The story behind FM Scout Editor

FMEL - Our first free editor

Few years back, I collaborated with Stelios from moddingway.com who created FM Editor Live for us, the one and only free real time editor for Football Manager. FMEL became an instant hit (over 280k downloads) as people have been long looking for a free alternative to FMRTE. The tool had good potential, but sadly that was never fulfilled.

Being a volunteer developer and relying on donations as your main incentive simply doesn’t work, at least not for long. Eventually real life knocks on your door and your previously spare time evaporates into thin air. A full-time job, a new relationship, your family and kids (you know… all these important stuff) dominate your every day.

And when you actually find some time for your FM passion, you’d rather play the game to have fun than write code for an app that will receive complaints because you didn’t update it in time after a patch or because you didn’t have time to add a much requested feature.

FMEL suffered from these very reasons. I tried my best to bring other developers on board, but let’s be honest; there’s only a handful of people who can actually do this well and most of them who remain active are already making their own tools here on fmscout. As a result, that project was put on hold indefinitely.

The state of real time editors

FM Scout is widely known for a few things, one of them being Genie Scout. Another one is MacAssistant, a dedicated full-featured tool for Mac users. But with FMEL out of the picture, we needed an exclusive flagship editor for Windows. FMRTE has been the only dependable editor for years, until Sports Interactive announced their official In-Game Editor a couple of seasons ago.

A lot of people quickly switched to IGE because SI promised that fiddling with their editor is safe and won’t break any saved games. The obvious authority and its ease of use helped IGE grow in users, but it lacks certain advanced features FMRTE has. On the other hand, FMRTE users would often complain about ending up with corrupt saves. Some people eventually purchased both editors; IGE for basic edits and peace of mind, and FMRTE for more advanced usage yet risky.

Another important matter is the speed of updates after a patch release. Naturally IGE is immediately compatible being the official tool. FMRTE updates are usually delayed for a couple of days and even weeks for the initial game release. When people spend their money on something, they demand fast updates which is totally understandable.

FMSE - The mission

This is where FMSE comes in. I wanted an advanced real time editor with a strong scouting side that would run lightning fast, be safe to use and roll out updates faster than most people would realize a new patch was released. I explained my vision to Thanos (MacAssistant author) and it didn’t take long until we started working on the new tool.

MacAssistant has been consistently the best FM tool for Mac users for a number of reasons; it’s a bug-free editor with almost flawless history of such reports, it gets updated faster than any other tool after a patch, and new features are being added frequently. Surely it’s lacking certain features that I’d like to have, but for the most part it had a solid base to kick-start FMSE; we just needed to rewrite everything for Windows and build upon this foundation.

A couple of months later FMSE became available for public use. Though still in alpha, it’s packed with plenty of must-have features and most importantly we’re determined to showcase significant progress by rolling out updates every single week. Feature requests are very important to us and a weekly release schedule will definitely prove that to our users.

FMSE - Specs & Features

Anyone can download the app and try it out. The simple scouting features in the app will always be free, that’s a promise. This basically means you can view just about anything. To unlock the editing features (and be able to save your edits), you need to purchase a license that is an one-time upgrade for all FM17 versions.

Current Compatibility

Football Manager 2017 v17.2.1
Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10
64-bit

FM Touch is not supported yet, but we plan on adding support for it before we move from alpha to beta version; from the looks of it, this could be added by mid February.

Feature Highlights

Blazing Fast Engine
Performance is not just an afterthought, we baked it in right from the start. Loading your game will literally take 2 seconds, while rendering all players in full-database save will take 1 second! No other third party tool for FM is even remotely close.

In-Game Assistant
See the most important hidden attributes, CA/PA & actual left/right foot values right in the game (player attributes screen). This is an exclusive feature no other tool for Windows has!

User Friendly Interface
The focus is on making data easy to find and a breeze to edit. The clean and responsive interface make it simple for anyone to use the app. You should have fun, not feel lost.

In-Depth Search Filters
Search for players & clubs by a plethora of available filters. You can use these for free to gain insight on possible transfer targets, or to help you pick which club to be.

Edit Club Info, Finances & Kits
Fiddle with all club details, such as name, year founded, facilities, youth recruitment, morale, attendances. Change kit style and colours every new season and see these changes apply to the 3D match as well.

Edit Player Stats, Positions & More
A vast amount of player details can be edited, including value, all attributes, abilities, contract data, reputation, positions, preferred moves and so on. You can also heal injuries, destroy a player (fitness to 1%) and remove bans.

Most Advanced Awards Editor
In-depth editing of awards is possible for all sorts of award details, such as voting type & format, award rep & type, recipient type, minimum requirements & many more.

Increasing Functionality
This might not be a feature per se, but it easily makes the highlights. There’s no other tool committed to rolling out weekly updates. Feature requests really matter to us.

Looking Ahead

Staff, competitions, positional / potential ratings, mass edit, shortlists… these are just some of the features already planned. And with so frequent updates, you’ll have something to be excited about every week.

The future definitely looks bright for FMSE. Once we reach beta, FMSE 17 shall have a much wider range of functionality to meet the needs of our most demanding users. And trust me when I say that it won't take as long as you might expect.

I encourage you to download the app today to find out how it works and to see what options are waiting for you inside.