The Scouter takes a Madden NFL 2003, 2004, or 2005 franchise file that has been saved in the off-season and creates a comma-separated value (CSV) file of all the draftees available with their actual statistics (Overall, Speed, Agility, etc.) The CSV file can be loaded into a standard spreadsheet program (such as Microsoft Excel) so you can sort the results by position or overall rating to pick the best rookie available for your team.

I originally wrote the program because the Madden NFL 2003 draft sequence was painfully tedious to the point I came to dread the off-season. With all the fun sucked out of the game during that period, I looked for a way around their awful interface while still being able to pick a decent team. You're still limited to the standard draft pick order and frequency, so while it may be perceived as an advantage I don't see it as cheating that ruins the game experience. It is also good for those people who get extremely upset when they use their #1 draft pick on someone who ends up a 60 overall somehow.

Through a lot of work with a hex-editor, I determined the format of the file that Madden NFL uses to store its tables. It helped somewhat that I saw ODBC SQL queries embedded in the program itself. Once I had written a program that printed the contents of all the tables in the franchise file it wasn't too much extra work to make a program that looked specifically for the "PLAY" (Player) table, team #1015 (the "draft team"), and printed their statistics.

So does that mean you can edit the saved games?

From the Windows Explorer, drag your "franchise.fra" file onto the Scouter program. That'll create a "franchise.fra.csv" file that you can then import into Excel. Alternatively, you can run the program from the command-line with the file name as the parameter. If you run it from the command-line, you can specify a second parameter as the number of the team you want printed. The real teams start at 0 and, from memory, go in order alphabetically from there. There are also special teams 1010 (AFC Pro Bowl) and 1011 (NFC Pro Bowl), 1009 (free agents), 1014 (retirees), and 1015 (draft).

I tried it but it doesn't work!

• Madden NFL database file format.
• TDB Write
  • Version 0.2 (2004-2005): binary (48kB). (March 19th, 2005)
  • Version 0.1 (2004-2005): binary (48kB) and source (10,354 bytes). (March 14th, 2005)

  Instructions:

  1. Place executable file (tdbwriteXX.exe) in your Madden NFL saved game directory under My Documents.
  2. Create a file with the same name as the franchise file, but without the ".fra" extension. For example, if your franchise is called "ToTheSuperBowl.fra", then you can name the file "ToTheSuperBowl.tdbwrite" (or just "ToTheSuperBowl.txt", if you prefer).
  3. Type search/write instructions (see sample batch file) into the text file for the modifications you want.
  4. In the Windows Explorer, drag the text file on top of the tdbwriteXX.exe program.
  5. If there are no problems, it will print the old CRC and the new CRC.

  Table/field list

  MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR FRANCHISE/ROSTER FILE BEFORE USING THIS. IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG, IT WILL CORRUPT THE FILE.

  See the sample batch file for editing examples. The parser isn't very intelligent and is quite fragile. Use my Madden Scouter program to view the list of tables and fields.

  There is a limit of 8 keys per search (or it'll corrupt memory and crash) and only a single word per key for text searches. No limit on number of writes per search. You must put "flush" before changing to a new "table" and also as the last line of the file.

  Thanks to Suchy for help on the CRC algorithm that made this all possible.

  Run the program by either dragging the text file with instructions on top of the program (see NOTE) or by opening the command-line, changing to the directory with the program, script, and franchise file, and typing: "tdbwriteXX yourscript.txt".

• Maddfixen
  • Version 0.1 (2004-2005): binary (32kB) and source (5,923 bytes).

  MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR FRANCHISE/ROSTER FILE BEFORE USING THIS. IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG, IT WILL CORRUPT THE FILE.

  It is used just like the Madden Scouter, by dragging the franchise/roster file on top of the executable in the Windows Explorer or by running it on the command-line with the file as the only argument.

• Scouter
  • Version 2.2 (2003-2005): binary (48kB) and source (13,581 bytes).

    Options are:

    • 1 - print all fields
    • 2 - don't filter by team
    • 4 - generate human-readable format to screen
    • 8 - print list of tables only
    Option parsing is rudimentary so add up all the options you want to get a sum, like: Scouter.exe franchise.fra 1 5 would print all fields for the players on the Bengals to the screen. To get a list of tables, use: Scouter.exe franchise.fra 0 8 (where the 0 can be anything since it's ignored anyway.) The default is team #1015 and 0 for options.

  • Version 2 (2003-2005): binary (36kB) and source (8,613 bytes).
  • Version 1 (2003): binary (36kB) and source (4,840 bytes).
• Scrooge

  Display your expected salary requirements from contracts and bonuses over the course of the next 7 years.

  • Version 1 (2004 and 2005): binary (36kB) and source (9,046 bytes).

  NOTE: It is recommended that you use an exported team file instead of the franchise file. The franchise file will work but you will end up with a salary report for every player in the NFL.

• DBD::MaddenNFL

  This Perl module provides a DBI database interface to query franchise files as if they were an SQL database. Requires SQL::Statement and DBD::File (included with DBI). If you don't know what Perl is, you don't need this. Be sure to rename the file to MaddenNFL.pm and place it in a "DBD" directory, which should itself be in the same directory as your script (or you can put this file in /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/$VERSION/DBD/).

  • Version 0.2 (September 18th, 2004): Fixed TABLE JOINs and possibly made it decode files faster.
  • Version 0.1 (August 12th, 2004): Initial release.

  Also useful will be lists of the tables and fields in each year: 2005, 2004, and 2003. There's also a simple Perl test script to try queries with.

• DB Print
  • Version 0.1 Perl source (9,761 bytes). (2004 and 2005 only at the moment due to small bug.)

• I used it today and I must say it is freakin' AWESOME! You guys are going to love it, as it adds a whole new perspective to draft day. -- Mardagg
• I simmed a season to test this out, and wow its almost like cheating. -- Croydo

This section for humor purposes, mostly.

Thanks to Jim O'Connell and Bob Hanson for sending me Madden NFL 2004 franchise files to determine how the file format changed.

Football Freaks utilities forum for being interested in such a program.