Jump to content

Baseball Stars - Expanded


TecmoTurd

Recommended Posts

Can anyone PLEASE help me figure out how the graphics are stored so I can replace them in this game? I've gotten to where I can see the area that stores the faces (roughly around offset 33B70), but I can't get anything to line up properly. No matter how much shifting I do left, right, up, or down... it always is misaligned. Obviously someone has been able to modify graphics in this game (as evidenced by the team logo edits), so how does it work?

post-12223-13413730384503_thumb.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can anyone PLEASE help me figure out how the graphics are stored so I can replace them in this game? I've gotten to where I can see the area that stores the faces (roughly around offset 33B70), but I can't get anything to line up properly. No matter how much shifting I do left, right, up, or down... it always is misaligned. Obviously someone has been able to modify graphics in this game (as evidenced by the team logo edits), so how does it work?

You copy individual tiles to the clipboard and then to an arranger, like in Tile Layer Pro, and rearrange how you see fit. You would then re-paste into the ROM. Here is a crappy tutorial, but it gets the job done -

or

Additionally, you can open a pattern or tile viewer from within your emulator and it will show all the active tiles on your in-game screen. From there you can reference tiles from the ROM's VROM data (tiles) as well. I personally use FCEUX's PPU Viewer for this. FCEUX's PPU Viewer also gives you the hex value as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can anyone PLEASE help me figure out how the graphics are stored so I can replace them in this game? I've gotten to where I can see the area that stores the faces (roughly around offset 33B70), but I can't get anything to line up properly. No matter how much shifting I do left, right, up, or down... it always is misaligned. Obviously someone has been able to modify graphics in this game (as evidenced by the team logo edits), so how does it work?

You copy individual tiles to the clipboard and then to an arranger, like in Tile Layer Pro, and rearrange how you see fit. You would then re-paste into the ROM. Here is a crappy tutorial, but it gets the job done -

or

Additionally, you can open a pattern or tile viewer from within your emulator and it will show all the active tiles on your in-game screen. From there you can reference tiles from the ROM's VROM data (tiles) as well. I personally use FCEUX's PPU Viewer for this. FCEUX's PPU Viewer also gives you the hex value as well.

So all the images are split up and there's no way to align them in a Tile Viewer? I know how to Arrange Tiles with TLP but was hoping I didn't have to do it that way. Thanks, though.

Also, about FCEUX's PPU Viewer... that gave me a completely garbage result (see screen shot). Did I do something wrong?post-12223-13413730389503_thumb.png

EDIT: Okay, derp... clearly my understanding of game programming is lacking... I see that what they did for this game is build all sorts of face parts separately and then mix-and-match them together in the game. So to effectively edit faces, I need to figure out where in the ROM the pointers are stored that tell the game how to compose each face. I assume that I can at least figure out how to change the pieces of a given face once I know where that area is. I don't suppose anyone already knows this information?

EDIT 2: Nevermind, I think I found it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

My editors have been fixed (I think). I have a guy who's doing ratings for the game...once he gets them to me, I'll use them as a test. If everything goes as planned, we'll have an AL and an NL ROM, each with 14 playable teams...

Unfortunately, the 6 extra teams will not be able to be used in netplay as it utilizes the battery file to add the teams, and we all know .sav files mess up netplay.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My editors have been fixed (I think). I have a guy who's doing ratings for the game...once he gets them to me, I'll use them as a test. If everything goes as planned, we'll have an AL and an NL ROM, each with 14 playable teams...

Unfortunately, the 6 extra teams will not be able to be used in netplay as it utilizes the battery file to add the teams, and we all know .sav files mess up netplay.

Tecmo - You would be my hero. Thanks for dedicating time to doing this!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The new logo for the marlins is in place, thanks to AdamB5000...stellar work as always. Also, I have the save state mapped out so now I can write an extractor for the stats from either the battery file, or the end of game save state.

The game currenlty has a bug in it that doesn't calculate saves correctly, and also calculates an IP for any pitcher who was brought into the game even if he never threw a pitch. Jstout was looking at that for me, but I don't want to harass the guy too much. Thankfully, those are easy stats to calculate on your own...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...

I didn't. I had finished it but never released it because there were several bugs in it. Then I took an online retro gaming hiatus. When I returned, several people contacted me about it, I shipped it to them for testing, they found some glaring bugs that made it not even usable. I have since fixed said bugs.

Once we release two successful ROMs that are bug free, I'll post the editors for anyone who cares to use them.

Caveats...the editors only modify player data and team names/initials. No uniform colors at this time (there will be some day, should I decide to code for it). I got lazy and lost steam somewhere throughout the dev process, and therefore there is no error checking, so you can hose up a game (which I did several times because the ratings I received had some fat-finger mistypes, and it borked the ROM). Eventually this should get fixed as well.

Actually, now that I think of it, I did post a usable version over at tecmoworld for the guys to use in their league after I added stat extraction capabilities to it. Let me find that link...

Here's the link to BSTARS ROM Tool. The sav tool I haven't released yet...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

Unfortunately I think we're stuck with just the rom editor and not the sav editor. I need jstout to figure out some bugs for me and I think I've over bugged him for stuff. Thankfully we have all the logos drawn so a 8-team rom with logos is possible. If someone were to make all the ratings we could easily swap teams in and out. I could make the rom editor even better so that we wouldn't need brinkys at all...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good news, I stripped out all my sav editor code and was able to start piecing it back together. So far, so good, I'm able to edit some names and batting orders...I hope that means I"m back in business!


 


This would effectively give us two ROMs at 14 teams each, all with updated team logos.  It's no 30-team hack, but it's better than nothing.


 


Can't promise anything yet, but as I slowly chip away at this, perhaps the project is still alive and has some legs...


Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...