von Ozbourne

@AdamCatalyst I sent you a message with my distillation of editing weights as displayed in the game as explained to me by Smozoma earlier [if that is what you were referring to specifically] and if it isn't, it is really interesting nonetheless. @smozoma As an aside perhaps to the Overall player rating in a 0-15 scale as interpreted by the ROM, I had made a test game where all of the player attributes were set to the same value [all 1s, 2s, 3s, etc...] and I was noticing that I was getting an overall of 99 with all D's, E's and F's and all B's and C's were already over 90. [I'll send some screen shots later to explain better, but I'm supposed to be finishing my breakfast and getting ready for work, not doing research for a game] I suppose that this is an extreme case and not how the player attributes are supposed to be used in a "real" game, but it just seemed like something was off, if the top third of available rating options all gave you a score in the top 10%.

Yeah I'm curious about the process... What kind of image adjustments you make before putting them in... Saturation and contrast boosts? Then dither with a predefined palette in photoshop? To start, Many thanks. To be honest, I was actually messing around with the idea of colour photos last year, but the team photographers were so inconsistent with the lighting and colour adjustments that it was just not worth the effort. This year however, they did a much better job of being at least in the same vicinity tonally, even if some teams would have a different fill light here or there or end up with a less vibrant set of images. But, it was all close enough that it seemed worth revisiting. Still wasn't sure though until I actually made that Dave Reid image. I'd gotten it ready for index colouring by setting a custom palette with all eight of the default grey tones and limiting the image to 16 colours and found that it was able to give me that image using only five skin tones. Emboldened with this knowledge, I tried an assortment of player photos using those same five tones and white, black and mid grey and it actually looked nice. As for what I had to do to the photos, given that they were so close to start, I was able to set up some photoshop actions to bump the vibrancy and contrast and brightness just a little bit before converting to eight colour index. I actually find that vibrancy works better for me than saturation and combined with a subtle brightening with probably a maxed out contrast and after going through the cropping and resizing, probably about 2/3 of them were good enough already. For some of the duller, darker, washed out players, I did go back and add some preset vibrancy, brightness/contrast adjustments, and that took care of a good chunk more so I think maybe only 10% of the total pictures actually required some manual attention. And even in these cases It was a lot of just going back to those vibrancy and contrast settings. In the more extreme cases, I would use dodge and burn to darken some forehead glare if the flash was too hot or darken the mid tones around areas like the nose or jaw to increase the contrast in just those areas. In some cases I ended up using layers, where I would overlay a copy of the image but with the layer properties changed to "soft light" or "overlay", occasionally in tandem with masking off areas so only certain features were adjusted. And then usually the top layer was a copy of the original but the layer property set to "colour" in order to preserve the original tones. This mind you is only in the extreme cases luckily so I didn't need to do this too many times. And luckily I didn't have to worry about too many bubble players who missed picture day this time, so trying to match a kid's junior photo to everyone else, wasn't an big issue. Anyway, armed with these tools, while constantly switching to the index colours I settled on after each adjustment, allowed me to see what was going to work in game. I did however restart about a third of the way through due to a change in direction with the dithering. [interesting you both touch on that in a way] I originally settled on a 30% dithering effect since it was subtle enough with the small images, but then I realized that I still didn't so much like it when it was up-scaled as it looked too "retro computery" rather than staying true to what old-school console game art looked like. To me anyway. So I bumped it down to 10% and that's what you see there. Sorry if this is getting long winded, but I guess the takeaway is that luckily the source images were very consistent this year, otherwise I probably would have just settled on black and white again. But since setting up a few automated batch actions was able accomplish what I needed for the majority of the pictures, I didn't feel like I was wasting my time on a foolish idea this year. Hopefully the team photographers do me a favour and keep this up next year.

Alright. First off, sorry this one is a bit late, but in our defence, sometimes life happens at the most inopportune times. Cutting to the chase, it's time @Jkline3 and I submit: NHL 2024 - '94 Edition To start, while I haven't seen any mention of this being the 30th anniversary of this all-time classic in any of the modern releases, [if you're into that sort of thing] it seemed wrong not to address it in some manner. Also, NHL Network continues their "sponsorship" in this edition. The main menu background didn't change, but some other things have. Since Ray Ferraro left NHL Network, the search was on for another former player turned host that we can call on for riveting in-depth pre-game analysis, and Dave Reid was classy enough to return our call. With the new season, the playoff format is restored so anyone could win it all! Some minor tweaks to the game menu graphics, where one can view their lines with the updated player rosters and custom player ratings. Zamboni guy improved his posture and changed his sweater. As well as the new player cards. Yes, I may just be trying show off the new photos at this point. With the discontinuation of the Reverse Retro program, this year's edition sticks to the regular home and away kits. As well, this version incorporates a new 3-Star calculator thanks to the amazing tutorial work by @AdamCatalyst [It's hard to justify giving the goalie credit for the shutout when he only faced two shots all game] Obligatory under the hood and minor graphical stuff: Original custom player attribute stats based on NHL24 updates. Original JKline player sprite mod based on helmet patch for more accurate and varied uniforms. Tighter puck collision on boards and net making for pucks that hit closer to the boards sprites and a slighter smaller scoring area on the nets. Pucks that also feature original customized sprites that change with team colours. The nets that those pucks can go in have also had their sprites redrawn. Weight bug fix is applied. SmozROM Ratings consistency fix - player ratings will match hot/cold overall. Freeze Bug applied so no player stats and player name on second line. User Records set to "ON" can still cause crashes with Vegas, Washington and Winnipeg so caution is advised. Expanded goalie roaming area. Go out to the edge of the trapezoid or out to the face off dots to cut down the angle. Goalie can also carry the puck out to the blue line before the automatic whistle. [if play isn't blown for holding the puck too long] Yes we know that the goalie can technically go to the red line, but that would mean having to figure out how to assess delay of game penalties and that's not likely to happen. Goalie Y-button control hack applied. Edit Lines hack for any player to play at any position. Great for 4-1 Power plays. Benches have been edited so the coach mod has been removed. EA Sports watermarks have been updated to modern logo. Most recent version: NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v2.1.bin Previous version: NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v1.2.bin Original version: NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v1.0.bin

Interesting question. My first thought though would be how after a whistle, there is basically an invisible wall put up in front of the net that prevents the puck from going in, even if the goal shouldn't count anyway. One would think that a similar thing would occur in either scenario, where the whistle blows as soon as a player bleeds, thus walling off the net, or the play is dead after a goal, thus disabling the code that makes a player bleed after a forceful enough hit. I am curious about post whistle fighting though. I know that after an egregious enough beat down, the loser can acquire a gushing head wound, but I've only ever seen that in a fight that stopped the play, rather than post whistle shenanigans. And if that still counts.

Oh no.. While part of me wants to "Yes and" this string, I feel like we've possibly gone too far already. Yes. it was an joke and No there will be no charge... up front... [stop it!] I do feel that I should probably note that we are going to miss our goal by a few days, so no game today. Sorry. As to why, well, I'm not going to say that my esteemed rival, Adam, had anything to do with it. And I'm not going to say that he might have affiliations with Russian hackers. And that he may have allegedly employed their services to slow us down, thus ensuring his monopoly on game mods. For the record, I did not say any of that. I will say that it was not aliens.

I feel slightly slighted, so I have been forced to retaliate the only way I know how. 'Bargo Bustin' a leaked Beta Build of Adam's Bogus Betting filled game! Is THIS what you want?! Show these sports gambling shills how you really feel by cancelling your pre-order and for only half the cost of a subscription to his game, you can support real indie development by subscribing to my patreon. Get the preferred early bird discount by signing up in the next 48 hours with the promo code YOUBETIWONT and receive a "FREE" pin!* *Supplies limited. Must be 18+ and have a parent or guardian's permission. Not available in the Province of Quebec for whatever reason.

Damn, that's a fat wad of Canadian Tire money. It's gotta be worth tens of dollars.

Most of the NES games that I've played around with have had a stack of sprites in a grouping near the end of the ROM data. Being very much a non-expert, this is the only method I know, but it worked fairly similarly if using TLP or TM. This is a screen shot of a CFL mod, but it should still be fine to illustrate the location of the fonts. Actually I might as well mention that I had a moment of uncertainty that this would work, but it turned out that I accidentally had a mod for TSB3 for the SNES mixed in with my NES folder. So this will probably work as long as you are talking about the original Tecmo Super Bowl. </disclaimer>

Sadly, while this would be a nice change in game presentation, the most recent patch is still incompatible with the expanded versions of '94.

Oh no! Wait! That was... Those was... There were "Quote" thingies! I didn't want the added pressure of knowing that we will inevitably be run over by a runaway hype train!

I guess since no one else has spoken up yet, I'll alleviate any concerns by saying that we are in the middle of something. Still a fair bit of stuff to do before it's ready, but suppose I can share this for the "hype". PRE-ORDER NOW! For Spectacular Bonuses! All 32 officially unlicensed NHL teams! A complete set of 16 bit graphics! All 16 of them! Zero Thousand N/A Chel points! FREE Membership to NHL94.com forums!* *sign up required. not affiliated with Electronic Arts, Sega Enterprises or the idiot making this post.

Sorry man, hmm ...not sure if that is an indictment on how the coders build the game or my explanation of my testing.... To be honest, I was just testing this with the colours that I already had in the #9 and #10 spots. I was planning on doing something with gradients and/or striping if this worked, but Florida just turned out to be a Bob Ross moment.

Just realized that while I was looking into something else, I seem to have stumbled onto something tangentially related, if possibly no more helpful. I was playing around with transparent team banners on the Game Setup screen with a net result of trying to get more colours into the banners. Then I noticed this happening. For context, what we're looking at here is a screen that is using four colour palettes. #1 [0xxx] is the default rink colours and the one used by the overlaying bits. [Also the background in the default game, but in this example I'm using the @Drezz background hack] #2 [2xxx] is The Home Team colours. Which is the most interesting, so more on that later. #3 [4000] is the Away Team colours and basically consists of the nine colours, plus black and white, used by the Away team logo. The remaining first five are basically unused. And #4 [6000] is an extra palette not used in the original game, but I use it with the background image to allow for the greatest option of colours that don't conflict with any other assets. Now, in the above image, I made the middle portion of the Home/Away banners fully transparent and put a gradient banner directly on to the background image that will peak through allowing for essentially four colour gradient banners not including the anti-aliased text. By changing the background hex code for those areas to 4000 [away] and 2000] [home] this allows me to borrow from the team logos' colours to create this effect. I tried this with the Banners themselves, but I recall this not working out so well. Turns out, it doesn't completely work this way either. [unless you disable player photos... hmm...] Anyway, finally getting around to testing it, I had to check all of the colours and I noticed that the 2000 palette on this screen it a real hodge podge of colours. Of the 16 colours used in that palette, #1 is the default background, #2&3 are taken from the Home Team banner colours, [the tutorial for such is included in wboy's original modding reference] #4&5 are what the Away team's banner uses, despite being a separate palette [in the same tutorial] #9-16 are taken from the Home Team's logo, but only when the logo is on the screen. Turns out that when the player photos are being displayed on this screen, those final eleven colours are replaced by the eight player photo colours and the blank black spaces that follow it. I haven't tried setting those extra black shades to something brighter, but seeing as they would be universal to every team, it doesn't really address the thing I was attempting to do anyway. Going to abandon the banners at this stage, but it did make me think about how the colours may be available to the player photos [once the 3 vs 4 bpp issue is taken care of and they can access those extra colours]

While pretty gross, I have to admit that I am neither as saddened or disgusted by this practice as I should be. Probably just numbness from seeing how things progressed to this point or due to the fact that, as someone who basically doesn't engage in online play anymore, it doesn't actually affect me beyond having some dumb thing cluttering up my menu screens. And as someone who is admittedly "behind the times" on these yearly instalment games anyway, I can just skip one if it looks like the publishers had more input than the developers, if you catch my meaning.

The first step is admitting your shame. The NHL board of governors is ready to return your "Valuable Fan" card once you have proven that you can rectify your oversight. Ew... now my cynical brain is imagining a meeting somewhere where a bunch of suits are complaining that the developers should totally be able to code a live score feed into the game and use the credit card attached to your Xbox Live account to allows you to buy a "Loot Box" that will unlock an "Ovi Celly" if the Bruins can beat the Red Wings by 3 or more.

Figured I'd see what EA was doing for 2024 and saw this. While I accept no responsibility for any influence taken from this post, I would just like to go on record that while I executed the idea first, I also executed the idea.

I could probably hook you up with something that should be easy to follow at some point this weekend. I'll have to reinterpret my notes away from my particular brand of shorthand, but should have something in the step-by-step style that shouldn't be too hard to follow [as long as the program is working well enough to open correctly I suppose] I guess the other question is: What type of sprite style are you looking for? I have a couple of different stripe styles and helmet patches that I use depending on the look, but if you prefer to have something that just looks like the original game sprites, but with tape, I just checked and it looks like I have a version of that too.

I suppose that would depend on what your intention is for the ROM. There is a patch for it, [don't know offhand, but it's in the forum] but the caveat is that it also updates the ice surface to modern standards. All well and good, but doesn't exactly fit a game that is meant to look like it is from the 1994 era. Another option [and the one that I mainly use for period accurate ROMs] is to open your ROM in your sprite editor of choice and import a copy of the taped sticks from another ROM or from a set of image files. I can hook you up with a set of images if you are interested in going that route.

Have to second what Sean said. Especially interesting when it's about a league that I don't know anything about, So I get to learn about it from someone who obviously has enough passion to have put together a game about it.

Hold up, if this were to work, is it possible that the 6000 palette might help out here? I'm wondering if even if the photos still reference the different palettes in the three different locations, could that just not be changed to the same colours? The menu doesn't have a third palette, so it's referencing a blank one. Might just be a matter of checking which instance of the "default rink colours" that the screen uses. i should really search that out later... But on the pre-game screen, it's just a matter of making your Ron Barr or replacement announcer image use the same colours as the players. As for the Player Cards screen, since the logos use that 3rd palette, and since the first palette has grey shades anyway, they can just share the first or second one with the rest of the background. Just need to remember which one dictates what parts change colours with the switch in teams. Have that in notes somewhere... This is all based on the premise that the photos can be converted to 4bpp of course, but if RAM limitations does pose an issue, wonder if commandeering the 3rd [or possibly even 4th] palette might be a possible workaround.

This could still be interesting actually. Quick math would indicate that even if there is no additional space allocated for player photos, once converting from 3bpp to 4bpp, that would still leave enough space for 17.3333 photos per team as opposed to the full 26. But that just happens to be exactly the same number as the starting lineup when counting the three full strength lines and starting goaltender with one spare for a logo or "generic shadow" to represent the rest of the team. Based on the assumption that this is also not going to be a problem.

Well fine, I suppose if I wanted to get pedantic about it, I could say that I am in fact capable of making a series of statements on the many aspects about the game that profess its superiority. What I would not be capable of however, is credibly refuting these assertions.

Ah yes. I should have clarified that since (6x6)-2 is obviously 34 and not 22, but it either slipped my mind or I've spent so much time counting in base-16 that it's second nature. I'll just edit that in. This was also a concern given that the player photos would end up taking up a lot more space. [guessing rather than a "4 is 25% more than 3" thing its a "2³ vs 2⁴" thing] My initial thought was that instead of increasing the bit depth of each photo to use 16 colours, [which would admittedly make things look a lot nicer and be a lot cooler once all the potential heavy lifting is out of the way] but perhaps relocating only the used palette to another location so as to free up the mandatory white and and black used by the other menu assets or allow for the use of multiple palettes. Which in light of the Doug Weight thing, would be pretty inefficient and take a lot of time and extra effort to set up and work with, which is why I wasn't married to the idea beyond general curiosity... I think I'm talking myself out of pursuing this matter any further.

Okay. After spending some time on this, I appear to be at the end of my capabilities. I don't know if this is even an question that can be answered in the affirmative, but I figured I would purge my notes and see if this might prove helpful to others or just be an interesting story about how to listen to the clues that you may be wasting your time. The quest? Can player photos be adapted in some way to use more than the per-requisite 8 colours. It's already been established that as long as the first white and black photo palette colours aren't changed, the remaining six colours can be changed to anything you want in order to introduce colour to the photos. First player card photo offset is at: 30 & 32 Team = 120294 OG game = C6402 [default unused guy] or = C6838 [default players] or = C75E0 [first starting lineup player photo] Colour palette offset = 120294 [decimal] Uses same #1 white and #2 black as menu screen assets and #3 to #8 are grey-scale colours by default, but can be changed to any colours as they are independent of any other asset. This is part of a larger colour palette that starts at offset C6762 Space is allotted for standard arrangement of 4 x 16 colour palettes Photos actually use colours #6 to #14 of palette #2. If using 120294 [decimal] on 3bpp linear as a basis, Palette #1 is the default colours, #2 is blank, #3 is a copy of #1, #4 is blank, #5 is a copy of #1 & #3. Using these settings, there is actually space for two preceding palettes, starting at colour #6 on palette #1, but it is not known if these can be incorporated. Every player photo, in both the default and 30 team version, is preceded by the hex code: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0024 Not sure why the four groups of 0s are required, but best guess on the "0024" is that each player photo is 6x6=36 tiles in decimal, aka 24 tiles in hex This appears confirmed by the fact that the first default player photo to reuse tiles was Doug Weight [offset CE9F4] whose photo leader code is: 0000 033A 0000 03BA 0022 Not sure about the "0000 033A 0000 03BA" yet, but clearly the "0022" points to the fact that Weight's image only uses 22 hex [34 dec] tiles instead of the normal 24 hex [36 dec]. I am guessing that "033A" and "03BA" are overrides for the new colour palette and tile ordering offsets respectively because... Following Weight's image tiles it appears that the "saved" space is just used threefold by additional colour and tile arrangement data anyway. [wonder why they bothered...] At offset CED24: 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EEE 0000 0CCC 0AAA 0888 0666 0444 0222 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 0EE6 Colour data follows previous pattern of using latter half of 2nd palette, although 3rd and 4th are left blank Immediately followed by: 0006 0006 Photos are six across by six down Immediately followed by: 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 200A 200B 200C 200D 200E 200F 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 201A 201B 201C 201D 201E 201E 201F 2020 2021 201E Normal image tile numbered ordering with colour instruction [2000 meaning 2nd palette as noted above] [Unfortunately my copy of the original unedited game doesn't load up when I make edits, probably something to do with checksum info or something... whatever] Used SmozROM tool to make a new "OG - checksum" version. That was the problem. Yay. Changed top half of Weight's image to use "4000" colour option and it came up with the top half using different colours. It appears that palettes might stick to the 8-colour model though so rather than jump to #6 to #14 of #3 palette, possibly they use the colours directly after the adapted "#2" palette and uses colours #1 to #8 of #3 palette. Although now I think they are referencing a palette in a completely different location. It is possible that "0000" colour will be #14 of palette #1 to #5 of palette #2. Or, in testing Winnipeg's Teppo Numminen, who uses 23 instead of 24 tiles, changing the tiles from colour "2000" to colours "4000" and "6000" appear to shift the colours in the image to instead use the colour palettes attached to the background on which the image is viewed [main menu, pre-game screen, player card screen] Top third is "2000", middle is "4000" bottom is "6000". From previous notes, I know that the main menu has no 3rd [6000] palette, for the Pre-Game screen, its 3rd palette is used for Ron Barr's colour photo and the Player Card screen, has a 3rd palette for the NHL and NHLPA logos Final image, default, Winnipeg's Alexei Zhamnov, offset E62D2 image is followed by hex code: 0000 2B0A 0000 2B8A The fact that the difference between the two offsets being "0080", matching that of the Weight example is not a coincidence On further investigation, jumping ahead an offset of 2B0A from this point arrives at the colour palette and tile arrangement data for the Player Cards screen background. Makes sense. 30 Team not as helpful as immediately after the final player image [offset 1C6622] [32 Team = 1D17AA] is the colour palette data for the main menu team banners Tried changing the "0000 0000" on the last couple players to "0000 033A" but it seems that whatever control override for colours was allowed in the original, is not accommodated when the additional teams and photos were programmed in. Soooo.... that's what I got. [sorry for the junk loads of bold, it just helped as I would skim along] Absolutely no idea if there is even anywhere to go with this idea, but I figured why not put it here and see. And if anything, even a failed experiment can be informative, because that's just science.

Noticed that the version of 94 I was using still had this inverted head to ass relationship issue. Using this '93 code and the sock colour offsets @Jkline3 posted, I found that pattern still held true to '94. Figured I'd post here for anyone still needing this and so it's all together in the one post. Here's the "head up asses" fix for NHL 94: OFFSET A74E0: Change "0132" to "011e" OFFSET A74E8: Change "0142" to "012e" OFFSET A7500: Change "011e" to "0132" OFFSET A7508: Change "012e" to "0142"