Stadium Conversions/Edits for NCAA 06 PS2

[Harry97]

Nice work. I'll have to try out the new version. Just as an FYI, your old Alabama stadium file with shadow fix throws errors in the debugger console screen in the emulator. It didnt seem to actually cause the game to crash, but it was constantly throwing errors.

Thanks. Yeah I'm looking for a better solution for the Day version of Alabama overhang shadows, I did include the file before I did the shadow fix, so you can hex compare those two and see the area that I changed to make the shadows go away, but resulted in errors. There's a way to delete the overhang shadows once it's loaded in-game through memory without it causing any errors, but I wanted to get them to disappear through the stadium file itself, so anyone hex comparing the files can find the area that needs to be edited.

Unlike the Night version of Alabama's stadium, which has its own crowd shadow problems, which I was able to solve by swapping the "Minor" files for the Night version of the stadium, the day version's overhang shadow problems cannot be solved by swapping the "Minor" files. Those overhang shadows in the day version are in the "Major" file so that fix I provided would need to be cleaned up to eliminate the errors. I would encourage your hex editors to hex compare those two files and see if you can come up with your own solution, if you guys are so inclined. I'm posting these files so you guys can work on stadium hex editing with me, and perhaps this could become like a community project with updating each other's stadium file edits and posting them.

Anyway, nice job. You sure you don't wanna join our discord channel? We have a community file sharing section to show off mods and let people download it. We have a much larger community than the 4-5 people that visit this site for NCAA. Almost 5000 members now.

I'm thinking about it. If there's enough interest from the Discord team of editing stadium files, like improving the stadium crowds, then that's what I'll have to do. But I would like to keep this topic going for a while so anyone can find this information, even if they're not on the Discord.

For example, I'll be doing a tutorial on how to edit the crowd colors in the stadium file, so we'll have a record of that here. I think at some point I'll jump on board to the Discord, but I'm hoping that this topic can be like an ice breaker, so when I join I can hit the ground running, with you guys already familiar with my edits to the stadium files.

I think you'd agree that the more densely packed crowds from the NCAA 07-11 stadiums once converted to work in NCAA 06 look way better than the normal NCAA 06 crowds. This is just the beginning of my work with stadium files, but you have a template now for the changes needed to correct the crowd problems of NCAA 07-11 stadiums in NCAA 06. Hopefully we can figure out an error-free solution to the overhang shadow problems in the Day version of Bama's stadium, by cleaning up the area I hex edited to get them to disappear. But the Night version posted above shouldn't cause any errors so you have that for now.

[Harry97]

One of the best things about the instant replay camera mod is that you can really zoom in up close onto the crowd. This makes it a lot easier to make changes to the stadium file and see changes to the crowd in real-time. Here are some up close screenshots of the NCAA 10 PS2 Alabama stadium crowd after I converted it to work in NCAA 06 :

AlabamaUpperDeckDay.jpg (158.2 KiB) Viewed 153 times

AlabamaUpperDeck2.jpg (179.95 KiB) Viewed 153 times

This is the crowd of the day version of the Alabama stadium that has the overhang shadow issues. It's of the upper deck on one of the sidelines. Even though the overhang shadows has some glitches to them in NCAA 06, some of the shadows look pretty good for a day game. So ideally I'd like to learn how to correct the overhang shadow glitches in this Day version of Alabama's stadium rather than just delete them completely.

In these screenshots you can see some inconsistencies between how the rows are crowd are placed. You can see some different spacing of the gaps between rows. From far away or from field level it is hard to really notice these small differences, but I am trying to learn how to adjust where the rows of fans are placed so that, perhaps, through hex editing we can add more rows to these sections to make the crowd even more densely packed. You see, in some stadiums, there are larger gaps between rows of fans than others, and this is something that I'm trying to learn how to edit.

Notice how in some of the sections, the first two rows of the upper deck are close together, and then between the 2nd and 3rd row there's a large gap between each row. I am trying to learn how to adjust where each row is located so we can make this spacing between rows uniform. In some stadiums it would look better if we were able to actually add additional rows to reduce these gaps between rows. It's just something that I'm looking into for now.

UD.jpg (199.3 KiB) Viewed 153 times

In this screenshot, there's two things I want to point out. First, as you can see, in this Alabama stadium, the exterior of the stadium that can be seen through the stadium from this angle is void of textures. So at certain angles, like this one, we can see how the area outside of the stadium is missing. I bet the NCAA NEXT guys know how to add a stadium exterior through texture replacement through PCSX2, but I would like to learn how to add stadium exterior areas to this Alabama stadium, through the stadium file. In my next post, I'll show you an example of a stadium that does have an exterior area, so you'll see what I mean.

What I also want to point out about this screenshot is that you'll notice that the home fans are standing up and cheering. If you go into a manual instant replay while the crowd is standing up and cheering, they'll be mid-animation as you explore the crowd through the instant replay camera. This will show you which rows of crowd are the home fans vs the away fans. The away fans do not stand up and cheer so you can easily locate which section of the crowd are the away fans.

As you'll see from this screenshot, in the upper deck section of fans, there's severals rows of fans that are not standing up and cheering. These are the away fans. In this Alabama stadium the away fans are scattered throughout the stadium in select rows. What I am able to do is to take any rows of away fans that do not stand up and cheer (even when the away team scores or makes a big play) that are assigned to specific rows an I can turn them into home fans that stand up and cheer.

So for example, I can take those two rows of away fans that are scattered in the endzone upper deck section and turn them into Alabama fans that stand up and cheer when Alabama scores. Now, in neutral sites, this is a big job because there's large sections of away fans that don't stand up and cheer that I need to convert. And in neutral sites, unlike in normal home team stadiums, the home fans stand up and cheer when either the home or the away team scores. So in neutral sites, the job is to turn the away sections of fans into home fans so they stand up and cheer when either team scores, but to also give those sections away team colors.

[Harry97]

Here is one of my best stadium conversions yet - UConn's home stadium from NCAA 10 PS2 for NCAA 06. What I like about this stadium is that it has a stadium exterior, with grass, trees and a track. I would like to learn how to use this stadium's exterior textures and add that to Alabama's stadium exterior since Alabama's stadium doesn't have any exterior textures. Here's some views of this stadium with the new instant replay camera mod showing views of the stadiums from unique angles. And remember all these screenshots are with no texture mods whatsoever.

In these screenshots I hacked the rain crowds to show up without it actually raining.

See the track and grassy areas outside of the stadium :

UConnBlimp.jpg (195.1 KiB) Viewed 145 times

Kickoff :

UConnsideline.jpg (201.52 KiB) Viewed 145 times

UConnNightRaincrowds.jpg (206.04 KiB) Viewed 145 times

I'll be sharing the stadium files for this wonderful conversion of UConn's stadium. Stay tuned.