30 Team Rom Editor - Official Thread

[Darky]

Agreed on overlooking the shit...Sounds pretty cool with this 30 team rom editor. All kinds of possibilities. I don't know what happened with you and Nightwulf there, but I suspect he meant that maybe he was disappointed that he did not think of this 30 team rom...nothing about encroaching imo...no need to respond to that btw...

[nightwulf]

The only other thing is team initials.  Not all of the lower-case characters are supported out of the box.  I had a lengthy discussion with Mr. Stout today and he explained everything...it shouldn't be a problem for most people, but team initials like "Pq" aren't available because the lower-case q isn't available on the rom, and because it's a VRAM style ROM, tile graphics couldn't be added.  It'd have to be drawn onto one of the reserve locations of needed.  It's sort of frightening to think about, and I've probably already lost most of you (including myself a bit), but for me, having what we have is enough for me to overlook that kind of shit...

The original game allocated 20 tiles for team icons (2 per team). There simply isn't room in the PPU for an additional 40 tiles (you're limited to 255, and this same set of icons is used on other screens as well).

However, that page does include all uppercase letters and numbers, so those are always available. Just glancing at it I'm fairly sure you can squeeze in a few more tiles, but not 40.

Agreed on overlooking the shit...Sounds pretty cool with this 30 team rom editor. All kinds of possibilities. I don't know what happened with you and Nightwulf there, but I suspect he meant that maybe he was disappointed that he did not think of this 30 team rom...nothing about encroaching imo...no need to respond to that btw...

Don't speak for me.

I brought up the concept of a 30-team ROM at the '06 fest but never had the motivation to do it. I'm glad someone finally did. What pissed me off is that Mr. Turd here decided to hoard all the new ROM information and make his own web-based editor, which is pretty much the polar opposite of how he was treated when he needed information and/or assistance.

[nightwulf]

Actually, taking a second look at it, I was only looking at the team select screen. There are four distinct pages of tiles where the team icons need to be present. Adding almost anything would become an impossibility when you start fucking with the pages used to draw the field, for instance.

[Turd]

I had a response, and deleted it, now I feel I need to post again.

Man, in no way shape or form did I hoard it! I offered it up up, and mentioned in the original post that I'd share it with whomever wanted it.  Noone responded to that.  Soon as you asked, I gave posted it.

As for the editor being web based or not, why does that matter? I was originally gonna just rewrite my C# one, but noone seemed to like it, and they preferred yours.  So, I set out to make one like yours, and that ended up being web-based.  Are you mad because you didn't get to write the editor? No matter if you did write one or not, I was always gonna because I wanted code that I controlled in case yours went away or whatever.  So, you can still write an editor if you want...in fact, I was worried about bandwidth on my server anyways...

I have been super polite on the forums, over email, I've offered you all the information I got from my hacking pal, I've offered to collaborate, I've apologized for something at this point I'm not sure I did anything wrong, although I'm sorry that you perceived it as me stepping on your toes or hoarding. I am not quite sure how I can handle this any more respectfully.  I have never been one to hoard, and have been trying to give to the community since day one.  Again, my intent was never to oust you from your master hacking title. I'm not good enough to do that. I'm just a programmer who got excited about an exciting project and acted on it, without malicious intent.  I'm not sure what else I can do at this point, so I'm just gonna continue writing the editor and hope that you are cool with me again someday.

As for what you said about the tiles, you're right, there are more than could probably be squeezed in, but not a lot more.  For those screens, I might just capitalize the letters and be done with it.  

[Turd]

Actually, if we wanted to squeeze a few more in, we could get rid of numbers, that would give us 10 more tiles.

[Turd]

Last thing I'll say on the matter...

I know, I should just let it go, but I don't want my reputation ruined! I'm a kind soul Just to prove to you that I wasn't hoarding, please refer to the original post where I said:

"As soon as we deem it playable, he's gonna hook me up with the locations for everything and I'll write an updated editor for this (and provide those locations to Nightwulf, in the event he wants to create an online editor for it)."

Link to the post:
http://forums.dee-nee.com/index.php?topic=23222.0

You'll notice the edit date was 7/16, so you know I didn't just edit it now...I'm not here to make enemies. The more we work together, the better this shit can be...

[nightwulf]

2-player pause is enabled, which is good. I'm not seeing Gantry's "same teams" hack, which is bad.

Probably not difficult to figure out again, but if your guy could probably do it in 30 seconds ...

[Turd]

Oh, did he leave that one out? I thought he added that one in...I'll see how hard it'd be for him to add it (I'm thinking not hard at all).  I'll email him and get back to ya...

[nightwulf]

Originally controller input worked as such on the select screen: "ok, the user moved the team selector, OH WAIT someone already picked the team I'm supposed to move to so I'll skip it."

Gantry's hack got rid of the OH WAIT section (for your 6502-savvy friend, he NOP'ed it out).

This is a somewhat inelegant solution as the two selectors can disappear on each other. This is a non-issue. People want to play the same teams; having a "pretty" select screen is a low priority.

[Turd]

Agreed, no reason not to have it in there...

[nightwulf]

Will need to do some digging to find a couple palette values, sound data, and runs for a complete game, but other than that everything (sans team icons) parses.

Of course, versatility wasn't a goal of coding the original ...

[Turd]

I'm actually trying to make mine pretty clean. I get burned out and code lazily, and I'm really trying not to this time.

One thing I did, which was sort of a bitch was to make a minor tweak to the uniform editor where
you click on the part you want to edit instead of using the radio buttons. It turned out kind of neat. I'm actually using greybox for some stuff too in hopes I can keep the UI clean.

I love coding, but I gotta retire from the nerdery for tonight. I gotta get up and do this for a living tomorrow! And it's nowhere near as fun as coding for RBI.

[Turd]

Nw, did you see the attract mode stuff? He xplained it to me this evening. I'm sure you could do so on your own, but I'd be happy go over it with you if you want. It's really the only other non-straightforward thing left for me to code.

[nightwulf]

Just watched a game with the PPU viewer up and there's pretty much no good way to get icons for each team on each page. The solution I'm using for now is to restrict icons to capital letters and put a generic "home" and "away" icon on the scoreboard during gameplay. Down the road the editor could allow the user to define a few icons to give a better selection, particularly on the team select screen (where half of the name table is unused due to the elimination of the stadium picture). But there'll be nothing but "home" and "away" on the gameplay scoreboard without some serious work.

Nw, did you see the attract mode stuff? He xplained it to me this evening. I'm sure you could do so on your own, but I'd be happy go over it with you if you want. It's really the only other non-straightforward thing left for me to code.

Changed back to fixed-length strings. The editor will take a text string and calculate space-padding for proper centering. There's plenty of room, and from an editing standpoint it makes more sense than re-writing a big chunk of 6502 with variable-length strings and updating 15 pointers with every build.

[Turd]

Honestly, I like the fixed length style better as well...the editor coding for that is a pain in the ass for a screen that rarely gets viewed anyways.

Why use a generic home/away for the scoreboard? Can't you just restrict that to a capital letter too?

Dare I ask for the info on what you reverted? If not, I understand.  I just would prefer that we not have two versions of the 30 Team ROM floating around, it'll just be confusing.  

Also, are you actually coding an editor right now? If so, let me know, and I'll stop being so dilligent about making mine user friendly and robust and just focus on something I can use...if you are, I still think we should chat, as I think you might possibly like some of the interface things I was using. Maybe not, but can't hurt.

[nightwulf]

Why use a generic home/away for the scoreboard? Can't you just restrict that to a capital letter too?

See attached. You still don't have all 26 letters available for the name table (left side). I suppose you could kick out things like 'Q' but I'd rather have all or none available. There are some apparent unused tiles (0x32, 0x34, 0x35, 0x3B, 0xDB, 0xDC) that could be utilized to offer a full alphabet, but that's not a priority right this second.

Dare I ask for the info on what you reverted? If not, I understand.  I just would prefer that we not have two versions of the 30 Team ROM floating around, it'll just be confusing.  

There's nothing "different" about the ROM. Simply gave all 60 strings the same length and updated the pointers.

Also, are you actually coding an editor right now? If so, let me know, and I'll stop being so dilligent about making mine user friendly and robust and just focus on something I can use...if you are, I still think we should chat, as I think you might possibly like some of the interface things I was using. Maybe not, but can't hurt.

Have been since I got back from Cinci and could actually catch up on everything. If your "interface things" involve using a bunch of extra libraries (greybox ...) for nothing but graphic effects and no functionality, I'm not interested. That's nothing against you personally ... I'm generally not interested in anything I can't do with vi and gimp.

[Turd]

Ok, fair enough, I'm officially relinquishing all this "official" editor stuff to you then.  I'm still gonna write mine for my own personal use, so I'll probably still be involved in this.  I'd also like to do it just for my own knowledge and education/entertainment.

Name tiles...I understand...I tried putting all caps in and it wasn't happy how it looked, everything was crammed together on the team select screen.  Do you have a way around that? Honestly, if that was fixed, I'd be completely happy with an "all caps" solution. That was my original solution, except I didn't like how it looked on the team selection screen.

Pointer info...that makes sense, and probably a good way to go.   So does it just skip the subroutine that he calls then? Any chance you could provide the rom you used and the fixed length/pointer stuff you used?

Interface...that's fine. I considered greybox a nice solution because it allows me to stay in one spot and pop up stuff in an overlay...but to each his own.  This is the main reason why I'd like to write my own editor for personal reasons...the only thing other thing I did that was slightly different than you did were the following two things:

1.) Import/Export using CSV (not terribly important, as a tab delimited can be easily converted, but still it's nice cause that's what I use to edit)
2.) The player uniform editor...instead of clicking radio buttons, my editor allows you to click the part you want to edit right on the guy and selects the part you're editing right there...

P.S. Stout is working on a tile solution that he's not even sure would work, but if it does, it'd make the game unplayable on a cart, but it would be playable on an emulator...just an FYI. 

[bonny]

Can't wait!

Would a "team import" feature in an editor be possible?

I have only played single games on the 30 team rom. Does "season mode" take you thru 29 opponents?

[Turd]

I think for this many teams there should be a team import where you can specify name, newspaper name, abbreviations, error value, and hex colors for uniforms...

Good question on the 29 team thing, i don't have the answer to that.

[bonny]

I think for this many teams there should be a team import where you can specify name, newspaper name, abbreviations, error value, and hex colors for uniforms...

Players too. Like a whole team file that the editor can plug into a rom(or whatever). Enabling the moving of teams from rom file to rom file. Kinda like MVPEdit did.