Leaderboard

I will be running a 2018 playoff simulation using @naples39 2018 ROM. Each day I hope to post a round with video highlights, until we reveal who will be the 2018 simulated champion!

Hi everyone! I’m a long-time lurker but would like to now see if I can be a contributor (of sorts). I love NHL94…takes me way back to a fun time of sports video gaming. Plus, 1994 holds special memories for long time (suffering) Rangers fans like me. This is a wonderful site and appears to be a great community. I want to say thanks to everyone who contributes as it helps folks, like me, with no hacking skills, develop custom ROMs. Hat tip to Slapshot67/Skip and Naples39 for the awesome ROMs that they do for the current NHL seasons. Both versions are awesome for different reasons. That said, I have “lifted” Skip/Slapshot’s version and have been doing “tweaks” to it. In the end, it’s a hybrid concept of theirs as well as Naples39 as it pulls some inspiration from both. Here’s what to expect from this file: *31 NHL Teams. The “WPG freeze bug” doesn’t occur IF you use Kega Fusion. However, with Fusion, WSH, WPG and Team #32 all cycle player portraits but there is a weird error code that appears next to the image. While it’s not the end of the world, I hope to one day fix it. The “WPG freeze bug” does exist for some other emulators. *32nd Team is the 2018 NHL Prospects. So now, you can play as Dahlin, Svechnikov, Zadina, Tkachuk, Boqvist, Hayton, Hughes, etc. I added all of the top-rated prospects for this year’s June draft. I researched the prospects, online via multiple credible sources, to get some attribute insights. *Several player portraits have been updated/replaced. I may replace some more when time permits and my wife doesn’t get annoyed at me for putting in more time. LOL *Some NCL players have been updated/replaced, from how Skip/Slapshot67 had them. *Goalie speed has been set to zero. As such, they are significantly less likely to go into the trapezoid (while forwards are attacking) as they don’t have the speed to come back in time. They are less spaz-like/aggressive out of the crease now. Agility rating makes the goalies move quickly side to side (between the posts) and makes them more animated in the net. I tested this many times and it feels more natural. Well, as “natural” as the NHL 94 will allow. *I edited just about every player (between 700-800 edits). I did not base ratings on this year’s performance alone. However, this year influenced said ratings. The ratings are based on the last 3 years averaged out for players who played a minimum of 60 games/per. For those who didn’t, I had a different methodology. I used Hockey Forecaster, HockeyDB, Elite Prospects and HFBoards (each team’s page) for insight. Plus, I used stat and analytics sites for insight as well. *No goalies or Dmen in the 90s, for OVR rating, several in the 80s. Only 3 forwards in the 90s. You could probably guess who…again, no drop off in terms of production as it is more in line with the original game ratings. So, in this ROM, 80 is the new 90. 90 OVR just means that you are the best in the world. Using the scale of 0-6 I did avoid 6 for certain attributes like defense. No one is higher than a 5 as it allows for some "human error" on the part of the CPU. *Only 2 goalies per team (except for the prospects who have 3). I felt it was a better use of a roster spot to have an extra forward and/or dman. I wanted to get some noobs like Donato, Andersson, Gaudette, Middlestadt, etc. in the game. Not all made it in but maybe one day… *Lines are set using LeftWing Lock’s and Daily Faceoff’s websites. They are not the most current but rather, the average for the year of which lines/D pairings were used the most per team. *Some injured players are still active (Shattenkirk, Bouwmeester, Suter, Carlo, Thornton, Nash, etc.). More fun that way. Folks can change them if they want up-to-date. *All shot/pass tendencies have been updated and play (mostly) accurate. Same for checking tendency. *Playoffs are based on 4 rotating scenarios. I added the 2017 & 2018 brackets (as of 4/8/18). There are also two fake/custom brackets that allow for teams that weren’t in the playoffs the last couple of years (CAR, BUF and ARZ) to have some opportunity as well as for those who maybe showed up once in the last few years (EDM and FLA). Anywho, sorry for the long post. This is in no way meant to be competition to Naples39 or Slapshot67/Skip (or Coach Mac or any other folks). I’m not interested in any such thing as I have big respect for what each does for the game/community. I just wanted to add “another flavor to the menu.” If you download and notice any errors, please let me know. I look forward to any and all feedback! NHL94 2018 v3.1.zip

Of course. First point I tried.

New version with player cards for all starters in the first post of this thread.

I made an edit with the final playoff tree set. Hopefully you don't mind, Naples. Obviously this is your work and 0% of it is mine. I used the 1.31 version and changed all (but 1) of the playoff matchups to match this year's real playoff bracket. Obviously as with everything in a 24 year old game, there has to be a few concessions. Here's what I did: -All but one possible playoff matchup in the game is real for 2018. -All of the non-playoff teams are in one possibility. (Couldn't leave them completely out, as it would cause the game to crash when trying to pick them for playoffs.) In this scenario, I seeded all of the non-playoff teams according to the real life standings, if the playoff teams didn't exist, except for Nashville. With 31 teams, ONE real playoff team had to remain in the West, since there are only 7 that didn't qualify. So, if you play with Nashville and notice that your matchup is Arizona instead of Colorado, back out and try again. Seattle will fix this in a couple years. -I flipped the 'West' and 'East' according to how EA matches them up, as it has always bugged me that the Western Conference is on the east side of the screen and the Eastern Conference is on the west side of the screen. Now, they show up on the "correct" side of the screen. This doesn't matter, as NHL 94 never actually refers to them on-screen as the Eastern and Western Conferences. If this bothers you, reset the matchups yourself. haha -You'll notice that the higher-seeded teams are toward the bottom of the screen, with the highest-seeded division champion in each conference at the very bottom. This is so that home-ice works properly. In NHL 94, the team listed second always has home-ice advantage. Therefore, if the seeds hold, home-ice will always play out correctly. The real-life higher seeded teams will always have home-ice as long as they advance (until the FInals). Unfortunately, the East will always have home-ice in the FInals and there's no real way around that without flipping the conferences back (as I already explained earlier). Luckily, the re-alignment a couple years back helped us out here. The game runs the playoffs as a straight bracket and doesn't re-seed like the real NHL used to. So, all of the matchups will play out perfectly, however home-ice may not work out right if a lower seeded team wins a series. There's no way around that. Hopefully this little tweak makes it easier for everyone to play through the real 2018 playoffs! It's not perfect, but it's the best we can do on almost quarter-century old software. NHL 2018 1.31 by naples39 - playoff.bin

If people can get RetroArch work and the long distance emulation is good as well as is suggested by Scribe "Netplay is intriguing because it supposedly uses a peer-to-peer setup with frame rollback similar to ggpo to reduce latency. " then I'd be willing to play some games again. As I've stated in the past my main problem is Gens and how I've perceived drastical changes to my online experience by using different version of the emulator and the latency settings provided by it (you cannot actually know is the opponent using it), I have been vocal and transparent about it since finding it. This is the main reason why I am abstaining from playing at the moment or getting involved in NHL'94 scene. I do not want to lower the level of the gaming I can offer by going down back to default but I also cannot demand anyone else to make the necessary adaptations as rerecording also comes with an occasional graphical glitch. Using the settings only to my advantage or it being just for the few would not make me feel good about winning either. A new emulator that has latency compensation built in and puts everyone to equal position would be ideal but as stated, problem would be the site and savestates.