Ok, I think I'm gonna give this a shot. :) Here's the first build of my online RBI editor:
http://nightwulf.rbicentral.com/rbi-editor
It should be mostly self-explanatory, and there's directions within the editor also. Because of the way some files are used internally, you need to register an account and be logged in to do just about anything. No biggie, you'll see "Register" on the first editor page. From the "Load" page you can load the default NES or Arcade data, or upload a ROM from your hard drive, and edit away. To make the ROM, click "Build" and the ROM will be built, zipped, and sent to your browser.
When you save a ROM, you have the option to "Allow other users to load this ROM in the editor." or something like that. To show an example of what this means, I added all the ROMs from the old dee-nee ROM page. On the load page, see all the ROMs from dee-nee.com under "Other ROMs"? If you allow other users to edit your ROM, they'll see it listed in that box as an "Other ROM" just like you see the dee-nee.com ROMs there. They can't actually save over your file, but can load it in the editor just to look at it, build it, or edit it further and save it as their own file.
This probably isn't written well. Easiest way to see how it works is just to mess around with the editor for a while.
Unfortunately, this is probably not a good day to launch the editor, as I'm leaving this evening and won't be back until Sunday night. I'll try to get on someone's PC and see what errors have been uncovered hehe.
Here's a couple things off the bat:
The first page allegedly preloads all the images used by the editor, but it doesn't seem to be working. This makes changing team colors awfully slow in MSIE the first time you use that color. I really don't understand why, as it works fine in Mozilla even when the color image isn't preloaded. Anyway, for now, don't be surprised if it takes a few seconds to change colors in MSIE.
If you save a ROM, you'll have the option to "Make this ROM publicly downloadable." That option is saved, but really doesn't do anything yet. The plan is to add a page outside of the editor which lists everyone's ROMs. This will (hopefully) be implemented soon.
Ooh don't lose your password. The "Forgot your password?" link is supposed to change your password for you, and send an e-mail with the new one. It worked on my linux box, but isn't working on rbicentral.com. Don't use it yet. Edit: Killed the option just in case.
Ok, check it out, lemme know what questions, comments, and/or complaints you have. :)
Nightwulf
I loaded RBI3 but the editor only gives me the option to edit the 10 teams found on the original RBI.
I'm amazed RBI3 made it through the ROM parser. This is an RBI editor, not anything else ...
Edit: I'm even more amazed. I just tried uploading RBI 3 and got the "This is not a valid ROM" error like I should've. What were you uploading?
Nightwulf
I'm sorry - I'm an idiot. I loaded the rbi03 ROM not rbi3. I guess I got a little excited anticipating a possible editor for rbi3. Sorry for the confusion
This is a great idea Nightwulf.
Excellent work nightwulf! Don't have much time right now, but I did notice that you don't see the team colors when uploading a ROM, it simply uses the default RBI colors. Is that fixable or will it screw up your color palette?
Also noticed that when using the "User" page (i'm logged in and uploaded a ROM) , the first button seems to change to an era. Changing teams while on this page seems to change the button to a new ERA...
Quote from: Gantry on 06/13/03, 01:32:06 PM
Excellent work nightwulf! Don't have much time right now, but I did notice that you don't see the team colors when uploading a ROM, it simply uses the default RBI colors. Is that fixable or will it screw up your color palette?
This works for me. I tried again just now uploading an old RBI arcade ROM I did, and the team color palette was picked up and used correctly. E-mail me the ROM you uploaded, if it's one of the weird sizes I may have the PRG offset wrong.
Quote from: Gantry on 06/13/03, 01:39:18 PM
Also noticed that when using the "User" page (i'm logged in and uploaded a ROM) , the first button seems to change to an era. Changing teams while on this page seems to change the button to a new ERA...
Hahaha. Oversight on my part, evidently the user page doesn't "tell" the script to ignore team changes on that page. I'll fix it on Sunday. :)
Nightwulf
As much as I hate to say it, the editor is already broken. I just tried building a ROM with MSIE and got nothing. No download box or anything. Evidently Mozilla and MSIE handle multipart documents differently.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to fix this right now. I'll have to look at it on Sunday night. My apologies to anyone using IE, as the editor really won't do anything for you at the moment.
As I've said before, I fucking hate IE. >:(
Edit: Fixed, kinda. The catch is, after clicking "Build" and downloading the ROM, the browser will just sit there on a blank black page. The menu is still there tho, you can continue using the editor by loading a new page from the menu.
And now, I leave for the weekend. :)
Nightwulf
The editor looks great. I think I'll wait for you to work the kinks out before I start working with it. Very Well done.
Also, I know this is stupid, but maybe someday you would think about doing something similar for Baseball Stars? I allready know of one league that uses Baseball stars, and if there was an editor, I have no doubt more would spawn.
8 Teams on a rom, and all the categories are based 0-15. Though there are more per player. Anyway, thanks again!
So I'm back in town, had a great time seeing old friends, just finished catching up on everything I missed, and I don't feel like coding. :) On deck for tomorrow is a little streamlining of the Javascript code which will eliminate the error Gantry found, a fix for the blank page you see after building a ROM, and hopefully a first build at the ROMs page.
Quote from: clyon81 on 06/13/03, 05:45:00 PM
The editor looks great. I think I'll wait for you to work the kinks out before I start working with it. Very Well done.
Thanks much, but I do have one request. The point of testing an application like this is to work the kinks out. While I've done a good amount of playing around with the editor myself, I'll never identify every bug that may exist myself. Give it a shot. :) Try uploading a ROM you've already done into the editor and seeing how it looks.
On a side note, the only ROMs the emulator spits back out to you are 98320 bytes, and zipped. If anyone has an older RBI hack that's the 196k or 256k size, you can upload it to the editor, click "Build" without making changes, and the ROM sent to you will be the exact same game, only it'll now be 96k.
Quote from: clyon81 on 06/13/03, 05:45:00 PM
Also, I know this is stupid, but maybe someday you would think about doing something similar for Baseball Stars? I allready know of one league that uses Baseball stars, and if there was an editor, I have no doubt more would spawn.
8 Teams on a rom, and all the categories are based 0-15. Though there are more per player. Anyway, thanks again!
Aye, we talked a bit about this on AIM. I was a pretty big Baseball Stars fan also, and this is definitely a possibility. Lemme get this one completely functional and where I want it to be first. ;)
Nightwulf
As an FYI, I cannot get team colors to load using any ROM. I tried uploading one as before and now I just logged in, loaded RBI 1969 from the drop-down list and the colors are still the stock RBI...
This is happening on two Win98 machines here, using Phoenix 0.5 and Firebird...
Quote from: Gantry on 06/16/03, 11:07:16 AM
As an FYI, I cannot get team colors to load using any ROM. I tried uploading one as before and now I just logged in, loaded RBI 1969 from the drop-down list and the colors are still the stock RBI...
This is happening on two Win98 machines here, using Phoenix 0.5 and Firebird...
Ah, found it. Was pulling the color palette from an offset that sometimes wasn't used in some sizes of ROMs. The ROM parser is now getting palettes from a different offset, and is working with all sizes.
Fixed "RBI 69" on the list of dee-nee.com ROMs; I'll get all of them re-upped shortly.
Nightwulf
Just thought I'd mentioned that NIghtWolf is a member of the DAH-NAH's. Oh yeah!!! Consider him the clean up batter. His RBI knowledge is already legendary!