FM26 Enhanced Environment Overhaul Alpha v0.2 & Responding to Monday's Survey

Hey everyone,

If you see this line of text because you are getting flash-banged after installing the update, do not comment, read the installation guide at the bottom and which file to remove😝

There is a huge update to the Environment Overhaul! It is still an alpha, and it will still (not to be confused with Will Still) have rough edges. But 0.2 is a big step up from what went out three weeks ago. Same as before: it doesn't replace your stadium pack, and it works on FM's own grounds as well as custom ones.

Bug fixes:

If you had a rhythmic hitch every couple of seconds during matches, that was me. It's fixed.

I spent most of the last three weeks chasing it and got the cause wrong three separate times before I found it. The floodlight beams were redoing an enormous amount of work every single frame, on every fixture in the ground, because one of my asset files was two weeks out of date and that quietly forced the slow version of the code instead of the fast one. On a ground with 334 floodlights that adds up fast. It's now doing about a twentieth of the work it was doing this morning. Nothing about how it looks has changed, it just stopped setting your CPU on fire to draw the same picture.

If you were one of the people telling me it felt choppy, thank you, and sorry it took a while.

Another major bug fix is the previous version would not properly illuminate non-custom stadiums, and that is now fixed. So the problem was that FM26 does not have a system in place that enables the lights in default stadiums when the time slot changes. In my custom stadiums I can do that because it runs on my lightinginject. Essentially what was happening was that when a match became night, FM didn't enable its own floodlights since it didn't have the feature. Now it is there.

The rain is mine now

This was top of the rough edges list last time. Rain was still coming from Weather Overhaul, so it fell on FM's schedule and had no idea what the sky above it was doing. You could have a clear evening and rain, or a closed grey lid and nothing.

Now it's built into this mod and it comes from the deck overhead. It scales properly too: a drizzle is fine and near vertical and hazy, a downpour is long fast streaks that you can see sheeting across the floodlights. FM actually has ten different precipitation types and the old setup flattened all of them into "it's raining", so a light drizzle drew the same doomsday sky as a proper storm. Not anymore.

You can drop Weather Overhaul now, with one exception: snow still comes from it. That's on the list.

Floodlight beams

New in 0.2. The floods throw real beams through the air, and how strong they are depends on what's actually in the air. On a clear night they're barely there. In the wet they blaze.

This is the thing I keep loading matches just to look at. A wet Tuesday night away game with the beams coming down through the rain is exactly the mental image I started this whole project for.

Clouds look right up close now

The cloud shapes were fine but there was a grain over them that looked like a cheap low resolution noise texture, most obvious on the ones further away. Turned out I was letting the graphics card guess at something it had no way of guessing correctly inside that kind of shader. Fixed, and the far half of the sky is much cleaner for it.

The HUD is off

Also on the rough edges list last time. That debug text in the top left is now off by default.

I've kept it for myself and it's a single setting in the config file if you want it back, but it shouldn't have been in your face by default and I should have done this before 0.01 went out.

Other fixes

Pitches were going black on FM's own grounds, which turned out to be FM's own pitch floodlights sitting switched off until a night kickoff while I was walking the sun down past them. Fixed.

Newgen faces were going dark for a related reason. Fixed.

The boots picker was popping up while you were searching outside a match. Fixed, it's gated to matches now.

If you reported the whole ground going dark with this mod on, that should be sorted in this build. If it's still happening, tell me and I'll go again.

Known rough edges

Still an alpha. If something looks broken, it might be.

In very heavy rain the beams can wash out into a milky fog.

Players still don't get wet. Still next on my list, I said that last time and I meant it, it just keeps getting queue-jumped. Snow still comes from Weather Overhaul.

There's still no real simulated wind. It uses FM's own base wind values. Saying it again so nobody gets the wrong idea. Puddles are still being tuned. Shout if they look wrong.

The survey

• 79 of you filled in the portal survey from Monday, which is the biggest response I've ever had. Some of it formed and changed my plan, so here's what you said, and some replies from me on why yes or why no.

• 87% of you download everything and install all of it. 75% copy the files across by hand, and 16% told me you don't know what a mod manager is, which is completely fine and is exactly why I asked. 80% update immediately every time something drops. I will form more elaborate consequences of what those numbers mean when the month ends.

• Then the one that actually changed things. I asked whether you'd genuinely use per-stadium picking. 52% said no interest just give me everything, and another 39% said it sounds nice but realistically you'd hit select all. That's 91% of you telling me I was about to build a feature for roughly seven people. I will hence not give it any priority whatsoever in the queue and will be a potential nice to have.

• 82% said download size doesn't bother you if the speed is decent, so the whole "how should I split the pack" question will be redone.

• What you actually want is to know where you stand. 67% picked "clearly seeing what's new since I last downloaded" and 43% picked "knowing which version I currently have installed", and those two beat screenshots, browsing and filtering by a mile. One of you described it better than my own form did:

Something in your profile that plainly tells you where you're at, like sortitoutsi does for face packs but better.

That's now going in the priority pile of things being built.

• On the bug tickets, I asked in the August post whether the rejected ones should be public with a reason attached. 49% said show both accepted and rejected, 9% wanted it kept private. So that's settled and it goes public with reasons either way.

Your questions and remarks:

A few of you asked me things directly and they deserve a real answer.

• Somebody wrote that they love this mod and can't play without it, but their laptop sounds like a plane, they're stuck on low, and they're buying a gaming laptop before FM27 purely so this runs properly. That one stuck with me. The hardware survey I mentioned is coming precisely so I can tell you what this actually needs, instead of you guessing or me guessing from my own machine.

• Somebody asked for a simple on-screen thing telling you what every key does, for cameras, boots, stadiums, all of it. Yes. Although much exists when you go into the free camera, there is a bit that is still missing.

• Someone else asked for tutorial videos or links sitting next to the download, which fills the same hole. Both are going in the portal, and will be future proofing.

• Somebody wondered whether other modders will be able to use the portal, one central place for FM mods. Honest answer, no, and possibly not ever. It's built around Patreon access and my own release pipeline for the moment, and opening it up means moderating, hosting and supporting other people's work and being liable for any potential risks or infringements. I'd rather say that plainly than leave it hanging.

  I have two further worries for this, the first being that sites like SortitoutSI, FMScout, FMBase and others will be left in the dust on this, when I know a large portion of supporters of my stuff still use those platforms. The other worry I have for this has to do with the responsibility. I don't back away from my responsibilities, as I hope is clear by now, but there is a limit to which I want my responsibility to reach, at least for the moment. The responsibility of becoming support channels for other people's stuff and actions, the consequences of them if anything were to infringe on anything, then that is me, my image, my brand and my sleepless nights from it. So for now, no. But I wanted to explain why not.

• Somebody asked for vanilla FM files to be downloadable so you can reset when something goes wrong. The plain answer, nope. I won't be doing that because

  1. it infringes, and redestributes the source material from SEGA, and therefore in breach of the ToS which state that redistribution of game files is not allowed (paraphrased).

  2. My files do not touch vanilla files. I would therefore bring myself at risk for something I do not even influence.

• And one of you pointed out that choreos fire in matches where they've got no business firing, because Man Utd aren't unfurling a tifo for a midweek game against Norwich. You're right, it currently has no idea which matches matter. That needs match importance wiring into it and it's on the list. The list that never stops growing😅

Telling me things

Screenshots help more than descriptions. You can send them in the group chats here:

https://www.patreon.com/messages/b0dcd3df63aa42e08cbd0ffd196fa2a2

or

https://www.patreon.com/messages/c7f8994aeb6d48128de30d0f4c7f4639

If a sky, a sunset, a beam or a pitch looks wrong, send the shot and say which ground and roughly what date it was. That's usually enough for me to find it.

One last thing

Somebody put in the survey that they were worried about me burning out, and suggested that after a big update the paying members should get to vote on whether I take a day or two off. They reckoned the majority would say yes.

More on my wellbeing will be asked when the next survey goes out. Thanks for being concerned, and it will be actioned upon :D

Thanks for noticing.

Installing:

1. Remove this exact file unless you want to get flash banged!

   1. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Football Manager 26\BepInEx\plugins\LightingInject\bloom_mappings.txt

2. Download and unzip the attached zip files.

3. Installation paths:

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

   2. Xbox Game Pass: XboxGames\Football Manager 26\Content

   3. Epic Games: Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\FootballManager26

4. Drag the files from the extracted zip file to the folder that applies in step 2.

5. Windows will ask about merging or replacing files. Say yes to either.

6. Start the game.

There is also a package of updated stadiums that you can install in the same way, with merged team mappings from Dale and myself.