The following describes not a tournament per se, but rather a live console season in which many games will be played at the same time rather than having to wait for 1 game. All season stats will not only be available for perusal on the game roms but also updated on our CFT Phile as we proceed. The goal is to give all owners as close to the original live tecmo season experience as possible, without taking so much time to complete, and with all teams closer to each other in overall attributes. In so doing, we all accept our fates and acknowledge the greatness that is the Tecmo Super Deities, and their love that will rein down upon us in all its forms and greatness, whether it be the JJs, the CCs, the condition or injury love/hate, and that most barbarous and diabolical form... THE JEALOUSY! Our goal is also to have at least 12 (more is possible) owners join for festivities.
Date/Time: July 28, 2018. Begin at 9AM Pacific Time. YES 9AM DAMMIT!
CFT Season 2 Draft will begin Friday April 20 at 4:20pm Cascadia time. This will be a rolling draft, meaning that technically there is no time limit or expectation that we are all tied to be present at the same time. Picks will be made through discord and I will solely update them in the Google sheet we will use. The draft order is based on season 1's results and the guys who didn't play season 1, I inserted them where I think was most fair according to Cascadia Tecmo History and impending shenaniGGans.
The Draft order is as follows.
Regular Season: Regular season will be in a Round Robin format with everyone playing everyone else. There will be 2 conferences (no divisions in the conferences) with at least 6 teams in each conference. This will limit the choices for owners joining in Season 2. For owners that participated in CFT Season 1, the same teams will be used (this may change, I just have to flesh out the implications of how it will all be displayed and accessed when looking at team histories on the CFT Phile) Actually, I think there's no problem changing Franchises. We're not a dynasty league..yet. If we get exactly 12 players, it will be an 11 game season and with a 9AM start time, we should be finished with the regular season by 7pm. With the current setup, we will have at least 3 stations to play all the games. Potentially 4, but either way, with 6 games per regular season week, it will take at least the time it normally takes to complete two TSB games to finish each week. Conditions and injuries will function as they would on a normal console Regular Season, with conditions carrying over from week to week, and injuries that can result in a player missing up to two more games after the game in which the injury occurred. ALL HAIL THE Tecmo Super Deities!
Playoffs!!?!: After the Regular Season concludes, the playoffs will all be played on one console with each playoff game streamed. Playoff seeds will be determined using Tecmo Super Bowl's tiebreaker logic, with teams in each conference seeded from 1 thru 6 according to regular season record, and the tiebreaker is point differential. In the event of a tie with same point differential, the team that won the regular season matchup will get the higher seed. Top 2 seeds in each conference get that Wild Card Round bye. The final regular season Rom save will be hacked to place the 12 playoff teams into the TSB Playoff bracket. The Playoffs will determine the Cascadia Effin' Tecmo Super Champion for Season 2!
9. @~Tailback King~ - confirmed! Brangin that Portland HEAT!
Disputes and Game fails/resets/glitches - We are all grown men and will figure it out. But I will reserve right to lay the law if need be.
Visions for the future: This will continue to be a summer event going forward. Eventually I would like to grow this to be a 16 game season. This could be done over one weekend (2 days or 3) or spread over over more time (1 day on consecutive weekends or something like that) With still around 12 players I could still do it in my garage and we could do a 16 game season where each team plays each of the other 5 same conference teams twice and the opposite conference teams once 5x2 + 6 = 16. I know thats a lot of tecmo to play in a short time, so we'll see how that develops. I also hope to get some non PNW KampBuddies out to future CFT seasons. I envision pairs of tecmo brethren from around the same region could take a tecmocation out here to the PNW where it's pretty much great weather once you get past July 4th, and usually before hand as well. Like my Chicago chaffeurs to Madison @modeezie and @toolie, B&G Vets @stalltalk and @MattyD, NTF brethren @chiefsjr83 and @redskinsfan1124 , and @arncoem and @baxterbear12 .
Other considerations include making this a regional event, holding part or whole seasons in different PNW locales and providing time to take in the scenery wherever it may be, and perhaps some local haunts. Another potential for the future is to carry forward with the goal of having a dynasty type season setup starting in the 60s like Manyo planned (or perhaps the 20s like my nerdy ass would want) and do a few short seasons a year during the Feb to Jun or July months (like Manyo planned originally for dates on the 3rd Saturday of each month).
Hacks included on Rom: The goal is to have these hacks (mostly for stat purposes) while not affecting any change in the actual game play itself when compared to playing a TSB Season on an actual TSB Cart and NES console.
Tapmeter - Counts and displays taps in man grapples.
Play Preseason Games in Season-Mode - Allows us to play in preseason yet still have stats kept, and use the Season Mode space for the other hacks we need (if I'm not mistaken).
No Fumbles in End Zone - To prevent loss of stats. This may be adjusted if it's possible to hack the game to allow End Zone fumbles (cuz the feeling of forcing one is SO DELICIOUS) without losing the stats. Still waiting for an answer to that question.
Track Fumbles - Shows each teams number of fumbles and fumbles lost in the recap.
Track Time of Possession - Allows us to see Time of Possession for each team in the recap. We found a bug in this one because it uses space that we are using that online leagues do not, which causes BUF QB1 (John Elway in our Season 1 rom tests) to accumulate weird stats when not even playing any games, like lots of passes and 100% completion rate of those passes for very minimal yards and TDs and a TON of INTS. So the set commands will be a little different for our league. Will update when fixed.
Recording Tackles - Tackle stats on recap and stat pages.
Player 2 Conditions Fix - Fixes the display of attributes to match the conditions for P2.
Other potential hacks are in the works, however none are meant to affect gameplay. Mostly they will be for additional stats. I'm hoping to be able to track some other things like JJs, CCs, picked plays, Yards after Catch, maybe individual player's fumble stats, JJ ints thrown and caught, Passes Defensed. Forced fumbles and fumble recoveries. Not sure how much we can fit and logistically do before this season, but hopefully we get a good deal of them. Also toying with the idea of randomizing the sound loop for each play.
How this will work: First of all a lot of thanks and gratitude must go out to the Godfather @Knobbe and @davefmurray for their contributions in ensuring this site meets the needs of all our tecmo brethren. Much thanks also to all those who share how to hack this in such a way we can enjoy it in this fashion. @jstout has shared so much (and was always very helpful when I would bug him about stuff a couple years back) and @bruddog for basically being the shining beacon of hope that allows us to not only approach doing this, but get the support to troubleshoot and basically provide so much of his time and resources so generously. Much thanks and praises also to @brookstonfowler for his help with our CFT Phile.
Getting Started with the Regular Season: The way we are able to do this is through using the rom created with aforementioned hacks on an Everdrive. We start by using the initial rom on all the Everdrives SD cards for week 1 and playing in preseason. I'm not sure if we need to set Team Control for each team to Man in the Season Game menu for our regular season games, but we will have to for the playoffs. After each game, a state is taken from the Everdrive and the ED's SD card is pulled. From the SD card, the state is saved to the CPU, then run through an Everdrive State Converter (linked below) which converts the state to a Nestopia like state which can then be uploaded to our Website (CFT Phile). Each Save State from Week 1 (in its Everdrive form I believe) is then merged with the other Save States from Week 1, one at a time (to the previously merged save state) using a tool Bruddog "whipped up" and the final version (Rom aka Save State) after all the Week 1 states are merged will be labeled as our Week 2 rom, and then copied to the ED's SD cards to be used for Week 2's games. This process will be used all the way through the completion of the regular season. Regular season stats and standings will be available to peruse on the rom and cartridge itself, as well as on the CFT Phile website, which will be updated with each game uploaded right after completion. There were some logistical concerns and flat out problems in our efforts for season 1 that will inform how we make season 2 and beyond happen. Problem number 1 was that we were unable to get the merges to work properly and consistently during the first season and the reasons included a lack of familiarity with best practices for making saves visible on the SD card and then trying to make a lot of this stuff work without allowing enough time to test it out before Game Day. Luckily we were able to manage to get the saves to show on the SD card using the knowledge we had (basically, after saving the state with a Select and Start button push, the state saved would not actually be saved on the SD card itself until a different rom was loaded). The end result was that we essentially played every game in season 1 with the same rom, but for each game, the rom's name was changed to include the week number and teams involved in order to ensure each file was named to clearly describe what it held. I also used a protocol for saving and converting these states for upload that included the creation of file folders for each week and game, and in each game's folder was an extra folder for the actual converted to nestopia state format since the names of both pre and post converted states were identical. Long story short, I was creating a lot of the folders while also going forward with the conversions and uploads and there was a lot of wait time for everyone else before the next set of games could be played. My plan to improve the logistics include having all the folders created for each week before hand, as well as to have extra SD cards so that when, for instance, the first 3 or 4 games of a given week are played, those SD cards can be pulled from the Everdrives and be replaced with other SD cards that have the rom for the rest of that week's games on them while the work to convert, upload and merge is being done. I'll also try to incorporate more help from guys there so it doesn't have to be just me doing the file work. @invader_star64 helped out a lot last season, and I think we can get a crack team to make it as efficient as possible and minimizing wait times between weeks.
Everdrive State Converter - Converts Everdrive state to one that matches Nestopia states and thus can be read and uploaded to our Phile.
Merge Tool - I don't have a link for this but we use it to be able to carry conditions and injuries over from week to week as well as be able to see the complete season stats with the Rom on the Everdrive in the NES itself.
PLAYOFFS??!?!? - For the playoffs, the final rom save after all the final week's mergers are done will be hacked to put the teams in their respective places in the Playoff Bracket that Tecmo Super Bowl console seasons utilize. I saw this in action yesterday and about flipped my lid. In this case the Team Control in Season Game menu needs to have all the playoff teams set to Man. Once this rom is loaded, no changes need to be added to it. The two potential logistical issues I foresee and want to get in front of are: 1. How can we ensure that we are able to get a state that we can upload from the end of each playoff game? and 1A. If we do pull the SD card to convert and upload the playoff save state after each playoff game, how can we do this without making the wait in between games too long? I know there is a way to create files on the Everdrive that can serve as placeholders (and using efficient nomenclature) for save states so that one can choose which file on the SD Card to save the current SRAM to. I'm hesitant to trust this method without ensuring we have a good save to upload before moving on to the next playoff game. I guess my thinking is we can save that SRAM to the file and pull it out quick, copy it to another SD card and use the next SD card for the next game while we work on converting and uploading the state for the just completed playoff game. (Having the actual SD card not being used by the current playoff game being played will make it easier to pop the card (in its Everdrive) in to the NES and "push" the save to the SD card, using the methodology from season 1. I apologize for this last bit of rambling (stream of consciousness) We will work it out.
Amazing concept! Godspeed on the merging.
Had to say it was a good day.
Started with a convo with Rudy da Tailback King and getting his confirmation for CFT 2 AND he's on Discord now!
Then got confirmation that Manyo720 is IN for CFT2!
And finished PNW Tourney History at bottom of top post.
At least 2 more confirms and we're golden. I think we can handle more, AND got good news from Brudd regarding playoff bracket.
Can't find the date of when this is taking place? 9am.. Just that draft is actual NFL draft weekend.
Could it be???????????? Is my boy BACC????!!!
........................................I think Jack Johnson just answered that question for me.
Don't forget to mention the thing you forgot to mention................$10.00 buy in, winner take all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When a King falls, make sure everyone is witness to see him die.
DT quote "ok, so if he shows up, he'll be paying for my funyuns, cool"
I'm expecting to see these JJ Master skills live on June 29 when we do a test run of all our season mechanics.
As much of an affront (and autobootworthyness) as someone not named @~Tailback King~ taking Johnny Johnson in the 1st round would be, I almost consider my feelings the same in regards to Manyo and the SEA OL... Although not 1st round...However...All's fair in tecmo and war. I'm now in the kamp of throwing a wrench into the machine. Time will tell. but we do need to make sure we got everyone on board to be present during said draft. I'm rethinking the date of our draft. Would love to do it live (or as live as possible). Couldn't we do a spring tourney and hold the draft during pre-festivities?