Arcade NFL Blitz & NFL Blitz 2000 Gold hack options?

[Gewal]

I have both of these arcade versions with the chd's loaded on CF Flash drives.

I have seen a couple posts about a potential roster update or mod for arcade?  Was it ever completed?

If so I would love to test it out....

Thanks!

[jaker3]

Hey Gewal,


I made a editor for arcade gold, but not 100% if it works or would work. I've never gotten someone to test it. Pretty much it requires you to edit the raw bin (decompressed chd). The assumption is that the arcade version uses text and renders the players names in game. However if it works like the PC version and renders it from a sprite it wouldn't work as intended. I'm more then willing to help walk you through testing the editor with the arcade version so we can figure it out.

[Gewal]

Absolutely, I would like to try it out.
I have the arcade version of Blitz 99 and also 2000 Gold.  Both Hdd's have been replaced with a Compact flash cards/IDE adapters.  I can pull/backup the card and make a duplicate to test with. 

If you want to put together a quick procedure or walkthrough for me try out I can start from there.

I also have NBA Showtime to test with if they were developed in a similar way.

Thanks!

[jaker3]

If you extract the bin file from there you can use the existing roster editor and just select arcade/blitz 2000.



I'll see if I can show a few more screen shots need be.

[Gewal]

I used CHDMAN to extract the CHD file as an ".IMG" file....
When attempting to open this file with the "Pull Roster From ROM" button in "Blitz Roster Manager 2.0" the application crashes with no exception message, etc.

I also tried renaming this file with a ".bin" extension but the application still crashed.
Let me know if you have a log/debugger or something else to try.

I can open the file in a hex editor as well is you want me to look into something.

Thanks!

[jaker3]

Hey Gewal,

Sorry about never getting back to you. I've been preoccupied with some life changing events that happened back in October. I actually just ordered a NFL Blitz arcade PCB. I'm going to be building my own dedicated NFL blitz arcade machine this summer. I’ll also be able to test out roster updates soon because of this! I’ll probably post a build thread in the next few weeks to keep track of the progress.

[Gewal]

Thanks for your response and good to hear from you.  I would still be interested in helping you with this when ready.

Let me know!

[bill55]

I have an NFL Blitz 2000 Gold/NBA Showtime cab in my basement. (The one with both games in 1). I would be happy to test and contribute however I can with this. I would LOVE updated rosters for Blitz (and Showtime also if that's possible).

Thanks!

[jaker3]

Hey Bill and Gewal,

I'll keep both of you in the loop. It looks like the arcade version uses same same sprite sheet for names as the PC game does :\. Good news is I'll be able to update rosters for the PC and arcade version when i solve it. Just need to find how the games pull the sprites from the sprite sheet since its nonuniform. Guessing since the game was made 99-2000 there is coordinates stored somewhere. I'm also trying to figure out what the values in the 38 and 40 byte headers mean.

[bill55]

Thanks! Keep me posted and if I can help in any way let me know. Hopefully you can make some progress. It would be amazing to replace sorry Tim Couch with Baker Mayfield on the Browns. Lol.

Have you heard of anything ever being done with the NBA Showtime rosters? I’d love to update those too.

Thanks
Bill

[Gewal]

Awesome.  Ditto on the helping out as well as the interest in NBA Showtime rosters.

Thanks!

[jaker3]

Just an update, got all the parts for the arcade. Putting it together. still working on the ability to update the rosters for the arcade.

[dmgambone]

I'm curious how this is coming along as I have the Compact Flash drive of NFL Blitz 2000 that I'd love to get updated to the most recent rosters.

Is there anything I can do to help?

[dschaefer]

I’m also very interested in getting updated graphics and rosters into the arcade version of this game. I have a Seattle board with the Boot/Sound and drives for both blitz 99 and 2k gold. I’m in the process of scratch building a 4P control panel for it but I’ve been poking around in the CHD files in between. If anyone has any insight or makes any headway in identifying files/formats or anything like that in the chd please share. I will do the same when/if I discover anything myself.

So far I’ve gotten as far as using chdman to dump an img file, which I had hoped 7zip would extract or windows would mount, but no dice. I went through the resulting img with a hex editor and found plaintext strings of team info, player names, as well as the trivia questions and answers. I have not yet attempted making edits.

I also used the demo of isobuster on the img which revealed a few audio files and some videos but I didn’t want to bite the bullet for $35 for 5 or 6 files. It does however provide the LGA and file size, not sure if someone better with hex editors could use that information to extract the files?

 I hope this helps and I hope we can put together a 2019 version!

[jaker3]

@dschaefer,

The plain text does not really do much. All of the player/team names are stored in sprite sheets. Yeah windows will not mount the image. I just got back from a backpacking trip, but I'll see if I can get some time to push you in the right direction. I know where the images are stored in the file, and how to pull them out. Just looking into how they pull single sprites from a sprite sheet.