wboy

For those who may not know, there is a custom build of SNES9X known as SNES9K that supports kaillera. Its published by goebish and can be found at http://goebish.free.fr/snes9k/ Not sure how it compares to ZSNES's non-kaillera based netplay (never tried it), but SNES9K's kaillera support might help a few SNES NHL94 fans find a game with each other a little easier.

Perfect Synchro is only for/required by a few Sega CD games, NHL94 (SCD) being one of them. The option actually disappears when you open a BIN or SMD rom. As for getting Kaillera to work... place the exact same rom with the exact same name on the "Gens" folder on both PCs. Have both players open the rom, let it play for a second or so, then select Netplay. Create the game on one of the PCs and have the other join and then start the game. if it stil fails, make sure you both have the same version kailleraclient.dll aswell.

Yeah I think swos made that rom some years ago now. Now if only I could find the permanent "Hyper" speed hack and we'll basically have "NHL Jam". It's done by editing the lines so the appropriate position is set to Hex 0 (or a hex value greater than the amount of players on the team). From memory it doesn't work for goalies... or atleast until after the first stoppage of play.... not that you'ld logically do that anyway. You can effectively apply this hack in NOSE as !!!! Hex 0 has been deliberately included at the top of each edit line position (player) list. I was going to make it read "None" for Hex 0 as a hint to this, but I don't think 95 onwards supports this nice little trick so I didn't end up going that way. For Evan, I have seen game genie codes that also enforce 4 on 4 (virtual penalty), but making that works for only OT could be tricky.

An idiom for the idiot... see here ... Oh, and for the record... the *public* release of NOSE only took one year. You couldn't even achieve a simple roster and palette hack in that time. Go do something useful for this site/forums... leave!

I may be forced to make a code structure change to NOSE (for other reasons) which may allow me to add SNES support with relative ease. The data structure is not exactly like the SEGA versions unfortunately.

Up the ratings of your players... then do this trick, and your game will be faster yet again... try it out when you get your new PC. I have more of an interest in finding new hacks as opposed to playing anyones roster hacks... so do as you wish... it's no skin of my NOSE...

Here are even more basic instructions for yourself so you can actually experience the difference, and see how *wrong* you are. Before opening a NHLPA 93 or NHL 94 sega genesis rom within the Gens emulator, set the "CPU" > "Country" > setting to "Europe (PAL)", and set the "Graphic" > "Frame Skip" setting to "0" instead of the default "Auto". This achieves the same result. I found this out shortly after I made my original post. How nice of you to show interest in this thread giving me a valid reason to explain it to you. I gather everyone here happily managed with the first set of instructions and realised it not only achieves a much faster game, but that it also maintains the gameplay of the original or hacked roms. At the rate you are releasing your 93 ROM hacks, I ensure you this will be lot faster to do as opposed to your suggested and flawed method, even with all your uber hex editor skills.

Rather than make an *extremely* long winded post on the formula used, I’ve decided to post an Excel spreadsheet that actively shows the calculation of the Overall Rating in NHL94 & 95. In short, the trick in reverse engineering how it works was to use NHL95’s Trade Player facility as it does not randomly(?) alter the Overall Rating. A team of equally attributed players will all have the same overall rating. By using this, calculating the multiplying factor for each attribute was made a considerably easier, or should I say logical. That said, it did take me a short while to figure out the Bonus Points methods used (select the appropriate cells in excel to see the formulas used). Also, working out that the goalie’s individual attribute sums (with the 2.25 multiplying factors) must also be rounded down to the nearest .5 value also had me stumped for a little while. I’ve tested it enough to ensure myself it is same calculation method used in-game. The random adjustments to the rating you can expect to see in-game for NHL94 & 95 are explained within the spreadsheet along with a few other notes. As for Aggression, well, it’s still not used! Sorry Mahavisha, but you got fooled by the dreaded random in-game overall rating system. Congrats to EA for making the game look more complex rating wise that it really is! So how is EA’s formula flawed? Well in two ways. Firstly, hex values greater than 6 are still multiplied at their hex value. Put in a few Hex F’s (15) and watch the Overall Rating sky rocket to 99+. Secondly, the bonus point system can also create flawed overall ratings. Give a player mostly 6’s, and leave their endurance and passing at 0, and they’ll still be rated 99+. It could be sometime until I get the overall rating column in NOSE (haven’t done any development on it for over a month now) so make do with the spreadsheet for now. I still plan to allow for a mathematical average/percentage for those who want it, as I don't like the rating system used in-game. Note, this formula *may* also work for NHL96-98, but I believe the default rating is 40 as opposed to 25. S9495ORF.zip

Try deleting the setttings.xml as suggested here: http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~kenth/tm/docs/help.htm#KNOWNISSUES It'll prompt you for the language settings again which may fix the issue for me. I just updated to the latest "Windows Platform - J2SE™ Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 6" (JRE) and it still works with no issues. Have you download the right JRE? Make sure you didn't accidently grab the SDK, or alternatively, if you purchased a AMD64 based CPU, make sure you grabbed the "Windows AMD64 Platform - J2SE™ Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 6" (JRE).

Just some quick news to inform you that I've actually worked out the entire overall rating formula (for players & goalies). I'll post some detailed notes in the next day or so. The formula is still flawed IMO, but the real question is have I changed my opinion on the "Aggression" attribute affecting the player's overall rating? Evan's Hypothetical Point Question #05: So who is initially right, naples39 (& wboy), or Mahavishnu? Jerry.... Jerry....

lol... these forums need a little bit of conflict to create some excitement... well, outside of the usual newbies boasting about their 1337 gaming abilities... which happens all too often here. all long as it doesn't get to jerry style fisty cuffs or nudity, then its all good and healthy...

Going by your original statement, why wouldn't I say you are wrong? Even though you have now explained yourself a little better, I can assure you aggression also has no impact on the overall rating. Wait for my long winded post and it'll prove it to you.

No, actually you are wrong and naples39 is mostly right, though I somewhat disagree with him sayings its "pretty easy" to calculate! The 8th "Handedness/Fighting", 12th "Roughness"(?) and 14th "Aggression" attribute values have no impact on the player’s overall rating. I'll prove it all when I find the time to make a long winded post that explains a good portion of EA's "methods of madness" overall rating system. Its actually partly flawed in extreme/rare cases.

Emulator based screen shots attached (1 snes, 2 genesis). Original game size rinks, resize as required.

Here's a little trick using Gens to fool the NHL94 & 93 roms to run at the PAL fps speed on a NTSC based console, making it run 17% faster. Before loading your ROM, select CPU > Country > Europe (PAL) from the Gens menu bar. By default, this is usually set to "Auto detect" Load your ROM, and once you see any on screen graphics (e.g. EA sports logo), select CPU > Country > USA (NTSC). As the ROM only checks the region of the console at the very start when loading, you've now tricked the ROM to run the less cycles used to make the PAL version operate as quick as the NTSC version. Changing Gens to then act as a NTSC console allows you to effectively boost the in game speed, giving you hyper speed hockey. If you want to "hear" the speed difference, don't change Gens to NTSC until the intro screen music has started. Now I have been researching how I can permanently hack this into the ROM. I already know where it stores the value in the cpu's memory for these two games, I'm just not experienced enough yet in 68k Assembler to hack this change back into the ROM for those of you who would want to make use of it in online play etc. Let me know if you like this speed-up... I personally do as I have always found NHL94 a tad too slow... the more interest, the more I may be inspired to find the hack required. I can also tell you how to hack a save state to run PAL on NTSC (saving you doing this trick everytime) if anyone's interested.

From what I've seen/tested, the banner tile data appears to begin at 7A3AC The 8200 bytes seems to affect the tile layout (if changed), as do the following 31 & 30 based bytes so avoid changing these (initally anyway). I've attached an image of a quick initial test I did, which shows how to the palette color being referenced has changed. In the first example where I have replaced the 11 with 55, if you make it 56 (or any other two colors), you get a checkered effect like seen in SJ banner. I don't plan spending anymore time on this unless someone makes a slight breakthough in understanding the data a little more, at which point if I can help decipher it further, I will. best of luck.

Hex 0000030E is where you find the team order offsets. You can use this data to tell you the exact start position of each team. The first 2 bytes of the team, typically 0092 is the offset + team start offset (e.g. 0092+00005330 for ANH) that takes you to the start of the roster data (also correctly bypassing any free bytes if they exist).

As a minor add-on/followup to my player card tutorial, attached you can find a TM XML configuration file to make editing ice rink logos in NHL94 a little easier. Basic usage/tips: Place the extracted XML file in your "resources" subfolder found under the Tile Molester folder. Rename the filename (not the extention) of the .XML to match the name of the rom you are about to edit. When you then open your rom in TM, you will find bookmarks for all ice rink team logos. I have also mapped the color palettes, but as they link to the rom data they will only work for original rom structure. If you are using a rom that you have roster edited in NOSE (and moved around the free bytes between teams), then use NOSE to tell you the home strip color offset in decimal, and use the "Palette" > "Import From" > "This File" feature. With the amount of palettes bookmarked, its best you set your screen resolution to 1280x960 or greater (vertically). Use the "Window" > "New Window" menu feature in TM to open many logo at once as seen in the attached images. If you paste in new logos using the "Edit" > "Paste From" feature, remember that TM will best attempt to match the colors found in your active/selected palette. Ice logos are 48x32 pixels in size, so make sure the image you using matches these dimensions. All logos are 30A hex bytes apart if you wish to use the "Go To (relative) Offset" feature. I think that just about covers everything. nhl94_tm_xml_irtl.zip

Ignore that bogus player, its nothing.... I just took a closer look and realised what EA have done. Its seems the game terminates the players in a roster when the player name length is 0002, which normally followed by the team name length bytes etc. When EA shortened/changed names, they got to the end and added an additional 0002, but didn't bring the team name data forward as to obviously not alter the original rom's structure too much. I actually thought the 0002 byte before the team name served a different purpose... which is why NOSE gets tricked into thinking its another player when indeed it is not... if only EA knew how to manage free bytes! If you check the last player in Anaheim, you even see the remanence of Dennis Vail from the orginal roster (after the 0002) though it is missing the "Denn" text.

swos, have you opened the extracted ROM from NHL94.SR in NOSE....? have you noticed that each team has what appears to be an additional bogus player entry, with no allocated name length.. and a heap of random bytes that follow. I thought it could be team averages for each attribute, but that doesn't appear to be the case. If modifications to this version of the rom require such data, that could be another slight hurdle in getting your NHL'06 from to work on the PS2. The goods news is (as you touched on) that the rom structure is very similar even with the roster changes etc.

I've finally posted the tutorial on my site. I've packaged it as a download (rather than online pages) as there is a fair bit of other resources I have included to help you with the process of updating player cards. It basically contains: a step-by-step tutorial on updating player cards in Tile Molester, additional pages & documents (pdfs) listing all the offsets & player cards (for both NHL 94 & 95), information about changing the player card to roster player associations, IPS patches to repair player cards with shared tiles, and more... Let me know if you think any sections are unclear or vague (excuse any bad engrish), and I'll update the tutorial appropriately in the near future. Find it here: http://www.hexaddicts.com/nose EDIT: link dead, here is the file: player card tutorial.zip -smozoma Enjoy, wboy. PS: Evan, feel free to use the info & resources as you wish in the editing section of this site.

yes, any joystick seen by Windows can be used by Gens, as long as its plugged in and detected before you launch gens. You must also reconfigure your controller options to make it work. for an extremely cheap option, you can even get the usb converters for most common console controllers.

Even easier...? if the database tools you're working with support XML scripting... and even then... surely not always easier than CSV? Yes, no doubt XML is potentially more adaptable for this scenario with the different types of data being captured... but in terms of pure simplicity, and backward compatibility with older databases and associated tools/applications, its best CSV is always keep as an option aswell IMO.

No, you can actually get replacement fliptop cases for the majority of older PS2's aswell. See here.

Well assuming its the same as the team hex reference order used by the rom's playoff data, then yes, that order should be correct. I'd be damned if its any different.