Jump to content
NHL'94 Forums

Sean

Members
  • Posts

    366
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    54

Posts posted by Sean

  1. 26 minutes ago, AndrewB said:

    It seems the best way is to put the 16 teams that made the tourney into Pod A and/or B, the "next best 16" into Pod A and/or B (all others in C & D)... then hope computer-generated fate makes a true-to-life tourney after choosing Rom with Pods A and B

    If this was a one-time release… yes, I would do that in a heartbeat. But there’s a good reason and I’ll share it.

    The main reason I don’t do that is because this project began in October, so keeping heavily structured pods (regions based heavily on conference and geography, alphabetized) as opposed to rankings saved me hours and hours of boring meticulous work reordering and repodding and made the navigation a little easier while playing, and saved guesswork as to who would have a good year and who wouldn’t.

    While the big symptom is that you can’t play the real tournament without Challonge and have to switch ROMs for certain match-ups, for now I’m okay with that because I’m burnt out on hacking and 5 minutes of work to set up a bracket when I log on for a weekend beats hours and hours of making a new ROM (but I completely understand why as a player who didn’t make the game that it would be an inconvenience).


    TLDR: next year I’ll maybe do a Top 32 commemorating the tournament, but for now I just can’t

    • Thanks 1
  2. 45 minutes ago, AndrewB said:

    I did notice (and tell me if I'm wrong) that we cannot play a computer-generated tournament that involves teams from 3 or 4 pods, only the selected 2 that were chosen at the start.  So, for example, we cannot have a tournament that has Boston College (pod A), RIT (pod B), and/or Michigan (pod C), and/or Minnesota (pod D)

    So this is my biggest complaint about the ROMs as well, and a reason why the Dynasty package had so many Excel sheets.

    But sadly it’s not possible to fix until we get a 64-team ROM (which by then might still be an issue because of how many schools are rumored to add D1 programs). 

    This exists (sorry if I’m over-explaining) because the most teams we can put in a ‘94 ROM right now is a firm 32, so the pods exist to even allow two teams that wouldn’t be together if I did ROMs by conference, region, or rankings to play in the first place.

    A symptom of this is that there is no way to just do a HockeyEast tournament (always will be AH or ECAC teams somewhere) or do a tournament involving a mix such as BC, RIT, NoDak, and UMich without software like Excel or Challonge.

    It’s not the best and you’d have to simulate/guess how games would go for others, but it is a necessary evil for the rest of this to work. 
     

    Aside from this - thanks for the kind words, and hope you enjoyed the latest update! 

  3. We have the most info on hacking those two games and there’s the most demand. 

    It might seem like a no-brainer to hack the games with the most features (such as 96) but it also can cause some issues and you lose certain levels of customization/ease we have with 94 (and 95). 

  4. 49 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

    New to the group here.  How do I get updated NHL 94 rosters with this latest update?  I only have the sega cd version of nhl 94 so I'm assuming I'll need the cartridge form to do these updates?  Is there a way to buy the cartridge with the most current rosters?

    Thank you!

    Ronnie

    Hi Ronnie! Welcome to the cult. 

    Our updates are typically played on emulators (PC, smartphone, modern console, other modern devices) or flash carts (which allow you to play on a Genesis via SD card).

    If you want to play digitally: Emulation is free if you already have a compatible controller and device capable of running the program.

    If you want a physical cart: Flash Carts are anywhere from $30 for cheap knockoffs to $100+ for the authentic high quality ones. Occasionally pirates will take work from sites like ours and sell real carts but they do not support our community so generally I’d recommend staying away and instead hunting for a flash cart (flash carts also store “unlimited” ROMs and you can update rosters in a matter of seconds). 

    We have a Discord where people are able to help you set up emulators or hunt for equipment.

  5. First, I just wanted to let you know that almost everyone’s first try at hacking this game takes a long time so don’t get too discouraged! My early work is especially terrible  

    Second, I would recommend using a 32-team rom and then cutting the team sizes down BECAUSE a few people here have created TM bookmarks that’ll let you just click two buttons and get to the correct colors/format/byte order and location in a jiffy. 

    I believe someone has a public file here… but if you can’t find anything AdamCatalyst has one and I have a fork of his I could share although certain tweaks may be confusing to others. 
     

  6. 4 minutes ago, Jlsegafan2001 said:

    Is this program dead? If so, that's unfortunate, as I would have loved to be able to edit the credits and Ron Barr texts.

    Not sure if it’s dead but if it is it’s because Smoz has spent the years since doing other unbelievable stuff for us.
     

    Credits and Ron Barr can be edited using a hex editor. Not sure what offsets are… but if you just CNTL-F and put Electronic Arts and Ron Barr you get there within a few seconds. I would read about the formatting in AdamCatalyst’s hacking guide before doing this though just to get a hold on certain formatting cues.

  7. Hey all.

    I have finished my music patch and created an accompanying Excel Music Table Generator that will expedite the process for anyone looking to plug the songs into a ROM.

    I don't know if any of this is useful to anyone except me, but please feel free to use it if you want a more modern sound in your game.

    The music catalog has mostly stadium jams and a few pep/marching band songs just to accommodate my NCAA project, but also a feel references either to the original NHL 94, other video games (New Vegas and Undertale fans may find a surprise inside), and TV shows in NHL markets.

    The patch is compatible with any ROM and only updates the music notes, not the table because the location changes in different ROM sizes.

    There are 66 total songs added in, and only a few from the original game remain as the "tone" didn't match on many of the longer/more advanced songs.

    The Excel Spreadsheet has an input page you'll type songs in on, and then an output page that will spit out the hex combination for you to paste over your table. I recommend not leaving any song slots as "Random" if you're doing retro ROMs because I don't know how to control what that pool pulls from, and Kanye West or Metallica might throw off any 70s vibe you're going for.

    I don't plan on updating this any soon because it was a slog, but if there are bugs please let me know.

    Download here.

    v1.1 Updates

    I tried to live with it, but The Sopranos Theme midi was so bad. It's been replaced with some ABBA, and the spreadsheet had a new offset added for no music per discussion on Discord.

    Sean's NHL 94 Music Patch v1.1 Update.zip

    • Love 1
    • Thanks 5
    • Like 1
  8. 20 minutes ago, Drezz said:

    what-the-fuck-wtf.gif

    how-do-you-even-do-that-tell-me.gif

    So here I am thinking to myself, "just release the 90s HNIC mod and be done with it" knowing that there's little niggling things like fonts, and text edits and things for branding etc. The last thing on my to-do list was checking out songs etc.

    And now... looks like I'm going back to work. Thanks Sean. LOL

     

    c0cb7a2c-8449-40c0-8aa6-25ec07b4e88b_text.gif

    Ping me on Discord if you need anything, quiet weekend ahead so will be able to help out.

  9. 9 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

    meanwhile he's knocked down the entire arena twice over, and put up three more in its place.

    So there's this real cool thing I found where anyone can call city hall, threaten to relocate a sports team, and suddenly you get 9-figures of cold hard cash wired to your business bank account to build a new stadium. It started as a miscommunication while calling about a sidewalk shoveling question, but it's just what I do now.

    • Haha 1
  10. 9 hours ago, von Ozbourne said:

    I have a project in the works that is just screaming for new music, but have not yet gotten serious about doing that.

    It's pretty easy once you get rolling with it and I'm sure that you'd be able to go beyond what I've done by a lot. Once I fill every slot (which is surprisingly coming up shortly) I will upload a patch for the in-game organ songs and some notes. Excited to see what you do!

    • Like 2
×
×
  • Create New...