Your first league file

Where league files are

A football world is a folder (or a ZIP file) with a Data folder inside. These parts matter for leagues:

Your own worlds are stored in Documents/My Games/Championship Soccer/DataSets/. Usually one league file describes one country. The file International teams and tournaments.txt is special: it adds countries without leagues, their national teams, clubs for international cups and the international tournaments. Players can switch it off when they create a career.

[LeaguePreset:Recommended]
Footlandia=3
International=off

How a league file is built

The game reads a league file from top to bottom. The first character of each line tells it what the line is:

A league file is therefore a series of blocks: first the country, then each league with its settings and clubs, then the cups. A league ends where the next league, cup or country begins.

The words of settings, such as division or promotions, may be written in capital or small letters. Names of clubs, leagues, cups and countries must always be written in exactly the same way. Only spaces at the beginning or end of a name are ignored.

Most lines that start with ! describe the country. Three of them belong to the league or cup above them instead: ! intro, ! goal and ! metar set music and weather (see Music, weather and sounds).

A complete small example

Step 1: write the league file

Create the file Data/League/Footlandia.txt in your world. It defines the country, two leagues with six clubs each and the movement between them:

! Country "Footlandia"
! Names "Data/Names/Footlandia_1st.txt" "Data/Names/Footlandia_2nd.txt"

: Footlandia - Premier League
+ division 1
+ promotions 0
+ relegations 2
+ reputation 12
Icicle Town FC
Sunburn United
Snowdrift Rovers
Flip-Flop Rovers
Polar Bear United
Sandcastle City

: Footlandia - League 2
+ division 2
+ promotions 2
+ relegations 0
+ reputation 8
Igloo Inter
Coconut Athletic
Mitten City
Siesta Sporting
Reindeer Rangers
Lobster Red FC

Step 2: add a file for each club

Each club gets its own file in Data/Team, named exactly like the club line. Only the name is required; everything else is optional:

! Name "Igloo Inter"
! Reputation 8
! 1 shirt White
! 1 shorts Blue1

If a club has no file, the game still creates it, with generated players and random kits.

Step 3: add name lists

Put one first name per line into Data/Names/Footlandia_1st.txt and one surname per line into Data/Names/Footlandia_2nd.txt. Long lists keep the names of generated players varied.

Step 4: start a new career

Create a new career and select Footlandia with two levels. Every season the last two clubs of the Premier League swap places with the best two clubs of League 2. A Footlandia national team is created automatically; an optional club file Data/Team/Footlandia.txt describes it.

Mistakes to avoid

None of these mistakes crashes the game, but each one silently changes your world. All of them were tried out in the game.

1. Start every line at the very left. An indented line is read as a club name. The line   + promotions 2 with two spaces in front created a club called “+ promotions 2”. Because the promotions were lost as well, the league above stopped relegating.
2. Write notes on a line of their own. A note behind a club name becomes part of the name. The line Alpha FC ; our best club created a club with exactly that long name.
3. Use whole numbers made of digits only. The game puts all digits of a number together and even counts the letters a to f as digits. + promotions 2.5 means 25 promoted clubs, + division 1a means level 20. Only the reputation may have one decimal place, such as 12.5.
4. Write one instruction per line.
5. Do not put quotes around a league or cup name in its own line. In : "Footlandia - Premier League" the quotes become part of the name. Quotes are needed when you refer to a league elsewhere, for example in a cup: + add 4 from "Footlandia - Premier League".
6. List every club only once in the whole world. A second listing, even in another league, is ignored and reported. The club stays in the league where it was listed first.
7. Give every league of a country its own name. A second league with the same name is ignored together with all of its clubs. Names that include the country, such as “Footlandia - League 2”, stay clear in cup rules and when two countries both have a “Premier League”.
8. Keep the order inside a league: the name line first, then the settings, then the clubs. Put + division directly below the name, because the game decides there whether the league is loaded at all.
9. Keep the club line, the club file name and the club's ! Name identical. A different ! Name renames the club, and cup rules or reserve links that use the old name no longer find it.
10. Save new files as UTF-8 text with the ending .txt. Older files may use other Windows encodings. Keep the encoding of an existing file, or convert a copy to UTF-8 on purpose.
11. Never put clubs into a cup block. A club line below a * cup line is added to the league above the cup.
12. Start every league file with its country line. Leagues and clubs before the first ! Country line belong to no country.

What #@cs means

A line that starts with # is a note, and that has been true in every version of Championship Soccer. Newer settings are therefore written as a special note that starts with #@cs, short for “Championship Soccer”:

#@cs league-rounds 4

The current game reads this line as a setting: every pair of clubs meets four times per season. Older versions, including the original Championship Soccer 2004-05, only see a note and skip it. The league then plays the usual two rounds. This way new settings never break older versions.

Do I still need to write #@cs?

For most settings, no. The current game also understands them without the prefix: league-rounds 4 does the same as #@cs league-rounds 4. Write each setting only once.

Two settings are exceptions and only work with the prefix:

#@cs allocation-centre-place "Namur"
#@cs allocation-centre-country "Belgium"

Without #@cs the game reads these two lines as a club name. In a test, a club called “allocation-centre-place "Somewhere"” appeared.

Small print

• Write the four characters #@cs followed by a space. Capital letters (#@CS) also work.
• A misspelt word after #@cs is ignored without any message: #@cs regoins "North" does nothing at all. Copy settings from this guide or let the Team Editor write them.
• A known setting with an impossible value is reported by the Team Editor's Check. The game then keeps the previous valid value or its default.
• #@cs in front of a classic line, for example #@cs + division 2, hides that line from older versions. Never do this with lines a league needs, such as the country, the division or the promotions.