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Author Topic: Missing Players on Giants Defense  (Read 29628 times)

Tarantula

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Missing Players on Giants Defense
« on: February 15, 2017, 08:42:58 PM »
Hey everyone,

I decided to sign up here because I've been playing NFL Blitz using the .rom hack and Roster Editor posted here for quite awhile, but I've run into a major problem when playing as my favorite team. I can't explain what the problem is other than that two players on the Giants defense have gone missing. I have Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Landon Collins in the LB2 and Safety slots in my roster editor, but when I play the game itself, neither actually appears. There's only a ghost of them, and it results in the gameplay becoming very buggy (Phantom tackles, graphical errors, erratic AI behavior, etc.)

http://imgur.com/a/UDZIl

I've tried fiddling with the roster before in order to get them to show up, but whenever I've been successful, my kicker has disappeared. This only happens with the Giants, as every other team I play with is just fine. I don't know how to go about resolving this.

Has anyone else ever run into this issue before? If so, how did you fix it?

blitzmaster5000

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2017, 09:16:57 PM »
Hi Tarantuala,

I saw this glitch before too. The Rodgers-Cromartie issue is because of the character limit- Rodgers-Cromartie is 1 character too long (17 total characters when the allotted amount of is only 16). This messes up the bit of data immediately after and makes the character glitchy. If you have already updated the rom with this name, I'm not sure if it's possible to use the roster editor to revert back (i.e. try using the roster editor to change his name to be at least 1 character shorter). If that doesn't do anything, then you can do one of two things:

1. use a rom w/out the roster updated and then update it w/ the roster editor, but change the length of his name to be <16 characters

2. Open the Rom in hex editor such as cygnus: http://www.softcircuits.com/cygnus/fe/ and goto the address with his name (should be 00121AEC). Change his name here to be <16 characters, and then after the 16th character make sure the next values are: 3F 86 66 66 00 00 52 00.

I'm not aware of collins having issues.. I will double check though.

Tarantula

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2017, 10:51:20 PM »
I tried removing the hyphen in DRC's name, but the problem persists. The Collins issue is a weird one since I don't believe it happened until a day or so ago.

I'd try to use a different .rom, but it looks like the file for Zoinky's patch has been set to private. Does anyone have a mirror or a .rom they'd be willing to share?

blitzmaster5000

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2017, 09:44:50 AM »
I have a version of Zoinkity's original patch I can upload later.

You can also find a patch I uploaded with all of his changes here plus some:
http://nflblitzfans.com/index.php?topic=553.0

It has some extra changes I added personally you may not necessarily want (extra plays, custom cheats etc, and filler extra team).

edit: Actually I just realized this patch may have the same issue w/ the name length.. I can check later.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2017, 09:46:31 AM by blitzmaster5000 »

Tarantula

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2017, 07:48:02 PM »
I have a version of Zoinkity's original patch I can upload later.

That'd be great. I think I had the original patch on my hard drive about a week ago, but I just re-installed my OS so I lost that file.

blitzmaster5000

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #5 on: February 16, 2017, 08:08:50 PM »

Tarantula

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #6 on: February 16, 2017, 10:46:06 PM »
Thanks. DRC is back now, but Collins is still MIA. I know he was there with the 2015 roster I downloaded from here, so I'll try to re-build my current roster off of that over the weekend.

EDIT: Nope. It doesn't matter what roster I use - At least one player on the defense is always invisible. I don't know what's wrong.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2017, 10:52:17 PM by Tarantula »

jaker3

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #7 on: February 17, 2017, 10:54:15 AM »
Is this for the giants only?

Tarantula

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #8 on: February 17, 2017, 11:07:22 PM »
Is this for the giants only?

Yes. Every other team in the game works as it should.

Tarantula

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #9 on: February 26, 2017, 09:19:12 PM »
So, I went into Cygnus like was suggested, and I noticed something. I have very little programming experience, but I did notice that while most players have "?...ff....Name...?" separating them, it looks like DRC and Landon Collins don't have that. The string is:

?.ff...R. Casillas.....A.RodgersCromartie....!....Collins.....?

If I haven't explained it that well, I've included a screenshot.

http://imgur.com/a/Y95Hq

Anyone know what this means?

blitzmaster5000

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #10 on: February 27, 2017, 10:51:08 AM »
The text you are referring to, "?...ff....Name...?", is the ASCII representation of the hexadecimal values I gave above. You are correct in thinking that the issue is because "?.ff.." is not after RodgersCromartie. The A just prior to his name is his number (#41).

You can fix the issue where he is invisible by simply changing the text from:

"A.RodgersCromartie......!." to "A.RodgersCromartie?.ff..!."

Although you will have to do it by changing the actual hex, which is just as simple. If you look at your red box in the image, look at the second line. change it from:

72 74 69 65 00 00 00 00 00 00 21 00
to
72 74 69 65 3F 86 66 66 01 01 41 00
This translates to the following text:
rtie?.ff..!.

This should fix this character (I think). if not, try changing the 3rd from last value from "01" to "00". Just save the rom (I would use a different name until you know it actually works) and save as the right extension. One more thing: I've noticed that when changing the hex directly such as that mentioned above, sometimes Project 64 gives me issues. If so, you will need to do 1 more simple step: Download an assembler such as LemASM (found in this zip: http://www.orbitaldecay.com/N64/N64-RomHackingToolkit.zip), open your rom, go to the tools menu, click "calculate CRC", and then save the rom from the file menu. It should work fine in P64 now.

One other thing: Cyngus does overwrite by default, so you don't need to delete the values that are there - just type over them and it will fix them. If you delete anything, it shifts the entire rom by the amount you delete and will screw everything up.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2017, 01:13:58 PM by blitzmaster5000 »

Tarantula

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #11 on: February 27, 2017, 07:59:48 PM »
I took your advice, but I did notice that there was a bit of an issue with the hex you provided. It should've been "72 74 69 65 3F 86 66 66 01 01 21 00" since '21' is Collins' number, and when I typed '41' it changed his number.

At the very least I now have Collins back (Though he's larger than he should be for some reason), but DRC is still missing. I did notice, though, that the hex is now in his display name. I've attached both a screenshot of what I'm seeing and the hex.

http://imgur.com/a/KVapD

Take from that what you will. I'm still trying to work through this.

blitzmaster5000

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #12 on: February 27, 2017, 10:28:06 PM »
Ahh, yes you are correct - the 41 I mentioned was for the next player Collins, I thought it was for Rodgers-Cromartie.

I think the reason you see the funny characters in Cromartie's name is because there is no break in the text - If you replace the last character in his name (the "e") with 00, it doesn't have the funny characters any more. Unfortunately it looks like it will be hard to get his full name in there with the character limit.

Tarantula

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #13 on: February 28, 2017, 10:06:54 PM »
Gotcha in terms of the 41 - Glad my ComSci class in college didn't go to waste in the end.

I've found a way to fix the issue I was seeing: I re-applied the Zoinkity patch without roster updates to my original .rom, and then adjusted the roster in the Roster Editor, but I put Eli Apple instead of DRC and the Giants work perfect - No missing players or anything. I think you're right and that it just goes back to the length of DRC's name screwing up the data.

Thanks for helping me work through this. I was hoping to contribute some rosters to this board (2017 and a special Greatest Teams one), so I wanted to debug this before I did any of that. Plus it's great that I can now play as my favorite team with no complications.

jaker3

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Re: Missing Players on Giants Defense
« Reply #14 on: March 07, 2017, 09:28:57 AM »
Gotcha in terms of the 41 - Glad my ComSci class in college didn't go to waste in the end.

I've found a way to fix the issue I was seeing: I re-applied the Zoinkity patch without roster updates to my original .rom, and then adjusted the roster in the Roster Editor, but I put Eli Apple instead of DRC and the Giants work perfect - No missing players or anything. I think you're right and that it just goes back to the length of DRC's name screwing up the data.

Thanks for helping me work through this. I was hoping to contribute some rosters to this board (2017 and a special Greatest Teams one), so I wanted to debug this before I did any of that. Plus it's great that I can now play as my favorite team with no complications.

Awesome! Always looking for updated roster files.