3zy0v5k7 ... m.zip?dl=0


I am working on tweaking other things as well to allow me to better mimic the era and have my college game feed into my 1960s era pro league. I have taken a modified 1950s names file from OOTP and converted it for use in DDSCF and it seems to be working quite well. I had previously used it in the pro version so I figured it would work fine. I also have found some modifier settings I am testing now but look pretty good to give scores and stats more in line for the 1960-70s era.

I have renamed my bowl games and set up what I believe are for the most part correct matchups for the era (Pac8 vs Big10 winner in the Rose Bowl for example). Just need the 0 playoff team option to be added so I can fully test them.

Finally, I also created a few more schedules so I have 10 years worth now (real life 1971-75 and then the same schedules with home and visitor reversed). Just waiting for the patch to test to make sure all 10 work fine and have the proper number of games for all teams. Once I do I will post them and also my modified bowls file and firstnames, lastnames files.



This is not for everyone but if I can do this to get 1970s style gameplay, with very basic paintshop skills and no experience prior to this editing XML files, it shows just how much Brooks has expanded things by allowing some customization. At some point I might just work on a completely fictional college universe as well.

Even though I probably won't use the mod, I just thought I'd say WOW. Very impressive! That's some serious dedication!!

Yup, it’s a great job. TF, now you can do no playoffs too.

This mod alone may get me to buy it...

Kingfish wrote:This mod alone may get me to buy it...

I'll email Brooks for my commission cheque

You won't be disappointed if you do. I am really enjoying playing this and having a ball with my solo dynasty incorporating both the college game and the pro version.

Updated version January 1, 2020

I updated the link in the first post as well, but here is a little more info on the changes I made.



I found a couple of issues with a pair of the schedules so I have created an updated file. This includes all 10 schedules, the logos for the 82 teams, a customized bowl alignment file, two different teams files and the firstnames, lastnames files I use to give names better suited to the 1950s and 60s.

The 10 schedules are based on the real life 1971-75 schedules and I flipped home and away teams in a copied version to give me 10 schedules total, so I rotate through them each year. I found it is easiet to import the new schedule at training camp each season and in years ending in 1 I use schedule 1, years ending in 2 I use schedule 2 etc.

The Bowls file cuts it down to just 9 bowls when you play with no playoff. I couldn't get the matchups to work exactly how it was in real life but they are pretty close and set up as follows:

ROSE BOWL - Pac 8 winner vs Big 10 champ
COTTON BOWL - SWC winner vs 2nd place in SEC
SUGAR BOWL - SEC winner vs at large
ORANGE BOWL - Big 8 winner vs at large (but on occasion the Big 8 winner will go to the Sugar Bowl and the runner-up in the Big 8 goes to this game.

SUN, GATOR, PEACH and TANGERINE are all 2 at large teams while the BLUEBONNET is the WAC winner vs an at large. However, if ranked high enough the WAC winner may go to a higher prestige bowl.


The names file is a collection I put together by using a 1950s OOTP name file.

NOTE - For both the firstname, lastname and Bowls file make sure you back up your original files before overwriting with mine. They go in the main DDSCF20 folder (My Docs\Wolverine Studios\DDSCF 2020 folder instead of in Program Files. Otherwise as you update you'll lose your changes.) inside the Data subfolder

The logos are all included except for jerseys. Unfortunately, you need to go to each team setup menu and manually add then as I cannot get them to automatically setup upon league creation. (They go in your leaguename/HTML/images folder which is likely inside your MY Documents/Wolverine Studios?DDSCF20/leagues subfolder)

The 2 Teams files are as follows. First is a rough attempt at recreating the landscape of the game in that era so there are some very dominant teams and some very weak teams. I found in testing the good stayed too good so I made a second file that modifies things a bit.

The second file just tones it down so the initial rankings are much closer from top to bottom than the first file. I am using it in my dynasty right now and there is a fair bit more variability regarding which teams improve and which regress. You can, of course, change the prestige how you like but I find this one yields are more entertaining landscape.

If you see any errors or have suggestions just let me know.

Here is the link.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/12b5j08g44svx ... d.zip?dl=0