Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

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minotauri
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Wed Feb 24, 2016 6:37 pm

Sorry, I havent been working on NCAA much lately (been playing my dynasty on psp while on travel) and going on vacation in a couple days but I did want to post something that may be of interest to you that I posted a couple weeks ago on OS.

http://www.antdroid.net/2016/02/ncaa-ps ... t-for.html

This was a trial I did that updates the Coaching staffs, coaching strategies and playbooks to NCAA dynasties. It's not exactly the easiest thing to import, but it's possible. I'll take a look at trying to make this a default file in the future.
I also go by Antdroid on other forums and places.

https://www.ncaanext.com - NCAA 06 NEXT Mod
https://discord.ncaanext.com - NCAA & Madden NEXT PS2 Discord

Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

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h4wduk3n
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby h4wduk3n » Tue Mar 01, 2016 12:27 pm

One update from me is that I tried minotauri's uniform swap but going from 07 PSP to 10 PSP (I wanted Oregon's 07 PSP unis, just asthetically like 'em better). Sure enough, using the older uis_helmets prevents dynasty from working but if i copied just the uniforms folder everything worked like a charm. So now I have updated rosters, with my preferred UNI set (altho not yet updated, which is the real DREAM :) ), running on PPSSPP on my phone :D. Amazing!

Regarding uni editing further, it seems that if there are .viv file editors maybe there is some hope to edit psp unis? Maybe it'll teach us something we can apply to ps2? I seem to remember that ncaa on psp uses viv for uniforms?

Btw, I'm pretty sure the uis_helmets dat on psp is for the helmets in dynasty mode magazines, which would explain it causing dynasty to not even start (let alone get in-game).

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minotauri
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Thu Mar 03, 2016 11:02 pm

I was digging through both PSP and PS2 files just now via hex editor and realized that there's a STRMDATA.DB file on both discs that is interesting. It opens in DB Editor or TDBView and has a lot of different sub databases within it including a couple dedicated to Uniforms. It looks like one is a Uniforms ID and another is another Uniforms ID that links it to teams. I dont know how this would help right now though.
I also go by Antdroid on other forums and places.

https://www.ncaanext.com - NCAA 06 NEXT Mod
https://discord.ncaanext.com - NCAA & Madden NEXT PS2 Discord

Harry97
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby Harry97 » Fri Mar 04, 2016 4:41 am

minotauri wrote:I was digging through both PSP and PS2 files just now via hex editor and realized that there's a STRMDATA.DB file on both discs that is interesting. It opens in DB Editor or TDBView and has a lot of different sub databases within it including a couple dedicated to Uniforms. It looks like one is a Uniforms ID and another is another Uniforms ID that links it to teams. I dont know how this would help right now though.

STRMDATA.DB is very interesting, that's what I edited when I tried to put a classic team's uniform on a regular team. (without any .DAT editing) After making only one small change in STRMDATA.DB, it crashed when trying to enter a new dynasty on that STRMDATA.DB. (Maybe it won't crash if you add a new entry or something, I just changed the number directly) Despite it crashing when trying to start a new dynasty, as I explained there is no such crash when trying to load a previously saved dynasty. This tells us a lot about what the game lets us do and what it doesn't, and that the crash when trying to enter a new dynasty isn't a big problem because you can always start a new dynasty on the original STRMDATA.DB, then go to an edited one and load that dynasty. (loading a saved dynasty doesn't appear to overwrite any of the changes made to STRMDATA.DB)

If many of the fields in STRMDATA.DB are the same on PS2 & PSP, well if PSP is easier for you to test right now, then we could work on discovering what everything does in STRMDATA.DB. I don't know if the crashes after editing are the same on NCAA on the PSP, you would have to test that, but what I would like to know is how similar the other files are on PSP vs PS2. The .DB files like STRMDATA.DB may be similar, but I bet many of the other files are very different and the file sizes are lower on PSP.

If you find anything useful in STRMDATA.DB lets talk about it. I'm not sure what we can accomplish in that file related to Uniforms besides choosing which uniform id#s are assigned to which team. (most teams having 4 uniform id#s, one assigned to each uniform : home, away, alt1, alt2) Editing these tables may be useful if we try to import a decompressed uniform into the .DAT, but we just don't know enough about how that would work to really attempt something like that.

--

On a related note, thank you minotauri for your tutorial about converting a PS3 roster to PS2. With you tutorial, I managed to take an NCAA PS3 roster and converted it to a PS2 roster. There were all sorts of issues though.... player ratings issues, player appearance glitches, etc but converting the names did work as you described, simply taking the names from the PS3 roster and converting each letter of the name to a number as was the format of the PS2 games. It is noteworthy that the earliest PS2 games (NCAA 2002, NCAA 2003, and NCAA 2004) actually have the same player names format as the PS3 NCAAs. (With one field denoting the whole first name and one field denoting the whole last name) Apparently starting with NCAA 2005 EA changed their roster format to not have one field be first name and last name anymore but instead each letter of the name having its own number / field.

I took a PS2 roster, and like you outlined, imported some fields from the PS3 roster, like the converted player names, and some of the attributes which are the same on PS3 & PS2, into the PS2 roster overwriting what was there before. After the conversions, when I loaded this newly converted roster in NCAA 06, the names showed up, but the player ratings and appearances are all messed up coming from PS3, meaning, some players ratings automatically get re-adjusted by NCAA 06 when you select a player in the roster editor. (Like it'll say a player is an 87 overall inside NCAA 06 PS2 with the newly converted PS3 roster, then you select the player and try to edit him, and exit out and he'll become a 94 or something.) So it's as if NCAA 06 PS2 takes those PS3 player ratings and adjusts / balances them to be on a more NCAA 06 PS2 friendly scale or something. It's very cool nonetheless, now that we know we can get the player names from 2011-current into NCAA 06 PS2. Basically the way to fix these player appearance issues coming from a PS3-converted roster is to simply use NCAA 06 PS2 (the roster editor in the game) to edit the roster player by player. When you change a player's appearance in NCAA 06, it will fix the player appearance glitches that come when you convert a PS3 roster and you can customize it from there so each player appears correctly in NCAA 06. You just have to go through pretty much every player and change their appearance / skin tone / muscles / body size / etc. It's a lot of work even after converting it but in the process I've learned a lot more about roster editing in general and I will be working on this roster as it will be fun to have any of the 2011-2015 seasons in NCAA 06 PS2 if we can get the ratings and player appearances sorted out.. Getting the names in there though really does make it a lot easier to go through each player, especially if you focus on two teams at a time. So thank you for your work on rosters.

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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Fri Mar 04, 2016 8:19 am

Harry97 wrote:STRMDATA.DB is very interesting, that's what I edited when I tried to put a classic team's uniform on a regular team. (without any .DAT editing) After making only one small change in STRMDATA.DB, it crashed when trying to enter a new dynasty on that STRMDATA.DB. (Maybe it won't crash if you add a new entry or something, I just changed the number directly) Despite it crashing when trying to start a new dynasty, as I explained there is no such crash when trying to load a previously saved dynasty. This tells us a lot about what the game lets us do and what it doesn't, and that the crash when trying to enter a new dynasty isn't a big problem because you can always start a new dynasty on the original STRMDATA.DB, then go to an edited one and load that dynasty. (loading a saved dynasty doesn't appear to overwrite any of the changes made to STRMDATA.DB

--

I took a PS2 roster, and like you outlined, imported some fields from the PS3 roster, like the converted player names, and some of the attributes which are the same on PS3 & PS2, into the PS2 roster overwriting what was there before. After the conversions, when I loaded this newly converted roster in NCAA 06, the names showed up, but the player ratings and appearances are all messed up coming from PS3, meaning, some players ratings automatically get re-adjusted by NCAA 06 when you select a player in the roster editor. (Like it'll say a player is an 87 overall inside NCAA 06 PS2 with the newly converted PS3 roster, then you select the player and try to edit him, and exit out and he'll become a 94 or something.) So it's as if NCAA 06 PS2 takes those PS3 player ratings and adjusts / balances them to be on a more NCAA 06 PS2 friendly scale or something. It's very cool nonetheless, now that we know we can get the player names from 2011-current into NCAA 06 PS2. Basically the way to fix these player appearance issues coming from a PS3-converted roster is to simply use NCAA 06 PS2 (the roster editor in the game) to edit the roster player by player. When you change a player's appearance in NCAA 06, it will fix the player appearance glitches that come when you convert a PS3 roster and you can customize it from there so each player appears correctly in NCAA 06. You just have to go through pretty much every player and change their appearance / skin tone / muscles / body size / etc. It's a lot of work even after converting it but in the process I've learned a lot more about roster editing in general and I will be working on this roster as it will be fun to have any of the 2011-2015 seasons in NCAA 06 PS2 if we can get the ratings and player appearances sorted out.. Getting the names in there though really does make it a lot easier to go through each player, especially if you focus on two teams at a time. So thank you for your work on rosters.


Hi!

Thanks for your previous findings on strmdata.db. There's a lot of stuff in that file but I'm not totally sure what it all pertains to. There looks to be a lot of random text fields for certain situations and other really random stuff. My current mission is to look through a lot of the files and see what I can uncover. I'd really like to re-do the default conferences and teams if possible and change logos and uniforms too.

As far as the roster porting, a few things:
1. I released version 0.20 of the porting tool. I dont know if you were using an older version or just my last set of rosters but this does fix a few issues and simplifies the process a little bit: http://www.antdroid.net/2016/02/ncaa-ps ... -v020.html

2. The tool generalizes practically everything related to appearances and accessories. This is because of the limitations in the PS2 game versus the PS3 one. I could improve it someday if we are able to extract, view, and compare every single accessory and face in both games and create a detailed conversion table for all of that but that's not something I am looking at right now. I made a faces lookup table to convert Madden PC to Madden PSP for my tool there but didn't do one for NCAA because I don't have that level of detail determined.

3. Player ratings - I haven't tried looking at what happens if you edit a player on PS2, however if it's the overall rating that drops or increases, I imagine that is because there is a field for Player Overall that is in the roster file but its calculated differently for PS3 than it would be for PS2/PSP so if that changes, I wouldn't be surprised. I'd be a bit more surprised if the other ratings did though.
I also go by Antdroid on other forums and places.

https://www.ncaanext.com - NCAA 06 NEXT Mod
https://discord.ncaanext.com - NCAA & Madden NEXT PS2 Discord

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minotauri
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Sun Mar 06, 2016 1:13 am

does this help us at all?
http://forum.xentax.com/blog/?p=155

It's a BIG file extractor and SSH graphics converter. But I think it may only apply to the EA Sports Canada games.
I also go by Antdroid on other forums and places.

https://www.ncaanext.com - NCAA 06 NEXT Mod
https://discord.ncaanext.com - NCAA & Madden NEXT PS2 Discord

Harry97
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby Harry97 » Sun Mar 06, 2016 4:02 am

minotauri wrote:does this help us at all?

It's a BIG file extractor and SSH graphics converter. But I think it may only apply to the EA Sports Canada games.

I don't think so because we aren't dealing with BIG or SSH files. That program is useful for like Fifa on PS2 or other PS2 EA games that have SSH files and BIG files.

.ssh is basically the PS2 version of a .fsh, which are commonly seen on older EA PC games like Fifa PC or NBA Live PC. Where Fifa PS2 has .big and .ssh, NCAA PS2 has .DATs instead.

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minotauri
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Mon Mar 07, 2016 5:17 pm

I picked up a PS2 Slim over the break to replace my now broken PS2 Fat. It has ethernet so I can now actually work on modding this game over samba!

I made some fun discoveries on how to open some graphics files for PSP but it doesn't translate over to PS2 unfortunately, but I am happy to try to work on mods for this now! And I'm seeing how we can mod College Hoops 2K8 in the OS forum as well. There's a lot of fun retro modding going on. :)

I looked into the DEFAULT databases. It looks like its buried in Leagues.DAT file. You can extract all the files out and they are "DB" files but they won't open in the usual database apps I've used for Madden. The is the same issue, actually, with Madden on consoles too. The file structure looks really similar though, so I'm not sure why it won't read, unless it's just a header issue.

If I knew more about how to program an editor or reader I'd probably dive deeper.

On Uniforms, so correct me if I'm wrong, the only way we're able to extract/decompress uniforms now is by loading them up in Madden 08 PC using Texmod or MUER? If that's the case, I may look into ways of modding the existing uniforms from newer games into older ones and seeing if/how we can manipulate the uniform.dat file without crashing, since I don't have Madden 08 PC and I can't find the OSX version anywhere.
I also go by Antdroid on other forums and places.

https://www.ncaanext.com - NCAA 06 NEXT Mod
https://discord.ncaanext.com - NCAA & Madden NEXT PS2 Discord

Harry97
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby Harry97 » Mon Mar 07, 2016 8:41 pm

minotauri wrote:I looked into the DEFAULT databases. It looks like its buried in Leagues.DAT file. You can extract all the files out and they are "DB" files but they won't open in the usual database apps I've used for Madden. The is the same issue, actually, with Madden on consoles too. The file structure looks really similar though, so I'm not sure why it won't read, unless it's just a header issue.

If I knew more about how to program an editor or reader I'd probably dive deeper.

I took a look at LEAGUE.DAT from NCAA 06. It's full of compressed DB files. You say these are the default databases of the game? There are over 400 files in this .DAT. It may be worth trying to decompress these DB files so we are able to view the uncompressed DB like the other DBs we've found. We could treat these files like a compressed uniform and try to decompress them with the MUER / Madden 08 PC uniform extracting method to see if that works so those decompressed DBs can be viewed in the Madden DB editor. Still due to the compression of the files in the .DAT, even if we are able to decompress and edit those DB files, similar to what we are experiencing with the compressed uniforms in UNIFORM.DAT, it may be hard to import those edited DBs back into the LEAGUE.DAT successfully.

On Uniforms, so correct me if I'm wrong, the only way we're able to extract/decompress uniforms now is by loading them up in Madden 08 PC using Texmod or MUER? If that's the case, I may look into ways of modding the existing uniforms from newer games into older ones and seeing if/how we can manipulate the uniform.dat file without crashing, since I don't have Madden 08 PC and I can't find the OSX version anywhere.

Yup, and that MUER method may be the only way we know to decompress any compressed files that are in the .DATs. The one thing that we can do now is what h4wduk3n confirmed.. being able to pad stock compressed uniforms from the UNIFORM.DATs of later NCAA PS2 games to become equal in file size to the file it is replacing in NCAA 06's UNIFORM.DAT and getting those NCAA 07-11 PS2 uniforms successfully into NCAA 06.

As of now, we have no tools to edit the decompressed NCAA PS2 uniform files because for a number of reasons they are incompatible with the Madden PC uniform editors like MUER or DEX. From what I've learned, it has to do with the characteristics of the PS2 graphics files (mipmaps) as opposed to the PC graphics of Madden 08. Even if we could edit them, still we would need a way to, like you said, manipulate the UNIFORM.DAT so the game doesn't crash when you try to put decompressed files in there. As you can see from LEAGUE.DAT, UNIFORM.DAT and STADIUMS.DAT, some of the DATs have compressed files which make any sort of editing much more difficult. For example, GAMEDATA.DAT has uncompressed .DB files (the playbooks) and editing those is a quick and simple process. Obviously EA made the graphics edits much harder to work with by compressing them. Yet thanks to MUER's uniform ripping method, at least we can attempt to decompress files that way and see if we can learn anything from them. If we were to figure out how to manipulate any of these .DATs to accept larger file sizes, and have the game accept those files without crashing, then there's a good chance that fix will work on any of the .DATs that have compressed files. It's probably going to involve a lot of hex editing of the overall .DAT to make room for the bigger decompressed files or something. I thought the Madden PC community may have some ideas on what we can try to get NCAA 06 to accept larger file sizes in UNIFORM.DAT, but there doesn't appear to be an easy answer.

I am interested to see what is in those DBs in LEAGUE.DAT though, when I get some time I may try to use the MUER uniform ripper method to see if that works on those compressed DBs as well to see if we can at least see what those DB files in LEAGUE.DAT are.

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StingRay68
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby StingRay68 » Tue Mar 08, 2016 3:38 pm

Harry check your PM.
The pc tools not working has nothing to do with mipmaps, the problem is the padding involved in the ps2 ncaa mmap itself that is different from the pc version. Ours is based off of a 32byte read, and the ps2 ncaa looks like it is 16. The xbox madden is different with that too, 128.

What changes are you making to a uniform (making it larger) when you say it crashes the game? Are you just using a default larger decompressed file?


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