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HOW TO: Change Team Selection Order


smozoma

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You need a hex editor (download HxD). NOSE can be helpful but is not required.

Notation guide: "@" indicates an offset to go to in the hex editor. It is in hexadecimal.

Introduction

If you use NOSE, you can see the "Offset Hex" of each team:

post-253-025610200 1330659092_thumb.png
(click to enlarge)

These values tells you where in the ROM the data for each team is located. Now, the nice thing is, you don't need to re-order all the team data to change the team order. There is a list of these offset values in the ROM, and you just need to re-order the list. A list of offsets is often called a "pointer table," so you need to re-order the team pointer table (a table of offsets that points you to the location of the data for each team).

The Hack

The location of the team pointer table is:
 

NHLPA 93: @0314 (same for original or 30-team ROM)
NHL 94: @030E (thanks SabreFan1)
NHL 95: @0772 (thanks KingRaph)
NHL 96, 97, 98: someone please post the addresses below if you know them (can be found by searching for the first offset value seen in NOSE)

For example, if you go to offset @0314 in NHLP93, the first few values you see are

000008B8 (Boston)
00000B70 (Buffalo)
00000E32 (Calgary)
000010D8 (Chicago)
00001398 (Detroit)


In NOSE (and the screenshot above), you can see which team goes with which value.

So, just re-order the values to re-order the teams.

Limitations

This WILL NOT REORDER THE TEAM GRAPHICS (logos, banners..)

Warnings

Make sure you keep the pointer table values properly aligned, and don't change the number of pointers.

1-offsethex.png

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It turned out that my NHLPA 93 ROM was in "SMD" format, not raw "BIN" format, which made it impossible to find the pointer/offset values.

Use this utility to switch it: ROM Converter

Use SMD -> BIN mode.

My ROM was actually named "NHLPA NHL '93.bin", (not "NHLPA NHL '93.smd"), so I had to change the input type when trying to open the file.

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  • 1 year later...

Sweet, this is the information I was looking for this weekend. My only remaining question, then, is how does the ROM or NOSE know whether it's a 28-team or a 30-team ROM?

Edited by Tickenest
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  • 3 years later...
  • 4 years later...
On 3/1/2012 at 10:34 PM, smozoma said:

You need a hex editor (download HxD). NOSE can be helpful but is not required.

Notation guide: "@" indicates an offset to go to in the hex editor. It is in hexadecimal.

Introduction

If you use NOSE, you can see the "Offset Hex" of each team:

post-253-025610200 1330659092_thumb.png
(click to enlarge)

These values tells you where in the ROM the data for each team is located. Now, the nice thing is, you don't need to re-order all the team data to change the team order. There is a list of these offset values in the ROM, and you just need to re-order the list. A list of offsets is often called a "pointer table," so you need to re-order the team pointer table (a table of offsets that points you to the location of the data for each team).

The Hack

The location of the team pointer table is:
 

NHLPA 93: @0314 (same for original or 30-team ROM)
NHL 94: @030E (thanks SabreFan1)
NHL 95: @0772 (thanks KingRaph)
NHL 96, 97, 98: someone please post the addresses below if you know them (can be found by searching for the first offset value seen in NOSE)

For example, if you go to offset @0314 in NHLP93, the first few values you see are

000008B8 (Boston)
00000B70 (Buffalo)
00000E32 (Calgary)
000010D8 (Chicago)
00001398 (Detroit)


In NOSE (and the screenshot above), you can see which team goes with which value.

So, just re-order the values to re-order the teams.

Limitations

This WILL NOT REORDER THE TEAM GRAPHICS (logos, banners..)

Warnings

Make sure you keep the pointer table values properly aligned, and don't change the number of pointers.

1-offsethex.png

Offsets for NHL96-98

NHL 96 - Team-offset to extract rosters - 77E 

NHL 97 - Team-offset to extract rosters - 77E 

NHL 98 - Team-offset to extract rosters - 77E 

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 3/1/2012 at 8:34 PM, smozoma said:

This WILL NOT REORDER THE TEAM GRAPHICS (logos, banners..)

Just figured I'd give the heads up to anyone looking into this.
I was curious as to what this actually reordered and was disappointed to find that, as far as NHL98 goes [and given the similarities, I might guess '96 and '97], it seems that in addition to the team graphics, it also doesn't reorder the team ratings, divisional alignment, default matchup, or well, anything that isn't the roster data basically.

I was hoping this would do something similar to how Carolina's data is still in the Hartford spot, but given that that change also applies to the logos and stuff, there is clearly something else at work here and more digging would be required. Unfortunately for my purposes, this edit doesn't do anything different than simply copy/pasting the player data in NOSE. Oh well.

Edited by von Ozbourme
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I've figured out how to move teams around, with the graphics, logos, banners and everything. It comes down to kore of do you care if the teams are in alpha order or not. If you do, then it can't happen; as of now. But if you don't, it's pretty straight forward. Find the teams in the divisions and where they would be jn the order and replace all the data (logo, ice, banner, players etc.) And then rinse and repeat until you get what you want it to look like. Example is my NHL95 2022 version that I did this for. 

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5 minutes ago, UltraMagnus said:

It comes down to kore of do you care if the teams are in alpha order or not.

Yeah for my purpose it was testing to see if I can align the team overall ratings while maintaining an alphabetized order. But it seems that that information is tied to the selection order and doesn't care in the slightest what team is in a given slot. And since I would be changing all of the art assets anyway, reordering them would comically end up being extra work.

Like you said, it just comes down to the results you are looking for.

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