Has anyone tried fiddling with the rom in the same manner as regular RBI? For example, player names, attributes, stats, etc.
As far as I can tell, it's easiest to change the kana or kanji into the lowercase English alphabet in TileLayer or another program of the sort, then type in the values in a hex-editor to correspond to names you want.
I could be skipping an easier step, though it seems player names are only 4 spaces long as opposed to the 6 in RBI, making naming a problem.
Anyway, I'm curious about editing PFS 87 since it has the same gameplay as RBI and it has 12 teams instead of 10. 2 teams are better for me any day. If editing can be done on the same scale as so many people do with RBI, I think this could make RBI/PFS 87 even more distracting.
BTW, this site and message board keep my RBI addiction alive. Thanks for the fix everyone.
Welcome Beanball...
It sounds like a very good idea if the consistency between ROMs doesn't involve too much altering of the management programs. The twelve teams alone makes using Family Stadium worth it...
I personally haven't tried and won't have much time to in the near future, but by all means give it a whirl and let us know how it goes...
I looked at that a while ago. ROM structure is very similar, and player data is almost identical. It'd be trivial to make it an editable ROM. Then again, all the Japanese text that I wouldn't easily be able to get rid of hurts my eyes heh.
Is there interest in this? I've been working on a ROM-editing project anyway; could add support to spit out a PFS ROM.
Nightwulf
I don't know if editing FS87 is worth it for most people, but for myself, I guess I'm already hooked. Goodbye free time...
In any case, I started on my hack by substituting the kana with lowercase english from RBI (cut and paste). So now I have the usual fonts to work with and change. This leaves about 25 kana tiles left, of which I guess I'll edit into two-letter tiles (since there are 4 spaces for names rather than 6, maybe I can cheat to fit them) or maybe I'll leave them as is.
The scoreboard and pitcher/batter screen were easy to change into english. That leaves fixing the text for substitutions (Batter, Relief, Pitcher.) End of game screen too I guess.
Some anamolies I've noticed so far:
-strongest hitter (61hr) has a power value of 90, most sluggers in FS87 are about 50-90 in hex. RBI has a bunch of sluggers in the 90-b0 range. I tried those ranges in FS87 and it wasn't too different, but I really can't tell for sure.
-ERA is 0.00-10.20 (though 10.20 shows as 0.20) No matter since it's just for show, but the values are in increments of 4. No odd numbers allowed in Japan League.
-contact in RBI is from 04(boggs) to 26(sullivan) but I see a range of 00-2e in FS87, making 12 more values possible.
-speed in RBI is 76(sullivan) to 94(coleman) and FS87 is 74-96. 4 more.
That's all I have for now, other than noticing there's a 13th team, I guess you play them after sweeping the rest. I'll try that out- but the rom data shows that they're a bunch of wimps. Strange...
Grr now I hate you; you're making me wanna play with the Japanese ROM. :P
Nightwulf
Neat. The pitcher data is extremely similar in layout for both games. But the curve ability is better defined in FS87.
Here's what I see:
Byte 1 is posistion 0c-0f
2-5 are name
6 is type (0=right, 1=left, 2=rightsidearm...)
7 is ERA
8 is sinker speed
9 is curve/regular speed
10 is fastball speed
13 is drop ability
14 is stamina
15&16 are unknown
here is the difference. FS87 has byte 11 as curve ability towards the right screen, byte 12 is towards the left. Normal values are 00-0f, but put in ff in one and the curves to the respective side will cross the screen 4 or 5 times horizontally before crossing the plate (sometimes as a strike. Try hitting that.
Your prior discussion about the nature of 15&16 seems to still be a mystery. I didn't find anything myself and I can firmly say that I do not believe in a meatball attribute. I play homerun derby and have seen some pitchers give up the least one season, and the most next. (A difference of up to 6 homers per game) Take my word for it, it's statistically proven because I've played an ungodly amount of derby games (try ~ 3000). Don't ask, please, don't ask why.
Almost forgot- I still haven't seen a fielding error on FS87. RBI has it beat by a mile there.
Good stuff Beanball, keep on hammering away. Finding the secrets of PFS will lead to more understanding of RBI...
As for the power #'s of PFS, did you try messing with the second byte? I'm not sure if you've seen, but nightwulf has disproven the ground-ball attribute and it's hard to believe upping the power from 90 to b0 doens't have any effect...
EDIT - I found the thread Beanball, please read if you haven't already:
http://forums.dee-nee.com/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=400;start=0 (http://forums.dee-nee.com/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=400;start=0)
Okay, looks like the only main player attribute differences betweent the two games is in ERA and curve ability. I could probably paste the data for each player onto FS87 and have nearly the same game. Which I think I have no choice but to do so.
This leaves me with two questions-
1: Anyone know how to change the team colors w/o using RBI manager?
I assume the values that determine each team's colors are in the rom data, but I doubt I have the knowhow to find it.
2: Who should the next 32 players be?
For now, let's say that Rob Deer is the top pick in the draft.
Speaking of Rob Deer, it looks like the power range difference between the two games was simply juicing up RBI. RBI was meant to be a slugfest, afterall look at the inflated stats from real players in 87 (Samuel, Boggs).
I'll put together a rom at some point and send it over for anyone to tear apart if they're interested. But as I said before, it only offers two additional team spots while giving up fielding errors and sporting a pink team.
Quote from: Beanball on 03/18/03, 10:54:01 PMAlmost forgot- I still haven't seen a fielding error on FS87. RBI has it beat by a mile there.
I haven't either. In fact, I'm about 100% sure that this game runs what we know as the arcade engine.
Team color pallete values are at two places in the ROM: once at 0x313B, and again at 0x9ED9. Three bytes are listed for each team, in the order Bat/helmet color, Flesh color, Uniform color. Each byte corresponds to the standard NES color palette. I imagine one entry is for the "batting" POV colors, and the other is for the "fielding" POV colors, but I haven't changed anything in the ROM yet, so I'm not sure which is which.
Nightwulf