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new TSB editor and call for information/request for features


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So I've finally decided to start on the TSB editor I've wanted to make for a long time tonight...it appears by browsing these boards that a TON of new information has been discovered about the ROMs since Flash's TSB editor's were released ages ago (I'm fairly proud to say that I helped out in the development of the original TSB manager).

Anyway, First up, I wouldn't mind hearing a list of requested features (feasible features mind you...something that could be implemented with information that's readily available)...and if anybody has a good compilation of all the ROM data that's available (hex locations of different information), I'd really appreciate it.

I should be able to make some decent progress tonight...I'm certainly not promising anything soon as I've got a lot going on...but I'd definitely like input from the community on this.

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Things that I can think of off the top of my head if it is just going to be an editor:

1. A better play swapper editor.

2. Easy control of new things found such as: dedicated kick returner, punt returner, etc

But something like what coredump was working on (TSB ULTRA)would be a lot cooler as it would allow for unlimited teams, checking defensive conditions, swapping defensive player.

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you can hit me up as Z6A6K6K on AIM.

Tecmo Ultra is cool...I always knew something like that was possible...I sort of have a similar concept in mind years ago but never pursued it (didn't want to deal with NES emulation).

Anyway, I think it would be cool to eventually get to a program like TSB Ultra...but for me, the first step is a complete, top-to-bottom editor.

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Here is a list of just about everything I can think of that is generally modified or has been by someone:

League Editing:

Year, League, Conference, and Division Names

Various Text throughout the rom

Team Editing:

City, Name, and Abbreviation

Team Background Color

Jersey Colors (Game Field, Action Sequences, and the Cutscenes)

Ability to select which uniform to wear vs each team

Kick Returner and Punt Returner Selection

Offensive Preference

Team's Playbook

Team's Formation (2 Back, 3-Wide, or Run&Shoot)

Player Editing:

Name, Number, Attributes, and Face

Attribute Probablities:

Player Attribute Probabilities

Speed and Distance of Kicking Arrow

Punt and Kicking Distances

Sim Editing:

Team and Player Sim Numbers

Offensive Preference <- Listed above as well

Computer Juice:

Weekly computer juice values

Schedule Editing:

Schedule Dates

Weekly Team vs Team Matchups

Pro Bowl Editing:

Pro Bowl Players

Pro Bowl Playbooks

Pro Bowl Offensive Preference

Gameplay Editing:

Quarter Length

Number of Points for TDs, FGs, and Safeties

Number of Downs (including final down popups)

Number of Yards for a 1st Down

Adjust Kickoff Location

Playbook Editing:

Play Name, Formation, Play Numbers, and Defensive Reactions

Graphics for the Plays including the Run Name Display

Number of Play Slots for Run/Pass

Player lineup for the Formations

Editing the play coding for offense and defense (Highly Advanced)

Graphic Editing:

Tecmo Super Bowl logo, NFL Shield logo, Tecmo Rabbit logo, Team NFL Logo, NFLPA Logo, AFC/NFC Pro Bowl logos, and Player Intros

Playing Field

Large and Mini Helmets (plus palettes)

Font Graphics

Palette Editing for the graphics

Music Editing:

Swap music to be played

I can give more information for these listed but I just wanted to keep it to a list.

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Here is a list of just about everything I can think of that is generally modified or has been by someone:

...

I can give more information for these listed but I just wanted to keep it to a list.

Wow, I didn't even know about some of this. Gonna be an awesome project! I'm going to start on the basic stuff that I know how to do (or can reverse engineer from previous apps...) and then I'll start hitting you up for help. You can also compile all the information together and shoot it off to me, if you'd like. I'm thinking this should totally be an open source project and I'll distribute the hacking documention with the program...

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I think the most useful thing would be a helmet manager program (for both large and small helmets).

Features:

1. extract each team's helmet (from a given ROM) to a bmp file.

2. ability to assign one of the bmp (helmet) files to a team in the ROM.

As far as Player name, and attribute editing go we already have TSBM and TSBTool to do these things.

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I think the most useful thing would be a helmet manager program (for both large and small helmets).

Features:

1. extract each team's helmet (from a given ROM) to a bmp file.

2. ability to assign one of the bmp (helmet) files to a team in the ROM.

As far as Player name, and attribute editing go we already have TSBM and TSBTool to do these things.

One of the general ideas is to have a TSB editor that is an all-in-one so you don't have a half dozen utilities to make all the changes you want to make in a ROM. Sure, I could be accused of re-inventing the wheel...but it's not like the source code is readily available for TSBM. If nothing else, I'm simply doing this project because it'll be fun and a great intellectual challenge. Being useful to this community would just be a great side effect.

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If you want to do an all-in-one program, that's going to be a pretty big project (unless you omit graphic hacking).

What do you plan on writing this in (C, C++,C#, Java, VB, ...)?

Yeah, it's going to be a HUGE project...I've already started on it, I'm writing it in VB.net

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If you'd like I could give you a .NET dll with all of the functionality of TSBTool.

By doing that you would get the following:

1. Player Attribute editing (name, jerseyNumber, abilities, face, sim data).

2. Schedule editing.

3. Text input parsing.

4. Kick/Punt Return men assignment.

5. Team Sim editing (along with offensive preference).

Then you could concentrate on the stuff that hasn't yet been done ( at least not done in TSBTool).

Or you could go ahead and re-invent the wheel..

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If you'd like I could give you a .NET dll with all of the functionality of TSBTool.

By doing that you would get the following:

1. Player Attribute editing (name, jerseyNumber, abilities, face, sim data).

2. Schedule editing.

3. Text input parsing.

4. Kick/Punt Return men assignment.

5. Team Sim editing (along with offensive preference).

Then you could concentrate on the stuff that hasn't yet been done ( at least not done in TSBTool).

Or you could go ahead and re-invent the wheel..

wow, I didn't even know such a thing existed!

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The helmit suggestion is a genius idea. being able to replace graphics in the game with a bmp image would be very very usefull.

the music changing would be more of a vanity.

I know a stat input rating calculator would have a lot of potential.

TSB TOOL is a life saver. no exhageration. without it i would not be making roms. i spent an unnecessary amount of WEEKS i could have saved if i had TSB tool back when making the all time greats rom

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You can get TSBTool from the uploads section http://www.tecmobowl.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6941 .

You can use Lutz Roeder's 'Reflector' tool to view the 'disassembeled' source code (in either C# or VB.net) http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/ .

If you wanted to interact with TSBTool you could do either of the following:

1. Reference 'TSBTool.exe' and create the objects, subclass objects, call static functions ect...

2. Construct string input for it to read and just 'exec' it, feeding it the input via standard in.

One of it's little used functions is the 'SET' command.

SET( , )

SET( 0x3456B, 0x55AB)

It's a very simple command, but it can be used to accomplish any hex edit (which can be useful when writing/generating scripts).

If you wanted to use a DLL instead of the .exe I could go through the code and make the functionality easier for outside apps to use.

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BAD_AL thanks for the offer, I'll definitely play around with. Way cool. However, since I would like to make something that's completely open source, I may go ahead and re-invent the wheel...of course, I may also get impatient and go ahead and build on what you've done. LOL.

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So if you are going to re-invent the wheel I'd like to make some suggestions.

1. Use an xml-text based format as a description of work to do. (By doing this you can make it easy for outside applications to create content targeting your program).

2. Employ an extensible plug-in based architecture so that the program's functionality can be extended easily (something where each plug-in would register for 1 or more distinct 'Work' commands). An example of this would be like:

TEAM=bills

QB1, qb BILLS, Face=0x52, #0, 25, 69, 13, 13, 56, 81, 81, 81 ,[3, 12, 3 ]

QB2, frank REICH, Face=0x22, #14, 25, 69, 13, 13, 31, 44, 25, 50 ,[3, 3, 2 ]

RB1, thurman THOMAS, Face=0x83, #34, 38, 69, 63, 25, 75, 50 ,[10, 7, 8, 8 ]

RB2, jamie MUELLER, Face=0x51, #41, 44, 69, 25, 88, 50, 25 ,[5, 3, 6, 2 ]

The program would read an xml file/string looking for 'work' tags, when it came to a work tag it would lookup the plug-in that could do the specified work command. Then it would pass the command, body, and the output ROM as arguments to the plug-in (so it could do the work).

The plug-ins would be responsible for providing a GUI for creating the xml text as well as a parser to handle the 'work'. If a plug-in for the 'work' could not be found, it would generate/show an error message and move on (or perhaps just stop). Plug-ins should also be able to hand off work to other plug-ins.

By using the plug-in approach you could deliver your base program quickly, and then concentrate on delivering features as you feel they are ready (rather than 1 big drop at the end of development). Also it would be easier to divvy up work to others.

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okay, the XML work format is not a bad idea at all. Let's talk about that more when I move on to doing the user interface. First and foremost is reading/writing all the data to/from the ROM. I'm gunning for a nice object oriented approach that's both easy to understand and maintain. I want that in place and perfect before the UI becomes an issues

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I really think that if you are going to do this you should make it extensible.

If it's open source then anybody can modify it to add features, but you run the risk of having 'n' different programs out there (that are all possibly a little different). If you make it easy to add features, this becomes less of a problem.

Off the top of my head I can envision several useful plugins (major features):

1. Player data plug-in.

2. Team data plug-in (sim data, playbook, uniform colors, formation).

3. Schedule plug-in.

4. Helmet manager plug-in.

5. Rating calculator plug-in.

6. Season generator plug-in (kinda like TSBSeasonGen).

7. Gameplay plug-in (modify points per score, quarter length, ect...).

8. Font selector plug-in.

9. Play editor plug-in.

If you want to eliminate the need for several specialized utility programs, the plug-in model is a great way to go.

It wouldn't take a terribly long time to implement a plug-in framework. Have a look at the following link for an example of how to do the plug-in (assembly) loading http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Code/2002/ ... lyInfo.asp .

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Just a quick update for interested parties: The reading/writing of players names and jersey numbers to/from the ROM is completed to my satisfaction. With the funky name pointers, this is actually a semi-tricky thing to pull of right.

Currently working on reading/writing the players individual stats.

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  • 1 month later...
So I've finally decided to start on the TSB editor I've wanted to make for a long time tonight...it appears by browsing these boards that a TON of new information has been discovered about the ROMs since Flash's TSB editor's were released ages ago (I'm fairly proud to say that I helped out in the development of the original TSB manager).

Anyway, First up, I wouldn't mind hearing a list of requested features (feasible features mind you...something that could be implemented with information that's readily available)...and if anybody has a good compilation of all the ROM data that's available (hex locations of different information), I'd really appreciate it.

I should be able to make some decent progress tonight...I'm certainly not promising anything soon as I've got a lot going on...but I'd definitely like input from the community on this.

A request if this project is still in the works...

Use apostrophes' in players' names (na'il diggs)

The apostrophe is already in the game, it just needs to be incorporated to display correctly on tds/sacks, i.e. the larger text.

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  • 3 months later...

in using the TSBmanagers, i've always been frustrated by the lack of information on the screen at one time. for example:

if the player edit page would include either the face, skin color, or both, that would be time saving. if the attributes could somehow easily be jumped to by using the "Tab" button and then the arrow keys, more time could be saved as well. and finally, to somehow include sim data for that player on the same page, would also be excellent. now knowing what you know about the sim editor, could those attributes be re-named to reflect what they actually do (like how KR ability has nothing to do with actual KR).

for the team page, it would be amazing if you could somehow edit the large and small helmets, or at least match them up to resemble one another. using the palette is ridiculous for newbies (like me, even though i've been coming here for years) b/c i'm just not that cpu savvy. could the editor have an easier way? could MS paint somehow be used or mimicked?

would it be possible to include a "what if" uniform editor, like "what if Indianapolis plays at San Diego", an edit option that allows you to override the home jersey for san diego, b/c an all white uniform for the colts is totally gay on tecmo.

everything elst that is listed on this topic awesome. when can we expect it??????????????????????????????????????????????????

i'd pay $$ for it if it had everything listed.

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  • 1 year later...

Yeah, unfortunately, I made the mistake of starting this project right around the same time I was starting my own business, I got in way over my head. It looks like in the time since, thinks have advanced pretty far, what with a 32 team ROM now available. I new it was possible but never invested the time myself to figure it out. It's awesome to see the community still alive and have advanced this far. Crazy to think that I did the first good hack of tecmo over 10 years ago based on the 1997 season. Congrats to everyone for busting their tails on this stuff.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Did you start anything with it?

I was thinking of starting a "SourceForge" type project to build something in a community fashion as an "All in one" TSB editor (Settings, Players, Teams, Graphics, and "advanced mod" loading, like the 50-yard and 8-man options).

If you've started something that would be a good start, better to start with something even small than nothing.

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