Custom football worlds & user content

What’s new in current Windows updates

The most important change is that custom football worlds and user content no longer need to replace files in the Championship Soccer installation. The current Windows updates provide a safer, more flexible workflow:

• Keep several football worlds side by side. Install freely named package folders or supported local ZIP files under Documents\My Games\Championship Soccer, preferably in DataSets.
• Choose the world before its leagues. When a valid package is installed, the new Career football world screen appears before Select Database and also shows the fantasy-player switch.
• Give shared content one predictable home. Supported name pools, graphics, team sounds and fan sounds belong in the fixed shared user Data folder rather than inside each selected package.
• Use packages only to create careers. After import, the career save is self-contained; moving or removing its source folder, ZIP or StartYear.txt does not break that existing career.
• Share clearer packages. A package can use Package.ini for its visible name, author, version and description, while the original Championship Soccer world remains available.

Packages and shared content do different jobs

Custom content is split into two parts. A football-world package provides the leagues, clubs and players used to assemble a new career. Shared user Data provides supported names, graphics and sounds whenever the game asks for them.

Selecting a package changes the football data used for the new career. It does not turn every file inside that package into a private graphics or sound mod. Keeping the two parts separate makes it possible to install several worlds without altering the supplied program files.

The Championship Soccer Documents folder

On Windows, custom content and normal career saves use:

<Documents>\My Games\Championship Soccer

For a standard local account this is often similar to C:\Users\Your name\Documents\My Games\Championship Soccer. Use the Documents location known to Windows: OneDrive, company policies or a localised Windows installation may redirect it elsewhere.

A well-used folder can look like this:

Championship Soccer\
├── My Career.ssc
├── Another Career.ssv
├── Data\
│   ├── Names\
│   ├── Graphics\
│   ├── Teamsounds\
│   └── Fansounds\
├── DataSets\
│   ├── Community Season 2026.zip
│   └── Historical World\
│       ├── Package.ini
│       └── Data\
│           ├── League\
│           ├── Team\
│           ├── Player\
│           └── StartYear.txt
├── Replays\
└── Snapshots\

You only need the folders for content you actually use. Missing custom folders are normal; the game continues with its supplied files.

Career saves remain directly in the Championship Soccer folder so existing saves and autosaves continue to work. Save and load screens hide recognised content folders from their top-level list; they do not move or delete them. Saved replays use Replays, and match images captured with F12 use Snapshots.

Preferences and diagnostic logs are machine-local rather than transferable football content. They normally live under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Championship Soccer.

Installing one or more football worlds

The clearest arrangement is one folder or ZIP per world directly under DataSets:

Documents\My Games\Championship Soccer\DataSets\Community Season 2026\
├── Package.ini
└── Data\
    ├── League\
    ├── Team\
    ├── Player\
    └── StartYear.txt

If the creator supplies a compatible ZIP, you may instead place the ZIP itself directly in DataSets. Championship Soccer reads it as a read-only world, without extracting it or writing into it.

Other recognised locations

Current updates also recognise packages placed directly in the Championship Soccer Documents root. This keeps older arrangements working and allows freely named folders:

Championship Soccer\Data\...
Championship Soccer\Data2\...
Championship Soccer\Data1.4.0\...
Championship Soccer\Data_Community\...
Championship Soccer\Any descriptive package name\...
Championship Soccer\DataSets\Package name\...
Championship Soccer\Package name.zip
Championship Soccer\DataSets\Package name.zip

DataSets is only a container and is never listed as a world itself. ZIP discovery checks the Documents root and DataSets, not arbitrary deeper folders. Up to 128 custom football worlds can be offered alongside the original world.

Recognised folder names are matched without regard to capital letters. For example, DataSets, datasets, League and league work in the same positions. Use the spellings shown in this manual when sharing a package so its structure remains obvious on every system.

Recognised layouts inside a package

A folder or ZIP becomes selectable when its detected data root contains a League folder with at least one regular file. The data can be placed directly in the package:

Package\League\...
Package\Team\...
Package\Player\...
Package\StartYear.txt

For a package intended for other players, the recommended structure adds one clear Data level:

Package\Data\League\...
Package\Data\Team\...
Package\Data\Player\...
Package\Data\StartYear.txt

Common extraction results with a second Data level or one additional outer wrapper are also accepted:

Package\Data\Data\League\...
Package\Downloaded folder\Data\League\...

These are compatibility conveniences, not a reason to add extra layers. If the same package contains both a flat League folder and a valid nested Data\League, the nested Data form is used. Avoid shipping two competing versions together.

Team should contain the files named by the selected league data. Player is the historical place for separate player-detail files and may be omitted when details are embedded in team files or players are intentionally generated. The Editing game data chapter explains the contents of these files.

Using a world directly from a ZIP

Use an ordinary, single-part .zip archive. Files may use normal Deflate compression or be stored without compression. Password-protected, encrypted, split and multi-part archives are not supported. Unsafe paths, unsupported entry types and ambiguous filenames also prevent an archive from being offered.

UTF-8 filenames and the common historical CP437 and CP850 ZIP encodings are supported. A download address or cloud-sharing link is not a package location: download the actual ZIP first, then place that local file in one of the recognised folders. Renaming another archive format to .zip does not make it compatible.

Giving a package a clear name with Package.ini

Package.ini is optional. Without it, the football-world list uses the package folder name or the ZIP filename without .zip. Place the file at the package top level or directly in the detected data root. For a ZIP, the archive top level is the clearest location:

[Package]
Id = community-season-2026
Name = Community Season 2026
Author = Example Editing Team
Version = 1.2
Description = Clubs and players for the 2026 season.

Every field may be omitted. Keep one value per line, each value no longer than 512 characters, and the whole file below 64 KiB. Keys are not sensitive to capital letters. Lines beginning with ; or # are comments. UTF-8 is recommended, while the historical Windows text encodings used by Championship Soccer data remain readable.

A missing or unreadable manifest does not invalidate the football world. An invalid Id is ignored without discarding valid visible details. Give every installed package a distinct Name; installing both a folder and a ZIP containing the same world normally creates two entries.

Selecting a football world for a new career

1. Choose Start a new career. Quick Start uses its already prepared world and does not import a package.
2. When at least one valid custom package is found, choose a source on the Career football world screen. The supplied Original Championship Soccer world remains available at all times.
3. Check Use only fantasy players in new careers on the same screen.
4. Continue to Select Database and choose the countries and divisions you want from that world.
5. Check the displayed career start year, change it if required, then let the game assemble the career.

Custom worlds are ordered by their displayed names, and the list can be scrolled. If no valid custom package exists, the football-world screen is skipped, Select Database opens directly and the fantasy-player value saved in Options is used. Returning from Select Database leads back to the football-world screen when it was part of the current route; returning once more leads to the main menu.

Use only fantasy players in new careers

This is the same setting found in Options, made visible where it matters for the career about to be built.

• Off: named roster entries and player details are imported from the selected Team and Player data. The game generates players only where normal squad-building rules require them.
• On: the game deliberately creates a new fictional player population instead of importing the supplied named rosters.

If the correct clubs appear but every footballer is newly generated, check this switch first. Authors testing real or predefined squads should normally turn it off.

What the selected package supplies

Domestic league, team and player files are not silently mixed with same-named files from the original world. This keeps the IDs and relationships inside the chosen package consistent.

Other folders inside a selected package do not become package-specific runtime replacements. In particular, Names, Graphics, Teamsounds, Fansounds and AI are not loaded from a named DataSets folder, Data2 or a selected ZIP. Supported replacements belong in the fixed shared user Data structure described below.

Suggesting a career start year

Place StartYear.txt directly in the detected package data root. It should contain one four-digit year from 1000 to 9999:

2026

The file suggests the initial value; it does not force that year. The value shown on Select Database is authoritative and may be changed before import. Championship Soccer chooses the initial suggestion in this order:

1. a start year that the player explicitly chose and successfully used before;
2. the selected package’s valid StartYear.txt;
3. the valid StartYear.txt supplied with the installed game; then
4. 2004 when no valid value is available.

The year supplies the calendar reference for dates and ages; it does not modernise historical club or country names by itself. Changing the file affects careers created afterwards, not a career that already exists.

An existing career does not depend on its package

The selected package is read while a new world is assembled. After a successful import, the career save contains its clubs, players, competitions, fixtures and current date. It does not need the package path, ZIP filename, package Id or StartYear.txt when it is loaded later.

You may rename, update, move or remove a package without breaking a career that was already created from it. That change also does not rewrite the existing career. Keep an older package only if you want to reproduce its setup, compare versions or build another career from the same source.

Shared user Data: names, graphics and sounds

The fixed shared overlay is Documents\My Games\Championship Soccer\Data. It applies independently of the football world chosen for a career. Supported files are sought here first and then in the supplied installation data, so copy only what you want to replace.

Name pools keep their historical path

A league file may still contain:

! Names "Data/Names/Exampleland_1st.txt" "Data/Names/Exampleland_2nd.txt"

Place the actual files in the fixed shared Documents\My Games\Championship Soccer\Data\Names folder. A copy that exists only in DataSets\Package name or inside the package ZIP is not a package-specific source. Use distinctive filenames when several community worlds share this global folder.

Graphics and sound references are global too

A team file may refer to a goal or entrance sound by name, but the playable custom file belongs in shared Data\Teamsounds, not in the selected package ZIP. The same global rule applies to graphics. Some early preview builds also recognised flat Championship Soccer\Teamsounds and Championship Soccer\Fansounds folders; those remain compatible, but new content should use the shared Data subfolders above.

If the shared Data folder also contains a valid League folder, it has two roles: it appears as a selectable football world, while its names, graphics and sounds remain global even when another world is selected. For a clearer installation, reserve shared Data for replacements and put football worlds in DataSets.

What the overlay does not replace

• match AI under Data\AI;
• general base sounds in the installation Sound folder, including the standard boo sound;
• language files, fonts, options and other product foundations; or
• League, Team, Player and StartYear.txt outside the package-selection process.

This boundary prevents a removed package from becoming a hidden graphics or sound dependency for an existing career.

Preparing a world for other players

A clean distributable archive uses one manifest and one data root:

My Football World.zip
├── Package.ini
└── Data\
    ├── League\
    │   └── Exampleland.txt
    ├── Team\
    │   ├── Example United.txt
    │   └── Riverside City.txt
    ├── Player\
    │   └── Taylor, Alex (1997).txt
    └── StartYear.txt

Tell players to place the ZIP directly in Documents\My Games\Championship Soccer\DataSets. If the world needs custom name pools, graphics or sounds, distribute them as a clearly labelled second group for the matching shared Data subfolders. Explain that those files are global and can affect other worlds or careers requesting the same filenames.

1. Test through Start a new career, not only in a file browser or Quick Start.
2. Turn off Use only fantasy players in new careers when testing supplied named squads.
3. Confirm that every league entry leads to the intended team file.
4. Inspect several squads, kits, ages and nationalities.
5. Advance far enough to check league, cup and international fixtures.
6. Test the finished ZIP after moving the unpacked development folder away, so the ZIP is the only package copy available.
7. Distribute only data, names, graphics and sounds that you have permission to use and redistribute.

Troubleshooting custom football worlds