90 overs per day of a test match in Brian Lara Cricket 99 for PS1

[LilleeWilleyDilley]

Well, well, after a very, very long time behind the desk, I have finally figured out how to reverse-engineer BLC99 for the PS1 so that the starting-time of each day of a test match or any unlimited-overs match is at 10:00am instead of 11:00am, thus enabling the amount of overs per day to extend to roughly 90 (as in real-life cricket) instead of roughly 75 in the game by default.

In all my online searches I have never seen any other site, thread, blog, or forum that talks about how to achieve this hack, and I find it extremely difficult to believe that I am the only person in the whole world to have discovered this hack for this game ever since it came out in 1998... I'm sure I'm not, but after 24 years why are these other programmers so silent?

(I Also found out how to edit, create, and swap players and teams in BLC 99 for PS1, yes - the PS1 version, by using a hex-editor and a handy tool like CD Mage BETA, but that's another story)

 

[timmy94]

So are you gonna share how or not?

 

[rifleman1202]

@LilleeWilleyDilley if you are not playing this game on the original PlayStation and are playing it using an emulator such as ePSXe I hope that you are aware that you can play it in Widescreen by going into Options > GTE Hacks and checking the Widescreen option. I just thought I'd let you know since the screenshot that you posted seems to be stretched as if playing in 4:3 mode on a 16:9 screen.

 

[LilleeWilleyDilley]

@LilleeWilleyDilley if you are not playing this game on the original PlayStation and are playing it using an emulator such as ePSXe I hope that you are aware that you can play it in Widescreen by going into Options > GTE Hacks and checking the Widescreen option. I just thought I'd let you know since the screenshot that you posted seems to be stretched as if playing in 4:3 mode on a 16:9 screen.

Yes I'm aware. I was testing this game on my laptop with epsxe in a 800x600 resolition even though my desktop resolution is much higher. This gives the game a CRT-shape view on a widescreen, with two black borders on each side of the screen. But when you take a screenshot under these settings then the borders are gone and the picture looks too wide. I still have a CRT monitor - for older games because I normally prefer to play games that were originally designed for CRT monitors on CRT monitors. I use a flatscreen monitor for later games designed to be in a wider resolution. i.e. all games made after 2008. You can also play BL99 for the PS1 through a USB drive on a Playstation 2 console using FreeMcBoot and there is also a widescreen fix for that too for flatscreen TVs and monitors.

 

[LilleeWilleyDilley]

So are you gonna share how or not?

timmy94, I have already shared so many hacks and patches on other cricket games - I have written probably the biggest unofficial guide for the DOS version of Brian Lara 1994 around, and I have posted probably one of the best, if not the best, available guide for all available patches for the PC version of EA Cricket 2004 - and the links to download them. All on this site. And I have asked little to nothing in return.

So I tell you what, if someone reading this can tell me how I can get coloured kits in the DOS game of Brian Lara 1994 (NOT the Allan Border one), OR, if someone can tell me how they can reverse-engineer the Sega Genesis version of Brian Lara 96 so that all pitches are played as Normal pitches (thus eliminating Damp, Green, Dusty and Hard pitches altogether), then maybe I will consider sharing the 10:00am hack for BL99 PS1. I am willing to make an agreement.

Here is some free info - you might want to know that by using the 10:00am hack it won't make much sense to "Generate Innings" during an unlimited overs match, because normally when you generate an innings, the match is actually played as if 90 overs are played between 11:00am to 6:00pm in the quick time it takes - unlike when you play the match in real-time, so if you generate an innings with the 10:00am patch in force, then the game will see 10:00am to 6:00pm as around 100 overs and therefore adds too many overs for each day, which if you are a purist is not realistic.

 

[LilleeWilleyDilley]

Another thing too that you might already know is that by editing players and player names you might as well turn the commentary off otherwise Jonathan Agnew will refer to the new players with the wrong names. There is probaby a way to remove only the part of Agnew's commentary where he mentions player names only for example. But then you would have much less overall commentary and the task itself is obvioisly not easy. I will say though that examining the file and folder structure of the PC version of BL99 is helpful when using a hex editor to analyse the huge 180mb sound file in the PS1 version of BL99 that you see when you mount the rom. It more or less tells you what sound is what in the huge sound file.

 

[LilleeWilleyDilley]

Update: I just found out also how to hex edit the starting time to 10:30am and the finishing time to 6:30pm, so that one does not have to wait as much as 3 hours (10:00am to 1:00pm) for the first interval, since normally an interval in unlimited overs is every 2 hours. This would obviously spread out the playing time more appropriately while still including the 90 overs.

However, the problem now is that when a bowler bowls the last ball just before the clock says 6:00pm, Jonathan Agnew still says "So-and-so, to bowl the last ball of the day", even when the day is now scheduled to end at 6:30pm. I can't fix that, so I guess having the game just at 10:00am to 6:00pm will do for now. At least Agnew still says "so-and-so is going to take the first ball" and "so-and-so to bowl the first ball of the day" when starting at 10:00am.

If anyone wants to assist with this project or share their experiences in trying to patch BL99 for the PS1 (or PC), do not hesitate to post here. Thanks.