The Summer of Backyard Sports has begun! Backyard Baseball 2001 has announced its release for July 8th and there will be more games re-released to follow. The introduction of 31 MLB pros for Baseball 2001 rocketed the franchise into orbit selling over a quarter of a million copies worldwide. This you think would be enough for any Backyard fans to call this summer "The Summer of Backyard Sports", but on the flip side of these title returns is a small community of die-hards producing mods of our beloved franchise to provide extended gaming experiences nearly a quarter decade since the franchise originally launched. I'm going to fill y'all in on the modding advancements that have been made the last few years as the community has grown.
The first modding of Backyard Sports titles was with save state hacking. This is done by adjusting the season text files which b hold the save data for the games, this could allow for some pretty gamechanging adjustments to rosters including the use of previously unplayable generic characters like Star Moonbeam or Franky Holly. The Reddit Backyard Baseball community used this to create their 24 coach leagues with full 9 round draft each season. You can find some coach file editing tools online at snailmemes.com/backyard_baseball.
The next modding advancement was spearheaded by Vissery who discovered that in the games .(B) file that you could find and change hex data. This type of modding is known as B-File modding or Hex Code modding. The easiest thing to mod is player names and rating. This also resulted in some gameplay changes using mostly guess and check techniques which were used in the Reddit League to create a more balanced league experience by making it harder to exploit the weak computer AI. Gschlim and others have contributed to this by unlocking more jersey colors for custom teams using this hex code modding.
A similar B-FIle modding technique can be used in the Backyard Soccer MLS edition to manipulate the schedule and teams that are in each league. Hackyard Soccer MLS Edition. This is how leagues like the Discord Backyard Soccer League can facilitate a full draft and custom schedules for its 24 coaches. This has also been done in Vissery's Football League for Backyard Football.
The ScummVM project allows for older games to be played on newer systems, all you really need is the game files and scummvm takes care of the rest replacing all the old executable files in the game's executable and rewrites it in C++. This means that with fork off of ScummVM and some C++ knowledge the games game be modded, however this requires a completely new build of the ScummVM for each modification. BackyardSports.online was originally a fork of ScummVM, but was included into the main project after partnering. Competitive mods can be toggled on, but the primary purpose of ScummVM is to preserve games and not modify.
In 2022 Whatisaphone started to work on a project called "inside-baseball" which were modding tools for Backyard Sports titles. This later became known as Baller, which can be used to extract the scripts of the game, let you make changes, and then compile those scripts so that they can run in the game. This was a large leap in the modding capabilities of the games, giving more wiggle room with changes in the game. Whatisaphone later became a Lead Developer for the Backyard Sports re-releases and showed off some of these modding capabilities with the Crowd Control plugin for Twitch.
There are only a handful of people working with Baller currently, but the modding has been ramping up. Most of this being discussed in the r/BackyardBaseball Discord Group. Vissery and Pesonizzle have created tools for swapping team logo's in the game so that the Reddit Backyard Baseball League can have completely custom team names and logos. Personizzle is also designing a tool called "soundizzle 2001" which would allow you to change the Home Run and Walk Up audio for any player in the game with a simple drag and drop.
With the summer of Backyard Sports in full swing I am expecting (and hoping) to see more modders jump into the scene to try and make customizing this beloved game even more accessible and fun. We may see franchise modes, new custom powerups, or maybe we will just end up seeing Kermit the Frog as a playable character. I'll be excited whatever the case.
A similar B-FIle modding technique can be used in the Backyard Soccer MLS edition to manipulate the schedule and teams that are in each league. Hackyard Soccer MLS Edition. This is how leagues like the Discord Backyard Soccer League can facilitate a full draft and custom schedules for its 24 coaches. This has also been done in Vissery's Football League for Backyard Football.
The ScummVM project allows for older games to be played on newer systems, all you really need is the game files and scummvm takes care of the rest replacing all the old executable files in the game's executable and rewrites it in C++. This means that with fork off of ScummVM and some C++ knowledge the games game be modded, however this requires a completely new build of the ScummVM for each modification. BackyardSports.online was originally a fork of ScummVM, but was included into the main project after partnering. Competitive mods can be toggled on, but the primary purpose of ScummVM is to preserve games and not modify.
In 2022 Whatisaphone started to work on a project called "inside-baseball" which were modding tools for Backyard Sports titles. This later became known as Baller, which can be used to extract the scripts of the game, let you make changes, and then compile those scripts so that they can run in the game. This was a large leap in the modding capabilities of the games, giving more wiggle room with changes in the game. Whatisaphone later became a Lead Developer for the Backyard Sports re-releases and showed off some of these modding capabilities with the Crowd Control plugin for Twitch.
There are only a handful of people working with Baller currently, but the modding has been ramping up. Most of this being discussed in the r/BackyardBaseball Discord Group. Vissery and Pesonizzle have created tools for swapping team logo's in the game so that the Reddit Backyard Baseball League can have completely custom team names and logos. Personizzle is also designing a tool called "soundizzle 2001" which would allow you to change the Home Run and Walk Up audio for any player in the game with a simple drag and drop.
With the summer of Backyard Sports in full swing I am expecting (and hoping) to see more modders jump into the scene to try and make customizing this beloved game even more accessible and fun. We may see franchise modes, new custom powerups, or maybe we will just end up seeing Kermit the Frog as a playable character. I'll be excited whatever the case.