von Ozbourne

Insert development hell joke here. But the good thing about retro games is that you don't need to stick to a stringent release schedule. I also guess I could have waited two more days to get to that "half a year to the day" mark, but here it is anyway. In honour of the 100th anniversary of the oldest invitational hockey tournament still played today, although due to mostly war and pandemic reasons, six tournaments had to be cancelled over that time span, serendipitously making this the 94th tournament to be held, I would to present a "review" of: Quick history, as noted, the tournament was first held in Davos, Switzerland in 1923, and originally devised by Dr. Carl Spengler, mainly as a way to promote friendlier competition with clubs from German speaking regions who may have been ostracized within Europe due to that thing that happened in the previous decade. It is held between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve and according to the foundation charter, he wanted to offer nations that had previously been enemies the opportunity "to test their strength in peaceful battles and to take one another’s hand in friendship." The tournament was held outdoors from 1923 until 1977 when its current home, the Eisstadion Davos, was built and where every tournament has been held since. Interestingly, that original outdoor rink still exists today right next door to the stadium, yet the organizers completely missed the opportunity to add a "Winter Classic" style outdoor game to the slate to commemorate the event. Anyway, as for what did happen, fittingly the home side was able to break a twelve year drought, winning the tournament they host, and are now in a tie with other tournament favourite Team Canada for the most overall titles with 16. On to the game. The art style in this one is a little different from typical Team 1920 games a it features a more "vintage computer" look with a much higher reliance on dithering than typical console games of the era. This becomes apparent right from the opening screens. As is the featuring of sponsors, which used to be much more visible than what you would see in a typical North American setting. While the title screen shows the exterior of the unmistakable Eisstadion Davos, the main menu brings you inside where you see the iconic wooden beams that form the signature of the building. The title bars are a bit of a throwback to the previous font used by Davos and the colour player photos lean into some of the inconsistencies that are found within the photographic methods of the different European teams and leagues featured this time around. While not an official team photo, Josh Jooris was excited to meet his new team. This being a North American release, the only North American based broadcaster at the games was TSN. Apparently host and play-by-play announcer Dustin Nielson showed up a bit early for his local co-host and colour commentator Doug Honegger so he could make the pre-game presentation solo. TSN's SportsCentre also presents the scores from around the sport. Foreshadowing some other events held at the same time. The Player Cards mix a bit of old and new styles while main tournament sponsor UBS... [which apparently like many banks these days, is no longer an acronym, because having a city or country in your name is not good for multinational aspirations] ...gets a main sponsor presentation. Interesting note here. The Head Coaches get a nod in the team listing, but they aren't available for play, so don't worry about that 23 overall rating. Of course there is an option to compete for the Spengler Cup. I'd recommend the one game playoff as it is more in line with the short tournament, but an extended Best-of-7 option is available as well. Due to the nature of a six team format, the method used to fit in to a normal four round playoff is to just give teams byes. Every team gets an option to go straight to the penultimate or just ultimate game, but you as the player will always start in the round of the bottom four. Some breakthroughs in the coding mean that matchups are quite varied, which is nice. Once in a game, line changes can be made so that every player is available for every position other than goalie. Players are listed numerically though because that is aesthetically pleasing. It would have been visually interesting if that trophy pedestal could continue all the way to the bottom of the screen, but fading out works too. As that line now takes to the ice, we start to see some other changes to the usual format with the TSN branded game clock, the referee facing the correct direction [thanks. I can no longer unsee that @AdamCatalyst] and a wood coloured floor nonchalantly sitting off to the side there. Which prompts a closer look. Wood construction is very much the hallmark of Eisstadion Davos, so it had to be featured in the background here. Sadly the developer seems to have not been able to come to an agreement with another tournament sponsor, Skoda, so there is no car in the corner of the arena, just more seats. Main sponsor UBS's logo can also be seen here peaking out from it's normal place at center ice. Skoda does get a feature on the game menu screen though. In the banner over the exits at the top of the arena stairs. Which are here in wood. Another sponsor, Swiss Air, get their usual spot behind the penalty boxes. And while they did not keep this feature up this past year, the penalty box bench give a nod to a feature used in previous years of replacing the penalty bench with a row of airline seats. It was an interesting feature, much like the old Swiss Milk sponsored jersey cow referee uniforms, that instigated a lot of talk on previous TSN broadcasts. No Hitsch mascot here, but he Zamboni driver decided to don a Davos jersey and helmet. Of note here is that while typical "Five and a game" penalties don't mesh well with the '94 coding, injuring a player will get you a double minor on those fancy seats. And there are those national teams again... As there was some space available, this game comes with a bonus Two-for-One Holiday Special pre-installed DLC if you will, in that the other Boxing Day to [just after] New Year's tournament, the World U20 Hockey Tournament, or as simply known in North America as the World Juniors, is available to play as well. The caveat being that while you can play as the ten Juniour teams, the branding will still be Spengler related because the game doesn't support multiple... everything presentation related. Someone else will just need to take the teams out and make that game. Wrapping up, what's a good score... One and a half hat tricks out of a Zamboni. Hope you enjoy. Updated version Spengler Cup - Davos 2023 v1.3 CAN.bin and the localized Swiss Edition. Spengler Cup - Davos 2023 v1.3 SUI.bin

This might be redundant at this point, but figured I'd note a final thought on the playoff matchups. Given all of our thoughts on the "randomness", I decided to be very deliberate with mixing up my draws for a mod I'm nearing completion on, that will have a "2-in-1 bonus" or whatever you want to call it. When I've done this in the past, I've just made the first 16 draws for the "main" group and the bottom 16 draws contain just the "B" group of teams. Keeping to this alignment, I was not getting a lot of variety in matches. Then using the same ROM, I copy/pasted the draws to alternate A,B,A,B,A... and now every time I scroll back and forth to a selected team, I am getting a different opponent. Well, I was technically still getting a lot of repeats, but that is mainly due the divisions being pretty small in this instance and not because the game was forcing me to play Draw #1, 60% of the time.

Technically this isn't an update as much as a standalone ROM. This is also just a SEGA Genesis version of the game.

Technically the center ice logo can be both rotated and have the line go through it, but the drawback there is that the logo ends up sharing space with the center line, which only uses half a tile, which will then lock in your colours to the same ones used by the rink as opposed to using the team colours. This was an example I made of this. Or the other options would mean having about a four pixel gap between the logo and the center line, or I think one of the original games used the face tone to fill in the middle part of the center line, but the shift in colour is very conspicuous and you're kind of better off without it.

Okay, you did a nicer job of explaining the point I was trying to make. Although now I am wondering, if our theory is accurate, then I might need to rethink some of my "Two tournaments in one" games like multi-level or men/women World Championships. Usually I would put one complete set in the first 16 options and then have the second complete set use the last 16 options. So this could mean locking in a 50% chance that I'm getting that first option for either side. Anecdotally I have noted some lack of variety, so maybe going forward I make sure that the playoff draws are listed A tournament ,B tournament ,A,B,A... to take advantage of some more options.

Figure I'll just dump my notes here to the open source since I actually jotted them down this time in a manner that could possibly be followed by other people. GO TO: C67E2 = Tile layout order for player photos. 0006 0006 = 6x6 layout of photos. 2000...2023 = Order of tiles for photos. Used universally for all. Change last 6 numbers [201E 201F 2020 2021 2022 2023] to 601E...6023 to set to fourth palette. Or change to [601E 601F 2020 2021 6022 6023] to leave the neck area as the default tones. GO TO: C678C[HEX] or import 812940[DEC] = Palette 2000 colours used by default for photos. Note that the 3bpp Linear codec as used by the player photos, only uses the 6th through 14th colours in a palette that is referenced by the 4bpp Linear codec setting used by everything else. GO TO: 4D614[Hex] or import 316948[DEC] = Palette 6000 colours for default main menu background. This is not normally used and is conveniently left blank. Change the following eight colours to White, Black an an array of basic uniform and neck tone colours. GO TO: 11CE02[HEX] or import 1166854[DEC] = Palette 6000 colours used by coloured Ron Barr photo plus Overlays and HOT/COLD graphics. Change the following eight colours to THE SAME colours used in the previous location. Coordinate this with Ron Barr and HOT/COLD sprites, noting that those assets are also able to use the remaining eight colours to get the desired look. Advised to leave white as the first colour as this is also shared with the "window frames" and the "MATCHUPS" title. GO TO: E9146[HEX] or imprt 954694[DEC] = Palette 0000 colours used by Player Card screen text and background. Change the following eight colours to THE SAME colours used in the previous TWO locations. Note that for some reason this change uses screen palette 0000 instead of 6000 so it will affect the background and overlaying text on the this screen. Leaving white alone is a good idea. On a side note, changing the entire Player Card background to use palette 6000, will make the background share the same palette at the NHL/PA logos. As the logos are only greyscale anyway, the default background colours can be shifted here without being much of a problem for the logos. Just be sure to edit the logos to use the proper colours. And for the banner colour overlay method. Player Card Screen Locations of tiles for bottom row of player photos. E95D2-E95DC Change 00E5 to A0E5 to change tile to use variable team colour palette as well as be moved to top layer over player photos. Will need to borrow a couple of tiles from elsewhere in the background image to make shoulder shapes that can be layered over the player photo. Remember to locate hex numbers for other instances of those tiles and replace them with the number of a different tile that may be close enough to not notice the change. Using the blank background blue 0000 tile in place of an almost blank background blue tile would be a good start. Borrowed tile can now use dynamic team banner colours to make an overlay that will add jersey colour, however this overlay will also affect the team logo when viewing the team rating/starting line. If logo background is the same colour as the uniform, then this is not noticable. As long as the team logo does not overlap the area designated for the coloured shoulders.

Hmm... Now I am wondering if I read this right. If the playoffs are drawn with a hint from the platter of random. And the result of that random is that should a chosen draw not contain the team the player is selecting, the game will just run linearly down the list until it encounters a draw that does contain that team. Then perhaps in the case where only half of the teams make the playoffs and half do not, there might be some cases where a team will not be featured in a draw until a ways down the list. So if I'm reading this right, say Ottawa is not featured in any of the playoff draws until the eighth option, and maybe also not featured in the last eight either. Going on the presumption that it also rolls over, that would mean that any random playoff draw landed on from 1-7 or 24-32 would result in the selection algorithm rolling over to option 8. Effectively meaning that 50% of the time, you are going to get whatever team is playing Ottawa in that eighth draw. If this is the case, this could perhaps explain some of the discrepancies.

Because that's not what this topic is about. But on the topic of player images, after sleeping on it, I realized that I can address a bit of the colours issue by adjusting the collar of the sweater. By centring the neck in a way where the middle two tiles only have neck and the sides only have sweater, and maybe using some creative greying to blend the two, the middle can be kept at the default colours leaving one more colour available for the shoulders. Probably yellow, although that still means that there are only five universal tones available for all 32 teams. Might as well share this option as well even though it is a bit half baked at the moment. Regarding the Player Cards screen, the colour sharing issue could be addressed by setting some of the tiles behind the photos to overlay the photo layer. This is in the hex code for the background of this screen and can be done by changing the 36 "00E5" tiles that make the background of the photo/logo area [shared by the top row of the coloured team name line] to "A0E5". The "A" meaning both that the tile will adopt the #2000 palette colour used by the team banner as well well be displayed on the top layer. Although you will also want to change the "0E0" part to the numbers of different tiles as well. Probably two that will be commandeered to make a mirrored shoulder shape with a transparent background. The stipulation here though is that those tiles will also overlay the team logo, so unless you are like me and like to have uniform coloured backgrounds behind your team logos, and position the logo in a way that doesn't interfere with the space allocated to the player shoulders, and also don't mind having the same shoulder shape for every single player, [something that I suppose isn't as much of a problem if you are using a more artistic style for the photos] then maybe this is an easier option that also provides more versatility in colour. But only on this screen.

I don't know how useful this will ultimately be as the options are limited, but I figured I might as well add a hypothesis turned discovery on this topic. I found the code that determines the player photos layout and changed the bottom row from 20XX to 60XX. This meant that it would now use the fourth palette option when displayed on a screen. The drawback is that it uses a different palette depending on what screen it is on. Main menu is easy. That palette is open and unused [unless you are using Drezz's menu bg hack, in which case it is also a spare, unless you are like me and set your entire background to use palette 6000 in order to separate it from the overlay assets] The colours are used universally though, so after accounting for white, black, grey and a light skin tone, that only left four colours remaining. I suppose if one when with a comic book style shading and put a shadow or over the neck area, or maybe just gave everyone crew necks, the grey and single minded skin could be removed in favour of six total colours. For this test my only colours were red, orange, green an blue. The wrinkles however show up when you get to other screens, like the pregame, where palette 6000 is subbed in with what the host and overlays are already using. Some rearranging of colours, while staying true to what the windows and text to stay put, meant that the Ron Barr's substitute needed some rearranging, but it can work. I haven't yet fixed the Hot/Cold things, but that could have been made to work well enough in the new confines. The Player Cards screen uses yet another set of background colours, with 6000 normally being reserved for the NHL/PA logos. But the odd part is that the photos actually borrow palette 0000 from the background. I actually added an extra bit of mess here in making the background different so some parts are affected more than others. I was able to have some of the background share palette 6000 with the NHL/PA logos, and I suppose if the whole background were changed to do that, it would make it so the colours can be changed without having the other bits get messed up. The only problem now is that while it is interesting to have some colours, I'm finding it a bit constraining to have so few to work with anyway.

This... This is a thing that I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around. Basically because technically there are 32 different playoff draws that can be drawn from. And I've actually been annoyed by the lack of variety in first round matches to the point where I've gone in and set the draws up in a way where every one is completely unique. But then when playing a game and scrolling trough the playoff options, it still seems that the teams still favour one or two opponents a disproportionate amount of times. So I don't have an answer to why, but I'm just guessing at this point that there is something in the way the game handles the playoff draws where it's not actually just going down the list every time you pick a team,

A few days late on this one, but better than never right? And with the fairly predicable trend in the current playoffs, I guess this means one can virtually correct reality. Presenting: The reason why this one is getting its own entry is because it is by a new team comprised of @AdamCatalyst, @Jkline3 and myself, and combines hopefully the best contributions of both of our previous games, under the banner of the X-Factor Edition. Also switching it up with some retro art style adapted to the modern logo. And Ron Barr gets called back to call the games. And if the duo-tone Oilers uniform and logo isn't enough of a clue, this edition puts its emphasis on the alternate uniforms when available. Retro and modern styling combinations stretch into the Player Cards. Not in black and white though, but that's kind of just channelling the SNES version. Player benches are imported from Adam's release, with some new animated Coach sprites. Players can play any position. Long names contracted to original 9_10 format. Player sprites adapted with the composite sticks New 3-Star calculator And more... Hope you folks enjoy this one. NHL 2024 - X-Factor 94.bin

https://www.eliteprospects.com/team/9966/winnipeg-jets/2023-2024 Default 2024/25 year does not have all player numbers listed yet, but last year[?] does. I guess maybe you need to check all the tabs? The Roster tab has just the bio info. Number, name, age home town, height, weight, handedness. Stats tab only has the name and stats. There is a Depth Chart tab and an In The System tab for minor leaguers, but you basically have to check each player individually to get any of their info. Lines tab just links to a popup of Daily Faceoff, which I guess is better than nothing.

Jersey numbers? <quick check> Ah. yes, they defaulted to 2024/25 already. I set it to 2023/24 and the player numbers were listed. The thing with that site is that you have to select each team individually and they don't always have complete data on everything. On the data side, they format it weird, so basically I have to copy the table and paste it into a spreadsheet with html formatting, then convert it to default formatting and delete the team icons. And un-merge the joined cells. ...Yeah the site used to be formatted more usefully until a couple years ago. The lack of right or left defence is a drawback though. Supposedly leftwinglock.com is good for getting line combos and game sheet type stuff, but it requires you to register to use the site. No idea if this registration is also a paywall thing though because I just couldn't be asked to do it. I hope this information is good enough to satisfy a plea bargain. Although I am curious if I should be let off with a warning as clearly by whipping out a 20 year old reference, I have illustrated that I am simply out of touch and not a threat to society or myself.

I've been more of an eliteprospects kind of guy, but then they tend to be better than any of those other sites at having non-NHL player data. Although admittedly, they aren't a one-stop-shop as some of their data is not always as complete as one would like. Also, if pardon may be begged, this isn't really my wheelhouse, but this was the first thing that came to my mind today. The Caps bought Cap Friendly and are putting it behind a paywall? Seems those Caps... aren't being very friendly.

Clearly you didn't mean to forget about the last active player to have been featured in the game in one Magnus Eliasson. Who after one season with Huskvarna/Vätterstads IF, who coincidentally was the previous season's champion, went on to a meandering career which ultimately took him to his final team in Lidingö where he hung them up after the 1999/2000 season. Only to take them back off the hook in 2011/12 to play in five games for a newer Lidingö team, in the Swedish 4th Division, netting two and adding a helper and six PIMs before retiring again. Only to unretire again just this past season of 2023/24 at the age of 55 to again lace them up for five games as his Lidingö Islanders were by now, relegated to Div 5, this time getting on a score sheet with one minor penalty. Who knows if his skates will again be called upon next season, or left hanging in the garage for another extended rest, but... just a though, if ol' Magnus doesn't mind dusting them off now and then, and he and Lidingö can work together on this, in just six years, he could lace them up one more time and get into the history books alongside none other than Mr. Gordie Howe as the only players to have played professional hockey in six different decades. Assuming Jagr doesn't do it too.

Oh? I'll be honest. I haven't tried this out yet, but I tend to concentrate on iterating and testing a bunch of things individually. I will say that I have settled on a naming convention of naming photos using the player's name as it appears in the game. That way I can copy the names out of NOSE and paste them in the import option in TM. And if they get traded, I can just copy/paste in the new spot without having to worry about the file needing to be renamed. That said, for the high turnover tournaments like the Olympics and World Championships, I did raid the IIHF website and name the photo files in the format like "CAN16.png". The reference point being that the image is of the player on Team Canada who wore #16. Rather than the player for Canada occupying the 16th or 23rd roster spot. I am kind of curious if the tool can use that as a reference to pull from in these cases. [I am reminded of how I had Sebastian Aho and Sebastian Aho<invisible underscore character> in the game in order to differentiate them because having just names runs into the odd issue like this] I will say that when I was trying out EARE more for the photos, I learned how each photo corresponds to an offset that can be put in anywhere in the order of rosters in the main menu/player cards. In theory, one could just put all of the photos in one big batch in alphabetical order, and then simply rearrange the order of offset link references [or whatever words be good] I did forget about this option eventually because it seemed like it could get fiddly once bubble players start getting called up and sent down. The colour palettes and logos part is intriguing to me though. [even if I had already made a version of a ROM that shifted the teams around to leave the blank space under the "U"]

Ah. Yeah I've actually looked into a couple Game Gear hockey games just out of curiosity. Had more luck with SEGA's NHL All-Star Hockey than EA's '94 or '95 entry since most of EA's graphics appear to be compressed. Only issue with SEGA Sports' NHL game is that, while I figured out that the graphics use the 4bpp planar rather than linear codec, I can't figure out where the colour palette data is. At that point though, it was quickly looking like a project that would take a lot of time to figure out, for something that would be of very limited interest, and I've got enough of those under my belt already.

Unfortunately, I would have to say that the industry knows exactly what they are doing. While your idea would make the most sense for a whole bunch of reasons, The problem is that it relinquishes a bit of that control that the publishers cling to like Gollum to the ring. And similar to the NHL's issue these days, their standard operating procedure is to grab the quick buck now, even at the expense of more money later. [At least the NHL hasn't figured out how to make a terms of service for jerseys so you are not allowed to own the one you bought, but merely pay for a limited term licence. Although, they are switching to Fanatics next year...] The other part of it is that they need the hype. And pre-orders. And embargoes on reviews. And limited run FOMO. That way they get your money before you have any idea whether or not they even deserve it. And keep the buying public in the dark until it is too late to do anything about it. Basically, this is why I'm glad I never really got out of my childhood habit of being very frugal with my allowance and would wait for games to go on sale or at least until the reviews were out and I knew if I would still find a game worth buying. That said, I would totally be okay with your "double dip" model if it meant that physical editions would not just be code-in-a-box, occasionally with a decorative coaster included.

Ah, yeah sorry. I may have leaned in a bit to hard on the world building on this one.

Huh. I never would have thought of it that way. I wonder if that type of process is related to the prevalence of "Live service" these days. Although to be honest, other than DLC and patches for games on my Switch, I tend to prefer to deal with "final versions" to avoid messing with updates. [and I rarely get games when they are new these days anyway] At least with a ROM, it should theoretically be easier as there is no updating to worry about, just a new standalone file.

I found myself getting hung up on this as the idea seemed so foreign. But then I had to remind myself that I grew up in an era when every computer game came on a shiny disc with a hole in the center and the initials "CD-ROM" prominently emblazoned on it somewhere. Now, with physical media being less prominent [with gamers as opposed to collectors] and many game playing experiences beginning simply with "Open Steam account or home screen on device of choice and click an icon", has what used to be considered general knowledge become a barrier to entry?

Hmm. Good point. I mean, my thought process is that the addendums get added to the end...um, but when our esteemed competitor is using a completely opposing methodology, possibly in an attempt to breed confusion and distrust in our efforts, I suppose one can only respond with additional clarity. I guess one could respond with like vitriol and contempt, but there is enough of that in this world as it is, and unlike our esteemed competition, I do not wish to contribute to that narrative or environment, so I mean that one should only respond with additional clarity. I did however add some text to make clearer the chronology of updates in the original post.

Wilkes-Barre This was a tough one. Feel free to improve it anyway you see fit. -R- -G- -B- 000 000 000 [black] 224 224 224 [white] 192 192 192 160 160 160 128 128 128 064 064 064 032 032 032 160 000 000 064 000 000 224 192 032 160 128 000

San Diego Lots of thin lines and fine detail on this one. Kind of bulked up and shaded the gist of it. Hopefully it still works. -R- -G- -B- 000 000 000 [black] 224 224 224 [white] 192 192 192 160 160 160 128 128 128 064 064 064 224 096 000 224 128 032 224 160 096 032 064 128 000 128 192

Alright. not exactly pleased with this one, but the compulsiveness is realizing that it's past my bedtime. San Jose -R- -G- -B- 000 000 000 [black] 224 224 224 [white] 032 032 032 128 128 128 128 160 160 160 160 192 128 096 032 224 128 032 064 096 096 000 128 160 064 160 192