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Has anyone ever created a playoff editing guide?


fgqb#19nyj

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It's great that this site is back on its feet, and it's great that we can all come back here again to gather whatever knowledge of what this great game has to offer in terms of hacking its rom.

 

Having said that, and after combing this site for whatever pertains to playoff editing, I was surprised to not find what I thought would be invaluable to TSB rom hacking. Sure, there are several topics covering playoff editing, but not one that explains the full extent of where these hex addresses are located and what they can do. At least not in a coherent way to implement whatever changes that would make other playoff formats that he or she desires. My question is this, has anyone ever created a guide that fully explains playoff editing, in both the 28 and 32 team roms, that's much like the playbook guide?  I think playoff editing is a huge obstacle, and such an informative guide could be invaluable to editing this great game.

 

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7 minutes ago, bruddog said:

Editing what about the playoffs specifically.

Any part of it, really. If I wanted to eliminate the wild cards, include or exclude a division champ into or out of another conference, or even remove one conference from the game entirely. Mold the playoffs into whatever I would like.

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It would be much harder to have a guide for this because its way more difficult than play editing which is also very difficult. 

 

Many if the things you are asking for here require reprogramming the game from the core and not just changing a few values. 
 

 

 

 

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I see.

 

What I'm hoping to accomplish would be to create these formats below. If you can help, I would appreciate it.

 

1. Both Carther's playoff edits, in his 66 rom and 67-69 roms, are structured somewhat accurate. But the game forces you to simulate the unneeded wild cards for both conferences, which is odd. Is there a way to fix that? 

 

2. I would like to create 1995 to 1998 rom editions, but that would mean reverting a 32 team rom back to the original 12 team playoff format, that was on 1991 original. Is that even possible to accomplish now, despite all the changes made to the original rom?

 

If you have info on how these can be done. Or if you prefer, I could upload the 3 roms to make these edits yourself, I would be grateful.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am not sure where to ask this question, but I am curious about editing how playoff teams are determined.

 

I have been tooling around with an 18 team USFL hack, and everything works--even the 18 gane schedule--until I get to the playoffs. I used the USFL-WLAF hack as my basis and at the end of the season the WLAF teams all play one game to determine the AFC East and NFC East champions.

 

Is there a way to exclude the WLAF division champs? The XFL and CFL hacks seem to work in determining two division champs and four wild cards. 

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I made a thread about 5-6 years ago documenting my journey through trying to figure out this part of the code.  I eventually figured it out, but I'm not sure I posted everything I learned.  I've long since forgotten what I did, but you can probably find that thread and reference it with the others to get an idea of what needs to be done. I think jstout made a bracket that shows the hex codes at each position a team can occupy in one of them, which helped me big time. I was specifically trying to make a simple 8 team playoff, which I ended up doing.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, adscl84 said:

I made a thread about 5-6 years ago documenting my journey through trying to figure out this part of the code.  I eventually figured it out, but I'm not sure I posted everything I learned.  I've long since forgotten what I did, but you can probably find that thread and reference it with the others to get an idea of what needs to be done. I think jstout made a bracket that shows the hex codes at each position a team can occupy in one of them, which helped me big time. I was specifically trying to make a simple 8 team playoff, which I ended up doing.

 

 

 

That was helpful I think I can experiment a little bit. 

 

I managed an 18 team USFL hack based on the WLAF-USFL rom. I removed the AFC East and NFC East (where the WLAF teams were) and used snippets of code from the playoff setup from the Grey Cup 2019 hack; I got the NFC to work--it sorts the Central and West (the USFL divisions) division champs and four wild card teams; it awards the NFC East title to a seemingly random WLAF club, but they don't make the playoffs. This worked because I used the CFL code for different wild card spots, though I am still not sure how it worked. I used the CFL code because I noticed it sorts two division winners and four wild cards. 

 

My current issue is on the AFC side--it sorts the two division winners (Central and West) and three Wild Cards, but the awarded AFC East champ (always the Fire) always gets in as a third Wild Card. It is frustrating, because I have gotten pretty far--the schedule maintains 18 games and excludes the WLAF clubs, so the Fire slip in even though their record is "-- - --." 

 

I might check the Conferences and how the playoff teams are calculated.

 

I also got another issue, though I am not sure it is related. When looking at individual leaders on the stat screen, the whole game crashes. Stats are retained and accessed on the Team Data screens, but everytime I go and look at individual leaders, the rom freaks out. I did do some weird edits to sorting team rankings--I have read and now understand that it is much harder to cut teams from the middle than at the top and bottom. 

 

I am away from my computer with the file, but I will upload it here tomorrow if anyone is interested. It is an '84 hack, with mostly accurate rosters and some what-ifs (Boomer on the Feds, Billy Sims with the Gamblers, Campbell with the Gun Slingers, Payton and Fryar with the Blitz). I still got some graphic edits to do, but I feel more confident about those than this bracket situation.

 

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I have attached the file here.

 

I tried the playoff calculation option--switching 0B to 07--and it wrecked the AFC: it only considered the Central Division for Wild Card spots. I restored to 0B and now it is working a little better. The thing though is, it really isn't a Wild Card issue, but a division issue, I think? I am trying to exclude a division champion on the AFC side.

 

The NFC side started working when I placed "B5 9A 95" at x2323C, where the 3rd AFC Division Winner goes. That code came from the 2019 CFL Roster.

 

I know the CFL Rom has "crossover" standings, which is a problem I already had and finally just showed up after dozens of sims: the Denver Gold won the AFC Central with a 10-8 record, but because that record was better than what would've been the fourth wild card--the Feds--they are now placed on both the AFC bracket and the NFC bracket. This actually isn't a big problem to me as long as it doesn't repeat the same team. 

 

The crash is still there under individual records. 

 

The game itself plays.

 

 

 

 

 

 

usfl_84_princes_of_spring_rosters_tborg.nes

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I also just want to quickly note that the schedule is a mess--my eyes have been bleeding from arranging it; I also keep getting errors in TBT due to the arrangement. I am going to double-check it again and try to correct it--I hope it isn't a reason for these problems. 

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I have corrected the schedule and did a couple things--editing conferences at x2397c, etc., etc., and while I still got the Fire problem, I think it helped at least "crossover" the next best record to the NFC side. Still getting crashes on the Leader board. I just don't know how to get this thing to drop the AFC East winner, even when I exclude the first five in x22c36. 

usfl_84_princes_of_spring_rosters_tborg.nes

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On 2/18/2021 at 8:44 PM, adscl84 said:

I made a thread about 5-6 years ago documenting my journey through trying to figure out this part of the code.  I eventually figured it out, but I'm not sure I posted everything I learned.  I've long since forgotten what I did, but you can probably find that thread and reference it with the others to get an idea of what needs to be done. I think jstout made a bracket that shows the hex codes at each position a team can occupy in one of them, which helped me big time. I was specifically trying to make a simple 8 team playoff, which I ended up doing.

 

 

 

Hey, adscl84, thanks for the help. Are these the only hex addresses and their parameters in the original game? And is this the same for both the 28 and 32 team roms?

 

xF03A-xF03F

xF04A-xF058

xF05B-xF0CA

x1E650-x1E6B2

x1E777-x1E7CB

x1E847-x1E89E

x21FE7-x2200F

x23221-x232AD

x23F6D-x23F9F

x23FE5-x24032

x2F260-x2F2D1

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I haven't messed with this stuff in particular since back then, so I'm not really sure. I can tell I never posted all my notes and the stuff I wrote down by hand is probably long gone as I didn't find it in my computer desk.  I think all that's missing is the bracket that illustrated the hex code that corresponded to the positions on the bracket. 

 

I assume the general process for how the playoff teams gets determined is the same in booth ROMs, but I have no experience with the 32 team ROM. I know a lot of code got moved around to make room for the extra teams, but have no idea if that affected where the playoff stuff is located.  You could compare the code in the two ROMs and see if everything in those addresses is the same.

 

I wish I could be more help, but other than occasional roster changes and tile editing, I've done very little in the last 5 years.

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  • 1 month later...

I found a text file of my notes. They're incomplete, as there is no entry for figuring out the wild card and I reference x20e92f for some reason (and it's clear I didn't even know why back then). But a lot of this stuff is essentially the same as what jstout put in his post (you'll have to search for this) about how the code works. Maybe it'll help you somehow...

8TEAMPLAYOFFNOTES.txt

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...

I've used Carther's playoff codes to create these two roms, but I've only managed to clean up the graphics appearance on the playoff trees.

 

The '67 rom sims two unnecessary AFL playoff matchups while using the same teams against each other before moving on to the desired playoff format.

 

And the '69 rom unnecessarily sims two AFL and two NFL matchups with the same teams playing each other before moving on to the desired format as well.

 

Does anyone know how to edit the roms, so that these extra games are skipped over? Both files were uploaded down below. I've shortened the schedules so that simming seasons would be a lot quicker, just to make it easier for testing. Any help would be appreciated.

Tecmo Super Bowl 1967 Season Backup.nes Tecmo Super Bowl 1969 Season Backup.nes

Edited by fgqb#19nyj
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