Family Stadium power ratings (vs. RBI)

[The Greeter]

Probably covered here before, but if I'm going to move this thing towards 1M posts thought I'd do my part 8-).

I'm using Nightwulf's Family Stadium editor - I'm bored to tears with the classic RBI stadium.  Thought I'd take one of the RBI cartridges data (RBI Arcade) and port it into the Family Stadium '90.  Hey, I even get to add two more starting pitchers.  Plus, I get some different stadiums and maybe even some of the rumored better pitching from FS vs RBI classic.  We'll see.

Everything seems pretty straightforward, except for Power.  RBI typically uses 600-1000, but FS uses 0-255.  Is there some generally accepted conversion here?  Like does FS (0) = RBI (600)?  Or is there something I'm missing here?

If a FS ROM has been done before with US Player names/stats, let me know and I won't kill myself repeating someone else's work.  If not, I'll post the updated ROM here when it's done if anyone is interested .

Thx.

[Turd]

Actually, I was Lready in the works on starting this project. I have all the data locations and I wrote a little excel function to transform the power from rbi to FS. Hit me up, I can give you all the info you need.

[TbT]

If its done with the FS version that has different stadiums, which I assume have different ball park dimensions, I will play the shit out of that.

...and then some 

[The Greeter]

Looks like I'm not the only one looking for different stadium options.  Couple of things in editing I've noticed with Family Stadium (FS) vs RBI:

1.  Names can only be 5 letters in FS
2.  Pitchers ERA must end in 0 or 5
3.  Batting Average must end in an even number
4.  Outfield dimensions in parks are in meters
5.  Unable to edit uniforms/team names with the FS editor (like I can in RBI)

But gameplay, I think, is much better on FS.  Pitching seems more unpredictable, computer is much more aggressive on base paths, defensive players seem faster.

Turd, will follow up in PM with what I've got so far.  Maybe we can make a go of this.

[Turd]

I have all the data to edit uniforms, team names, logos, etc...

Also, on FS, there are 14 teams + 2 All-star teams.

The only thing I don't know and need to ask the resident hacker dude is what CPU difficulty affects when you play in a season.  It goes from A1 - C9 I believe.

[Turd]

Maybe somehow I can write a roster importer for this too and get an extractor written for rbibaseball.us...

[BeefMaster]

Actually, I was Lready in the works on starting this project. I have all the data locations and I wrote a little excel function to transform the power from rbi to FS. Hit me up, I can give you all the info you need.

How does the conversion work?  I'm also curious how they line up, whether power points are on the same scale and you basically add to a minimum value, or whether 0 FS = 0 RBI, and you go up by some multiple.

The batting average thing is probably because the original only has a range of .256 for batting average (without hacks).  Doubling the value gives them .512 to play with without using an additional byte per player.  Probably the same reasoning for ERA (some of the original RBIers have unrealistically low ERAs because it maxed out at 3.55, so they just rolled over the value and started over at 1.00 for guys above that), although I doubt they really needed ERAs up to 12.80.

[BeefMaster]

The only thing I don't know and need to ask the resident hacker dude is what CPU difficulty affects when you play in a season.  It goes from A1 - C9 I believe.

There's incremental CPU difficulty?  I was not aware of this.

There's adjustable difficulty in RBI 3, but I don't know specifically what it changes, other than that I've always assumed it speeds up the defense's reactions a bit.

[Turd]

I'll post the conversions for the original ROM in  just a minute.  I haven't done a lot of checking, so we'll see how good it lines up...in FS, power is represented in one byte instead of two, so we only get 0-255 for power, where in RBI, it's 0 - 65535

Also, in FS, go into season mode and you can set the difficulty on the CPU...I need to find out what that does...

[The Greeter]

I'm assuming the non-Power items (Contact, Speed, etc) remains the same across FS/RBI platforms.  For example, if an RBI player has a Contact rating of 20, that is a 20 on FS.  Eyeballing it, everything but Power looks to be of a similar general value across platforms.  If we have to convert each one, let's discuss conversion rates.

Is there a way to edit the stadiums to change the signage on the outfield to feet vs meters?  I remember a post quite some time ago with someone that had done some work editing FS stadiums, so I'm guessing this is possible....

[Turd]

It's pretty close...though it's not perfect...

It's a conversion of the scale from about 750-954 (difference of 204) to 217-245 (difference of 28).  We lose some precision, and some of those 718 power guys in the original just won't be represented as nicely unless I adjust the scale to account for them.  Doing so would make a range of 28 even harder to fit in, so we'd have to expand that as well, which we definitely could do.

I've attached my sheet...play with the numbers, see what you can come up with...

[Turd]

You just want to edit the graphics to change? I think the game engine actually shows it in feet, so I assume you're just meaning graphics...if so, that should be easy...

[BeefMaster]

I'll post the conversions for the original ROM in  just a minute.  I haven't done a lot of checking, so we'll see how good it lines up...in FS, power is represented in one byte instead of two, so we only get 0-255 for power, where in RBI, it's 0 - 65535

Okay... so 0 RBI = 0 FS (although it doesn't sound like 65535 RBI = 255 FS).  That certainly does decrease the level of precision.

I'd assume that contact values are generall smaller in FS, given the increased value of each power point.

[Turd]

Correct, I used 954 as 255 FS because 954 was RBI's highest power rating...

FS is 217 - 245
RBI is like 718 - 954

You can see in that spreadsheet you can adjust the min/max for each and see what the numbers look like for the original RBI players. We just need to find a range that works nice and play test it...217 - 245 is only 28 difference between the worst and best batter, so maybe there's more at play here...

[Turd]

I gave greeter the formula to convert MPH to FS values, so that should be easy to convert...hope he posts his progress on this...when we get to a point where the ROM is playable, we can work out re-drawing the logos, because that part is a bitch...

[The Greeter]

OK, I've done some preliminary RBI conversion to Family Stadium.  I'm working on converting the original RBI baseball (classic) to FS so we can finally have some new stadiums to play in.  If I knew how to post a file, i would put it up here.  I forwarded it to Turd; maybe he'll be kind enough to share it here.  Don't shoot the messenger; Family Stadium is new to me, and I'm just figuring out where everything is stored.  But it's got potential.

I've dumped the original RBI rom data into FS format.  FS has more basic teams than the RBI, so i had to add some others.  For lack of anything better, i used data from an "88 89 Different Team" rom that I had.

I don't know yet how to change team names or edit the logos.  So data for some teams like the Detroit Tigers (from the original)  are currently under "San Diego Padres", etc.  Teams I've loaded (and their current names) are shown below.

Things still to do:

1.  Playtest POWER ratings.  Iv'e done some converstion from RBI to FS, so we will have to see if these hold up.
2.  Playtest Pitching speed.  Still way too fast, i think.  Not sure what the conversion should be yet.
3.  Changes team names/logos to match.  There are 4 teams that have the wrong names/logos.
4.  Figure out how to edit the stadium.  Not sure where the individual stadiums are loaded (hex address), or what format it is stored in (JPG, BMP, TIF, custom, etc).

I am travelling this week for work, so a lot of this has been done in a HEX editor and I haven't tested this ROM much yet.  If it doesn't work, I'll fix it, but wanted to take a shot at getting this out today.


Yankees
Angels
Red Sox
A's
Twins
Pirates (change name/logo: was Rangers)
Orioles (change name/logo: was Braves)
Cardinals
Dodgers
Astros
Giants
Cubs
Mets (change name/logo: was White Sox)
Tigers (change name/logo: was Padres)
AL All-Stars
NL All-Stars

[Turd]

We def. still have some work to do...will keep everyone posted...

[MRRBI]

Awesome stuff guys. Thanks for keeping us in the loop.