von Ozbourne

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that one. Actually it's been there all along. It's not a glitch, but a compromise that I was testing out thanks to the Hurricanes being edgy '90s revivalists and going with dark red and dark grey on dark "like my soul" black. But since they apparently didn't want to go full edge lord and kept some white in their logo, that colour had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was to repurpose the grey skate blades. As you notice, that skate colour also doubles as the floor of the benches. If that is too distracting, the other possible options are basically to superfluously add some white to their uniforms in form of a stripe, defy their marketing team and use the old/third red/white/black uniforms as their home kit instead, or restore the grey floor and just replace the white on the logo with default ice colour. Couldn't really decide which of these was the least un-best option to not hate the most.

You can't tell me what to do! my chosen email may be the same as my display name...

Sorry guys, the line discrepancies are on me. @Jkline3 had done the update on the Standard version but I clearly didn't save a couple edits properly in transferring them over. The corrected Wide Screen version is in the main post now. Not really a mistake unfortunately, just a limitation of the game engine. The Wide Screen version is kind of the definitive version and is fine because I've included the "Any Player, Any Position" mod, but I kept the Standard Edition more to the original in regards to a few features including handling rosters. The pro to that is it addresses the complaint of the Save/Load function breaking with the roster mod applied, but the downside is if a team has more than 16 forwards or less than 9 defencemen on their regular rotation, the compromise becomes placing a forward on the back end, or cutting an obvious forward in exchange for a minor league defence. I suppose an alternate compromise of sticking a benchwarmer at the end might be preferable given that Karlsson may not have featured in many games this year, but that was due to injury and he is an alternate captain and all, but that messes with the alphabetized sorting.

Well, when you put it that way... Actually I think other than correcting the colouring on a couple of the fighting sprites and that injury pop up text, this one is really just reflecting the lineup changes since the trade deadline.

Final version for the season [probably, likely, unless there is something I missed that breaks the game] In the original post.

Ah. Can't confirm, but I do know that there are some bugs with the short penalties and fighting. Unfortunately the fighting/non-Off bug is known, but undoing it is going to be easier said than done at this point. In lieu of getting that fixed for this newest update, it might be possible to lower every player's fighting rating to a 0 or 1 for a minimum left or right handed designation. A 0% fighting rating just means that players will never fight. So that would effectively take fighting out of the game, it would just take some time to do. Could export the player ratings and find/replace in the spreadsheet and re-import I guess...

Thanks eh. Actually I think I completed this originally before the wide screen patch was first released, never mind perfected. Forgot that I never went back and tried it out. @AdamCatalyst's patch might[?] work. Caveat: There are a lot of customized assets in this one so results are not guaranteed. I also tend to use a custom set of parameters in all of my other widescreen versions so I could try getting that together. A bit busy right now though, may be a few weeks before I can get to that.

Thanks for the interest. Curious, what version are you playing? I've actually been including chaos's fight patch in the ROM since version 3. 1 minute? I have to ask, what ROM/version are you using? Because none of the penalties should be 1 minute, never mind a fighting major. I do remember something in other ROMs I was testing just after the patch was released however, [non-NHL, so there shouldn't even be a chance of accidental WIP versions getting posted] where short or imbalanced penalties did result in some weird cases where timings meant perpetual power plays or injuries showed up as long penalties instead of injuries. Even though a Blades of Steel-style "only the loser goes to the box" fighting penalty sounded like an interesting idea, it severely broke the game. The injury thing is related to the fighting code and the difference in the fighting rating of the winner/loser. It shouldn't happen all the time, but this might be better directed @chaos since it is his patch and I haven't done anything beyond using the default code. but... If fights are set to Off, that also shouldn't happen. I wonder if there is just some menu text issues or if something else is at play here. Did fights happen on all three menu settings? I will say that In the version I tested, it was almost too hard to start a fight, even on "Arcade" mode. Although that may be by virtue that the player ratings reflect current sensibilities towards fighting and most players just don't feel compelled to drop the gloves anymore. Ah, yeah that is a bit of a weird thing with the layering of text in that window. Actually I tried editing the text before to mixed results [clearly] but this was before a recent fix was posted. So recent that I have not yet had time to implement it into an update. Interestingly, if you were playing the Standard resolution version, you still would have noticed a glitch, just a different one. I will likely post some kind of update soonish where I fix up some of these last few things.

It should be noted that the offsets for some assets in the 30-Team and 32-Team versions of '94 are different. Given that it is not hard to simply limit the number of selectable teams, you might find it easier to just use the 32-Team version for every mod you want to make and not have to make any adjustments to notes when you might need to switch. Can't say I know what mods were applied to both examples though. I've been using a version that started out as a slapshot67 ROM but has acquired a lot of additional mods that have been discovered over the past few years to the point where the only thing I can say for certain is that it still has 32 teams.

Yeah... I don't really have a good answer for this. Technically a player's photo is locked to a position on a team. There is a way to adjust this in the hex code near the beginning of the ROM, but for intents and purposes, a photo of say Alex Ovechkin is not locked to a player named Alex Ovechkin, but is just the photo in slot number 793, which is by default assigned to the 13th player on the 31st team, which just so happens to have player data with the name Alex Ovechkin. The problem is that if the next roster update has a player in one of those previous twelve spots get traded away, or a player is added who slots in ahead of Ovechkin alphabetically, then Ovi is no longer the 13th player and his photo no longer lines up. The good news is that line changes don't matter, so whatever you do there is not going to mess up the photos. There is a way to realign these photos in the hex code, but that can get a bit faffy if you make any typos. The EARE tool has this function as well, and I even made a cheat sheet at one time, but I don't bother with that anymore either. There is probably a better way to do it, especially seeing as I will make a photo for all 832 available players, but the way that gives me the most control and allows me to double check that there are no errors, is to have a full roster list open, either in NOSE or a spreadsheet. My default ROM has every player photo initially just a blank square with a big ol' number on it. And my folder of player photos has a full array of 48x48 indexed colour images with the player name as the file name. Then I just alt+tab back and forth from the list and Tile Molester copying the player names and Edit > Paste From and paste the player names into the File Name window. Luckily you don't even have to add the .png or .jpg or whatever file extension to import the file. As long as the name matches, just hit enter and the photo is there. Then just advance a Relative Offset of 36A bits [yes I have all of these numbers memorized] using the F5 button for subsequent photos and Paste From the next guy on the list. Is this a time consuming method? Absolutely! Does my left hand now have the evolutionarily useless muscle memory for all this alt+tabbing copy/pasting? You know it! Is there possibly an easier method but I now do this one to avoid any mistakes and double check things line up and look good during the process rather than having to go back after the fact? Got me there! Given the workload, I kind of see why some other guys would only do the starting line-up and leave the rest of the team with generic pixelated dudes, but I like the idea of every player having their own photo and have kind of been committed. As in "to the bit" not the other meaning... never mind.

1. It wasn't what I remembered, but maybe you saw this one? It's old and only referenced the 30 team ROM and the screen shots are in a download or on a ad laden image hosting site, but it's a decent start. I don't have a decent thread to refer you to, but if you're looking at a 32-Team ROM, the banners and logos are located at: Team Banners Location: 1DD370 Size: 11x64 Colours: 366884 Colour Size: 32 Menu Select Logos Location: 1D38B0 Size: 6x6 Colours: 1914022 Size: 512 2. Technically the players can be copy/pasted in at any time during your modding process. Sometimes I leave it for last, sometimes I have all the data and photos ready at the beginning and I do that first, right after the teams are set. Because the players can be copied over at any point, it's not that vital to do them right away. Team names and selection order however is a bit more locked in so that is usually something you want to take care of at the beginning. This way your banners, menu logos, on-ice logos, team colours, and of course players, can be changed at any point in your process and you won't have to redo any of them should you find that you need to move some teams around to accommodate different team orders from alphabetizing, division alignment, number of playable vs non-playable teams... whatever.

Thanks man. I noticed that the text seemed to be getting layered, but not knowing why, I just ended up changing the offending "the game" to "Out for " so it would at least display properly. This is obviously a much better option. What I still can't figure out though is why the ":" at the end of "Injury to:" is now displaying as the "RD" character. Barring a real fix, I just changed the text to a blank space.

Yep, you are correct. Actually this issue was because of Laila Edwards. My pre-tournament info had her listed as a forward, but the official game sheets had her on defence. I had switched my spreadsheet, but due to the nature of the importing tool, had to manually change the names. Evidently I ran into some version control issues because I remember doing that. The Lines are correct even after just pasting in the new name order, so clearly I must have at some point. Anyway. Fixed it now. v1.1 in the original post.

It is a good Friday to play hockey. 4.0 updates in the original post.

This does make me wonder how the Save Lines function works now. As in if I go into a game with line changes off, set and save a line, then reset and start another game with line changes on, then go into Edit Lines and load your save. What happens then? I know that this will just load your NLC saved line into the SC1 spot, so if you want those to be different, you will need to re-edit your SC1 line. But now the question is what happens with your NLC line? Does loading a save mean that this line is also loaded up behind the scenes or is it completely ignored by the code of a Changes On so you're locked into whatever default was already set.

Ah. Curious, so would that basically just be the NLC line? As in a team's best players anyway, but ones that might not be on a regular line together in reality? Now I'm thinking this is kind of like a "Desperate nuclear option" when say Edmonton would put McDavid and Draisaitl together. Or Crosby and Malkin in Pittsburgh. Or what Winnipeg should have done when they had the chance and put Nikolaj Ehlers on the top line. Admittedly, my preference would be to have a proper 4th line, but barring that, this seems like an interesting alternative.

Yeah sorry, that was perhaps a mistake. The date represents the fixing of a feature in the ROM itself and not the current-ness of the roster. So I just updated the ROM but didn't add a .1 before re-uploading. That said, I'm just collecting photos for the new call-ups right now so version 4.0 is probably coming out this weekend barring any unforeseen issues.

If I may offer a hundredth of a two dollar bill, I find this idea intriguing, but I can't say I'd be a fan of this in practice. Without knowing how viable the line is, or being able to view it in the Edit Lines menu, it kind of feels like a gaffer tape solution. Plus there is the question of what line will that NLC line be in a game? Do you make it your 4th "Energy" line that you use sparingly and don't have to manage their... energy...? Or is it your first line because that is still what you would use if you play Line Changes off. In that case, is your opening line in a Line Changes on game technically going to be your SC2 Line? I feel like there are a lot of questions around this idea that lead me to think that depending on what the technical limitations dictate the final result is going to have to be, this may or may not be worth the effort.

Pardon my ignorance on this perhaps, but does the hardware version not follow the same course as the emulated version? I ask only because it's been my experience [I haven't played the hardware version of EA Hockey owing to living in an NTSC country] that after you complete a game and it displays the end of game stats and after the game expires and returns to the main menu, that end-of-game song just continues on through to the main menu the same way the title screen music continues on when initially turning on the game. My recommendation would be to play a game, hit start to end before any highlights come up and then just let the game sit on the main menu. ...maybe pressing the d-pad occasionally to prevent the game from starting another game before you get your sample.

In light of the fact that no art is ever really completed, just occasionally abandoned, I couldn't help but notice that this game would be better with fancy banners and fighting. The fact that these can be different is just cool. Two flavours available. Hockey Stars 1 [2.1].bin Hockey Stars 1 - Fighting Edition.bin

Yeaaaaah...... It took a few hours after I should have been going to bed, but I eventually got that behaviour back. I think there is an order of operations that needs to be followed with some of these transformative patches because I was running into so many issues. I don't even know how to explain the troubleshooting process because I was bouncing around between different versions with different mods applied in different orders and losing track of what I'd done and didn't done do. But the original idea was to have a mod with fighting, menu banners, fully highlighted playoff banners, in-game banners using the original modded sprites so they can be different, clock logos. Two problems I found were that after most of that was done, reverting to the original playoff banner highlighting code actually ended up with a ROM that only highlighted the team in the #1 slot, regardless of what team you were playing as. I then realised that this was on a version that didn't have fighting applied, and the version that did have fighting was even worse in that the game just crashed when simply trying to start a playoff. I eventually backpedalled enough to where I had a ROM that had the menu background mod removed, had an old fashioned method customized menu background and overlays applied, then had the banner mod applied to only the main menu and playoff screens, [clock logos weren't quite working in this particular instance so I omitted them], then switched the highlighting code to the original full banner setup and only then applied the fighting patch. [and then fixed all of the menu option changes that the default fighting patch undoes] Other than that slight stutter when loading the menu screen which I attribute to likely the extra step of loading in all of the team menu banners to RAM, everything else seems to be working as intended. Don't know if there is anything to be learned here other than be careful of applying multiple patches that may conflict with each other and sometimes a habit of testing limits will just end up testing your limits.

Not sure how easy it is to add the extra button. There is the following post but not sure if anyone has done anything with it (other hacks) or whether it works on expanded roms which is why I'm asking if anyone has experience of doing it. There was a third party site that relayed the process of getting the Y-Button hack to work. It relays how the process doesn't exclude the X & Z buttons, but it's a matter of what is possible in the game engine. That said, I know a percentage of players prefer the 3-Button controller. [my go-to is an 8-button configuration, but no one has figured out how to incorporate shoulder buttons into a Genesis/Megadrive game] This is why I suggested a D-pad option, but then that would need to overwrite the ability to keep skating around with the line change popup open so that might be a non-starter. I think the No Line Change line is a good idea though. There is even precedent with NHL Hockey and NHLPA'93 using the NLC line simultaneously as the 1st line. I don't know if the NLC and 1st line had any reason to be different back in 1994, and even these days, unless you have a Draisaitl or Malkin as your SC2 center that you want to promote to your SC1 winger, I don't know if there is much reason still to make those different. Curious how easier-said-than-done getting that popup to display four choices would be.

Technically. The smozROM tool just reverses the bit where the game engine calculates a successful check using player weights. But the problem was that the rest of the calculation is kind of based on a broken premise. There is a new fix that changes the calculation formula and works a lot better. The new info is accessible in this thread.

I will say that unless you have the time and are curious to see if you can do it, I wouldn't bother. The coach option is interesting and fun, if perhaps limited, and the only drawback it has is that it interferes with the line saving/loading option. Which personally I never use anyway so it's not actually a drawback for me. I understand some people like to use that function though, but you can't always please everyone, so sometimes you just have to please yourself. ...wait... never mind. This fix is really interesting in that is erases any differentiation between positional players, but the fact that the goalie is available as well is giving me pause. I don't know if I like it or not yet. I had no player taking the face off when I put my starting goalie at center. One would think there should be guard rails against this. But then, if you want to do something dumb that's your fault. It does kind of open up an option if you are making a ROM with small rosters and want to have the ability to put a backup goalie on the ice in a pinch, but then again it's translating those goalie stats into skater stats and those three "Leave @ 0"s kind of get in the way. I suppose you could not leave them at 0, but there is still the fact that goalies don't get credit for scoring goals in the player stats. [maybe that one can be figured out somehow] Either way, it's kind of a case where if you don't want to have a goalie as a forward, it's just easier to remove the option all together.

Rats. Oh well, that's fine. Back to "Plan A" I guess. I do have one other question though if I may @McMarkis I found that one really cool thing that I can do with this hack is emulate what NHL'95 does with having a different team banner for the menu and playoff screens that what shows up on the pause/game menu/jumbotron. But there is one catch in that the default only does the colour scrolling replacing white on the right side name portion of the banner now. There wouldn't happen to be an easy way to expand that highlight area to the full width again in the case where you are using this mod for something other than having a mini logo on the side is there?