von Ozbourne

All this cool talk about new found knowledge and... Is it just me wondering if I can exploit this to make the CPU controlled players even more likely to throw the body?

First? That's what the leet innerwebs kids say right? Just have to say that at risk of sounding like a plant and a cheerleader, this patch amazing and worked perfectly. Except for the fact that it didn't compensate for the four letter names I used in my WWF mod. 0/10. But since you were nice enough to include all of the offsets for manual editing, I didn't need to track those down in my notes and was able to quickly edit the hex value to move the score numbers over by one tile, thus redeeming yourself. A/7 I also liked that you included an add-on for less lateral camera movement. Haven't tried "minimal", but "less" seemed just right compared to the default of "lots". Þ/π

Ah, if only that could work for the real Canadian team... Although, at risk of making a soon to be dated comment, after that Latvia game, the real test starts tonight. I haven't had a chance to examine this, but after watching some of the other games, you really can see how the local fans get behind teams like the underdog Latvians or how the crowd went nuts cheering for Finland [perhaps also against the U.S.] Any thoughts on giving some teams a bump in this regard?

Sadly I so frequently play [or play test] with the sound off that I had to reassure myself that I wasn't wrong in thinking that there was a chime that signalled a penalty expiring. While it might be interesting to commandeer that signal to also trigger a chime when the game clock reached 1:00 in a period, but that's definitely beyond my scope. I guess I could recommend that if you wanted a chime at the one minute mark, just get a penalty at the three minute mark and you should be good right?

Curious about this. I understand the graphical changes, but is the gameplay different enough that it would be a different enough experience compared to the original game? The other question would be what to do with the additional teams in that case. Other than maybe adding All-Star teams and a '94 Canada Cup that never happened maybe...

I tried it out. Worked seamlessly for me. Only issues were that I needed to download a different patching program after realizing that it was in .bps as opposed to .ips format, and that I don't like to read apparently since I initially got an error that reminded me that you specifically pointed out that this was a patch for the Original game, so obviously it won't translate to the expanded 32-Team version you dumbass.

Good to know. One less thing on my plate at least. Unfortunately I have hit a wall with the saving issue in this particular ROM and have to assume that it got baked in somewhere within the two years of iterating. And then personal bias and a small base of feedback means that these become foundational things that don't get noticed until you have a big tower on top that is leaning ever so slightly to the right. Funny thing is that part of my brain is wondering why I would blow it all up just to figure out how to fix a feature that I never use! Are you going to take time away from these other things you're doing to deal with this? But then the other part is pointing out how much I enjoy fixing things and learning in general is fun and this just might be the incentive needed to revisit a couple of other things that I was debating changing and/or cleaning up anyway, so why not? Just means that it might be a while for all that. But on the bright side, the next update might be compatible with this new widescreen mod? So that could be exciting.

Off the top of my head I will say that some of this can be addressed easily enough, I'll DM you back on Discord with some details. Some of it may take some digging. I have concluded that the line saving is related to the freeze bug fix, but I've realized that there might be some other residual issues from the other mods I've applied to the ROM because even after reversing the fix, the loading function only works properly for the 1st/NLC line. I did find one option that seems to stop the freezing issue, and seems to allow for that top line saving, but I haven't tested it fully and the drawback is that Washington's player roll call looks like this. The 5-minute major is an interesting point as it is just based on the original game's 2-minute "injury" Roughing penalty, so it is beholden to the rules of a minor, but now I'm wondering if there might not be a way to take whatever rule in the code that governs how the [unused] 5-minute fighting major operates, and apply it to a 5-minute "misconduct" type penalty, with a minor/double minor being served by a second player for the actual penalty kill. [what used to be the instigator] @AdamCatalyst? @smozoma? anyone? I will say that in my case, I normally play 10min periods so the major isn't as punitive. I'm curious if the savestate thing is just a matter of how the code interacts with the web thing. Since the major was changed from what used to be just another minor, I'm wondering if there is just something hard coded into how that is interpreted, but without knowing more I can't point a finger at any one thing. Although if the penalties are reduced to 1-minute, I'd be curious if they still show up as the same when uploaded.

Trust your instinct. The gist is that thing was broken. I tried the thing that fixed that thing, but it broke a different thing. So I tried a another thing that fixed that different thing, but broke another thing. Since apparently we can't have nice things and something needs to be broken, I'm just backing away slowly with my hands clearly visible so as not to be responsible for any fatal explosions.

heh, I noted that too. Thought it was a mouse pad, but the dimensions seem off.

Sadly it would appear that you are. I double checked on one of Slapshot and Skip's OG 32-team conversions and the load saved line function seems to work as it should. However I tried saving a line on a pair of 32-Team ROM that I did nothing to except applying two different Winnipeg Freeze Bug fixes, and in both cases I tried to save a line edit but then the Load option just doesn't come up. So at this point my hypothesis is that the thing that the Freeze Bug fix does to memory in regard to how it handles player stats and records, also affects how player line edits are remembered. I have to say, if that's actually the case, I'm going to take stability over convenience. Interestingly, I was able to revert the ROM back to an "unfixed" version, but actually found out that there is a way to not have the game display the glitched data, simply by leaving the lines blank. Initially I left it so all the lines were blank and the player photos came up on the menu screen with no names. And then I activated only the first line, so the player names came up, but no additional info. This seemed to work fine actually, and when I saved a line, the Load option was available again and it worked. Sort of. The caveat is that this edit only seems to work out okay if you are playing with line changes off, since only the First line is recalled as you saved it. The Second and Third lines did some weird bits where, in my test case, I swapped Edmonton's First and Second lines, but when I reverted to default and then loaded the saved lines again, Draisaitl was Ironmanning it on all three lines. So, I guess this might be a patch idea? If loading saved lines is really important and you only ever play with no line changes. Possible this might need further examination to see what's going on here.

You're looking at the TV, I'm going "Hey cool a Rocketeer poster." ...and maybe started humming George Sanger's excellent NES soundtrack. Totally not trying to throw shade.

Ah that pic link is broken. The lines thing is a bit of a weird one. I do wonder if it has something to do with a player card fix. I know when the Winnipeg Crash bug was being addressed, a couple of the fixes had unintended consequences. One in particular seemed to cause the game to forget a fair chunk of data such as if you were playing Playoff mode, after completing a game, trying to Continue Playoffs, would result in the Playoffs being reset to game one of a best of seven of the first playoff bracket option in the list. I can't say for certain, but I'm wondering if this is an age old issue of fix one thing, and find out later that it broke something else.

Now I am stumped. I did a quick test, turned Icing and Off-sides into minor infractions, got about eight guys crammed into the boxes for both teams, and they all were set free with no problem. So... making shrug gesture. I will however be putting that collision update in the main post to address the blowing through the net thing. And might as well list the other hacks included to clear up some other questions. NHL 2025 - Retro 94 Edition v2.1.bin

Ah shoot, yes. That was using the change in the collision to make the puck hug the boards a bit closer and make scoring a bit harder. Probably should have coupled that with a smaller net graphic, but I never liked the look of that. Can't say that I use the pass shot a lot and I don't usually notice any through the mesh plays like that. Suppose I can put it back to the original tolerance and post an update. As for the penalty glitch, I'm not sure what's going on with that one. Will have to look into that one a bit more. I do tend to get penalized a lot, not sure how that one never came up. Don't suppose you have that error address again eh?

Yes, I realized that I did a poor job of relaying a lot of the edits in the original post. Probably because I was only thinking about the changes from the 2024 ROM, but forgot that noting all the changes from the 1994 ROM is important too. Probably also doesn't help that I forget where I learned about ignoring that F/D split since my note taking is awful and I usually only remember the main information, but not it's source. Should work on that so I can give proper credits. But yeah, in this case, any skater can play skating position, but only if they are listed as D-men. Changing someone to an F is interesting though as it puts them on the roster in the player cards screen or the stats sheet, but the only way to put them on a line is to do so by editing the roster in NOSE. It is an interesting way to allow the coaches to show up in the photos.

This is pretty cool. And I like that it is timely for myself since I am coincidentally in the beginning stages of a '98 based mod that this would be perfect for. Although, at first I couldn't be certain that this wasn't just a player AI hack, as for a ludicrous amount of time, every stretch pass I attempted would either be picked off by the opposing team or sail by the target and turn into a race to beat the icing call. Used to be that I would forget about the rule and could easily get called for a 2-line pass at least twice a period.

I think it was some of the original wboy tutorials where he pointed out the eight grey tone palette that is used almost exclusively by the photos. It shares white and black with the main menu and the message was something like "don't edit these colours because you'll mess up this". Or at least my interpretation of it anyway. But I looked at it later and tested that I could change the other six colours without affecting anything else. I first tested that on a mod that used NES-style character art. It worked out alright there, so the next logical leap was to see about finding six colours that could encompass a decent range of skin tone. It did mean that it took a little longer to colour correct all 832 player photos so they would still look nice when reduced to eight colours as opposed to only worrying about lightness and contrast for the greyscale versions, but I was able to sort out some automation in photoshop that would at least take care of most of a team at a time. Anyway, it was just nice to find out that the player photos used their own colours because that meant the option was there.

I don't know if anyone has ever made a true type version of the large font, but the issue I've always found with that one [apart from being kind of ugly] is that most of the characters are 2x2 tiles in size and they share some tiles between different letters. This makes editing this font a little tricky, but the good news is that those columns of multi-coloured pixels directly following the font characters are actually the hex code that determines the order of how those tile get used. Granted this only helps if you are trying to change the font in the game to something that requires a different alignment of shapes, but only provides a chopped up image of chunks of letters if you are trying to transplant this font to something else.

I'm not too familiar with RetroArch but this sounded similar to an issue with a widescreen patch that was posted last year for the base ROM. So I'm curious if you are using a patched version of the ROM or if you are using the original ROM and the wide-screenification [sure, that's a word] is being handled completely by the emulator. The issue with the original patch was that, while it changed the viewing area to utilize the entire screen, the players would still despawn and present an arrow indicator once they left the original active area. However, the modder released an updated patch soon after that resolved that issue. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7502/ [He's got patches for 94-97 as well if that is of interest, but the don't work with the expanded ROMs] I will say that this mainly just allows the game to use the full 4:3 screen space though, so I don't know how this will interact with an emulator that will apply a second hacking device that changes the screen to 16:9. But, I've noted that even when the puck carrier is hugging one wall, you can still see a bit of players that are up against the opposite wall, so it's possible that this might address the issue with RetroArch's display option since players are still going to be restricted to the ice surface area anyway. Edit: Actually if you want to just test on a patched version of NHL'98, this link should direct you to a page where you can download a widescreen patched version that will also have a bunch of other modifications to it, mostly just visual, but was turned into an IIHF'99 game. Version 1.2 is using the updated wide mode patch. Would actually be curious to see how it works with RetroArch's 16:9 mode.

I like this one. Looks more fun than watching the last World Cup. Although when I saw Irbe's name I couldn't help but think that he probably would not like it. Given that he famously refused to play for the Soviet team to instead help put up barricades in the streets of Riga to block the tanks that Russia was sending to halt their independence movement. Interestingly, my initial thought would have been Khabibulin, but I had to remind myself that he was born in Sverdlovsk, USSR, when the city of Yekaterinburg was known by that name, and not the Sverdlovsk that is hopefully still in Ukraine. [because that would have been a whole similar, but different issue]

Alright, looks like it's time for an update. Although I should point out that if the previous one was more of a "late pre-season" edition, this one is more a "late opening night" edition. The big changes that make this one a 2.0 rather than a 1.1 version are Some roster shuffling has been completed. All players now have updated photos. [except for a couple exceptions like Swayman, whose contract issues caused him to miss picture day and even the NHL website is using a year old image] Team ratings have been adjusted to reflect some performance changes since last season. Some lines have been shuffled to reflect newer groupings that were put together once the regular season begain. Some teams have changed starting goaltenders to reflect who's taken over the net. Oh and Vegas is only in the Western Conference now. Graphics remained constant, other than also figuring out how to use some more tile spaces and changing the frames on the title screen because it appeals to my need for visual balance more than the original ones did. A clearly labelled version 2.0 will also be included in the original post. Enjoy, hopefully. NHL 2025 - Retro 94 Edition v2.0.bin

How am i just now seeing this post. some of these are really interesting things that I need to try now because I've never known about them and am curious to see how they will work in practice, like the face off [I always figured it was a timing with the puck drop animation thing] or the crowd meter bonus. And the passing direction especially, since I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who figured it was D-pad, then button, but sometimes the game would pass to a player that may be closer to my player, but in a different direction than I wanted to pass to. This however, I am really curious about, because I have never seen the AI start, or even send the backup out if the starter is getting the hook or gets injured, until NHL'96. Except for one mod I suppose. So this might mean there is a clue to how the player or the game will determine how the backup goalie is deployed in '94, but something was glitched in a game I was testing out and the game was starting the second goalie on some teams for every game. Even if I was playing as that team. I don't know if there was an accidental glitch introduced, maybe related to RNG and percentages, or if it had something to do with the goalie bytes. I never figured it out and kind of forgot what mod that happened in to now to go back to it.

Oooh... Damn I should have taken a better look. I've literally done the exact same thing even going back to the Blades of Steel days. Only difference is that instead of numbering them, I just made a list and X'd out the ones I've used. Not sure if I was just adding a step there. Actually if you're using NOSE, the program will give you a notification if you have a team listed twice in one draw. That said, it's easy to ignore that message and do it anyway. That's basically my workaround for giving teams a "bye round" in cases where I don't have the minimum 16 teams. Makes for messy replays and you kind of have to make a non-playable duplicate of those teams to make sure the player doesn't accidentally select one. Huh, I've not heard that one before. I am curious if that is an issue in the original 32-Team hack or if it's related to one of at least a half dozen roster affecting modifications that are included in this version. To be honest, I just never bother saving roster changes, so this would be completely off my radar, but now I'm wondering what's going on there.

Thanks eh. Oh yeah no. It would have looked really bad if I tried to make that in only 16 colours so I did end up using three palettes. Luckily the image is very vertically aligned so it wasn't hard to keep track of the different sections. The New Jersey brothers got the first palette all to themselves so it was just the 8 greyscale shades and an array of reds. The second palette is also used by the NHL and NHLPA logos, but since those are greyscale as well, with the first slot dedicated to transparency, that left seven colours left over for the middle Vancouver uniform. I think the third palette used to be for the original '94 NHLPA logo? but with both logos sharing the second palette now, the third one was unused and free to make as many skin tone shades as possible. I don't recall what the forth one is reserved for, but I don't think it would have helped anyway.