Hardball 5 modded

[Devlin]

On 12/5/2024 at 1:15 AM, Yankee4Life said:

Well yes and no. There are a handful of players that I added to the incomplete rosters that you had that when I finished the rosters I found they are now on two different teams. Here is a good example.

 

Yes, when I set the league up there were only 12 teams and no Browns and I wanted to have as many good players of the era present as possible. So they ended up all over the place. In the end, only a handful of us play it and anyone who has a better solution can upload it. For my part, I'm just happy and thankful that the remaining four teams are finally filled and it doesn't bother me the least for now. I'm still interested in creating portraits for this roster and if I get around to it I'd make some changes anyway. I have the feeling, that our new friend freem might motivate me to spend some time on it again … So yeah, if you don't mind, I'd say upload it. 🙂

 

19 hours ago, freem said:

Probably Dock Ellis.

 

Iconic player. Good choice!

 

19 hours ago, freem said:

I've made more progress with HB5Tool as well; 8bpp RLE-encoded images can now be exported from MSH files. I've attached a few rips from Yankee Stadium as examples.

 

This is nothing short of incredible! I'm really excited to witness your progress.

 

19 hours ago, freem said:

Problem is, some of the images will need proper colors swapped in... how did you manage to change the stadium-specific colors, anyways?

 

That’s the pain of working with different color palettes. Each stadium (each screen in fact) has its own. That's why Toronto's SkyDome can shine in rich blue, while the Polo Grounds presents itself in beautiful green.

The respective color palette of a stadium is located right at the beginning of it’s data:

 

 

All I did with Fenway was simply to copy the palette of Sportsman’s Park and paste it into Fenways’.

 

Thanks to DosBox you can get hold of the palette of a respective screen (stadium, menus etc.) simply by taking a screenshot (CTRL-F5) of it and open it’s color table. This saved me a lot!

 

 

Aside from it, there are still some colors you can’t use:

 

 

The selected lines in the image above are reserved for the primary and secondary uniform colors of each team and therefore often change from team to team. These lines need to be blocked, whenever editing the stadium images. There might be some more colors (probably only in the first and last lines of these palettes), that could cause trouble, but I am not sure about it.

[Devlin]

I forgot one thing worth mentioning: the pink color pixel in the first row is used for transparency in the portrait-files (to show the background pictures). The stadium images also use transparency sometimes and likely the same color was used.

Hope this helps.

[Yankee4Life]

More laughs and fun with these wonderful mods by Devlin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sabugo]

I'm absolutely shocked that you even used Gary Sanchez in a game. I think I need to see a therapist.

[Yankee4Life]

7 hours ago, sabugo said:

I'm absolutely shocked that you even used Gary Sanchez in a game. I think I need to see a therapist.

 

I was surprised to see this too. This game has an option where they are in charge of substitutions and I neglected to disable that feature. Next thing I know this lazy sack of crap was in the game. 😄

[Yankee4Life]

Cleveland at New York (AL)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eleven strikeouts. The fastballs in this game are 95% untouchable.

[jwuk99]

WOW!!!!  I used to update rosters along with bigjim wayyyy back in the day.  I'm honestly speechless at this though.  This makes me want to do a 30 year anniversary 2025 roster update....

 

Still no way to add all 30 MLB teams I assume based on the scheduling file?  The face edits are blowing my mind. 

 

HB5 remains the best baseball game ever made.  

[jwuk99]

THANK YOU so much for sharing this.  HB5 truthers unite!  There are dozens of us LOL. 

[Devlin]

On 11/4/2025 at 10:54 PM, jwuk99 said:

WOW!!!!  I used to update rosters along with bigjim wayyyy back in the day. 

 

It's a small world. I was in contact with him a long time ago and used one of his rosters for the 2015 mod. 

 

On 11/4/2025 at 10:54 PM, jwuk99 said:

 

Still no way to add all 30 MLB teams I assume based on the scheduling file? 

 

I extended the mlbpa-league to 30 teams in the 1920s mod to showcase it ... just in case someone asks about it. Create a new mlbpa.lgd and add 2 teams. Unfortunately, a new schedule would indeed have to be written for 30 teams, which is a huge undertaking without a tool.

 

On 11/4/2025 at 10:54 PM, jwuk99 said:

This makes me want to do a 30 year anniversary 2025 roster update....

 

In this case, I would probably honor my Jays for their incredible run and add a few portraits. I was already tempted to make at least Ernie Clement. And a smiling Vladdy ... 😊Oh and Bo and Varsho and Gausman and Yesavage ... Scherzer! Who is doing the other 700 portraits? 😄

 

On 11/4/2025 at 11:02 PM, jwuk99 said:

THANK YOU so much for sharing this. 

You're welcome 😊

[jwuk99]

3 minutes ago, Devlin said:

 

It's a small world. I was in contact with him a long time ago and used one of his rosters for the 2015 mod. 

 

 

I extended the mlbpa-league to 30 teams in the 1920s mod to showcase it ... just in case someone asks about it. Create a new mlbpa.lgd and add 2 teams. Unfortunately, a new schedule would indeed have to be written for 30 teams, which is a huge undertaking without a tool.

 

 

In this case, I would probably honor my Jays for their incredible run and add a few portraits. I was already tempted to make at least Ernie Clement. And a smiling Vladdy ... 😊Oh and Bo and Varsho and Gausman and Yesavage ... Scherzer! Who is doing the other 700 portraits? 😄

 

You're welcome 😊

I noticed Bo and Vlad were in the 2015 file!  What an amazing season for them this year.  It is truly a game of inches.  As a big White Sox fan I was very happy to find Mark Buehrle on the Jays roster as well!!  If you're ever tempted to complete a 2025 update I will absolutely help with all the roster construction, attributes, etc. Thanks again!

[Yankee4Life]

Devlin it's nice to see you around here again. How are you?

[Devlin]

On 11/7/2025 at 4:14 PM, jwuk99 said:

I noticed Bo and Vlad were in the 2015 file!

 

Yes, but based on low res photos. Nothing else was available back then. But most of the portraits in this file are a bit of low quality. I could only replace existing portraits at that time. The quality improved significantly years later, when I figured out how to add portraits regardless of their size. I also had to remove portraits of players who retired, due to these limitations. If I remember correctly, Jeter and Halladay were among them. Konerko too, by the way.

 

On 11/7/2025 at 4:14 PM, jwuk99 said:

What an amazing season for them this year.  It is truly a game of inches. 

 

I was so bored by the swinging for the fences and striking out stuff, I barely watched any games the last few years. I mean lots of the players don’t even have two-strike approaches nowadays. That's the first thing a hitting coach should focus on. I don’t get it. By May at the latest, it was obvious that this Jays team was different. I was hoping for a Brewers Jays World Series, just so other teams would realize that contact and fundamentals matter. Let’s hope it shifts a bit. This season was a blast for me to watch. ☺️

 

I hope your White Sox climb out of the cellar soon. I always wanted to mod Old Comiskey Park into HB5. I wish I could get my hands on a stadium editor. Unfortunately, the stadiums consist of countless small images, making it nearly impossible to create something new with only a hex-editor as your main weapon.

 

On 11/7/2025 at 4:14 PM, jwuk99 said:

As a big White Sox fan I was very happy to find Mark Buehrle on the Jays roster as well!!

 

If you enjoy it this much, I can offer to make 5 players of your choice for you. Maybe some more. We’ll see. All I can say is that interest and enthusiasm have a positive effect on my motivation. It's nice to create something that others enjoy.☺️

 

On 11/7/2025 at 4:14 PM, jwuk99 said:

If you're ever tempted to complete a 2025 update I will absolutely help with all the roster construction, attributes, etc. Thanks again!

 

Thank you, but no chance on my part. I started in 2012. It took me 4 or 5 years to make the portraits for the 2015 mod. By the time I am finished, half the players are retired. 🤪On top of that, I hardly play anymore. Funnily enough, the last game I played was the first perfect game I ever witnessed in HB5. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of it. Al Michaels wrapped it up as usual, by the way.

 

My motivation isn’t the same as before, my free time even more limited. If HB5 were just a little bit more realistic (more stats based, walks!, more strikeouts, CPU less dependent on the homerun to score), I would still play it to death. Someday AI might be able to tweak it just a little bit. 😬 But I love the art style so much, that I still enjoy making a portrait now and then.

[Devlin]

19 hours ago, Yankee4Life said:

Devlin it's nice to see you around here again. How are you?

 

Great to hear from you! I am fine. How are you? I nearly contacted you after the Yankees lost the ALDS, but I didn't want it to come across the wrong way. But now I have a crumb of comfort. The 1908 Old Time Baseball mod is finished.

 

OTB08.ZIP

 

However, the tiny hitting timing window is frustrating. You’ll collect K’s and it basically eliminates bunting and hit and run, too. 🙄