FM26 AI Dialogue mod v1.2 [BepInEx]

Changelog

v1.2

• Made the "thinking..." boxes a bit bigger to make them jump around less when the rewritten dialogue is actually put into them.
• Added a new 'Language' configuration value (under [General])to force dialogue to be a particular language regardless of FM in-game user interface setting. Default is 'Auto' which will leave it up to the AI model - sometimes it will get it right, sometimes it will just be in English. Other allowed values are: English, Portuguese, French, Turkish. You'll need to start and quit the game once first after installing 1.2 for the Language item to be put into your config file. Thanks to AsotOne for the idea.
• Very slight tweak to prompts when talking to players and agents (via pop-up window) to try and reduce chances of you referring to them by their full name.

v1.1

• Changed prompts to make team talks and press conference rewrites a LOT more varied. Team talks should be more passionate and motivational, press conferences will be more formal and soundbitey. Maybe I've gone too far but it's certainly more interesting! (see new screenshot)
• First attempt at supporting non-English languages - Portuguese should be fully working, others should work for everything except press conferences. No guarantees the AI models will produce good output, but I've done what I can on my end.
• Fixed team talks for incoming subs

Supported Dialogue Scenes

• One-on-one player or agent conversations (pop-up)
• Player+Agent group meetings (full-screen)
• Team meetings
• Press conferences
• Tunnel interviews
• Team talks

Where possible, extra on-screen context is used to give the AI more to work with when deciding what to say. E.g. what the result was in a post match press conference, or a player's morale, hierarchy position and relationship with you in a one-on-one chat. Obviously the most important thing is the original text, as we don't want it saying things that make no sense or don't help you understand what the real gameplay impact of clicking that option is. A few items of context are carried over to other screens so it gets a little more intelligent the more you play.

Not (yet) supported

• Any other interactions not in the supported list. Examples (will add more to the list as they are discovered):
• Board interactions (not rewritten; original text remains)
• Stuff tucked away in sidebars like during contract negotiations or creating recruitment focuses - will probably never support these, does anyone even read them?!
• Any operating system other than Windows - Mac/Linux may work, or may not - completely untested
• In-game languages other than English - most press conferences will not work, other dialogues may or may not.
• Women's football - untested, the rewriting may work but it might assume the players are men unless the original text mentions they're not

Definitely broken

• During a press conference, if you are asked a question where the only option is a dropdown box (e.g. "What position is the player best at") then it breaks rewrites for the next few questions.
• During a press conference, if a journalist re-asks a question ("the public deserve an answer...") then again rewrites get broken for a bit.

STEP 1: Install prerequisites

This is a BepInEx 6 based mod. If you have BassyBoy's stadium mod installed (or any other BepInEx mods) then you already have it and you're good to go straight to step 2.

Otherwise, you need to install it.

1. Get the latest BepInEx v6 nightly from https://builds.bepinex.dev/projects/bepinex_be for your operating system - it should be the "IL2CPP x64" build (for example, at time of writing, if you are on Windows you'd want `BepInEx-Unity.IL2CPP-win-x64-6.0.0-be.755+3fab71a.zip`).
2. Extract it to your FM folder, if you've done it right then then you should see a BepInEx folder appear in there, for example `SteamApps\common\Football Manager 26\BepInEx`
3. Run the game once - if done correctly, you'll see a window pop up alongside the game. Leave it alone.
4. Quit the game after loading is finished.

Where is your FM folder? Common locations are:

Windows - Steam:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Football Manager 26

Windows - Epic:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\FootballManager26

Windows - Microsoft store/Game Pass:
C:\Xboxgames\Football Manager 26\Content

Basically it should be the place where the main game executable is, i.e. `fm.exe` on Windows

STEP 2: Install the mod

• Extract the AIDialogue zip file (it should just have one DLL file inside it) into: <FM folder>\BepInEx\plugins\ - You may need to create the `plugins` folder if it does not exist
• .
• Launch FM26 (in order to generate the mod's configuration file)
• Quit the game.

STEP 3: Configure the mod

TL;DR Provider and APIKey

The configuration file can now be found at <FM folder>\BepInEx\config\AIDialogue.cfg. It can be opened with any text editor.

The mod supports three LLM providers. Set Provider in the [General] section to the provider you want to use, then fill in the corresponding APIKey in the section that relates to your chosen provider. You do not need API keys for providers you are not using.

The default provider is groq (link). You can sign up to this and create an API key without providing any payment information, although you can pay if you want higher rate limits.

Other providers currently supported are openrouter (link) and google (link). Which you use is a combination of personal preference, cost and which models are available in each.

Each provider has some models pre-chosen by me that seemed to work well (low latency, low price, limited hallucinations) in my testing, you can keep these as they are or set your own if you want to experiment - maybe you'll find some that work better!

You can change the models used by any provider, but it's really easy to introduce hallucinations e.g. agents making up totally random numbers in contract talks. I've tried to counter this as much as I can but sometimes a model is just determined to make stuff up.

Read on for information about each provider...

Groq

I chose a default set of models that are fairly cheap while still being fast and accurate 'enough'. The free tiers are quite generous - the mod will cycle between them so you should get about a good amount of interactions out of them before rate limits start to kick in - enough to evaluate if you want to keep using the mod. They are all quite cheap if you do want to add money to your account.

The Thinking configuration setting is turned off by default as it uses alot of tokens and you hit the free rate limit much quicker. If you are a paying user, you could turn this on to make the rewritten text more interesting, although it is a bit slower and very slightly more expensive.

Google AI Studio

I chose the most recent Flash and Flash-lite models as they are relatively cheap and very good (maybe the best) at following the instructions - weirdly the pro models tend to hallucinate more as well as being much slower and more expensive - maybe there's such a thing as trying TOO hard! Thinking is turned off by default for the same reason.

As far as I can tell, the free tiers are not high enough for a decent amount of gameplay so you'll need to set up billing - it's pay later rather than pay up front.

HUGE WARNING: at time of writing, unlike the other providers, Google do not let you put a spend limit on your API key, which means it is VERY important to keep it secret! You could avoid this risk by using openrouter instead, although it might be a bit slower.

OpenRouter

For this provider, the default set of models is just Gemini with GTP3.5-Turbo for a bit of variety.

Also, because Openrouter chooses from many providers, sometimes it picks a really slow one. You can counter that by telling it to prioritise throughput in your account's routing settings (on the openrouter web site), although that might slightly increase cost.

The Thinking setting is again off by default, I found it slowed things up too much, and it's not really needed for the default models (may be for others). Feel free to experiment.

I haven't tried changing the models to any of the ones they offer for free, but the free rate limits aren't great so paying is probably the best option.

STEP 4: Go

With the provider and API key set, you're good to go, start the game and play.

Optional: Other config values

Language

Forces dialogue to be a particular language regardless of FM in-game user interface setting. Default is 'Auto' which will leave it up to the AI model - sometimes it will get it right, sometimes it will just be in English. Other allowed values are: English, Portuguese, French, Turkish.

FAQ

What do you use?

In my long term save I use openrouter with default model set, thinking off. Costs a few US cents per hour.

Is this mod free?

Yes. The cost of the AI itself is yours, though.

Will it work on FM24?

No.

Do I need to start a new save?

No.

My dialogues are starting with [rate limited]?

You're using your provider's free quota and have used too much of it - the mod automatically pauses rewriting and lets you know with the [Rate limited]. This is unlikely to happen if you're paying. Depending on which limit you hit, it may start working again in a few minutes, or the next day.

The text isn't changing?

Check that BepInEx is installed correctly into your FM folder and that the mod's `.dll` is in the `plugins` folder. Check `BepInEx\LogOutput.log` for error messages. If it's working you should briefly see "thinking..." in each text box while it does the rewrite.

Text is showing as "AI error" or "thinking..." and there's 401 Unauthorized errors in the log?

Make sure you have replaced `XXX` in the config with your actual API key for the provider you have chosen.

Roadmap

When I have some energy back after this push for v1.0 -

More AI provider support, board interactions, women's football, any other dialogues I've missed and bug fixes.

Removing the mod

If you have no other BepInEx mods, just delete everything that was extracted from the bepinex zip file (4 files, 2 folders) from your FM folder. Otherwise, just delete bepinex/plugins/AIDialogue.dll and bepinex/config/AIDialogue.cfg.

If you just want to temporarily turn it off without deleting anything, you can use `Enabled` in the `[General]` section of the config file. Set it to `false` to fully disable the mod, then restart the game.