Modding wall.dat / Braves Field Info

[Sean O]

So, I've been messing around with the wall.dat file, since that's, at least to me, one of the most important modifiable elements of the game that has received pretty much no attention.

This is (the very, very minimal) information I've gathered from the wall.dat file, and I'd love for people to share whatever they've found out about the file here.

1). Open wall.dat in Word or another good word processor, which will give you 3 tidy columns of numbers. I'm more concerned with the height of the wall at this point, so I go to the 2nd column (it's x,y,z respectively).

2). Open up your mstadium.o file in oedit, and find a section of wall you want to edit. Go to the view menu and click vertex properties, then select a specific point in either the front or the side view. You should see a y-value for the point which hopefully corresponds with a number in the y-column of wall.dat. By moving these points together with editing the number in the wall.dat file, you should theoretically be able to completely edit the usable field space in every stadium.

I started with AAA stadium 1 since there's just one wall height (around 267.xxx, with ads at 247.xxxx), and so it was easy enough to edit. I'm thinking each of the numbers is in inches, since I'd say the walls look around 20' in that stadium, so that'd make sense.

I know this could prove useful for whoever is doing the McCoy stadium mod if we could manage to change the specific walls, and it would definitely help Rolie with Ebbets (or PaulW if he continues with his edits) and whoever is doing the Comerica wall mod. It can be done; last night I changed the stadium to have 100' tall walls and it was quite fun.

Sorry if this is all old-hat, but I'd love to create actually different stadia rather than just graphically changing what we have. I just wish I were better at oediting, or if I didn't have to use Oedit and could use vectorworks or CAD or something, but c'est la vie.

[mastasports1]

So, I've been messing around with the wall.dat file, since that's, at least to me, one of the most important modifiable elements of the game that has received pretty much no attention.

This is (the very, very minimal) information I've gathered from the wall.dat file, and I'd love for people to share whatever they've found out about the file here.

1). Open wall.dat in Word or another good word processor, which will give you 3 tidy columns of numbers. I'm more concerned with the height of the wall at this point, so I go to the 2nd column (it's x,y,z respectively).

2). Open up your mstadium.o file in oedit, and find a section of wall you want to edit. Go to the view menu and click vertex properties, then select a specific point in either the front or the side view. You should see a y-value for the point which hopefully corresponds with a number in the y-column of wall.dat. By moving these points together with editing the number in the wall.dat file, you should theoretically be able to completely edit the usable field space in every stadium.

I started with AAA stadium 1 since there's just one wall height (around 267.xxx, with ads at 247.xxxx), and so it was easy enough to edit. I'm thinking each of the numbers is in inches, since I'd say the walls look around 20' in that stadium, so that'd make sense.

I know this could prove useful for whoever is doing the McCoy stadium mod if we could manage to change the specific walls, and it would definitely help Rolie with Ebbets (or PaulW if he continues with his edits) and whoever is doing the Comerica wall mod. It can be done; last night I changed the stadium to have 100' tall walls and it was quite fun.

Sorry if this is all old-hat, but I'd love to create actually different stadia rather than just graphically changing what we have. I just wish I were better at oediting, or if I didn't have to use Oedit and could use vectorworks or CAD or something, but c'est la vie.

Interesting find.

I am doing the McCoy mod (Check out the thread) and this should help a lot! 8)

[Sean O]

Ok, just as a brief (and really ugly) glimpse at what can be done, here's a shot taken from my modded spring training stadium 2:

The walls all around have been raised to about 65', and yes the ball does accurately bounce off of it. The graphics are really screwed up both because of the stretching and around the ads, but the most important thing is that you can actually change the way the game sees the walls.

As a side note, it's ridiculously fun to play in, as in my first game Johnny Damon got an inside the park homer despite the ludicrously small outfield because the ball richoted about 95% up the wall, over the heads of two outfielders after it hit the ground. Really fun.

Now I'm going to see if I can't move the right field wall of spring training stadium 3 way way back so we can play in the cornfield. Wish me luck.

[basballfanatik9]

Ok, just as a brief (and really ugly) glimpse at what can be done, here's a shot taken from my modded spring training stadium 2:

The walls all around have been raised to about 65', and yes the ball does accurately bounce off of it. The graphics are really screwed up both because of the stretching and around the ads, but the most important thing is that you can actually change the way the game sees the walls.

As a side note, it's ridiculously fun to play in, as in my first game Johnny Damon got an inside the park homer despite the ludicrously small outfield because the ball richoted about 95% up the wall, over the heads of two outfielders after it hit the ground. Really fun.

Now I'm going to see if I can't move the right field wall of spring training stadium 3 way way back so we can play in the cornfield. Wish me luck.

I wish you luck :wink: :wink:

[The Big O]

You would also have to consider the X and Z values as well because for example: in Oriole Park a good portion of the walls are the same height so if you raise just the Y value because it matches you may be raising a completely different part of the stadium collision data than you intended. I looked at the wall.dat but I didn't really feel like messing with it due to the many vertices that would have to be checked. However it might be something I do in the future.

[Sean O]

You would also have to consider the X and Z values as well because for example: in Oriole Park a good portion of the walls are the same height so if you raise just the Y value because it matches you may be raising a completely different part of the stadium collision data than you intended. I looked at the wall.dat but I didn't really feel like messing with it due to the many vertices that would have to be checked. However it might be something I do in the future.

Right, exactly, but the nice thing is that by ballparking the x and z values for any particular point you wish to modify, you should be able to figure out which specific vertice you want to change up. I just changed the spring training stadium 1 to include the cornfield in right just by changing the specific points that controlled that wall.

I'm never going to be able to mod anything, really, but it is definitely possible to change the different parks enough to theoretically create completely new designs. And that's pretty exciting.

[Sean O]

Well, just to show that better modding is possible, I whipped this up when screwing around with AA stadium 1 to create a more accurate Hadlock Field with the mini-green monster, but it works well and wasn't all that difficult to do. I also moved the left field wall from 325 to 315 in addition to raising the wall heights to 37'.

However I suck at modding graphics or anything other than this specific thing, and the disappearing frame problem is truly annoying. But if someone wants to work on Hadlock, I can send off the wall.dat and mstadium.o file.

[Stix]

Get find man! You should mod the walls on the minor league stadiums and release it. I'd download it. :mrgreen:

[Kelvarr]

Get find man! You should mod the walls on the minor league stadiums and release it. I'd download it. :mrgreen:

Better yet, mod the Walls (or realease instructions) for Create-A-Stadium! That way, everybody can have completely unique CAS's!

[1927yankee]

sendme those files just cuz im curious and i cant find them on my computer thanks.

[pdawg17]

Once you adjust these values, does collision detection get adjusted too? Or if you raise the walls would the ball just go thru the wall for a home run? 8O

[Sean O]

Once you adjust these values, does collision detection get adjusted too? Or if you raise the walls would the ball just go thru the wall for a home run? 8O

I edited the wall.dat file to actually affect collision detection, and in the test games I've played at Hadlock (see other thread) to this point, I've smacked a couple of high fly balls off the top of the wall. It's really quite fun.

So yeah, no more invisible graphical walls, and best of all it's not that difficult to mod. I'm hoping more modders will become interested in fantasy or old-time recreation parks since now it's feasible.

[futzy99]

How's everything going? Have you made any progress? How's the cornfield idea comign?

[Juan1919]

can you fix cincinnatis walls? they are much too high, left field should be higher then the rest but people have robbed homers in center and right there a few times

[Sean O]

How's everything going? Have you made any progress? How's the cornfield idea comign?

The Cornfield thing was more of a test than something that was actually meant to be released, and it didn't really turn out so hot. I'm messing around with something else now which may or may not turn out decently, so I'm pretty much just trying to learn as much as I can about the file system at the moment. But, if anyone else wants to see what I did, open up the wall.dat file from Hadlock Field and compare it to AA Stadium 3 to see what I changed and how, and compare both of those to the .o files.

[bravesj858]

Better yet, mod the Walls (or realease instructions) for Create-A-Stadium! That way, everybody can have completely unique CAS's!

i agree...not everyone wants the same dimesions for their stadium...every team may not want a monster wall or etc. default settings are too blah. with this, we can make whatever we want for cas.

[kevineasyc]

Where do you find the wall.dat file and the stadium mat.o file? Thanks

[five]

In the stadium.big file, for example Minute Maid is minuday.big / minunite.big.

[kevineasyc]

Hey, Sean O can you give us instructions on how to change the height of the wall. Thanks!

[Sean O]

Hey all-

So, I'm sorry if I got peoples' hopes up with the thread about what project I should do next, which ended up being Braves Field as the polls would have it. But, I'm frankly not happy with any of the work I've done since I don't have the patience or graphical skill to make a park polished enough to where I'm happy with releasing it. Even a lot of the wall.dat mods have ended up with gaping issues, whether it be the entire right field area of the Coliseum or the the left field corner of what work I managed for the original Braves Field.

So, if I get particularly energized I'll explain my method of modding wall.dat with mstadium.o and all the other changes you'll have to make, of which there are many, so hopefully people will start creating their own unique parks rather than just graphical mods of what's existing.

Maybe if I have some breakthrough and gain the patience to deal with the little things I'll work on some other projects, but I sorta doubt that's gonna happen any time soon.

Sorry that the Coliseum is going to perpetually remain in its Alpha state, since that would be incredible if it'd been done completely.

[kevineasyc]

can you just upload the stadium that you did with the high wall. Any stadium will be perfectly fine as long as there is a high wall

[kevineasyc]

where are you Sean 0????

[Sean O]

I suggest downloading either the coliseum or Hadlock and comparing the wall.dat file from cleveland stadium or AA stadium 3, respectively, to the modified one. Also compare it to the mstadium.o files for each and you'll see what kind of changes have been done.

The high-wall stadium isn't that great of a change, so I'm not really planning on releasing it. In fact I think i've already deleted it from my system.

[Dan]

so if you want to put, say, a picture of Trues' face on the wall ( ) than you would have to get enough verticals and put the textures in a graphical file and move them, there is no way that you can change the wall texture without some space between the texture and the wall, right?

[sdoyle7798]

2). Open up your mstadium.o file in oedit, and find a section of wall you want to edit.

I cannot find an "mstadium.o" anywhere. When used Biggui, I found mstadium.ord and mstadium.orl.