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New Java TSB editor for Windows, Linux, Mac


cpovirk

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I discovered Tecmo Super Bowl Manager around the same time that I switched to Linux, which meant I was rebooting my computer just to run TSBM under Windows. Later I used QEMU, but the real goal was a Linux editor for Tecmo Super Bowl. After four years of on and off (okay, mostly "off") development, including about two years of using exclusively it for my ROM editing, I've gotten it to the point that I'm ready to release it.

General Manager for Tecmo Super Bowl offers most of the features of TSBM, along with a few of its own. Even if you use Windows, I think you'll find it's worth a look. GM for TSB allows you to view multiple teams at once, dragging and dropping players to move them around. It groups all the WRs of 3- and 4-WR teams together, instead of putting some with the RBs or TEs. It seamlessly saves players and teams that won't fit in the ROM into their own file. And those are just a few of the improvements to the interface.

Read more and dowload GM for TSB

A HUGE thank-you to Emuware and all those who documented the Tecmo Super Bowl file format, notably bruddog. I would never have attempted this if I had had to decipher the contents of the ROM before even starting on the programming.

Please let me know about any problems you encounter or features you'd like to see added.

--Chris

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This is pretty sweet from what I've seen so far.

Would you be able to update for the 32 team rom if given the locations?

Thanks for the contribution...I'm sure all the Linux and Mac guys will be excited about this.

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Thanks for the quick and positive feedback.

I just came across the 32-team ROM a few months ago. I have a few pages bookmarked with locations and other information, so I'll probably try to add support in the near future.

* viewtopic.php?f=34&t=10432&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15#p81231

* viewtopic.php?f=34&t=10432&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=150#p83137 (Pro Bowl)

* viewtopic.php?f=34&t=6941&start=141 (TSBTool Supreme, which as I understand can edit it)

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WARNING: When you first save a ROM, the editor will prompt you to save a TSBSUP file, too. This is a separate file from the NES file, used to store teams and players that don't fit in the ROM. I recommend naming it romname.tsbsup, where the ROM file is named romname.nes. Once you choose a name and hit Save, both the ROM and the TSBSUP file will be saved. Whatever you do, do not overwrite the NES file with the TSBSUP file, or you will corrupt the ROM.

This has already claimed one victim, which is a sign that I should have included a better explanation in the editor. I'll be adding one to the next version.

Thanks to those who have tried the program, and please let me know if you encounter any other problems.

--Chris

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This thing sounds cool, but I'm really not wanting to download and play around with it right now, so sorry if these questions annoy anyone. Maybe others out there are wondering some of the same things.

Is there things that this editor can do that tsb tool can't? I mean for instance I assume that the trading players function beats the cut and paste method anyday, but is there anything you can only do with this program?

Does it have the sort feature that tsb manager has, sorting the leading players in the entire rom by position and ability?

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No problem. Even tentative interest is a good thing as part as I'm concerned :)

I tried to set up my feature list to emphasize the things that TSBM can't do. Unfortunately, I only became aware of TSB Tool in recent months, and I have only taken a few minutes to browse through it, so I don't have a good sense of its capabilities.

I will admit that the goal, especially for the first release, was not to implement everything. I hope that you do find the drag and drop, spinners, and other UI goodies to make up for the things I haven't implemented yet, like the schedule editor.

That said, here are the features that I believe GM for TSB offers that TSB Tool does not. Please correct me if I am wrong; I don't mean to slight TSB Tool, which impressed me in the brief time I spent playing with it.


  • [*:13l1e94y] The one you asked about: GM for TSB allows you to view all players at a given position and sort it by any attribute.
    [*:13l1e94y] GM for TSB lets you select a player, not a slot, as KR/PR. That is, if you have MJD at RB3 and he's the kick returner, then if you move him to RB1, he's still the kick returner.
    [*:13l1e94y] GM for TSB can set the Pro Bowl teams. (Again, it's tied to player, not slot.)
    [*:13l1e94y] GM for TSB will automatically calculate team simulation codes in addition to player simulation codes. (The downside is that you cannot set them yourself.)
    [*:13l1e94y] GM for TSB can edit alternate uniform codes -- that is, which of its two uniforms a team wears against each other team.
    [*:13l1e94y] GM for TSB can edit the background color shown on player-data screen.

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[*] GM for TSB will automatically calculate team simulation codes in addition to player simulation codes. (The downside is that you cannot set them yourself.)

When you say automatically, does this mean if I load the original rom and edit, say, one player with all 100s and give him my name that it will mess with all the sim codes on the rom? Or do you have to hit a calculate sim attributes button?

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[*] GM for TSB will automatically calculate team simulation codes in addition to player simulation codes. (The downside is that you cannot set them yourself.)

When you say automatically, does this mean if I load the original rom and edit, say, one player with all 100s and give him my name that it will mess with all the sim codes on the rom? Or do you have to hit a calculate sim attributes button?

Yes. In fact, if you just open the ROM and save it, it will calculate and change all the sim codes. I should add a warning about this at the least. It was unclear to me how concerned people would be with this "feature," but it's sounding like it should be possible to disable entirely.

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Forgive my ignorance but I can't figure what I need to download and how to run this.

If you don't already have Java (I'm not sure of the best way to check, but it would probably show up in the Start menu somewhere), you'll need to install it. Then you need the program itself. Once you've saved it to disk (anywhere should do), you can double-click it to start. My installation instructions have links to Java and the program. It should be straightforward; if not, let me know what's not working, and I'll see what I can do. Since this is my first attempt to distribute it, there may be some wrinkles in the process that need ironed out.

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Ahh the main problem is the link you provided isn't correct. Internet exploer wanted me to download the file. Even copying and pasting the link into the browser doesn't work right.

Then i had to figure out from that html file what the right address was for the link to download the program.

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After getting it working here are my comments:

first of all nice job.

I think the method of trading players by dragging and dropping is faster than tsbmanager.

I think the method of changing player ratings is just as slow as tsbmanager and slower than tsbtool since if you have

things set up right with tsbtool you can basically just import things from a spreadsheet. It would me nice to be able to edit ratings in the "show all players by position" window. And make it so you can just type in the ratings rather than have to click on arrows. Being able to "drag" ratings down like in excel would likely speed things up as well. In the player window it would be nice to sort by team as well as by depth level. Example lists all WR 1's first.

Just for your information on the play editors that exist. Neither of the play editors works real well if you really want to design new plays. The one konforce wrote is good for viewing what the offense does and simply swapping plays from one slot to another.

The one bad al wrote is great for updating play graphics and player name in the graphics but really isn't great again for developing new plays.

None of the play editors really breaks down the defense very well.

Nice work on the program.

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Ahh the main problem is the link you provided isn't correct. Internet exploer wanted me to download the file. Even copying and pasting the link into the browser doesn't work right.

Then i had to figure out from that html file what the right address was for the link to download the program.

Ugh, I thought I had fixed this problem. Somehow the fix works on some pages on the site, but naturally the one I linked to isn't one of them. I've tried a different, uglier solution. It seems to be working in IE for me now; if anyone else could confirm, I'd appreciate it. Sorry for the trouble.

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Thanks for the kind words and detailed comments.

I'd say that it's just about impossible to compete with text import when it comes to speed. An import feature might be worth adding at some point, but I don't want to just clone what TSBTool does. It probably wouldn't work as well as TSBTool, and even if it did, I wouldn't know what to improve. The text interface to TSBTool works under Linux (though I haven't tried Mac), so I'm happy to just point people in that direction. (I've added some references to TSBTool for users who want text import or 32-team-ROM editing to my web page.)

That said, editing ratings in the "show all players by position" window might help to speed things along. I've added this to the to-do list.

When you're editing players, you can type the ratings if you want, but first you have to select the text that's already there and remove it. You can press TAB to jump from one rating/text field/button to the next, but this isn't very useful when you have to erase the existing text. I'll see about auto-selecting or auto-clearing the text when it's clicked on.

When you say "drag ratings down," are you talking about the Excel feature where you can click the box at the bottom-right of a cell and drag down to copy the contents to cells below? This thing, I mean. It might be worth adding to an editable "show all players by position" window. For now, I'll note that if you're dragging a player and you hold the control key when you drop it, you'll get a copy of the player. This isn't as flexible, since maybe you've already filled in names for everyone and only want to copy attributes, but it's the closest thing I have to an answer for you now.

The default sort in the "show all players by position" window is by team, but there's no way to get back to it once you've changed it. This should be fixed.

When you say that you want to sort by WR1, I assume you mean "the guy in the 7th slot" and not "the WR with the best receptions score" or anything like that, correct? Or are you looking for something more like "starting WRs" vs. "backup WRs?" It shouldn't be difficult to add either meaning to the table. Let me know which you prefer, and I'll try to do this when I add teams into the table.

Thanks for the information about the play editors. I have only briefly played with konforce's, and I hadn't tried Big Al's yet at all.

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Is the page itself java because I know I was having problems with java before and when I went to the site originally, it gave me a download. After a reboot, everything was fine.

Ahh the main problem is the link you provided isn't correct. Internet exploer wanted me to download the file. Even copying and pasting the link into the browser doesn't work right.

Then i had to figure out from that html file what the right address was for the link to download the program.

Ugh, I thought I had fixed this problem. Somehow the fix works on some pages on the site, but naturally the one I linked to isn't one of them. I've tried a different, uglier solution. It seems to be working in IE for me now; if anyone else could confirm, I'd appreciate it. Sorry for the trouble.

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The page itself doesn't have any Java. The problem has something to do with the .htaccess file on my server and the content type it sets for the pages and the program when you download it. I don't understand all the details, and apparently I messed it up.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I tried using the TSB GM, but it won't save any of my data. I get an error that says:

"Error saving league:java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\[rom loaction path]\TSB.nes (Access is denied)."

Anyone know the source of the problem and/or how to fix it? Thanks!

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I tried using the TSB GM, but it won't save any of my data. I get an error that says:

"Error saving league:java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\[rom loaction path]\TSB.nes (Access is denied)."

Anyone know the source of the problem and/or how to fix it? Thanks!

Hmm, I haven't heard of this. If you right-click on the file in Windows Explorer and choose Properties, is "Read-only" checked in the attributes section at the bottom? If it is, uncheck it and press OK, then try to save again.
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  • 3 weeks later...

When I am trying to load the TCS rom with this tool, I get the following error message (after hitting 'cancel' when given the option to select a supplemental file):

"Error loading league:java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: RICKEY FILLMORE is already on the AFC Pro Bowl team at slot QB1"

I know the rom has a seemingly random assortment of players on the pro-bowl squad. Not sure if you are aware of this problem or if you are coming up with any way to work around the issue, but I figured I'd notify you of the issue. Unfortunately, I cannot use your tool with the rom right now.

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i have downloaded this and cant seem to make this thing work. for one i dont even know where to start. i mean is this like tsbm or tsbtool and others that have tha certain application file that u can use or is there some other way to start it up? any help will do

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  • 1 month later...

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