New Contact with RBI developers

[Beastmode]

So recently a guy I know on the tecmo bowl discord server decided to try and get in touch with RBI's developers, Peter Lipson and Yoshihiro Kishimoto. I know you guys have had contact with lipson in the past, and he didn't have anything crazy to say. However Kishimoto (who is "Kissie" in the secret credits. He actually goes by Kissy, and currently runs an omelette review website  ) Anyways, he left this response to our questions. Somebody get nightwulf!

How does the batter's contact status affect power? Is there a specific calculation for how contact impacts a batter's swing?

⇒ The program for "RBI" is the same as the one used in "Famista," which was released in Japan.

Player data:

Batting average, home run count (just these two).

The moment when the bat and ball make contact, the position of the bat and its direction, all controlled by the player.
The ball speed = fixed initial speed + coefficient * home run count - coefficient * (.350 - batting average).

The horizontal direction of the hit ball is calculated from the relationship between the position of the ball and the bat and the direction of the bat, with a random number factor added.

The vertical direction = a random number + (a constant for upward direction if the player uses an uppercut swing, a constant for downward direction if they use a downward swing).

How does contact work in conjunction with power? For example, how does a contact of 10 affect a power of 800, and how does a contact of 20 affect the same power of 800? Does the contact status multiply, divide, subtract, or fractionally influence the power?

⇒ As mentioned above, power is subtracted. I don't understand the meaning of "contact."

How does the game's RNG affect fly balls, ground balls, and their distances?

⇒ As mentioned above. I don't understand the meaning of "RNG."

Does hitting the ball with a specific part of the bat affect the trajectory and distance?

⇒ Yes, it does affect them.

Does the batter's position in the batter's box influence the power of a hit?

⇒ No, it doesn't. It's just about where the bat and ball meet.

Does the movement of the batter using the d-pad within the batter's box affect the swing in any way?

⇒ If you press up, it's an uppercut swing; if you press down, it's a downward swing. As mentioned above.

Does pressing multiple buttons or moving around with the d-pad cause errors, and are there factors that influence the game's RNG?

⇒ There are bugs that are left in the game on purpose because they are interesting.




Also attached is an interesting article on Lipson
https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/peter-lipson-rbi-baseball-the-silicon-valley-survivors/

[fightonusc]

What I'm hearing is that the EARLY THROW BOP IS REAL

[Gantry]

Interesting stuff!  Things like the batting mechanics have been mostly figured out, there could be differences between famista and RBI or he's using different terms. 

In the US version the batting average and home run count aren't used, it's all based on the "under the hood" power and contact ratings for each player.  IIRC the contact is multiplied with something based on your position of the bat - further you are from the "sweet spot" the bigger the penalty. 

The uppercut/downward swing stuff is interesting, don't know if anything was researched in that regard. 

[fknmclane]

That's what caught my eye as well.

[ultimate7]

hmmm, I never recall pressing up, but I believe I would press down when trying swinging bunts

[BeefMaster]

The uppercut/downward swing stuff is interesting, don't know if anything was researched in that regard. 

I am pretty sure this has been discussed before but my recollection was the opposite - hold down for a fly ball and up for a grounder.

[BeefMaster]

In the US version the batting average and home run count aren't used, it's all based on the "under the hood" power and contact ratings for each player.  IIRC the contact is multiplied with something based on your position of the bat - further you are from the "sweet spot" the bigger the penalty. 

Yeah, I wonder if the use of separate contact and power ratings is a difference from the original he didn't know about.

[Gantry]

The uppercut/downward swing stuff is interesting, don't know if anything was researched in that regard. 

I am pretty sure this has been discussed before but my recollection was the opposite - hold down for a fly ball and up for a grounder.

That's what my experience would say too, as "the retreat" was our unscientific method to get fly balls. 

[Mr. Mark]

Hi, what an amazing guy to reach out to him. Hopefully he becomes a saint of the community

With that said, when speaking to kissy it does seem like HR count and batting avg are what creates the contact number. I am going to be discussing more with him and try to get through a bit more of the language barrier. It has been exciting to talk to him for me and I plan on clarifying some more things.

If anyone has anything they want me to ask him I will gladly put it in my message when I reach out to him again

[Gantry]

Whoa, got an email about a new member and it wasn't a spam account.  I was starting to think the "verify your email" signup messages weren't getting out.  Thanks Mr. Mark for signing up and doing this! 

when speaking to kissy it does seem like HR count and batting avg are what creates the contact number

Ah ok, that could very well be.  Quickly going through the lineups on the team page and looking at contact ratings next to each player, it does seem very related to batting average.  I might have misunderstood that first part as how they calculated things in the game.  If contact/power are created using a formula, I'm fairly certain that was all done before programming the game.  Then they took the results of said static power/contact ratings are stored in the game code on a player by player basic.  The average/HR rating in the same itself from what I remember were only used for display purposes. 

Man, I've forgotten most of the technical stuff we figured out by this point, I think there's a "thread of threads" that links to the tech stuff. 

[Mr. Mark]

I am likely mistaken, I have no experience reading code. Seems others believe RBI uses a different method involved, but for Kissy that is how he remembers it. The only thing I could imagine is in the US they made a new formula to better match the player. Armas has terrible contact, but mehh batting avg and 40ish HRs. I wonder if this could be tested in a rom editor and any results could be seen.

Basically I ran all this through beast mode cause my reading comprehension isn't all that great.

Like I said,  if theres any direct questions anyone else wants to share I'll be messaging him in the next couple days.

[Gantry]

It's all interesting stuff!  I think for the US version things were different, it's been nearly two decades since I looked at any of the RBI code so all my specifics are long forgotten.  I just remember the big picture stuff at this point...

If there was a consistent formula for contact and/or power numbers, I think we'd see it when comparing players with the same statistic.  So I looked at the team pages and saw that lots of guys had 20 homers exactly.  Here's the breakdown sorted by average:

Code Select Expand

------------------------
Name       AVG HR Pow Ct
------------------------
Raines    .330 20 843 11
Rice      .324 20 891 10
Kruk      .313 20 777 14
Bass      .311 20 780 14
Baines    .293 20 792 18
Maldonado .292 20 876 15
Lemon     .277 20 882 21
Burks     .272 20 888 28
Downing   .267 20 867 20
Contact is *mostly* tied to Average but clearly isn't completely.  Power numbers are all over the place.  What I take away from this is that Power/Contact weren't based on any formula related to their average and/or homers.  Likely just a "best guess effort" by Peter Lipson, there's too many discrepancies for it to be a mathematical formula. 

On a side note, man John Kruk got really screwed.  That 777 power is over 100 points worse than a bunch of guys who hit the same # of dingers that season. 

[Baines]

The uppercut/downward swing stuff is interesting, don't know if anything was researched in that regard. 

I am pretty sure this has been discussed before but my recollection was the opposite - hold down for a fly ball and up for a grounder.

That's what my experience would say too, as "the retreat" was our unscientific method to get fly balls. 

That's been my experience too. I stood still in the batters box for 20+ years until playing RBI at Dee-Nee fests. I learned "the retreat" from watching you guys and immediately started hitting more dingers.

[BeefMaster]

The Retreat was also explicitly coded into the RBI 14 revival (documented in the game's tooltips and hilariously overpowered for hitting homers), presumably because of its existence in the original.

If there was a consistent formula for contact and/or power numbers, I think we'd see it when comparing players with the same statistic.. 

FWIW, there is something approaching this in RBI 2 & 3, presumably because they had hundreds of players to rate. I never figured out the actual formulas but there are lot of pretty strong patterns with fewer exceptional ratings - the main one I can think of is '89 Canseco, who has a high power rating despite few homers because he missed a lot of the year injured.

[Big Hath]

Man, I've forgotten most of the technical stuff we figured out by this point, I think there's a "thread of threads" that links to the tech stuff. 

how's this for a late reply!?

I THINK you are talking about this one. I just bumped it as well

https://forums.dee-nee.com/index.php?topic=11729.0