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Yes. I've never actually turned line changes off. I think the puck is in possession of the highlighted player. I think the puck was also in possession of a player the other time but he was facing towards the camera so it was more obvious. He just stood there doing nothing.

In the 2nd gen of 3D NHL games on PC (2000-2005) when we broke open the AI, there were a bunch of label to some of the functions (stepuptimer, stepupdefault? I think) which were also found in earlier iterations of the series 95-99. The code wasn't commented but fragments of the text were still there. Since NHL Hockey and NHL95 on PC were similar in structure to the Genesis version, Ì wouldn't be surprised if that code made its way through every iteration... even up to now.

New Jersey and Pittsburgh. I just ran another demo of the two teams (20 minute periods, penalties and line changes on) and it happened again. Here is a screenshot of the situation when they stopped playing. It's different from the 1st time.

OH! Yes, that sounds perfectly logical, the exact combination of players on the ice, their awarenesses, the puck position etc. could all lead to an AI stalemate. Thanks for the insight! I assume this is caused by everyone's awareness being too low to see eachother, is that right? In any case, can you tell me any more, or point me to a relevant forum thread? EDIT Just reviewed the original ROM ratings distributions for Offence & Defence, and compared them to my distributions of the same. My distributions were done purposely very similar, with one major exception: the median and mode of my Forwards Defensive Awareness is significantly lower. If my understanding of what you are saying is correct, nudging this curve back to conform to the original should reduce the problem. Assuming of course this issue better, not worse, in the original.

Thank you very much for this. Great to see your back! Your work is always amazing.

If he made any tweaks to the cpu defensive awareness, that may happen. EA has this thing called "step-up logic" that they've used in their AI parameters for decades. Basically, if a player moves within a certain range of another player they will engage, but if you alter those values to affect the distance between them, it creates dead spots. Offensive players won't move forward, defensive players won't attack. It's a tricky little piece of code to get the balance right.

Great hack! Its awesome well done! I'm sorry but I just came across a weird bug. I was watching a demo game and after a while all the players just sort of stopped playing and were just standing there occasionally moving a couple of steps back and forth. The crowd animations and clock timer continued to tick down. After the period, the next period began normally and the game continued.

Amazing to see that you're back! Your rom hack is the new Gold standard! Incredible stuff.