Reordering Lineups through DBF Editing

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Reordering your roster (or the roster of a CPU controlled team) through DBF editing is a quick and fairly simple process. The data you need to edit is located in players.dbf.

Games

This tutorial applies to the following games:

You will need...

  • DB Commander
  • A knowledge of NBA Live's DBF files
  • A backup in case anything goes wrong

Changing the lineup

The first thing you should always do before modifying any DBF files is to make a backup so that no data is lost should the file become corrupted in the editing process. As you will be modifying a saved roster or Dynasty game, the file you need to open will be stored in one of your saves folders. The name of the save folder will depend on the name you gave it (eg MYROSTER, MYDYNASTY) or in earlier NBA Lives, the save slot number (000, 001, etc).

The attribute in players.dbf that determines a player's position on the roster is labelled ROSTERPOS. This is the only field you will need to change in order to modify a team's lineup. ROSTERPOS makes use of the following values:

0: Starting Centre

1: Starting Power Forward

2: Starting Small Forward

3: Starting Shooting Guard

4: Starting Point Guard

5: Sixth Man

6: Seventh Man

7: Eighth Man

8: Ninth Man

9: Tenth Man

10: Eleventh Man

11: Twelfth Man

12: Injured Reserve #1

13: Injured Reserve #2

14: Injured Reserve #3

Changing the order of the lineup simply involves searching for the players on the appropriate roster and swapping their ROSTERPOS value as desired. The easiest way to locate players is to search by their surname, PLAYERPKG or the TEAM field, though you can perform a search using other criteria if you wish. If you search by TEAM, you will need to use the appropriate Team ID number (see the individual DBF guides for more information).

Please note that no two players on the same team can share the same ROSTERPOS value, else the game will attempt to place them in the same roster slot causing a glitch. To help ensure each player is assigned a unique ROSTERPOS number, it's a good idea to jot down their names on a piece of paper along with the roster position you wish to assign to them, then tick off or cross out their names as you make each change.

After making each change, simply move to another cell in the database. If you are using DB Commander, the changes will be saved automatically. Upon entering the game and reloading the roster/saved game, your lineup will now be reordered.

Practical Use

In many cases it is unnecessary to use DBF editing to reorder the rosters as the same changes can be made from within the game. However, if you'd like to change the lineups of a CPU-controlled team in Dynasty Mode you will need to make the changes in players.dbf. Many users do this to correct CPU lineups that for one reason or another are undesirable, for example when the CPU starts a player whose real life counterpart is normally a sixth man.

This method can also be used to correct a glitch in the default rosters of NBA Live 07 that placed six players in the starting lineup for the International All-Stars. Please note that most roster patches for NBA Live 07 have already corrected this error.

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