FOOTBALL
Football Player Editor/Creator
The Football Player
Editor/Creator is a full featured editor for
ABPA Football Players. It allows you to change any player rating or
statistic on a player disk, add new players to a season data disk and create
your own season data disks, including the "fumbles.9xx" file and the "Locator"
file used by the Game. It also contains tools to help you create player
card numbers from raw statistics. It does not matter whether you use
APBA Football for DOS or
APBA Football for Windows.
Some of the things you can do through the Editor
are:
- Change any player's ratings.
- Add, Delete or Change a player's positions
or specialties.
- Change a player's statistics to affect
the way the Robot Coach uses him.
- Add additional statistics records to
the player.
- Copy one player's statistics or card
numbers to another player.
- Create player ratings from raw statistics
a la APBA's Baseball Wizard.
- Change a player's APBA "card" numbers.
- View a player's APBA "card".
- Create a Seasion Disk from scratch.
APBA's DOS Football
Editor will allow you to change some of the player
ratings. But it will not allow some of the changes I wanted to make.
I wanted to be able to add or remove positions from a player. I will
use a hypothetical player to illustrate those changes.
For years Swifty O'Toole has received ratings
at EB and FS. But this past year, Swifty only played at EB. I
want to use Swifty at FS in the Dime Defense, so I want to be able add the
FS position to his card.
Swifty has also returned punts for years, but
he did not this year. I would like to give him a TC on his card.
After I give Swifty his TC, I can put him on the Punt Return Platoon at TA
or TB, but he won't return any punts unless I also add punt return stats for
him.
These changes were the genesis of the Player Editor.
And as long as I was programming anyway, I made the Editor so any rating,
attribute or statistic could be changed.
This program is included in the Football Bundle.
Multiple Card Viewer
While you can view individual player "cards" in
the Editor, the Card Viewer allows you to view multiple cards simultaneously.
It can be used to compare, for example, all of the halfbacks on a team to
determine who should start. Or use it to compare all the starters to
determine whom to place in each formation. Or use it to compare players
to determine who your next draft choice should be.
This program is included in the Football Bundle.
RoboCoach Editor
The RoboCoach Editorenables you to edit the Robot Coaches in the APBA Football
Game. You can also create custom coaches, similar to MicroManagers in APBA
Baseball. There are no programming or special skills required.
The Editor also automates the installation of custom coaches into the Game.
A number of custom coaches (courtesy of Scott Griffin, author of the Robot
Coach in the Game) are bundled with the program. Although the RoboCoach Editor is a Windows
program, it will work with coaches from both the DOS and Windows
versions of APBA Football.
This program is included in the Football Bundle.
RPK Utility
A companion program is included which allows you
to inspect a player file and determine which RPK record keys are in use and
by whom.
This program is included in the Football Bundle.
Team Editor
The Team Editor was originally intended to allow you to set the Level of
Aggressiveness for an APBA Football team. The capabilities of the program
were expanded during design to include the editing of League Names, Conference
Names, Division Names and Teams. The Team Edit feature allows you to change
a team's year, city, nickname, and won/loss record. It also allows you to
create a "fumbles.9xx" file for a newly created season disk or edit the "fumbles.9xx"
file on an existing season disk. Because the APBA FB Game allows a maximum
of 15 Locator records for each of receptions, interceptions and sacks per
team and a maximum of 150 unique RPK records in a game, the Team Editor can
count the number of Locator records and RPK records in use by a team, as well
as identifying which players use which records to help you know who to adjust.
This program is available in the Football Bundle.
Locator Synchronizer
The Locator Synchronizer keeps the "locators" used by the FB program for identifying
receivers, interceptors and sackers in synch between the Locators file and the Teams file. If you create your
own data disks using my Football Player Editor, the Editor will create a Locators
file for you and will keep it synchronized with
the Players file
as you edit players. The Draft function of the APBA Football program will
then create the appropriate locator references in the Teams file. But what if you
want to change a player's receptions, interceptions or sacks after you have
drafted your teams? You could drop the changed players from their respective
teams and then redraft them, or you could use the Locator Synchronizer to update
the Teams file with
all locator changes in one operation.
This program is available in the Football Bundle.
Other League Adjuster
In addition to homemade data disks for APBA Football
for past NFL seasons, some folks have created season disks for leagues other
than the NFL, such as the old WFL or the USFL or early AFL seasons. There
are two schools of thought on rating the players in one of these other leagues.
The first way is rate the players within their own league. The best players
in the league would be rated as a 5. The second way is to rate the players
in relationship to the NFL. APBA apparently did this with their first AFL
cards in which the highest rating given was a 4. A case can be made for each
of these approaches, but what if the creator of the season disk followed
the first approach but you want to follow the second approach? That's where
the Other League Adjuster comes in. The program quickly and effortlessly drops the
rating for the players on the disk one level. That is, all 5's become 4's,
4's becomes 3's, etc. Of course 1's are unaffected.
This program is available in the Football Bundle.
Receiving Grade Adjuster
This program adjusts Receivers's Grade Ratings to
match those created by the Football Editor. It operates on an entire disk at once. Just pick the era
of the season disk you are adjusting and then click on Open.
This program is included in the Football Bundle.
Sack Calculator
Some homebrewed disks do not have sack statistics.
The sack locators were entered directly instead of being calculated from stats.
This program will calculate the number of sacks a player with a sack locator
probably had and will automatically update the season disk.
This program is included in the Football Bundle.
Football Player Name
Adjuster
The Football Name Adjuster can
change all names to mixed upper and lower case or force all last names to
upper case.
This program is included in the Football Bundle.
Football Player Text
Exporter
The Football Player Text Exporter creates a text file of an APBA
Football Season Disk player file for export
to a Spreadsheet Program like Lotus 123 or MicroSoft Excel. A file named export.txt will be created in the same
subdirectory as the data disk from which it was created. The text file
created can be read into a Spreadsheet Program using the "Import File" facility
in the Spreadsheet Program. Consult your Spreadsheet Program documentation
for details. Column headings will be created along with the data and
will be imported along with the data.
This program is included in the Football Bundle.
Fix Passing Stats
If the first passing record added to a season disk
created by the MakoJo Football Player Editor is added through the APBA 'Merge' facility, then the passing
stats may get out of synch. "fixpstat.zip" contains "fixpstat.exe" and "St_pass.999".
Copy "St_pass.999" into the "\seedfls" subdirectory of the MakoJo Football
Player Editor. Copy "fixpstat.exe" into the same directory as the Football
Player Editor. "fixpstat.exe" will fix any disks which have the passing stats
out of synch due to this problem. Using the updated "St_pass.999" file in
the disk creation process will prevent the problem from reoccurring.
Booklet - Making Season
Disks for APBA Football
This how-to booklet covers all of the steps involved
in making a Season Disk for APBA Football from tips on player rating to the
creation of auxiliary files such as the locators file and the fumbles file.
There is a heavy emphasis on using the MakoJo Utilities (which are free)
but other tools are mentioned as well. The booklet was originally a handout
at the 1998 APBA Convention in Lancaster for the Computer Football Seminar.
It is in Word Perfect format. There are two documents within the zip file.
The first is the booklet cover, front and back, inside and out. The second
is the booklet itself.
The booklet is available for download in WordPerfect
6.1 format or can be viewed online. When
you are done viewing use the BACK button on your browser to return here.
