eagles2231

On a different note, I built a MAME cabinet recently and was playing SNK's Baseball Stars 2. I realized KGB is a pretty shameless ripoff scaled down to run on an SNES. Here are some observations: Overall art style is quite similar with cartoony oversized, exaggerated characters. Batters have special animations when warming up/waiting for a pitch, which are often very similar between the games. Baseball Stars 2 often has them chewing tobacco but in KGB it's replaced by bubble gum. Batters who strikeout can break their bats over their knees. When pitchers get tired they start huffing and puffing on the mound between pitches. When hitting a HR they show a very similar animation of the batter strutting to home plate and dancing or flexing. If a fielder tags a runner during a pickle/rundown play, the baserunner gets knocked out. I saw an original design doc that was used to pitch KGB and on the main batter/pitcher matchup screen, they originally planned to have picture boxes in the top left and top right of the pitcher's face and batters face. This is exactly how Baseball Stars 2 looks. I'm guessing they couldn't get it to work well on the much weaker SNES hardware. Kevin Edwards (programmer quoted in a post above) commented on twitter that KGB originally had a fight sequence animated. Baseball Stars 2 has this too. Overall though, they just look and feel very similar. Baseball Stars 2 came out a bit before KGB and there is 0 doubt in my mind the designers played it and were highly inspired by it. If you have played/loved KGB, I highly recommend checking out Baseball Stars 2 (not the NES game, but the arcade or Neo Geo one). You will definitely get a feeling of deja vu. It's a great game and superior in ways, but definitely light on content and replayability compared to KBG (only 8 teams and no real players).

Thanks for sharing. I don't think it answers my main question but still very interesting to read as a KGB super fan. This line: "Increased pulled ball percentage to 75% if hit in centre posn." seems to indicate there is an element of randomness, which makes sense. I don't see how it could have been programed any other way really.

Some notes back to you here... When you swing definitely matters, at least for a human player. You can control whether the ball goes to the right of left side of the field based on your swing timing. Occasionally it will go to a different part of the field than where you swung, but it's not random. The question as the whether it's you get more hits aiming a certain way, I'm not sure. The computer bunt logic I never really noticed, but that is a good observation. Hit and run is a very interesting observation. I really doubt there is a second swing type, but that could be confirmed through save states. If there was a second swing type (say power swing and control swing) then why would the devs not just have mapped that to a second button, or at least put it in the instruction booklet? As a human player I always "hit and run" when there is a player on base (except 3rd base) because you can virtually always get back to the original bag safely if you swing and miss. I only do this to get an extra jump on the basepaths at very little risk, but it never occurred to me that it may give a boost to the batter too. Pitching must have some effect on hitting as you noticed, but what that is I am not sure. Here are some thoughts: As a human pitching to the computer, the computer hits noticeably more poorly if you throw all slow balls. If you throw fast pitches you will get hammered. I strongly suspect there is logic programmed in to make fastballs result in more hits and homers. I am not sure if the pitcher's SPD rating matters and how much, but the pitch type matters for sure. I noticed the computer will typically select a relief pitcher according to the platoon advantage (e.g. they will put in a lefty pitcher to face a lefty batter, and righty vs. righty, probably 90% of the time). That makes me wonder if there is some advantage programmed in. Last thing, which should be obvious on some level, is fatigue. If a pitcher is tired and huffing and puffing, then he won't be able to throw as fast or curve the ball as much. I am not sure if that really translates into the batter having more success, other than the fact that the pitches will tend to come in over the plate and slower, thereby making them easier to connect on. Seems likely though if they programmed in a fatigue system they would have programmed in a boost to hit results. I keep coming back to the batter location and sweet spot idea. I don't know if the ratings are tied to this at all but from experimenting with save states it does seem to matter. I have tried standing as far away from the plate as possible and then as close to the plate as possible and seeing whether i could recreate the exact same hit from different distances from the ball. I wasn't able to, meaning where on the bat you make contact does effect where it goes. Now I can't say with 100% confidence my test was conclusive, but it seems to be. I also don't know if it's better to hit the ball off the end of the bat, the middle, or get jammed close to the hands. This would also help explain why a lot of people online believe the batting stance affects hit results. That always seemed unlikely to me from a programming perspective, but maybe there is some truth to it. Larger players have larger bats and a bigger sweet spot to hit the ball with.

Very interested in this topic and hopefully you and others see it and reply. A friend and I have completed over 20 full seasons and the batting mechanics are still largely a mystery to me. We also kept track of all those seasons stats so I'm able to do some analysis of real-world data to see how BAT and PWR affect batting results. Here are some notes: Higher BAT rating leads to a bit higher batting average - To analyze this I took 26 completed player season where batters had a 9 or 10 in PWR and plotted their BAT rating vs. their batting average. There was a slight positive relationship (r-square = .32). I did the same thing for a group of 64 player seasons where batters had a 7 or 8 in PWR and saw a similar positive relationship (r-square = .15). So I don't know why, and there are MANY exceptions, but the BAT rating does appear to cause players to get a few more hits. Higher BAT rating leads to a bit FEWER home runs - I did the same analysis here with the 2 groups but this time found r-squareds of .39 and .29 showing that a LOW BAT actually resulted in more HR on average. There are many exceptions, but it's generally true. In the sample of 26 players with a 9 or 10 PWR rating, 7 of them also had a 10 in BAT. The best any of those 7 players finished was 13th place in that list of 26. In fact those 7 players finished ranked 13, 15, 18, 21, 23, 24, and 26. On the flip side their ranks in AVG were 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 14, and 15. So there is something happening there for sure. The relationship in both of these cases is subtle, but I do believe it exists. Next I have some other notes: Idea from RBI Baseball - RBI Baseball fans struggled with a similar question of what - if anything - the batting attribute does in that game. Eventually someone who could pick apart the code figured out that it serves as a penalty for not hitting the ball on the barrel. If the pitch makes contact with the end of the bat instead of the sweet spot, then the batters power rating would be reduced based on their batting rating when the game performs the hit result calculation. In practice this doesn't do a whole lot because the power rating is huge compared to the batting rating so a powerful batter making bad contact will still be a lot better than a weak batter making good contact, so that's why it was hard to tell if the rating even does anything. I wonder if a similar thing could be at play with Griffey. Results of hitting a ball trigger a canned animation. There isn't a true physics engine - This is more obvious if you bunt vs. the computer. There are only so many paths the ball can travel when you bunt - maybe a dozen or so - regardless of the batter. You will see the ball go in the exact same path again and again if you pay attention to it. The same thing happens when batting, but there are a lot more possibilities. Nonetheless, if you play enough you will notice there are certain batted ball paths that happen repeatedly. How to Find the Answers - There are two ways I can think of to find the answer to how the batting mechanics work. First is a long shot, but someone with a lot of SNES hacking ability would need to analyze the code. This would of course give us the true answers, but there are not a lot of people who can hack SNES games beyond just the text or graphics, Griffey is programmed in a difficult to decipher way according to people who have hacked it so far, and the overlap between a Griffey fan and a dedicated SNES hacker is probably very small, if it exists at all. Anyway, that is an option technically. Next way is with analysis of game play. To do this, you can play on an emulator and take a save state immediately before an at bat, then replay the at bat again and again and again. I've done this a bit and haven't made any breakthroughs, but I noticed two things: 1) The pitcher becomes set on what pitch to throw at some point before he winds up. If you do the save state idea, the pitcher will throw the same exact pitch every single time. Not totally surprising or useful, but the pitcher appears to lock into a pattern of what pitches to throw in what order. Anyway, this finding is good because it lets you control for the effects of pitching easily. Since the pitch is exactly the same, you know any difference in the hit result are due to the batting inputs. 2) Referring to my point from a bit above, it's possible if you swing at the exact same time that the ball will go in exactly the same path. By that I mean you can hit a homerun that goes in the exact same spot and measures exactly the same distance again and again. You'll also notice the number of batted ball animations is reduced. If you play this at bat 50 times in a row, you'll start to see there are only so many paths the ball will travel. So that tells me based on a certain batter/pitcher matchup and a certain pitch thrown, there are only a certain number of hits that can result - and some results, say a 575 ft HR, are not possible. Clearly the timing of the swing affects whether you pull the ball or hit opposite field, so if someone has a tool to do this, we could probably prove that pressing B on a certain frame will always cause the same hit result. I'm sure the hit result is determined by the batter's ratings, swing timing, batter's location in the box (maybe), pitchers rating, and pitch thrown ... but how that all works I am really stumped on. If anyone wants to help, I think we can make some progress.

Just saw this thread, but BAT doesn't appear to do anything at all - at least from a user controlled player perspective. (i.e. it is no easier/harder to get a hit with someone with a high or low BAT rating.) PWR appears to be the only attribute that actually matters when a user is batting. A rating of a 9 or 10 may not make a difference. Some of my highest ever recorded HR totals have been done by players with a 9 rating. Below a 9 there is a definite drop off, but 9 and 10 appear function the same. SPD only affects base running speed, it doesn't affect how fast your player moves in the field. It is still very important for hitting as there are certain groundball animations where a fast batter can beat the throw, but a slow batter cannot. This is particularly important when bunting. A player with a 9 or 10 speed can bunt every single at bat for a full season and hit over .500. DEF controls both the fielder's speed and throwing speed. All the stats matter for pitching and work the way you probably imagine (control is how much movement you can put on it, speed is how fast you can throw, and fatigue is how long they last before tiring). FWIW, I have played at least a thousand games of Griffey over the years. I've completed numerous full 162 game seasons, but haven't played it much in recent years (damn adulthood). I also saved the stats for all the seasons played. For fun, here are the top 10 HR totals recorded in a single season by either me or my friend who used to play a lot too. 10. Bo Jackson / Cecil Fielder = 56 8. Chili Davis = 58 7. Albert Belle = 60 6. Mark Whitten = 64 5. Mickey Tettleton = 68 4. Kevin Maas / Danny Tartabul = 69 2. Joe Carter = 74 1. Cecil Fielder = 80 Some other notes: highest ever AVG = Rickey Henderson (.534), most RBI = Mark Whitten (390)

Thanks man, that was kind of tedious but it works. I just updated the first page with what will probably be my final update. Pro bowl rosters are now included. Also, I included the hack that separates the PC and PA attributes. I changed a rating or two also. Lowered Favre's PC and also I had Andre Gurode as white and named "Andrew Gurode" so I fixed that too.

i dont believe it works. i think it was something somebody was experimenting with and never finished. could be wrong though, i really dont give a crap about weather.

Thanks for the compliments. I uploaded version 1.2, I think it might be the last one I do, I don't think there is a lot that needs to be changed but I might add one or two more minor gameplay hacks. What I added: -Dedicated KR/PR hack -Interception returns use a players quickness as his max speed -Brady is on the bench and Cassel is starting for the Patriots (I didn't change their ratings at all though) -A couple of minor players got switched around, I don't really even remember who they are, it wasn't really important to do Oh - but the one thing I would like to do is edit the pro bowl rosters. If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know. I couldn't find it by searching but maybe I'm dumb.

as others have said, read the manuels and stuff. its not really all in one place but you can get all the answers out there somewhere. as far as editing colors and most other things in TSB, you have to double click in the text. Like double click a team name and it will bring up the playbook and their tendencies. double click a player and it will bring up their ratings, picture, number, etc. there is something to double click that lets you edit team names and colors too, im not exactly sure what it is off hand though.

here is the link to the program you need to download to edit TSB. viewtopic.php?f=34&t=6941

Thanks for the tips, I'm going to update it again with the suggestions people made. Also, I think I'm gonna put Tom Brady on the bench and make Cassel the starting QB for NE. That way the computer wont use him, but if you want to be the pats, you can put him in yourself. I might do a similar thing with Kitna, or maybe just lower his ratings. The Lions are too good with how I have him being a decent QB. The other thing that will be in the next update is a couple common hacks. I put in the dedicated KR/PR hack and the quickness as MS for interception returns. I'm also going to have to revise the quickness rating for a bunch of players due to that.

"this is pretty much the worst video ever made" "napoleon, like anyone can even know that"

thanks for the feedback. for the year thing, i've just been using BadAl's tool which has one spot to change the year. so whatever places that changes is what it changes. at the end of a season, it still says 1991 roster too. oh well, its not really worth the effort to change it, im not great editing the hex as it is so its not worth it for me to hunt down all the years and change them. if someone has a link or something on where all the year locations are, i would do it, but otherwise then im just gonna leave it. sims was a mistake, he should have a 68 RP, i'll change that. little should have a 64 in quickness, i'll also change that. not sure how either of those things happened, but if you notice anymore then let me know. i'll change huff's number too. as far as the stars and scrubs thing, its pretty much based on how the original tecmo is. most players - especially on defense - are mirror images of real tecmo players. i basically matched up the best current players with the best tecmo players, and worst current players with the worst tecmo players. some teams did turn out to be stars and scrubs, but there are tecmo teams like that and i dont think it hurts the gameplay. All you have to do to edit the year, bro, is to open up the hex editor and do a search for the dates. It'll find every one you need to find for easy changing. that was simple, thanks. the only one i dont know how to change is after you win the superbowl it says "1991 roster" - i think that must be a graphic so im not gonna worry about changing that. i made those edits outrider pointed out but ill wait a little and see if i (or anyone else) notices any more before i post an updated version.

thanks for the feedback. for the year thing, i've just been using BadAl's tool which has one spot to change the year. so whatever places that changes is what it changes. at the end of a season, it still says 1991 roster too. oh well, its not really worth the effort to change it, im not great editing the hex as it is so its not worth it for me to hunt down all the years and change them. if someone has a link or something on where all the year locations are, i would do it, but otherwise then im just gonna leave it. sims was a mistake, he should have a 68 RP, i'll change that. little should have a 64 in quickness, i'll also change that. not sure how either of those things happened, but if you notice anymore then let me know. i'll change huff's number too. as far as the stars and scrubs thing, its pretty much based on how the original tecmo is. most players - especially on defense - are mirror images of real tecmo players. i basically matched up the best current players with the best tecmo players, and worst current players with the worst tecmo players. some teams did turn out to be stars and scrubs, but there are tecmo teams like that and i dont think it hurts the gameplay.

Thanks for the feedback I got from those of you who downloaded my rom. I made several updates and you can download version 1.1 from the first post if you like. What I changed: Vikings - reduced Peterson's BC, improved K. Williams, swapped a couple LB's Defensive sim data - it has now been corrected and sims well. I changed the sim data so it all the pass/rush D adds up to 255 which is apparently what Tecmo needs to works right. Team sim data - i changed a few teams so the good teams tend to win a lot in sim and the bad teams lose. I also edited a few players here and there What I could use help with or may change later: The Cards still insist on being a running team, I don't know how to get them to pass the ball in simmed seasons. Receiving stats tend to be a little higher than I would like, I'm not really sure what to do about this.