OpenFUT/fifa17-recon/docs/plan-2026-08-05-families.md

OpenFUT live-test script — 2026-08-05, non-player card families

Read this once end to end before touching anything. Total cost: one utas restart, one fresh FIFA launch, one MY CLUB visit.

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1. What shipped

Six commits on fifa17-fut-squad-and-userinfo, nothing pushed. All three families default OFF. Two changes are unflagged and already live in the working tree (they take effect at the next restart whether or not you set a flag): the rareflag guard and the club_route mirror filter.

The rareflag trap — no flag, always on (d8ef9d4)

fut_store._item() takes cardsubtypeid=/rareflag= and forces rareflag 0 on subtype 219.

• MEASURED: FUN_1801a88c0 is *(rec+0x58) == 1, and FUN_1801bfac0 case 5 turns a rare Player Fitness card into a Squad Fitness card. rec+0x58 is read a second time, unconditionally, at line 108 for every cardtype, so the guard also stops a 219 being drawn as rare. That is intended and is stated in the source comment.
• MEASURED: the player dict is byte-identical (20-key order and full value dict asserted in tools/test_card_families.py, 414 checks; mutation-checked).

Consumables — FUT_CONSUMABLES=1 / =all (340c31f, 0e4bc13)

126-item shelf over 69 subtypes, built from EA's own fcc_* rows.

• MEASURED: the 172-subtype enum (144 live, 28 dead) re-derived twice independently from FUN_1800d8330 + FUN_18013f4d0; EA's authored (amount, rating) per subtype; the four builder refusals (dead zone, missing amount, missing contract, rare 219).
• Serves type=contract 13, type=training 42, type=healing 27, type=development 44. =all also answers an untyped club fetch with no team=/league= with all 126.
• INFERRED: that any of those four ?type= names is what the consumables screen asks for. None has ever been on the wire. healing = categories {4,5} is a guess (fitness has no arm of its own). itemType: "player" on a consumable is unobserved. contract: 7 is invented — fcc_contractcards has no amount column.

The four coach families — FUT_COACHES=1 / =all (9feb577, 0e4bc13)

24-card shelf: 6 head coach, 6 GK coach, 6 physio, 6 fitness coach, ratings 55..80.

• MEASURED: 411 real ids from read-only dumps with rowcount == rows_emitted; the merge key is the raw u32 at rec+0x18 (only players mask); each family's table-unique DB Error miss-fill (assetid 2000148 / 9000258 / 4000146 / 3000259, rating 0x32, rare 1); no row in any of the four tables has value == 50, so rating 50 can only ever be a miss. The four miss-fill ids and any row whose own stat write equals its family's miss-fill are excluded from the shelf.
• A coach item sends 8 keys and no invented geography: no nation, no leagueId, no teamid, no preferredPosition, no attributeList, no rating, no rareflag, no assetId. (Diverges from the design agent's probe-shaped item_json, deliberately.)
• Serves type=headcoach|gkcoach|physio|fitnesscoach|staff. =all also answers type=manager.
• INFERRED: that the staff screen asks type=manager (observed exactly once, 2026-08-04) and nothing else.

Managers — FUT_MANAGERS=1 (9b22435, 0e4bc13)

10-card shelf on type=manager|staff: Luis Enrique 88, Conte 87, Wenger 86, Klopp 84, Koeman 82, Pardew 80, Di Francesco 78, Maes 75, Wdowczyk 70, Canning 65.

• MEASURED: 417 rows, carddbid == managerid + 1000000, 297 join real names; FUN_1801356c0 has no else-branch, so a wrong manager id is completely silent; nation lands at rec+0xde and leagueId at rec+0xe0 for a manager only, neither is written by the merge, and both have an identified reader (FUN_1800e5940 publishing NATIONALITY_ASSET_ID and LEAGUE_ID); negotiation is published as ATTRIB_CONTRACT_NEGOTIATION from rec+0xe3 (Enrique is 3).
• INFERRED: that the manager card template actually paints the flag, the league logo and the negotiation field. The readers exist in CardsDLL; the layout lives in the packed FIFA17.exe and cannot be read statically. TODO/CONFIRM.

Architecture, all three

Served as a synthetic overlay, never granted into the save. Clearing the flag restores the real club on the very next fetch. Overlay cards cannot be moved or quick-sold. The five staff sub-counters (stat ids 0xb..0xf, which FUN_180094ce0 sums into STAFF_EMPLOYED) are computed from the overlay — that is the second, independent oracle.

The mirror filter — no flag, always on (0e4bc13)

club_route used to filter nothing on the type=player, type=custom and untyped branches. It now keeps cardsubtypeid in (0,1,2,3) there. Verified no-op: all 194 items in the live save are cardsubtypeid 0.

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2. The test script

Constraint that sets the shape: env flags only take effect at process start, and restarting utas under a live client is what once produced "error connecting to Ultimate Team". So: FIFA closed, one restart, all three flags at their widest setting, then one fresh launch.

I dry-ran the armed server against a copy of the live profile at 10:11. The step-2 numbers below are what it actually returned, not predictions.

Step 1 — Close FIFA, restart utas with all three flags (terminal only)

Quit FIFA from the game's own menu (pkill -9 -f FIFA17.exe if it will not).

pkill -9 -f utas_server.py
cd /home/alex/Documents/OpenFUT/fifa17-recon/tools
setsid env FUT_CONSUMABLES=all FUT_COACHES=all FUT_MANAGERS=1 \
  python3 -u utas_server.py </dev/null >/tmp/utas.log 2>&1 & disown
sleep 2 && ./openfut-fut.sh status

Only utas restarts; lsx / blaze / roster / pow keep running. Do not use openfut-fut.sh restart — it restarts everything and drops the flags.

Positive: status shows utas ✓ (8099) and all other servers still up. Negative: utas down or 8099 not bound means a syntax or import error in the new code. Read /tmp/utas.log, fix, do not proceed. You have lost nothing but a terminal command.

Step 2 — Prove the arms before spending a game launch (terminal only)

for t in player manager staff training healing contract development; do
  printf "%-12s " $t
  curl -s "http://127.0.0.1:8099/ut/game/fifa17/club?type=$t&count=200" \
    | python3 -c "import sys,json;print(len(json.load(sys.stdin)['itemData']))"
done
printf "%-12s " untyped
curl -s "http://127.0.0.1:8099/ut/game/fifa17/club?year=2017&count=200&level=any&sort=desc" \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json;print(len(json.load(sys.stdin)['itemData']))"
python3 test_fut_contract.py | tail -2

Positive, exactly: player 194, manager 34, staff 34, training 42, healing 27, contract 13, development 44, untyped 320, and 439 checks passed / 0 failed.

Negative: any number off means the flags did not take or a module failed to import, and every in-game reading afterwards would be uninterpretable. player not 194 specifically means the mirror filter is wrong — stop, see §4(e). This step is the reason step 5 is readable at all, and it costs no menus.

Step 3 — Launch FIFA fresh

~/Desktop/launch-fifa17.sh → Ultimate Team → security question (any answer) → the FUT hub. A fresh launch is required; stale in-process state produces the "FUT Squad Update" error.

Step 4 — The players tab (you land on it; zero extra navigation)

Open MY CLUB. Read the default players list and click one club drill-down (Chelsea / team=5).

Positive: 194 footballers as before, no consumables and no staff mixed in; the Chelsea drill-down shows 26 items, not the whole club. Negative: any change here is a regression from the unflagged mirror filter, and it must be fixed before anything else is believed. See §4(e). This is the only step that can catch it, and it is free.

Step 5 — The staff screen (the highest-information action in the run)

From MY CLUB open the STAFF tab. Read out, in this order:

1. The STAFF EMPLOYED number on the club stats panel.
2. How many cards the staff tab shows.
3. Whether any card reads DB Error with rating 50.
4. For Luis Enrique: the name, the rating number, whether a Spain flag drew, whether a LaLiga logo drew, and the CONTRACT NEGOTIATION value.
5. Whether any staff card shows a position label (ST/CM/...) or a row of six attribute numbers.

Positive: STAFF EMPLOYED reads 34. 34 cards, real names, ratings 55..88, no DB Error anywhere. Enrique reads 88, draws the Spain flag and the LaLiga logo, and shows negotiation 3. No position label, no attributes.

That one screen chains, in order: the response ingested; cardsubtypeid reached rec+0x50 and FUN_1800d8330 dispatched; five separate merges ran and hit; rec+0xde/rec+0xe0 are ours alone and are rendered (nothing else on the wire could have supplied that flag or that logo); and negotiation 3 is an independent second confirmation that the managercards row itself was read.

Negatives, each separately actionable:

• 34 on the panel but the tab is empty. Our club really holds the staff; the failure is downstream. The tab asks a ?type= we do not answer, or staff items are not rendered. Step 7 says which.
• 0 on the panel and the tab is empty. The stats path never reached _club_stat_set. This is not a staff question at all and the coach ids must not be blamed.
• DB Error cards at rating 50. The whole chain ran and the failure is specific to the key. The staff branches read rec+0x18 raw, so suspect a version byte, not the item shape. This is exactly why coaches are on this screen: a manager failing the same way is completely silent, so the coaches turn a blank manager card from uninterpretable into "the merge missed".
• Enrique reads 88 with a real name but no flag and no league logo. The merge is fine and rec+0xde/rec+0xe0 are not what the manager template paints. Nothing else in the shipped shape changes; that is the TODO/CONFIRM above, resolved.
• Any staff card shows a position or six attributes. Something upstream is still injecting preferredPosition/attributeList into staff items, because neither module sends them.

Step 6 — The consumables screen (same visit, one tab press)

Walk to the consumables screen and every other MY CLUB tab you can reach. If any consumables appear, read the title and the number on three specific cards: subtype 219 (amount 20), subtype 220 (amount 10), subtype 61 (amount 5).

Positive: 219 titles Player Fitness (or the raw key FUT_CONSUMABLE_NAME_PLAYERFITNESS) and reads 20; 220 titles Squad Fitness / FUT_CONSUMABLE_NAME_SQUADTRAINING and reads 10 — same family, different title, the trap seen from the safe side; 61 titles Player Training (Pace) and reads +5. The numbers are positive.

Negatives:

• Cards appear but every number reads -1 (it will be -1, not 255: FUN_1801a8040 sign-extends). Atom 0x1b never reaches rec+0xbf and the entire amount-bearing half of the family is unshippable until that is found. The title still being right is what separates this from "consumables do not render" — title and number have independent sources.
• Nothing appears. Do not conclude anything here; go to step 7. The item list for this screen has never been observed on the wire, so absence is expected-ish and only the log distinguishes "we answered the wrong arm" from "the screen is not a club fetch at all".

Step 7 — Read the log (terminal only, and it is what makes step 6 worth doing)

grep 'family overlay armed' /tmp/utas_server.log | tail -60
grep -o 'GET /ut/game/fifa17/club[^ ]*' /tmp/utas_server.log | tail -60
grep -o '/club/stats/[a-z0-9/]*'        /tmp/utas_server.log | tail -20

Positive: the census shows a type= we serve, and the +N item(s) on that line is non-zero.

Negatives:

• A type= we do not answer appears (anything outside player/manager/custom/staff/headcoach/gkcoach/physio/fitnesscoach/contract/training/healing/development). Aim the flag at that arm at the next start. The request reached us; this is a one-word fix.
• Only type=player, type=custom, type=manager and untyped-with-team= appear, exactly as before. Then the consumables item list is not a club?type= fetch under any name we serve, and the next round is a route hunt, not an item-shape hunt. Note that /club/stats/consumables fires 35 times in the existing log and /club/stats/staff 9 times, so the screens exist and do talk to us — the item list simply arrives by some other door.

When done: leave it armed if you want; nothing is written to the save. To disarm, restart utas with no flags (step 1 without the env prefix) and the real club returns on the next fetch.

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3. What was skipped, and why

• The rareflag trap, live. The shelf builder now refuses to construct a rare 219 — that is the fix. Testing it live means hand-building the exact item we shipped code to prevent. The static chain is verified end to end (atom 0x271 → rec+0x58 → FUN_1801a88c0 → the squad branch, and rec+0x58 is not overwritten for cardtype 6). Not worth a menu trip.
• The four-card manager probe (fut_staff.probe_items(), including resourceId (1<<24)|1000509). Not wired into the overlay; wiring it costs a second restart. Its only unique leg is raw-vs-masked key, and that question only becomes live if managers come back blank while coaches resolve. Fire it in that branch, not before.
• Club items (badge / kit / stadium / ball). data/club_items.json is on disk, uncommitted, with no reviewer verdict. Also sweep_items() answers before the type filter and keeps itemType: "player", so any club-item experiment through the sweep is double-confounded.
• Manager formation modifiers 71-86 — zero rows in the 143-row fcc_trainingcards, and FUN_1801bfac0 case 6 calls FUN_1801a0100 on the formations result without the rowcount guard its twin case 7 has. A crash candidate. Formation 121-136 — artwork constant is -1. Manager league 300-341 — case 10 formats literally "ML: %d", so even a perfect card reads "ML: 13". None are on the shelf.
• The dead-zone canary (subtype 89). Its positive changes no decision (we only ship subtypes from consumables.json either way), and consumables.json predicted the wrong title for the dead zones until this round, so scoring it against the file was itself a trap.
• Coach nation/league echo. The shipped coach item omits nation/leagueId/teamid entirely, so there is nothing left to echo. That test died with the item shape.
• Equipping a manager into the squad slot. FUN_18013d1f0 was never read for a staff member and PUT /squad's staff shape is unobserved.
• Packs. Deliberately not in the same round as the shelf.

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4. What could break, and the instant fallback

(a) The restart drops the client → "error connecting to Ultimate Team". This is why step 1 happens with FIFA closed. If it happens anyway: ./openfut-fut.sh start, then relaunch FIFA fresh.

(b) The STAFF tab chokes on 34 mixed items, or coaches confuse a manager-only tab. Fallback at the next start: FUT_COACHES=1 (removes coaches from type=manager, leaving the 10 managers alone) or FUT_MANAGERS= (leaves the 24 coaches alone). Both need a restart, so decide from the step 5 reading, do not iterate blind.

(c) The untyped arm buries the consumables. With =all, an untyped fetch returns 194 players then 126 consumables, and the players tab pages at count=11&start=0,10,20,.... If the client truncates each page, the consumables sit past the end. TODO/CONFIRM. Fallback: FUT_CONSUMABLES=1 — drops the untyped arm entirely, and under the typed names consumables are served from position 0.

(d) Any flag typed as 0. Already handled: _family_flag() treats "", "0", "off", "no", "false" as OFF (21b2263 — before that fix, FUT_CONSUMABLES=0 would have turned the family on). Prefer unsetting the variable outright.

(e) The players tab changes (step 4). This is the mirror filter, and it has no flag — it is unconditional in club_route's else-branch. Verified a provable no-op against the live save (all 194 items are cardsubtypeid 0), so this is unlikely, but if it fires the fallback is to restore that one line to a no-op in tools/utas_server.py and restart. Do not git revert 0e4bc13; that also removes the overlay wiring and the log line you need.

(f) Step 2 disagrees with the expected numbers. Unset all three flags and restart: you are back to exactly today's server. Nothing was written anywhere.

(g) You try to move or quick-sell an overlay card. Do not, during this run. Overlay items are not in the save, so the client is holding an id the server cannot find. TODO/CONFIRM what it does. If it happens: clear the flag, refetch, the card is gone.

(h) The save. The overlay never writes to it. The one write in this whole script is test_fut_contract.py's club-rename round-trip, which restores the original name in a finally block.