Net.o - Breakthrough in stadium modding

[Sean O]

So, I'm just about to head to sleep after about 4 hours of work, but I just found a way to make the crowds never disappear, regardless of their location. If you're not interested in the nitty gritty details of how I figured this out, skip to the bold part below.

I had tried replacing alphablend.o with crowd.o, assuming it would still read the texture file from crowd0.fsh, but unfortunately I just had non-disappearing crowds without any textures. Even after I added the files from crowd0.fsh into cram32.fsh, which is what alphablend reads from, I wasn't able to have any luck having the game recognize the texture.

Then I went on an ill-advised attempt to modify every .ifo file included in the park to have the game somehow know not to make crowd.o disappear, but again with no luck. Then, I tried hex editing, which somehow ended up with an alphablend.o file that was 116 megs large.

Finally, I opened up the index.fsh and started messing with the exact details there. I had imported x000 and mm01 from crowd0.fsh (I'm using Cleveland Stadium, as always) into cram32.fsh, and by some combination of renaming every entry for x000 to v000, or possibly mm01 to v000, the game finally recognized the correct texture, and voila, textured, permanent crowds.

I then replaced net.o with former crowd.o file, since 1). it is permanent, without the weird ghosting effect of alphablend, 2). alphablend is the only file where you can have complex alpha files, perfect for chain link fences, and 3). net.o is not all that useful, since you can create a net in an unused part of alphablend.o, especially if you use fenway classic's version.

So, the breakdown of the files and their optimal uses:

alphablend.o: shades of grey in alpha files, perfect for nets and fences, using classic fenway.

net.o: crowds that never disappear

removable.o: the big one. For any part you do not want to disappear in the game.

mstadium.o: useful for any parts that will not be moved from where they were in the source file. I primarily use mstadium for background files (check out KC Municipal, where I sunk aaa02, or LA Wrigley where I replaced mstadium with background01.o), as it is not taxing on the system since everything in the foreground is disappearing.

Now, what everyone's interested in: What this means to you:

1). Every park is at least possible. There's no technical limitation to The Big A or Candlestick anymore, as we can put crowds anywhere we want.

2). Modders can modify crowds in ways, both subtle and grand, that never would've been possible before. Anyone who has not modded stadiums has no idea how sensitive the crowd disappearance has been, but not anymore.

3). Disappearing stadium parts are a thing of the past.

I'm sure there are more, and I still need to figure out how exactly it happened, but it works. Hallelujiah, it works.

SP

[Kccitystar]

Sean O is teh rule. Awesome find man

[AstroEric]

I have no idea what you're talking about, but...awesome!

[The Big O]

Sean, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the net.o file contain the parts for the backstop safety net and also in some night version, the glare effects for the lights? I know Fenway uses the net.o file for the glare. I guess if you rename it to the alphablend.o file that might work as long as you don't have anything special in the alphablend that can't be replicated in removable.o. Also were the crowds animated after you renamed crowd.o to net.o?

[jscand]

Very cool find.

[compmaniac]

Could you explain what the "crowd disappear" thing is?

[UncleMo]

"crowd disappear"

I also have never experience such a thing.

[superciuc]

Yeah,what is it?

I've never heard it

[Sean O]

Sean, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the net.o file contain the parts for the backstop safety net and also in some night version, the glare effects for the lights?

Yes, it does contain the safety net behind home. But, and here's the thing, the way the game handles alphablend.o makes it a much better choice for the net anyway, since it's not just completely see-through. Since I use fenway classic's alphablend, there are two or three unused parts that can be very easily moved to make the safety net.

As for the glare, I don't think there's anything specific to net.o that makes the glare more realistic as opposed to putting it in removable or net.o, so you should be able, pretty easily, to harvest another texture file for that effect.

Also were the crowds animated after you renamed crowd.o to net.o?

Honestly I was so busy being thrilled with seeing the crowd everywhere I didn't notice. I figure this is a relatively minor point in most cases. For example, if you were to add the complete state street pavilion (did you add the complete state street pavilion?), you can keep crowd.o for 90% of the crowd, but then you could also copy crowd.o over to net.o, sink most of the crowd, and use a small portion of the vertices for the upper reaches where theoretically crowd.o would've disappeared originally.

For what I do, where I essentially start from scratch (like the current project, hint hint), I'll take a static crowd in return for having the vertices all over the place.

Could you explain what the "crowd disappear" thing is?

The crowd disappearing problem is akin to the former vertex disappearance problem in stadium modding. If you load up certain modded parks, in some weird camera angles the crowd will disappear briefly, only to reappear a second later when the camera angle changes.

The main problem was that the game had a very, very low tolerance for where crowds could be moved, making modifying the crowds really difficult on large projects. Now, we can put them anywhere and have them look normal, albeit without the swaying, without having to worry that 1/2 the camera locations in the game will make it invisible.

[philliesphan18]

Does this mean we can now manipulate and/or create 3d crowds?

[Sean O]

Does this mean we can now manipulate and/or create 3d crowds?

No, 3d crowds are still better off deleted, or never dealt with. That whole situation wasn't even handled with a .o file, and is just a .dat file detailing locations. It's a mess.

[AlexTony]

Excellent!

Hats off Sean

[maddux31]

I too am lost..

But it sounds great! Congratulation's on your awesome discovery!!!!!

[Padres67]

You're a genius.

[northpaw]

picture?

[fookes]

Props Sean, nice find.....Back to the question Phills stated about 3d crowds, i've been wondering for quite sometime if its possible to expand the 3d polygon crowd, which is typically 2-3 rows behind homeplate and down the lines, to the entire stadium. You state that it was implemented poorly, do mean that editing the .dat file(do u know which one by the way) would be almost impossible or from a performance standpoint it makes sense to delete.

[Sean O]

both. 3dcrowds are just really stupid, poorly spaced in the game, and really poorly executed. The crowd.dat file just has a lot of random data points that may or may not even relate to a specific 3dcrowd object. They are highly processor intensive, nearly impossible to deal with, and so I usually just delete them when I work on a project.

For the sake of 3 rows, EA shouldn't have even bothered. No one in their right mind would want to expand the 3dcrowd around the stadium, and this is coming from someone who builds stadiums from scratch.

[The Big O]

both. 3dcrowds are just really stupid, poorly spaced in the game, and really poorly executed. The crowd.dat file just has a lot of random data points that may or may not even relate to a specific 3dcrowd object. They are highly processor intensive, nearly impossible to deal with, and so I usually just delete them when I work on a project.

For the sake of 3 rows, EA shouldn't have even bothered. No one in their right mind would want to expand the 3dcrowd around the stadium, and this is coming from someone who builds stadiums from scratch.

I agree and EA had it almost right the first time in MVP 2004 with the animated 2D crowd which would stand up and cheer around the whole stadium if the home team did something good. They could have expanded on that and made the textures a little more detailed. I miss that from MVP 2004.

[rolie]

wow Huge find Sean O! This is very valuable in adding the extra crowd seats in dodger stadium!