Tactic file hex analysis!

More
18 years 1 week ago - 6 years 2 months ago #13716 by Playaveli
Preserved from: bigcalm.tripod.com/swos/tactics-analysis.htm / bigcalm.tripod.com/swos/

SWOS Tactics File Hex Analysis

The manual gives us some hints about how SWOS manages tactics:

The game comes with 10 preset tactics covering all the popular formations used in modern football, plus six slots for you to save your own custom designs to. All of the tactics in the game are based on a grid which defines 35 separate areas of the pitch that the ball can be in at any one time, and 240 separate positions that any one player can be in at any one time. The Edit Tactics menu deals with the six Custom Tactics slots (called User A to User F ), and presents you with six tools to help you shape them.


The .TAC files all have 370 bytes and I ll try and work out what they re all used for.
First, the 35 ball areas:


Note that the areas have been measured to be approximately correct.

The tactics file is divided into players positions that they should run to when the ball is in one of the 35 positions. The first 8 bytes of the file are a string containing the name of the tactic, then bytes 9 to 166 (hex) are used to define where the players should run to when the ball is in one of the areas. The goalkeeper is not included in the 10 players. The last few bytes in the file from 167 to 171 are a magic number sequence (probably) and always is the following bytes: 00 FF FF 00 01 FF FF 01 FF FF 00 This was probably used by SWOS to check file validity.

Within the file, player positions are held in sequences. So, for player 1 you have all his possible positions for each ball location in order. For example, player 6 has all his possible positions located within the file in the bytes B8-DA. The diagram below shows the ranges for each player and their customary pitch locations:


Use the following formula to find the byte defining where the player will run to:
(Player No * 35) - 26 + (Ball Location - 1)
The hex location within the tactics file will give you the place that the player will run to.
e.g. If I wanted to find out where player 8 would run to when the ball was in quadrant 35, then I d calculate this as (8*35) - 26 + (35-1) = 288 = 120 Hex. The value in the file at 0x120 would tell me where the player would run to.



So the only thing left is the player positions. For example, if we have value 7F in 0x120 what does that mean?
7F is a position on the pitch that the player should run to. You can calculate it by using the following picture. The position should be calculated X-Y. So if we re trying to work out where 7F is, it s going to be position 7 on the X-axis, and position F on the Y-axis. In other words, right in the opponents goal mouth (what a goal-hanger).


Again, to re-iterate - if we have byte 7F in position 120 of the file, this means that when the ball is in quadrant 35 (top left corner), player 8, normally the left winger will be madly sprinting towards the goal-mouth of the opponents. This must be from the Davide Ginola tactic....



Positions on this diagram should be approximately correct here.



Tactics file was decoded by Jonathan Daniel using WinHex 9.92 SR-4 and Sensible Soccer Euro Champions Edition. I ve done it because it ll be very helpful to anyone trying to make a clone.


---
(c) Jonathan Daniel, 2001-2002

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • CATS
  • CATS's Avatar
  • Visitor
  • Visitor
18 years 1 week ago #13717 by CATS
Replied by CATS on topic Re: Tactic file hex analysis!
Thanks for the tutorial Playa, good find; but your images are hotlinked which Tripod doesn t seem to enjoy too much.

I ve hosted them for our benefit:

www.goalhanger.net/swospatch/images/pitchareas.jpg

www.goalhanger.net/swospatch/images/playernumbers.jpg

www.goalhanger.net/swospatch/images/playerpos.jpg

Feel free to update your post with these, I have plenty of bandwidth :)

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
18 years 1 week ago #13718 by Playaveli
Cheers, mate!

I have opened a new board for SWOS progamming... as you might have recognized! ;)

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
18 years 1 week ago #13773 by whiteulver
This is a very usefull site bigcalm.tripod.com/swos/

I used these info to create the Tactic Viewer :)

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
17 years 3 months ago #23703 by Playaveli
Added pictures to first post! ;)

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
17 years 3 months ago #23707 by Stromberg
Anyone got the source of stage 1 about that hes talking? He links it too www30.brinkster.com/bigcalm/ but that one is down.

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

More
11 years 1 month ago #120143 by Playaveli
Image files re-uploaded!

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

Time to create page: 0.213 seconds
Powered by Kunena Forum