A sponsor registry

If you're contributing, this is a proposal for a sponsor registry in the standard library. The schema is packages/sdk/std/proposals/sponsor/1.0.json, status experimental. Nothing here is built into the core yet. Everything it describes already runs in a community addon (Sponsor Studio and its Sponsor Base by JonnieDesigns), so the proposal is about moving known-good behaviour into the core, not about new research.

Why the core should own sponsors

Adding a sponsor today means about 20 database operations, 2 textures per decal design, a texture registry patch in several archives and a shader-archive overlay (Adding a sponsor). Three problems involve several addons at once and can't be solved well by one:

1. Ids. Every row carries a statId/id/sponsor_id, and saved liveries store DecalSet.id. Two addons that each took "highest stock id + 1" gave Pirelli and Toyota the same decal id, and the game showed one in place of the other. Today each tool has to scan every installed addon for the ids it uses. The core already allocates StatId: "auto" for other registries and can keep the allocations stable per record.
2. The starting list. initial_secondary_sponsors is one comma list per career data group. An addon that sets it removes every other addon's starting sponsors. db.list-append fixes this, but authors keep using set. A registry field (career.available_from_start) makes the right operation the only one.
3. Existing careers. The game copies that list into a career only when the career is created. A sponsor available from the start stays locked in older careers, and only native code can discover it there (below).

The record

{
  "sponsor": {
    "acme": {
      "name": { "literal": "Acme Lubricants" },
      "logo": "sponsors/acme/logo.png",
      "designs": [
        { "key": "p", "image": "sponsors/acme/primary.png" },
        { "key": "n", "image": "sponsors/acme/alternate.png" },
        { "key": "s1", "image": "sponsors/acme/s1.png" }
      ],
      "career": { "discovery": { "title": { "literal": "Acme wants in" } } }
    }
  }
}

Stock sponsors are game/<code> (128 in F1 25), seeded from sponsors.sponsors.sponsor. A layer on one changes its name, logo, list tile or designs without new rows, the same way team.logo layers work on game/<team>.

What the core writes, per field

field	rows and files
record	sponsors.sponsor, DecalGroup (id, sponsor, material_name, texture_name), MyTeamSponsorUnlockReward, unlockable_decal_group in every list that has the template's
designs[]	DecalSet <code>_<key>; unlockable_decal_set per list; menu texture 340 × 244 + group.register + TextureArrays entry in every ui_package copy of ui_dynamic_texture_loading.uidta; car texture eaid://ego_package/decals/textures/<code>_<key>_da.tif, 1024 × 1024 with 11 mips, BC7 sRGB, in an overlay into both customisation_decals.nefx2.sm51 and _amd
name, design name	lng_sponsor_<code>, lng_sponsor_<code>_<key> in every language (lang.set *)
logo, list_tile	customisation/decals/<code> (268 × 160); <code>_list_da (340 × 244) with sponsor.texture_name and DecalGroup.texture_name pointed at it
career	secondary_sponsor in every MyTeamSponsorsDataGroup_<g>, cloned from the template, every nested template reference rewritten, levels without a design written empty; default_decals
career.discovery	a new DepartmentEvent → Outcome → OutcomeModifierMyTeamReward chain cloned from the template's
career.available_from_start	db.list-append of the code to initial_secondary_sponsors in every group; plus the existing-career discovery (native)
emblem	BadgeEmblem (cloned from BadgeEmblem_17), unlock rows in the lists holding a plain BadgeEmblem_01, emblem_<code> texture 512 × 512 under customisation.cstm_badge_large.emblem
stat_id, design id, career.sponsor_id, emblem.id	allocated by the core when "auto", kept per record once used

Rules the core must keep. The game crashes or misbehaves without them (all seen in game):

• every decal name a row holds (loyalty decal, default_decals) names an existing design, or is empty;
• cloned rows copy their hash-only numbered fields (Outcome.outcome_modifier_1..3), which the key catalogue can't name;
• ids are unique across all enabled addons and never change.

Native part

These behaviours need code in the game process. Sponsor Studio's Sponsor Base does each one today, with byte-checked signatures on the KB build. The engine research is in re/research/sponsors.md, with KB rows proposed in the same contribution. Levels follow PROTOCOL §1; none of the rows is independently verified (PROTOCOL §5).

behaviour	field	how	level
discover starting sponsors in existing careers	career.available_from_start	once per loaded My Team career, call the game's discover routine 0x1410f43f0(CareerSponsorsComponent*, u16 sponsor_id, u32 team_key) for codes in the career's starting list (+0x4e0) that the player team lacks	L2 static, harness only
engine supplier sponsors	my_team.engines	hide the sponsor's catalogue tiles and designs unless the team's newest EngineSuppliersComponent+0xe30 history entry is one of its engines; remove its decals from the livery when the supplier changes; leave them out of the per-decal income	catalogue filter seen in game (owner, 2026-11-01); removal and income offline
fixed sponsors	my_team.fixed	add the decal to the saved My Team livery at career load and on editor save; locked: grey swap/delete (raise the reserved-slot count at the menu's own check), Duplicate and Mirror, hide from the catalogue grid, not paid	add, greyed swap/delete and income seen in game (owner, 2026-10-30)
emblem stickers	emblem	list the emblem's designs only while the My Team team badge uses that BadgeEmblem.id	L2 static
unpaid sponsors	my_team.paid	subtract its decals from the weekly per-decal income count	seen in game for fixed sponsors

In the core this would be one system addon, or a sponsors service, that reads the effective sponsor records instead of Sponsor Studio's per-addon .cfg files.

Open questions

• Calling into the career from the frame tick. The discover call and the livery apply run on the core's frame tick, a game worker thread. Calling the same functions there worked in the harness only; the game's own callers' threads aren't traced.
• Title sponsors. They're out of scope: their contracts (team_primary_sponsors, goals, core beliefs) are a different row family. The cut fourth core belief YouthDevelopment is still loaded and translated but unused.
• Per-decal colour. The decal node has a saved RGBA colour slot (+0x18, default 0xffffffff) that nothing in the UI sets. Whether the renderer uses it was asked by a write test (T016) that hasn't run yet. Until then the schema has no colour field.
• Required areas. A user-chosen blocker for title-sponsor-like slots needs native guards beyond my_team.fixed.