Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

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minotauri
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Tue Feb 09, 2016 2:54 am

Here's NCAA 09 PS2 imported uniforms into NCAA 06 PS2. I took Uniforms.dat and replaced it, then made a new image using imgburn. It's a start anyway. It seems to load fine in the roster screen, but when i tried to load a game it crashes half way through load up. Granted, I am running a windows version of PCSX2 in Wine on OSX and its already really buggy to begin with, so I'm not sure if it's the modded game or the emulator causing issue.

I use Oregon because they change uniforms 100000x more often than any other team out there so it's easy to distinguish. :)

NCAA 06 Stock Oregon
Screen Shot 2016-02-08 at 11.29.21 PM.png
Screen Shot 2016-02-08 at 11.29.21 PM.png (270.73 KiB) Viewed 3561 times



NCAA 06 with Oregon dot things uniform
Screen Shot 2016-02-08 at 11.27.17 PM.png
Screen Shot 2016-02-08 at 11.27.17 PM.png (272.69 KiB) Viewed 3561 times
I also go by Antdroid on other forums and places.

https://www.ncaanext.com - NCAA 06 NEXT Mod
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

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Harry97
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby Harry97 » Tue Feb 09, 2016 3:37 am

minotauri wrote:Here's NCAA 09 PS2 imported uniforms into NCAA 06 PS2. I took Uniforms.dat and replaced it, then made a new image using imgburn. It's a start anyway. It seems to load fine in the roster screen, but when i tried to load a game it crashes half way through load up. Granted, I am running a windows version of PCSX2 in Wine on OSX and its already really buggy to begin with, so I'm not sure if it's the modded game or the emulator causing issue.

I use Oregon because they change uniforms 100000x more often than any other team out there so it's easy to distinguish. :)

I think it’s crashing not due to your emulator setup but due to NCAA 06 not accepting the entire UNIFORM.DAT from NCAA 09 causing a crash when you enter a match. There are differences in the .DAT files and NCAA 06 PS2 is very strict as far as what it accepts from other games. I experienced a similar issue when I tried to put NCAA 08 PS2’s entire STADIUMS.DAT into NCAA 06. Well I was able to preview stadiums but it crashed when trying to get into a match. FYI doing the same with STADATA.DAT didn’t even get me that far. (with NCAA 08’s STADATA.DAT in there it crashed when trying to even get into a stadium preview)

So likely you are experiencing the same issue with trying to put NCAA 09 PS2’s UNIFORM.DAT into NCAA 06 as I did with STADIUMS.DAT from NCAA 08 PS2. The game does startup, it gets into the main menu. It maybe even display the uniforms properly in Roster Editor like you are reporting, but when you try to enter a match it crashes. This is what happens when you try to put the entire .DAT from another game into NCAA 06. This process might work on NCAA PSP, but when trying to do the same thing on NCAA 06 PS2 it crashes.

At the very least, we do know how to get other uniforms from the later NCAA games into NCAA 06, one by one with DFR and h4wduk3n’s 00’s padding method, though I think you can only do this really on the “biggest” file size slots in UNIFORM.DAT of NCAA 06 and the “smallest” file sized uniforms in the later NCAA 07-11. Now that you’ve tested this minotauri, I think you can verify what we’re saying about it crashing when we try to do what you are suggesting in NCAA 06 PS2. Your success with rosters might make it seem like everything were that easy, but it’s not, if it was we’d probably have this figured out by now. Your discovery with rosters wasn’t something we even had taken a look at yet since we were so hard at work on uniforms. The deeper you get into the PS2 stuff I think you’ll understand why this has taken us so long.

minotauri wrote:Here's an example of what I was saying about being able to replace the Uniform and Helmet files from another game. In this case, I took NCAA 10 's Uniforms.viv and uis_helmets.dat and put it in NCAA 07.

I'll try if I can do something like this for NCAA 11->06 or something on PS2. I think I still have my NCAA 11 PS2 copy in my garage.

Does PSP have Uniforms.viv instead of UNIFORM.DAT? The PSP’s uniforms are of a lower quality than PS2 and possibly of a different format compared to PS2. I know from a DB perspective PSP is very similar to PS2 but from a graphical perspective they are very different and possibly use completely different files. Another possibility is that the graphical engine saw significant changes between NCAA 06 and NCAA 07 and possibly the graphics files in NCAA 07-11 are more compatible with each other than they are with the graphics files in NCAA 06. We like NCAA 06 on PS2, so we will have to test this thoroughly discovering the differences between PS2 and PSP and NCAA 06 vs NCAA 07-11 in terms of uniforms, helmets, stadiums etc.

I know that NCAA 06 for example does NOT have a UIS_HELMETS.DAT. There is UIS_GEAR.DAT, UIS_ALL.DAT and many other UIS_.DAT but not UIS_HELMETS.DAT. So where you might be able to change helmets and “the rest of the uniform” separately on PSP, in NCAA 06 PS2 I think the uniforms and helmets are combined all in one compressed file inside UNIFORM.DAT. What you can do on NCAA 07-10 PSP, could be like another world compared to NCAA 06 PS2. Still, it’s good to hear what you can do on NCAA PSP as there may be some crossover.

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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Tue Feb 09, 2016 10:38 am

Yes, I'm not trying to discredit anything you've all done in the past. Just trying to try out some different methods that may or may not work. I am really excited to see a devoted group here that is willing to resurrect an old game and peak my interest.

I like your idea of trying to extract out individual files and seeing if we can inject it into the old .dat file. Have either of you tried doing that idea with a single helmet extract yet? That would be a good test to try out if it's feasible. I may be able to try that out later tonight after work.

Another idea, maybe already discussed, is if there was a header file or something we can modify the offset location in?

One of the things I noticed in the psp version at least was that there were specific files that look like lookup tables as h4wkduck3n mentioned uniforms. I'll snoop around the PS2 disc and see if I can find anything similar though I imagine this will be buried in a dat file somewhere as that seemed like the predominant file format if I recall correctly.

Interestingly enough, PSP uses both *.viv files which are compressed file format to store graphics which were used by EA Canada in the NBA/NHL/NFS and FIFA series and *.dat for other files, including compressed graphics, which seems like something more unique to EA Tiburon. The PSP versions of NBA/NHL seem to only use *.viv files period, and Madden/NCAA games include a combination of both. As it was a portable game, I imagine it was probably split resourced or an entirely different company porting it over and using whatever was easiest at the time. Unfortunately they also decided to use a different image format than their PC format (using *.msh instead of *.fsh) and that's where graphics were the most challenging for PSP EA games as well as how to extract the ones in *.dat and put it back together.

The madden psp helmets were also attached to the uniform files as it seems like you mentioned in the PS2 version.

edit:
I went through the entire thread over again, some places twice to grasp what has occurred in this project and it does seem like some of the things I have thoughts on above have already been tested or mentioned in passing.

I'll try to see if the emulator will spit out a useful debug log when the game crashes. When I run in OSX-mode running wine. Wine crashes before I can see what's going on in the log, so I'll have to run it in XP but its awfully slow in XP since all my RAM is stolen from running dual-OS.
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

h4wduk3n
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby h4wduk3n » Tue Feb 09, 2016 2:30 pm

minotauri wrote:I'll try to see if the emulator will spit out a useful debug log when the game crashes. When I run in OSX-mode running wine. Wine crashes before I can see what's going on in the log, so I'll have to run it in XP but its awfully slow in XP since all my RAM is stolen from running dual-OS.

Have you tried bootcamp ?

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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Tue Feb 09, 2016 3:24 pm

Yes. I used to run bootcamp but I dont have the HDD space to have two fully loaded OS's, so I want to be able to use Office on OSX side and XP just for the windows tools exclusively. My macbook is 128GB SSD. Pretty crappy. I was trying for a long time to figure out how to bootcamp off of a flash drive but I couldnt ever get it working. I actually got it to boot up Win 8 once but it freezes during loading. Ive been holding out on buying a new laptop but I may eventually, though not sure if I want to go back to Windows or stay on OSX.

I'm still on the look out for a PS2 Slim for a decent deal, and then figure out how to softmod it to read our potential mods.
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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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Thu Feb 11, 2016 12:20 pm

I ran into an issue with *.dat files on NCAA PSP now too. The photo I showed previously in the PSP version used an imported helmet.dat file from NCAA 10 and an imported uniforms.viv file from NCAA 10. It seems that it loads up fine in exhibition play, but after a bunch of debugging, the helmet.dat file crashes dynasty mode, while the modified uniforms.viv works just fine.

Again, these two file formats look like they come from different EA studios and it looks like the *.viv file is more forgiving. This might be because the individual graphics files within the *.viv have individual offsets, while the *.dat file has a separate offset table (assumption) that controls where the graphics are.

Its still odd though that it works in the game and not while loading a dynasty where you wouldnt think helmet graphics would matter.

I havent gotten a chance to take a deep look at PS2 this week and probably won't for a little while. Way too busy at work this week and out on travel next week. I did pick up a used PS2 at Goodwill the other night for $7 and spent last night modding the fan. OMG - I cant believe how loud the PS2 was. Now that I have a working PS2 that's fairly silent and disc copies of NFL2k5/NCAA06, I may be able to help out a little more here. I have to figure out how to load FreeMcBoot and mods now but hopefully I'll have more time some time in the near 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

Harry97
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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby Harry97 » Thu Feb 11, 2016 1:39 pm

minotauri wrote:I ran into an issue with *.dat files on NCAA PSP now too. The photo I showed previously in the PSP version used an imported helmet.dat file from NCAA 10 and an imported uniforms.viv file from NCAA 10. It seems that it loads up fine in exhibition play, but after a bunch of debugging, the helmet.dat file crashes dynasty mode, while the modified uniforms.viv works just fine.

Any changes to the DAT files seem to cause a crash specifically when starting a New Dynasty. To get around this, try loading a saved dynasty rather than starting a new dynasty. There you should be able to observe the same mods you observed in Exhibition / Play Now when you do it that way. I ran into this issue when I tried putting a classic team's uniform on to a regular teams. (through editing a file in the .DAT) Well it worked fine in Exhibition but crashed when starting a new dynasty. But when I loaded a dynasty created from the original, the dynasty loaded fine and I observed the same changes made to the .DAT that were seen in Exhibition.

This goes back to what I was saying about trying to make changes globally as opposed editing a dynasty. I had the same inclination as you, to make the changes globally so that when we start a new dynasty everything would be set up to 2016 when you start a new dynasty, but as you can see, it crashes when you try to do anything like that and try to start a New Dynasty. This particular crash isn't as bad as it sounds though, as you can get around it by loading a dynasty instead of trying to start a new one. If you want to start a new dynasty, just make sure you are on the original and it won't crash. Then start the modded one and load it to test your mods in dynasty. This is an example of how strict the game is when it comes to using other .DATs or even making changes to the .DATs. But don't confuse this crash with the crashes that we got when trying to enter a match. Basically any change to a .DAT (even if successful) won't let you start a new dynasty, but that's not as big of an issue as the crashes that occur when trying to get into a match.

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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Mon Feb 15, 2016 11:24 am

Yes, editing globally is the way to go. I sort of got my PS2 set up now. My NCAA 06/NFL2K5 discs work. I havent been able to consistently get it working through usb yet though. It's very finicky so that would make it very hard for me to mod NCAA and test it without this worked out. Defragging seems to be the way to fix issues but that takes a long time for each build! Or I'll have to burn through a ton of dvds...

Anyway, I'll look more into this when I get back from my trip.
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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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby h4wduk3n » Thu Feb 18, 2016 12:48 am

minotauri wrote:Yes, editing globally is the way to go. I sort of got my PS2 set up now. My NCAA 06/NFL2K5 discs work. I havent been able to consistently get it working through usb yet though. It's very finicky so that would make it very hard for me to mod NCAA and test it without this worked out. Defragging seems to be the way to fix issues but that takes a long time for each build! Or I'll have to burn through a ton of dvds...

Anyway, I'll look more into this when I get back from my trip.

And I just returned from mine :)
I didn't get much time to play around but when I did I played your ported psp ncaa 10 rosters so thank you again and again for your work and that of those who made the original update, Minotauri.
I dig that we're using UO and UW as our reference/examples in our tests, true college football fans- albeit rivals. Is it u of washingtwelve? ;) jk jk..

But in all seriousness, I just wanted you guys to know I'm still here and just trying to find some small spaces between being a new dad and some additional responsibility at work. Whenenver I do get free time next, I'm going to see where you all are at and see if I can help test or eventually get to work on that roster conversion (From ncaa 14 360 to psp/ps2) tool from minotauri's spreadsheets.

I also am going to - just for me at least - pull in the 07 psp unis into 10 psp because yep i dont really like the diamond paneling truck look they went with and prefer the simpler unis of 07.

One question I had was to see if you, minotauri, had revisited where harry myself and others had gotten to on ps2 with being able to paste in a compressed uni from a different uniform.dat slot that was the same or greater size originally (pad with 0s). This allowed me to go in-game with modded unis on 06 ps2. Did you reproduce that?

That is what made me start to wonder if there is another db table in another dat with the sizes. The weird thing is that uniforms.dat on 06 anyway has a pretty similar file structure to that of madden pc... the header section has offsets that should be adjustable to compensate for different uniform sizes! For some reason though modifying those didn't work. Any thoughts here?

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Re: Uniform Updates for PS2 NCAA games

Postby minotauri » Fri Feb 19, 2016 11:17 am

Just got from mine as well.

I thought I broke my PS2 already but it seems like it was an issue with HDMI HDCP or something when converting from components, so I am using component cable to TV now. But I still have an issue where I can't load up a NCAA 06 ISO file. It's defragmented. When I try to defrag it using a variety of software and OS's it just crashes my computer. So I'm a little stuck. My Mac external disc drive can't read the original disc either so I can't even make a new copy right now. I think I may have to go out and find a network adapter for the PS2 so I can run games through the network or via hdd.

I'd like to figure that out before I go more into looking at NCAA on PS2 since my emulation is limited. Another idea is to see if any of the other graphics editors from other EA titles work. There's a lot of work that's gone into NBA Live, NHL and Need for Speed series in that era, though they were produced by EA Canada so it might be useful. If I have more time this weekend, I'll try out a dat replacement and see where I get in the emulator.

It works fine in the PSP series doing this using extracted viv files but i did not try dats (helmets) there.
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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