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Jkline3

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Posts posted by Jkline3

  1. 4 hours ago, LaTormenta said:

    Great work as always, @Jkline3.

    If anyone is interested, here is a cover that I have made for the ROM.  I know that Kaprizov is now a Wild player, but I liked the shot and I figured that he would be a good fit, seeing as CSKA Moscow won the Kontinental Cup last season and there was no Gagarin Cup for obvious reasons (my NHL covers generally feature the Stanley Cup winners from the previous year).

    That said, if anyone has a better suggestion for a photo and has a high resolution version of it, let me know and I will redo it.

     

    NHL 94 - KHL - 2020s Covers - 2020-21 Edition) (Cover).png

    Love it!

    • Love 1
  2. 7 hours ago, seamor said:

    How's the mission to make every league in the world playable in NHL 94 going? :)

    Amazing as always.

    I've crossed the Atlantic and leagues are getting smaller. Winter is coming and I've got nowhere to go. I may make it further than I originally thought...

    • Love 1
    • Like 1
  3. 12 minutes ago, Sauce said:

    That's the Stars new alternate jersey color scheme.  Rumor has it, many teams will have a "4th jersey" this year.  I saw Vegas' the other day.  Gotta make money back so way/how.

    This will not be in my roms as it is an alternate.
     

    Not going to follow the NFL's lead with a Color Rush version of the ROM? :lol:

  4. These are hilarious / awesome. Brings back so many memories of the first "roms" (if you can even call them that) that I would make when I started using NOSE but wasn't brave enough to try and learn Tile Molester yet. Absolute garbage but I still had a blast playing them and fooling around with all the different variables. 

    • Like 1
  5. 21 hours ago, Sauce said:

    Final update (assuming no serious issues are reported)... I didn't like the original Title Screen art so I just  changed it.  The original version had too much of the white helmet and jersey color bleeding into the background.  So, I went with a different image and created a background that allows the white to pop.  I'm sure my fellow ROM editors know the frustration of trying to get something that you like for the finished product.  LOL

    Anywho... if you downloaded the original post, only the Title Screen art changed so no need to re-download unless you want the new image.  :)

    Cheers!

    It is, hands down, my least favorite part of making a ROM. So much work goes into finding out that you picked a lousy image and it doesn't look good in-game...

  6. 7 hours ago, Fiddz said:

    Great job! I can finally play as my beloved hometown Saskatoon Blades and always lose in the playoffs!

    Seriously though JK, this is a beauty mod, greatly appreciated as a hockey & retro gamer fan! :lol:

    Thank you, these have been a lot of fun to make and after really only watching the draft eligibles over the years I have learned a TON about the CHL.

    Any tips, ideas or suggestions to improve them are greatly appreciated.

  7. Here's a step-by-step of what I do to make center ice logos. Compared to the team selection logos these are a lot more difficult because they require you to fit everything into an even smaller graphic.

    Would love to hear any other tips/tricks from anyone on improvements that they have made.

    1. I use sportslogos.net for the majority of the base artwork. Another great resource I've found is thefaceoff.net which is a great reference to check what teams have used as their center ice logos over the years.

    2. Using Paint, I resize the 150x100 .gif image that I downloaded from sportslogos.net to 48x32. Since these are the same proportions as the original image sometimes you get lucky and only need to shrink with no cropping necessary. Save that as a 24-bit .bmp image.

    1.jpg

    3. In order to make this next step work you must already be done setting the team's uniform colors as the home unis are going to give you the colors that you have to work with. There are 16 colors in the palette, 10 of them specific to the team and 6 "standard" colors used for everyone (ice, skate/blade, stick, face, shadow). Many of these colors will probably repeat depending on the uniform style. The trick is to force your center ice logo to use these colors prior to loading into TM. The automatic color choosing feature in TM can be nice but also very frustrating on some of the "busier" logos with some weird results. Open your ROM with NOSE so you can view the palette.

    NOTE: I use my own sprite edit so this may be a little different for you but the general idea is the same.

    2.jpg

    4. Open your image in GIMP and open both your Colormap and Palettes windows. If these don't automatically open for you they can be found in the Windows > Dockable Dialogs> menu.

    3.jpg

    5. Next step is to create a palette that only uses the colors that you chose for your team uniforms in NOSE. Create a new palette, create a new entry (color) and then edit that color to match one from your team uniform.

    4.jpg     5.jpg     6.jpg

    6. In the color edit screen you will need to input the RGB values of your uniform colors in the HTML notation field.

    7.jpg     8.jpg

    To determine your color codes you can hover over them for a 3-digit code or check the color preview in the sidebar. In this case navy blue is 420 (or 4B, 2G, 0R). The easiest way I've found to convert them to HTML format is to just reverse them and input necessary zeroes. In this example navy blue would be 002040. Repeat this process to add all of the colors from your uniform into the palette and save. I always also include black (000000) and light gray (c0c0c0) from the skates. Most teams will end up with 5-7 colors in their palette.

    Not to get off on a tangent, but you may also find it useful to add some of the other standard colors from the stick, face and shadows to substitute for a color not in your uniform but that may be in the logo. As an example, the pink for the face makes a passable red at such a small scale and the tan can fill in as a yellow or flesh tone.

    NB.jpg

    I DO NOT include them unless they would have a place in the logo as more colors just confuses the color selector in TM more.

    6. Now you're going to want to convert the image you opened into one that only uses the colors from your uniform palette: Image > Mode > Indexed

    9.jpg

    You're going to use the palette that you just created.

    10.jpg

    You'll end up with something like this but don't panic, yet...

    11.jpg

    7. Last step in GIMP is that you're going to save your file. Choose 'Export As', I keep the image as a bmp.

    12.jpg

    SUPER IMPORTANT - make sure you check the 'Do not write color space information' box or your image will not be usable in TM.

    13.jpg 

    8. Open your ROM in TM and paste your logo in the proper spot. Because the colors in your logo should match exactly with colors in your palette TM will not modify anything. 

    14.jpg

    Add your ice color...

    14b.jpg

    Here's where you can let your OCD run wild... You've already got a good working base but most logos can be improved with a little manual cleanup. Text will always be very difficult to make readable because of such a small scale but it can usually be sharpened up a bit so that if you squint your eyes you may be able to make it out...

    15.jpg

    Sorry if that was super long-winded but it took me a ton of trial and error to come up with a system for making new logos that were usually passable in-game. Any time you need a pick-me up, go back and look at the logos from the original game...

    Hopefully that made sense :lol:

    • Thanks 2
  8. I must be missing something, I use Ditherer all the time for other graphics and darkening images but don't know how to reduce the number of colors. Wouldn't be the first time something went over my head!

    I use GIMP because it's the easiest (and freeist) program I've found to be able to limit the number of colors in a palette - or conversely forcing a palette onto an image for center ice logos. 

  9. Here's a summary of a conversation between Mr. @Sauce and I had regarding team selection logos. This is the basic outline of the method that I use. Some manual cleanup is still often necessary but it generally gets me a workable image and some consistency. This is just the method that I use, I'm all ears if anyone has other thoughts. I am in no way, shape or form a graphics expert. In fact the below lists the sum of my knowledge of using GIMP. Only figured out enough to accomplish what I wanted to do with reducing the palettes.

    1. Download logo from www.sportslogos.net. I like using the small 150x100 .gif files because they're already sort of preshrunk and they are also in the right proportions for using as center ice logos. More on that later.

     Penguins 67.gif

    2. Using Paint, I shrink the image to a maximum height OR width of 46 pixels (depending on orientation) in order to give a minimum pixel border on each side. Regardless of how you want to crop, resize to 48x48 and save as a 24-color .bmp. I also take out any TM or R marks at this point because they're too small to see at scale anyway.

    Penguins 67.jpg

    3. Using GIMP, I open the file and convert to an indexed image. Image => Mode => Indexed.

    GIMP1.jpg

    4. There are 9 available slots in the Tile Molester palette for team selection logos.

    TM1.jpg

    You'll want to convert your logo to fewer colors in order to have it match the palette in Tile Molester. Depending on how many colors are in the logo you can reduce it to as few as 1 color (plus B&W). Generally I prefer to use as many colors as I can so that it gives a fade effect. Fewer colors can produce a "too sharp" effect, but it's all just style and preference.

    In Indexed Color Conversion, select "Generate optimum palette". You'll already have white permanently available in the palette so you can select up to 10 as the maximum number of colors.

    GIMP2.jpg

    5. After converting your image the colormap will show the colors that were used. (If the colormap is not visible, go to Windows => Dockable Dialogs => Colormap in the GIMP menu bar).

    GIMP3.jpg

    Copy the 6-digit HTML notation to notepad, then scroll to the next color using the arrows in Color index.

    GIMP4.jpg

    6. To save your reduced-color image go to File => Export As. IMPORTANT: while saving, make sure that you have checked the Do not write color space information box.

    GIMP5.jpg

    GIMP6.jpg

    7. In Tile Molester, navigate to where you want to insert your new logo and load the correct palette:

    TM2.jpg

    7. Double click the color that you want to change (don't touch the first 7 colors as they are attached to the team selection banners). Select the RGB tab and copy/paste your color code from notepad and hit OK. Tile Molester will automatically convert to the nearest available RGB color.

    TM3.jpg

    Since there are only 256 specific colors available to the game, occasionally 2 colors are so close that Tile Molester will consider them the same and you could have duplicate colors in the palette - it's not a problem.

    8. Once all the colors have been changed, go ahead and paste your logo into your ROM. Generally speaking the images come out pretty good but occasionally you'll want to make a tweak or two to fine tune. 

    GIMP7.jpg

    9. Here's how it looks in-game:

    GIMP8.jpg

    10. For this example, I probably would have tried to darken some of the detail in the penguin (gloves, scarf) and maybe a little in the text to sharpen it up.

    • Love 2
    • Thanks 2
  10.  

    2020 QMJHL.bin

    In addition to the 18 league teams I included the All Star Team and Team QMJHL from the CIBC Canada/Russia Series.

    Q1.jpg

    Q2.jpg

    Q3.jpg

    Q4.jpg

    Q5.jpg

    Q7.jpg

    Q8.jpg

    Q9.jpg

    Q10.jpg

    Q11.jpg

    As a special bonus, I created a "French" version for fun. Much of the text cannot be translated due to byte limitations but I changed up a few things to give a bit of a different flavor:

    2020 LHJMQ .bin

    QF1.jpg

    QF3.jpg

    QF4.jpg

    QF5.jpg

    QF6.jpg

    QF7.jpg

    Enjoy!

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