OpenFUT/fifa17-recon/docs/CARD_SYSTEM.md

# FIFA 17 FUT — Card System RE + Next-Steps Plan

Status as of 2026-08-01. All clean-room (our own binaries + running client only).

## ★ SOLVED: real player cards render offline

A full 88-rated real squad (Ronaldo/Messi/Suárez/Ramos/Kroos/…) renders 100%
offline. The definition FETCH turned out to be unnecessary — FIFA has all player
identity data locally in `dbdata.dll`. **The CLUB-SEARCH / ADD-PLAYER flow is the
trigger:** when FIFA displays club-search results (`GET /club?year=..&type=player&
count=..`, served by our `/club` route), it resolves each item's assetId against
its own local DB (real name/photo/club/nation) and merges the rating/attributes
our `/club` item carries, then caches a real record in the CardsDb store
(`obj+0x160c0`). No `idList` fetch, no leaked data.

**Working recipe:**
- `utas_server` on `FUT_SQUAD_STEP=s3v0` → `/club` serves the full XI (real asset
  IDs + our attributes).
- In FUT: Squads editor → Add Player / player-name **search** → results render as
  real cards → **add them to slots** → full real squad.
- Distinction: the squad-EMBED path (`GET /squad/0` itemData) does NOT resolve
  (generic); only the CLUB-SEARCH/ADD path resolves. So: serve-club + search/add.

Cosmetic-only nit: card short-name label shows a default "BAS" (real full names
are in the record + Player Details panel) — likely the FUT commonName/knownAs
field; low priority.

Everything below is the reverse-engineering that led here.

## Where we are

Offline FIFA 17 Ultimate Team runs end-to-end on our backend:
- Every EA online gate cracked (Origin/LSX, Blaze, UTAS/RS4) → **FUT hub**.
- **Squads editor renders**: correct 4-4-2 formation, 11 labelled slots, 5-star
  squad rating, manager slot, benches — **no freezes**.
- The one missing piece: player cards render as the generic "FUT 17" back
  (rating 0) — no real player *identity/face* resolves.

## The squad-shell (what makes it work — don't regress these)

- ~~`userMassInfo` MUST return `{}`~~ — **superseded 2026-08-03.** `0x180174630` is fully
  decompiled: a FLAT `{userInfo, squad, settings, userData}` body. The old desync is
  attributed to the `squad` member, which was built before `0x18013d1f0`'s schema was
  known. `utas_server.py` now defaults to `FUT_MASSINFO=full`; fall back through
  `squad`/`userinfo`/`settings`/`empty` to bisect if the hub freezes at 0x1801c7f1a.
- Deliver the squad via **`GET /squad/0`** (LoadActiveSquad, deser 0x18013d1f0),
  which FIFA fetches on **Squads-tab entry** (re-fetches on tab-switch, not on
  editor re-open). `FUT_SQUAD_STEP` selects the squad (s2v0 = 1 real item).
- `GET /user` is NEVER called at boot — userInfo can only reach FIFA via
  userMassInfo, which is now populated (above), so the hub's coins/record and the
  squad roster (`userInfo.squadList`) are delivered at boot. Pending live verify.

## Why cards render generic (definitively reversed — 3 workflows)

The card view-model (0x1800d7920) reads EVERY rendered field
(rating@+0xb4, position@+0x146, nation@+0x148, teamid@+0x94, 6 attrs@+0x98..0xac,
name@+0xdd) from a **resolved player-definition record at `item+0x10`** — NEVER
from our item JSON. That's why item-format/version/field changes had zero effect.

`item+0x10` is filled by the resolve at 0x180141160-76:
`getter 0x18011a830 → CardsDb singleton [0x1802e6398] → call [vtable+0xa08]`
(= lookup **0x18011cca0**), output buffer `[rbp+0x160]`. The lookup searches a
std::map at `CardsDb_obj+0x160c0` keyed by resourceId. **Offline that map is
EMPTY**, so every lookup misses and a **default blank record** is emitted →
generic card.

Dead ends (proven, do not retry):
- **Version advertising is inert.** `itemDbVersion` (atom 0x16c) and
  `checkServerDbVersion` (atom 0x80) are JSON field names routed to the value-SKIP
  handler 0x180135ff0 in every parser — parsed and discarded, never compared.
  Roster-version bump and Blaze `itemDbVersion=999999999` both did nothing.
- **Serving owned items does NOT auto-trigger a definition fetch.** The
  itemData-array parser (0x1801293d0→0x18013fe00) does no membership check and no
  enqueue; the render-miss is terminal. Our squad already has an owned item
  rendering generic with 0 `idList` fetches — empirical proof.
- **In-place map overwrite is dead** — the map at `+0x160c0` stays empty even with
  all 11 cards rendering (probed live). The resolve emits a transient default to
  the caller stack each frame; nothing persistent to edit.

The definition FETCH (`ut/17/item?idList=`, `/item/resource`, `/defid`; URL builder
0x180129200) is issued by FUT-controller vtable method 0x180119010 / requestDefinitions
0x180036e20 — **both have zero call-sites inside CardsDLL**. The decision to fetch
lives in the **packed FIFA17.exe** (decrypted in live memory only).

Our definition-serving endpoints (`item_def`/`defs_route` in `utas_server.py`,
routes `item/resource`/`defid`/`item?idList=`) are **built and ready** for if/when
the fetch is ever driven.

## Next-steps plan (real player faces) — ordered by tractability

### Option A — Drive the fetch from FIFA17.exe (most "correct", hardest to find)
FIFA17.exe is packed on disk but decrypted in live memory (Wine flat-maps at
0x140000000). Find the call-site of the idList issuer (CardsDLL vtable method
0x180119010, .rdata slot 0x18021cb78) inside the live FIFA17.exe image: set a
hardware breakpoint / rwatch on that slot's invocation, or scan decrypted .text
for the call. Identify what condition it gates on and satisfy it. If FIFA then
requests `item?idList=<ids>`, our endpoints already answer → cards resolve. This
is the clean win: no ongoing memory writes, works via normal data flow.

### Option B — Populate the CardsDb store so lookups HIT (live-memory injection)
Pre-insert real records into the std::map at `CardsDb_obj+0x160c0`
(node: Left+0x0/Right+0x8/Parent+0x10/color+0x18/key(resourceId)+0x20/record+0x28).
Two sub-approaches:
- **B1 (call the game's own insert):** drive the map's find-or-insert
  (0x180115c30, reached from lookup 0x18011cca0) with a resourceId + a record we
  fill. Requires a small code-injection harness (set up registers + call) since
  the insert isn't reachable from our side otherwise.
- **B2 (hand-build a node):** allocate a node in FIFA's heap, write
  left/right/parent/color/key/record, splice into the tree + rebalance. Fiddliest;
  RB-tree invariants must hold or later lookups corrupt.
Record fields to fill (from base `dbdata.dll`): rating@+0xb4, position@+0x146,
nation@+0x148, teamid@+0x94, 6 attrs@+0x98..0xac, name@+0xdd.

### Option C — Patch the resolve miss-path (proof-of-concept, then key it)
Patch lookup 0x18011cca0's miss branch to write real fields into its output record
`[rbp+0x160]`. Quickest to see *a* real card, but naively makes ALL cards show one
player; must be keyed by resourceId to be useful. Good first experiment to confirm
the field offsets end-to-end before investing in A or B.

### Prerequisite for all: a dbdata.dll extractor
Build a tool to read the base player DB (`/mnt/games/FIFA 17/dbdata.dll`,
single export `getTableData`; tables players/playernames/teams/nations/
teamplayerlinks) → a `resourceId → {name,rating,pos,nation,team,attrs}` table
(resourceId = playerId | version<<24; Ronaldo playerId 20801). This feeds B and C
and validates A. No such tool exists yet.

## Recommended order
1. **C** as a 30-minute proof: patch the miss-path to emit a fixed real record →
   confirm a real card face appears (validates the whole record-offset model live).
2. Build the **dbdata extractor** (needed by everything).
3. Attempt **A** (find the FIFA17.exe fetch trigger) — the clean, durable win.
4. Fall back to **B1** (drive the game's insert) if A's trigger proves unreachable.

## Reusable tooling
- `/proc/PID/mem` read/write pattern: `autopatch.py`, the poke/force tools
  (ptrace_scope=0 armed by `root_arm.sh`).
- Live vtable/struct probing: the python snippets used this session (singleton
  `[0x1802e6398]`, static↔live base map).
- `fifadrive.sh` (screen capture) + `vgamepad.py` (virtual pad) for headless
  drive/observe — note keyboard XTEST does NOT reach FIFA; the gamepad is unverified
  in-game.

---

## REFUTED 2026-08-04: the CardsDb map is NOT empty offline

This document has claimed since it was written that "**Offline that map is EMPTY**, so
every lookup misses and a default blank record is emitted -> generic card", and that
the view-model reads every rendered field from the resolved record and "NEVER from our
item JSON". A live pack open falsifies both halves.

### The observation

One bronze pack, five cards. Two rendered as real players with names, club badges and
national flags. Three rendered as blanks: rating 50, position RWB, every attribute 1,
no name. Nothing in our pool has rating 50, position RWB or all-ones attributes, so the
blank is the client's default record, exactly as this document describes.

The two that resolved match OUR ITEM JSON field for field:

| we sent | screen showed |
|---|---|
| `(232517, 62, RB, nation 36, league 19, team 175, [72,44,58,60,62,61])` | SILVA, 62 RB, Wolfsburg badge, Norway flag, 72 PAC / 44 SHO / 58 PAS / 60 DRI / 62 DEF / 61 PHY |
| `(235066, 60, GK, nation 34, league 31, team 48, [62,63,33,61,17,62])` | NOWAK, 60 GK, 62/61, 63/17, 33/62 |

Those attribute numbers were invented by hand. They cannot have come from a database.

### What this means

- The map HAS entries offline. Some asset ids resolve.
- Rating, position, nation, league, team and the six attributes come from **our item
  JSON** for a card that resolves.
- Name, club badge and national flag come from the **client's own data**, keyed by
  assetId.
- When the assetId is NOT in the client's data, the whole card collapses to the blank
  default, which is why a bad id looks like a rendering failure rather than a lookup
  failure.

### The consequence, which is much cheaper than what this document proposed

The recommended plan here was to populate the client's map by driving its insert, hand
building a red-black tree node, or patching the resolve miss-path, all of which write
to a live process. **None of that is needed to get real cards.** The rule is simply:

> Use asset ids that exist in the client's database. Valid id gives a real card.
> Invalid id gives the blank.

`fut_cards.py` currently carries 18 verified ids and 61 structural placeholders, and
the placeholders are what produce the blanks. Two of them (232517, 235066) happen to be
real, which is why the pack was a mix. The remaining work is therefore a DATA problem,
getting the real id list out of `dbdata.dll`, and not a code-injection problem.

`TODO/CONFIRM`: whether a resolved card's rating truly comes from our JSON or whether
the client's record happens to agree. The attributes settle it (they were invented) but
rating specifically has not been isolated. Send a deliberately wrong rating for a known
good id and look.

---

# SOLVED 2026-08-04 (evening). Card identity, end to end.

Everything above this line is superseded where it disagrees. Two of its premises were
wrong: the CardsDb map is NOT empty offline, and `dbdata.dll` is NOT the player
database.

## The mechanism

Every item object in every response is inserted into the CardsDb map by the item
parser tail (`0x18014115b` -> registrar vtable `+0xa08` = `0x18011cca0`, a
find-or-insert). There is no fetch to trigger; `item?idList` was a red herring.

IMMEDIATELY BEFORE registering, `FUN_180141660` merges in the client's OWN local
database. It switches on `record+0x4c`, which `FUN_1800d8330` derives from the JSON
atom `0x6c cardsubtypeid` alone:

    0..3 -> 1  players            4 -> 2   managercards
    5    -> 3  headcoachcards     6 -> 10  gkcoachcards
    7    -> 5  physiocards        8 -> 4   fitnesscoachcards
    9..b -> 7  UNIDENTIFIED       absent -> 0x156 -> 0, NO merge at all

For players `FUN_180135890` queries `players` by `playerid = record+0x18 & 0xffffff`,
where `record+0x18` is atom `0x287 resourceId`. Atom `0x23 assetId` lands at `+0x20`
and is NEVER read by the merge: sending assetId alone does nothing.

On a HIT it fills the name (`+0xb8` first, `+0xc8` last, `+0xdd` knownAs, all inline
char arrays), fills `nation +0x148` and `teamid +0x94` ONLY IF THEY ARRIVED AS ZERO,
and always recomputes `leagueid +0x154`. It never touches `rating +0xb4`,
`position +0x146` or `attributes +0x98..+0xac`.

So: send zero for everything the client knows better than us, and send our own value
only where the client has nothing. That asymmetry is the whole design of `fut_cards`.

## The three-state oracle (all three confirmed live)

    NAMED        sentinel rating survives, real name -> the id is REAL
    placeholder  sentinel survives, name is "Jamal Blackman", team 0 -> the row
                 exists but is an EMPTY SLOT. This is the trap: 169193 does this and
                 it was in VERIFIED_ASSET_IDS.
    MISS         rating 0x32, teamid 0x78d, nation 0xe, position 2, attributes 1,
                 name " " -> the id does NOT exist. This fingerprint matched a
                 user's blank pack cards field for field.

`FUT_ID_SWEEP` (utas_server) serves a window of candidate ids as a synthetic club;
`tools/card_identity_probe.py` reads back what the client resolved. 5000 items per
response ingests cleanly; 20000 was served and silently NOT ingested. THE MAP IS
WIPED ON EVERY CLUB FETCH, so an auto sweep must be collected continuously
(`sweep_collect.py --watch`) and not once at the end.

## Where the roster came from

`tools/dbdata_extract.py` reads FIFA's own rating-sorted index out of a running
process (0x40 stride, self-validating {begin,end,end+1} name-pointer triple, anchored
on 20801 = Ronaldo 94) -> `data/roster.json`, 17,547 players. Cross-validated against
the sweep oracle, a completely independent method: 573 of 573 overlapping names
agreed. The one id in the sweep and not the index is 26501, the target of the
documented 22800..22879 Legends remap, which is also what produced "Alex Hunter x80"
in a sweep and had looked like a bug.

`dbdata.dll` is an anti-tamper decoy. Its single export `getTableData` returns a fixed
759-byte self-integrity blob and the file contains no tables. Do not re-attempt it.

## Still missing for players

`position`, `nationality`, `teamId` and the six attributes are NOT in the rating
index. Two live sources were found and BOTH are per-materialised-card caches, not
tables: the 0x180-stride resolved card records, and a 32-byte keyed container
(entries `{playerId, position | hash<<32, rating, ?}`). 59 positions came from the
second. A full-roster position source has NOT been found.

## The other card families, as of 2026-08-04

Mechanism known, id spaces NOT. `FUN_1801356c0` queries `managercards` by column
`carddbid` taken RAW from `record+0x18` (no mask), selecting firstname, lastname,
assetid, value, talkrating, negotiation, rare; it writes firstname to `+0xb8`,
assetid to `+0x20`, a byte to `+0xb4`, bytes to `+0xe2/+0xe3`, and `+0x58 = (rare==1)`.

Sweeps of carddbid 1..5000 and 6000..8000 both produced 2000+ manager records with
cardtype 2 and NOTHING written. THE MANAGER BRANCH WRITES NO MISS-FILL, so a wrong id
is SILENT and a negative result does not distinguish a wrong id from a wrong
mechanism. Manager name strings are in memory near 0x42800000 but are inline with NO
inbound pointers, so the players trick (find the index that points into the name pool)
does not transfer.

Tables named in the DLL and not yet probed: `headcoachcards`, `fitnesscoachcards`,
`gkcoachcards`, `physiocards`, `fancards`, `newcards`. Consumables are a separate
family (consumablesContract/Fitness/Healing/Position/Training/Formation plus
`FUT_CONSUMABLE_NAME_*` loc keys) and may be enum-driven rather than DB-driven.

`GET /club?type=` has only ever been observed with two values: `player` (paged,
start=N&count=11) and `manager` (count=200, from the STAFF tab).

---

# CONFIRMED LIVE 2026-08-05: managers and the four coach families

All five non-player card tables render correctly in game. Nothing here is inferred.

## Coaches: 34 staff cards, ZERO DB Error

Served subtypes 5/6/7/8 (headcoach, gkcoach, physio, fitnesscoach) from ids read out
of the game's own dumped tables. Every id hit its table on the first attempt:
A Shaikh 80, J Kim 77, M Kuhn 80, P Trenouth 80, C Duke 74 and the rest, ratings
55..80, with real face photos and their bonus percentages (+15% SHO and so on) drawn
by the client. The whistle / gloves / heart icons distinguish the families.

That is the payoff from enumeration over probing. The miss-fill exists and is loud
("DB Error", rating 0x32), and it never fired once, because the ids came from reading
the database rather than sweeping for it.

## Managers: 10 of 10 resolved, and the template paints OUR fields

Luis Enrique 88, Conte 87, Wenger 86, Klopp 84, Koeman 82, Pardew 80, Di Francesco
78, Maes 75, Wdowczyk 70, Canning 65. Every nation and league is historically right:
Conte/Wenger/Klopp/Koeman/Pardew all Premier League, Di Francesco Serie A, Maes
Jupiler, Canning Scottish.

RESOLVED, previously TODO/CONFIRM: the manager card template DOES paint record+0xde
(nation) and record+0xe0 (league). The Luis Enrique card draws the Spain flag and the
words "LaLiga Santander"; the Premier League managers draw their flag and "ENG 1".
Neither field is written by the merge (FUN_1801356c0 does not touch them), so nothing
but our own JSON could have supplied them. That is the cleanest possible proof that
those two offsets are ours.

NOT confirmed: negotiation at record+0xe3 is NOT on the card front. The card shows
"CONTRACT 7" there instead. FUN_1800e5940 does read +0xe3 and publish it as
ATTRIB_CONTRACT_NEGOTIATION, so it surfaces somewhere else or not at all.

## Why managers needed the coaches beside them

A wrong manager carddbid is completely SILENT: FUN_1801356c0 has no else-branch and
writes no miss-fill, so a bad id and a bad wire shape look identical. The coaches were
put on the same screen precisely because their miss IS loud. Nothing failed, but the
test was designed so that a failure would have been diagnosable rather than mute.

---

# CONFIRMED LIVE 2026-08-05: consumables

Rendering with real artwork, stack quantity badges and correct amounts (+5 / +10 /
+15, so atom 0x1b reaches record+0xbf and FUN_1801a8040's sign-extension never fires).
The client's own dialog names the class: "Search Type: Consumables Search".

## Three things had to be right, and each failed SILENTLY with a 200

1. THE COUNT IS THE GATE. The client will not ask for consumable items until
   GET club/stats/consumables reports a non-zero count. We answered that route 41
   times a session with the PLAYER stat set, so the panel read seven zeros and never
   proceeded. Two rounds of item-shape work sat unrequested for want of a counter.
2. THE ROUTE IS GET club/consumables/<category>. Not club?type=, which a previous
   round shipped four arms for, and not the "/consumables/%s" template in .rdata,
   which the client has still never used. Worse, that path is a /club PREFIX, so it
   fell through to the generic route and the consumables screen was answered with the
   194-card player list.
3. THE ELEMENT IS A STACK WRAPPER, NOT AN ITEM. FutConsumablesSearchServerResponse
   (RS4 literal 0x1802222f8, factory 0x180130a10, vtable 0x180222200, deser +0x08 =
   0x180130d10, 6873 chars) reads itemData(0x16b) at the root like the club list, but
   its element is five atoms:
       0xbc  count             0xd7  discardValue
       0x16a item  -> FUN_18013fe00, the item parser itself
       0x287 resourceId        0x362 untradeableCount
   Everything else goes to the value-skip handler, so a bare item was ACCEPTED and did
   nothing: the live card map held only the 11 squad players afterwards. That is also
   why FUT draws consumables as one stack with a quantity rather than N cards.

## The lesson, since it has now cost three rounds

A 200 with a well-formed body that the consumer silently discards is the worst failure
shape in this project. Nothing errors, nothing logs as unmapped, the screen is just
empty. The diagnostic that worked every time was reading the CardsDb map: if the
client ingested nothing, the shape is wrong; if it ingested records that do not draw,
the failure is downstream. Guessing between those two costs a human a menu trip each
time; the probe costs 0.03 seconds.

## The green box, and why two guesses missed it

CONFIRMED FIXED 2026-08-05. Consumable cards draw real artwork once cardassetid
carries the ART id from the fcc_ tables (training 3, contract 7, healing 10, misc 45)
instead of a copy of the resourceId. The placeholder was
external/ion_fut/artAssets/.../notfound.swf, the client's stand-in for art it cannot
resolve.

The two wrong guesses are recorded because the reasoning behind each was plausible:

  1. "It is the untradeable badge." The deserializer really does set a UI flag from
     (untradeableCount < count) and UNTRADEABLE_COUNT really is a state key. Changing
     it flipped the flag in the live record (+0x49 went to 1) and the tag did not
     move. Refuted by measurement, not by argument.
  2. "It is an untranslated loc key." Also wrong: the string NOT FOUND does not exist
     anywhere in cardsdll.dll, in any casing.

What settled it was reading the badge TEXT off an unobstructed screenshot. "NOT FOUND"
is not a status, it is a missing-asset placeholder, and that turned a UI question into
an id question. The lesson is the cheap one: get the exact on-screen string before
theorising about what produces it.

THE TRAP GENERALISES. An fcc_ row carries BOTH carddbid and cardassetid and they are
not interchangeable. fut_store._item copies resourceId into cardassetid, which is
correct for players and wrong for every other family. The club-item family will need
the same mapping: balls 37, kits 35, stadium 36, badges 39, league logos 40.