Hey everyone!

Before you continue reading and comment for a password when you are a free user, this post is ONLY for game changer members and above. For some reason Patreon keeps unlocking this post to free members, but it is NOT available for free members.

It is time for 3.0, the big one! This wraps up everything since 2.4 went public back in March, and a LOT has changed in the two months since. Below it's organized by what's different now. If you're coming from 2.4 directly, every section below is new to you. These are the Patch Notes, so if you're interested read through them at your own pace. It is quite long! To prevent any confusion, there is a regular link in the installation section as well ;)

But before we go in, I want to express my gratitude to everyone who has supported this mental project. Whether you've been here since day one or this is your first time, the support allowed this idiot to spend the time and effort on this, and hopefully enhance your experience.

Genuinely, thank you.

CROWDS

This is where the most visible work has gone in.

• Crowds react to what's actually happening in the match.

• 26 different match moments now have their own animations: goals, dramatic saves, VAR checks, red cards, full time, boring 0-0 stretches, the lot.

• Up to 17 different animations sprinkled across the stands per reaction so the whole crowd doesn't do the same dance.

• Reactions ripple across the stands naturally instead of all firing at once.

• The frame stutter that used to come with mood changes is gone. Old version hitched visibly every time the crowd switched reactions. Now it's seamless.

• Choreographies. The home end now holds up colored cards forming an image at scripted match moments.

• Crowd colors pull from each team's actual kit colors.

• Performance: in heavy stadiums at cranked-up settings, average FPS went from 108 to 165, and big stutters over 50ms went from 452 per match to basically zero.

• Crowd attendance now is accurate to in game attendances, so no more full stadiums when 4k/25k should be there.

STADIUMS

The stadium plugin had a structural rebuild and every stadium got passed over by hand.

• Post-processing included. This gives night matches a colder look, and day games a warmer look.

• Bench placement: Every stadium got home and away bench empties added so substitutes show up in the right spot. Manual per-stadium work, took a while.

• Camera placement: The stadiums with camera issues in broadcast mode are all tackled and now have no roof in the way anymore. If they do, please let me know.

• Stadium segmentation: same stadium can serve different teams in different competitions via ID mapping.

• Pitch shader rewrite (Partial): Rewritten the pitch shader and rolling out gradually.

• All stadiums now have their lighting overhauled. Took the most time, but it now looks good.

• Using the Tilde key ( ~ Key, next to 1 and above Tab) now copies the stadiumID for you to map.

LIGHTING

• Lighting toggle got a performance pass. Was making 28+ expensive object searches per call, now caches. Dynamic GI updates only fire when something changes. Noticeably smoother.

• Skybox stutter fixed. No longer forces dynamic GI updates every time the skybox is reapplied.

• Memory leak from skybox materials being duplicated and never cleaned up between matches. Long sessions stable now.

• Bloom tweaker is added. Use Numpad 1 to tweak the bloom of your matches. Only affects custom-lighting stadiums, vanilla stadiums keep FM's own bloom system.

• Vanilla stadiums no longer get the wrong skybox/exposure after you've played a custom one.

• Bloom threshold vs per-light lens flare conflict resolved. Floodlight flares no longer wash out.

CAMERAS

Custom Camera: (NOT Free Camera) got added.

• Player nametags now line up correctly with custom cameras. They were drifting before.

• FM's dynamic zoom still works on top of your custom positions. The camera still zooms based on where the ball is, just from your placement.

• Toggle keybind: F1. F2 toggles LookAt re-aim - off is smoother when FM blends between sideline cameras, on is smoother for static presets. Try both.

Free Camera:

• FreeCam Bloom Tweaker: Numpad 1 during a match opens the in-game adjustment panel. Arrow keys tune intensity, threshold, scatter, iterations, player brightness clamp. Saves automatically.

• FreeCam ball tracking. Three modes cycled with F4:

• Mouse: original free-look. WASD flies, mouse looks around.

• LookAt: WASD flies, camera auto-aims at the ball with smooth easing. Cinematic.

• Chase: camera follows the ball at the offset you had when you switched in. WASD steers the offset live. Broadcast camera you can move.

• FreeCam now takes priority correctly when toggled on after CameraInject is already active.

WEATHER

• New plugin: WeatherOverhaul. Custom rain and snow particles that work alongside FM's weather system. Looks the part now.

• Weather particles no longer randomly stop mid-match. The stadium's internal weather system was killing the custom effects. Sorted.

BALLS

• Custom ball lighting completely rewritten. Tested across night, day-shadow, day-sun and vanilla stadiums. Should look correct everywhere.

• Balls appearing black in non-custom stadiums fixed. Custom materials were using a shader incompatible with FM's vanilla lighting. Now grabs FM's own shader and applies it to custom materials.

• Memory leak in ball injection (cached textures not cleared between competitions). Long multi-comp sessions don't eat memory anymore.

• Custom ball textures per competition still work as before, just better-lit now.

COMPATIBILITY & PERFORMANCE

• Full FM 26.2 / 26.3 compatibility.

• Cross-plugin performance audit. Lighting, cameras, crowds, seats, stadiums all got cleaned up in one pass. Average FPS up 50%, worst-moment FPS up 275%, big stutters basically eliminated.

• Major FPS killer found and removed: a second camera was re-rendering every crowd instance every frame. Reducing FPS for nothing, this is obviously removed.

• Crowd cleanup between matches. Old crowd objects were stacking up invisibly.

• Six silent failures in stadium injection were swallowing errors without logging. If your stadium wasn't loading and the log was empty, this is why. Errors now properly reported.

• Newgen screens going black after custom lighting fixed. Ambient now properly restored on UI enter/exit.

• Bundle load time logging so we can track which stadiums are slow.

UPDATED STADIUM LIST:

2.4 went out with 213 stadiums total. Since then the focus has been a mix of new additions and major reworks on the existing roster.

EVERY stadium shipped before this version got the bench/lighting/camera overhaul somewhere along the way. If you played a stadium pre-2.4 and revisit it now, it's not the same stadium.

Argentina

• Club Atletico Cordoba

• El Cilindro (Racing Club)

• El Monumental (River Plate)

Belarus

• Dinamo Minsk

Belgium

• 't Kuipje (KVC Westerlo)

• Achter de Kazerne (Yellow Red KV Mechelen)

• Cegeka Arena (K Racing Club Genk)

• Club Brugge

• KV Kortrijk

• Planet Group Arena (KAA Gent)

• Royal Antwerp

• Sint-Truiden

• Stadion am Kehrweg (KAS Eupen)

• USG St. Gilloise

Brazil

• Alfredo Jaconi (Esporte Clube Juventude)

• Allianz Parque (Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras)

• Arena Condá (Associação Chapecoense de Futebol)

• Arena da Baixada (Athletico Paranaense)

• Arena Grêmio (Grêmio Foot-Ball Porto Alegrense)

• Barradão (Esporte Clube Vitória)

• Beira-Rio (Sport Club Internacional)

• Castelao (Ceara)

• Castelao (Fortaleza)

• Couto Pereira (Coritiba Foot Ball Club SAF)

• Ilha do Retiro (Sport Club do Recife)

• Independencia (America Mineiro)

• Maiao (Mirassol)

• Mangueirao (Remo)

• Maracana (Flamengo)

• Maracana (Fluminense)

• Mineirao (Atletico Mineiro)

• Morumbi (Sao Paulo)

• Red Bull Bragantino

• Neo Química Arena (Sport Club Corinthians Paulista)

• Sao Januario (Vasco da Gama)

• Vila Belmiro (Santos)

Uruguay

• Centenario

Croatia

• Hajduk Split

• Maksimir (Dinamo Zagreb)

Denmark

• Brøndby Stadion (Brøndbyernes Idrætsforening)

• Midtjylland

• Nordsjaelland

• Parken (Football Club København)

England

• Bramall Lane (Sheffield United)

• Coventry Building Society Arena (Coventry City)

• Fratton Park (Portsmouth)

• Hull City

• King Power Stadium (Leicester City)

• Portman Road (Ipswich Town)

• STōK Cae Ras (Wrexham)

• The Den (Millwall)

• The New Lawn (Forest Green Rovers)

• The Peninsula Stadium (Salford City)

• Toughsheet Community Stadium (Bolton Wanderers)

• Turf Moor (Burnley)

• Vicarage Road (Watford)

Greece

• AE Larisa

• Agia Sofia (AEK Athens)

• Apostolos Nikolaidis (Panathinaikos AO)

• Atromitos

• Georgios Karaiskakis (Olympiacos SF Piraeus)

• Kleanthis Vikelidis (AS Aris Salonika)

• Levadiakos

• Oficrete

• Panetolikos Ground (GFS Panetolikos)

• Panserraikos

• Toumba (AS PAOK Salonika)

• Volos

Hungary

• Ferencvaros

Netherlands

• AFAS Stadion (AZ Alkmaar)

• De Goffert (NEC Nijmegen)

• Het Kasteel (Sparta Rotterdam)

• FC Twente

• Vitesse

Norway

• Intility Arena (Vålerenga Fotball)

• Lerkendal Stadion (Rosenborg BK)

Poland

• Arena Zabrze (Gornik Zabrze)

• Jagiellonia

• Legia Warsaw

• Narodowy

• Narodowy Cup

• Polsat Plus Arena Gdansk (Lechia Gdansk)

• Rakow

• Stadion Poznan (Lech Poznan)

Portugal

• Estadio D. Afonso Henriques (Vitoria Guimaraes)

• Estádio do Marítimo (Club Sport Marítimo - SAD)

Serbia

• Cukaricki

• Karađorđe (FK Vojvodina Novi Sad)

• Novi Pazar

• Ofkbeograd

• Rajko Mitic Stadium (Red Star Belgrade)

• Stadion FK Partizan (FK Partizan Beograd)

• TSC Arena (FK TSC Bačka Topola)

• Čair (FK Radnički Niš)

Spain

• Andorra

• Cartuja

• Spotify Camp Nou (FC Barcelona)

Sweden

• AIK

Turkey

• Alanyaspor

• Antalyaspor

• Başakşehir

• Demirspor

• Rizespor

USA

• Orlando City

HOW TO USE THE NEW STUFF

• Choreographies fire automatically once your team has them authored. No keybinds needed for normal play. F9/F10 are for testing.

• Bloom tweaker: Numpad 1 in match.

• FreeCam ball tracking: F5 to use Free Camera, F4 to cycle modes, after activating FreeCam.

• Numpad + toggles the crowd off for screenshots.

• Tilde (~) during a match logs the current stadium_id, team_ids and bundle name to the BepInEx log AND copies the stadium_id to your clipboard. This is your stadiumID to map a custom stadium to. Works in vanilla matches too.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Some choreographies don't fire on shared bundles where the same stadium bundle is used by multiple teams (ongoing work, edge case for non-league teams playing in famous stadiums).

• No tutorial on the crowd tools. Editing them to hopefully release today or tomorrow on YouTube!

That was it!

Enjoy 3.0

INSTALLATION

This is a FULL VERSION. Full reinstall is required.

BEFORE YOU INSTALL:

1. Back up your custom kits if you have them inside the FM26/BepInEx/CrowdInject. Anything you've placed in the Kits folder of earlier crowd plugins should be saved aside. The plugin folder structure has shifted and you'll want to reapply your kits cleanly afterwards.

2. REMOVE ALL FILES FROM EARLIER VERSIONS.

• Open the BepInEx\plugins folder and delete every plugin folder you installed from previous versions before dropping the new ones in.

• Old leftover folders WILL conflict with the new layout. Easiest way: delete the entire BepInEx\plugins folder (after backing up your kits!), then drop the new files in clean.

3. With FM closed, drop the new files into the install path below. All subfolders go into the directories below. That's two folders and 4 loose files. If you don't place all of them it will not load.

Installation paths:

• Steam: Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Football Manager 26

• Xbox Game Pass: XboxGames\Football Manager 26\Content

• Epic Games: Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\FootballManager26

THE DOWNLOAD LINKS:

• The 3.0 Stadium Megapack.

• FM26 Crowd Tools

BepInEx for Linux:

• Download

Steam Deck (Desktop Mode):

- Download the Linux version of BepInEx

- Download r2modman and extract it

- Navigate to: home-deck-config-r2modmanplus-local-fm26-profiles-default-

- Add the files to that path

- Make a shortcut on your homescreen of the r2modman app image and click execute

- Search game: -fm26 and select profile

- Find bepinexpack-footballmanager26 and install

- In the top left click "Start modded", not vanilla

- Game will load

If you have extraction issues, try winrar or winzip.

The first boot after this update will take a long time. IT HAS NOT FROZEN, IT IS LOADING. DO NOT INTERRUPT IT.

Anti-tamper message:

• Remove the plugin files while FM is closed, boot the game and play a match, close FM, reinstall the files while FM is closed. Then you can play.

Thanks again to everyone testing builds and reporting issues.