AdamCatalyst

@bisch79 I took another look. Cannot get it to reproduce. However the details you shared make it seem like it is not reading data on megs 3-4 properly. A few things you could test so we know for sure. Does Sonic 3 & Knuckles or Phantasy Star IV save and load properly for you? I ask because we are using the same code to access megs 3-4. Do the player photos crash the ROM in the pre-game matchups screen? What Everdrive OS are you on? Does v0.1.0 doe the same thing? Any of these might help. Sorry I don't have an answer and a fix right now. The first question would be the most helpful, but I understand if that is not something you have handy.

@Latty95pc Yes, there is full playoffs already, and it should have been there for you, so it sounds like the SRAM is not working. Can I ask you favour? Can you confirm that NHL 95 & 96 both properly save and continue playoffs with your Everdrive MD, even after a restart?

@Latty95pc Thanks for writing! Glad to hear you enjoy it. I will get the icing thing fixed on the next build, no prob. As for the goalie getting stuck, I'm still tuning that feature. Will be making him more conservative on puck prediction, as well as insertion a fail-safe, so if he does not get the puck in X seconds, it is assumed something went wrong and he goes back to his net. And Superstar WILL get more difficult. Maybe one day you will actually lose! I LOVED the 3D thing when I saw it last night, and would love to see the same as you. :)

@bisch79 Thanks for writing! Wow, that is a lot of errors. So after 5-7 seconds it tries to show you the first player on a team. This means that it shows photo data stored above the first two megs of storage. That COULD be the problem. It may also still be loading something from SRAM into the menu, although I thought I disabled that. Can you tell me what model of "Everdrive MD" you are using? Are you able to take a photo of any crash screen so I can see what is going on? Or send over an SRAM file for the ROM? p.s. I will improve the goalie to be icing savvy, sorry, I just forgot.

That's insane!!!

Gotcha. LC menu coming up in AUTO is a bug in 0.2.1, will be fixed in next release. However, suppressing the LC menu on A depends on the Control Scheme that you use. The default Hybrid does not suppress it, while a few others suppress it regardless.

Gotcha. There is no specific piece of code for crease-cut goals, but numerous factors that cause them to happen. It SHOULD be more difficult in my ROM in EVO mode, but more can be done. It's a matter of balance and tradeoffs. reduce goalie positions tolerance from +/- 4px to +/-2 px . Changing goalies position tracking between puck carrier and puck from 50% (OG) to 75% (EVO) or 100% puck reduces crease-cut goals. Increasing goalie Speed reduces crease-cut goals. Increasing goalie Agility / Size (EVO) reduces crease-cut goals. Increasing goalie save percentages for glove & stick saves (EVO) reduces crease-cut goals. clamp goalies lateral movement to +/- 20px. …and probably lots more. It's a matter of how far you want to push it, and what you are willing to give up in return. If you want it eliminated, you can easily just set the goalie Size to be too big too fail, but what's the fun in that? Try changing where he tracks position to 100% puck only, and reduce his move tolerance to +/- 2px on the puck, and it should definitely be harder to score crease cut goals.

@Brodeur30 Are you sure you weren't playing in Classic mode? Classic mode uses the original Flip Pass, which is exactly what that looks like. Furthermore, Classic mode allows the goalies to enter the corners, and your video clip shows a goalie entering the corner. Regardless, I will keep an eye out for that, it's quite possibly a bug I just haven't been able to find yet. I will investigate LC menu suppression as well.

I figured it out, you were right. Thanks for reporting this!

I'm not sure what you are asking… can you re-phrase for me?

@Brodeur30 Between v0.1.0 and v0.2.0 the pin reading timing for button presses was changed to adhere to the original better, and this seemed to fix issues with real hardware. It is entirely possible that this aggravated other pre-existing issues. One of the changes in v0.2.1 was a bug reported by AI that P2 controller X button was interfering with P1 controller X button. Because no human reported it, and I could not recreate it, I had another AI agent perform a simulation on the code, and it found the same thing, and at that point I blindly accepted the change recommendation. I was never able to see the effect myself, so I have no idea the extent of what was happening. It's not out of the realm of possibility that it's what you saw. Some user wanted teammates to get hit by the puck less. Some users wanted shot tips. I wasn't going to do Shot Tips unless I could figure out how to get the CPU to do it too, and then it occurred to me, I could simply redirect a skater getting hit by the puck into a shot tip instead, solving both problems with one mechanism. I went through the various existing game mechanics and resources: shot aiming, one-timers, puck deflections, pass & shot follow-through animation frames, puck & stick sounds, etc. and pieced together a set of existing items that could be re-mixed into the new feature. At its core it is just an alternate behaviour when your teammate gets hit by the puck in the o-zone. It is dependent on the players Offensive Awareness & Stick handling rating, so elite players will get hit by the puck less, and tip more, the worst players the opposite. But it is essentially jut a fork of deflections when the puck hits a teammate. Yes. Here is where we are at. It finally works, but the tuning is rough and uniform. The Goalie is instructed to only go get the puck if he can get it before anyone else, however, his prediction math isn't the best. So there are six variables that can be adjusted to bias this prediction. Each one essentially affects how aggressive / conservative the goalie is in risk taking. Puck/Speed estimation in front of the goal line. Puck/Speed estimation behind the goal line. Teammate arrival estimation in front of the goal line. Teammate arrival estimation behind the goal line. Opponent arrival estimation in front of the goal line. Opponent arrival estimation behind the goal line. I've numbered them, because I tune them in that order, as the earlier effects tend to get masked by the later effects. Once we have 1-6 ideally tuned, I can look at adding some randomization, or scaling setting based on Defensive Awareness, etc. For, as you correctly note, all goaltenders have the exact same out of net puck tracking behaviour right now. YES PLEASE! Do let me know if you can score on him. So yeah, there is so much I could do to make him more realistic, but I'm not going to push the Goalie behaviour much further, it is already so complex for me. I'm trying to keep it simple and CPU friendly. I think you may have already noticed this… the goalie doesn't always go get the puck directly. He skates from the net, to the "intersection", midway between the post and laneway behind the net. He then reassess at the moment he hits that threshold, and decides (a) go get puck in front or red line (b) turns 90° and skate to pre-designated spot beside boards, or c) turn 180° and return to net. I needed to do this to save CPU cycles spent on him constantly re-assessing the situation, and because his predictions of whether it was best to go in front of the goal line or behind it were more often wrong when he decided in net, but more often correct once he got to the "intersection". Lastly, the puck can rings around the board quickly, and the goaltender bounces off of the boards if he skates quickly into them. I couldn't figure out a reliable way to get him to be able to stop ringed pucks without using a pre-defined spot that he skates to. I don't like how uniform it is, early builds had him tracking the pucks Y-position which looked better when he got the puck, but too often he would bounce off the boards and miss a ringed puck. There is another mechanic at play that you have observed, causing him to just wait for the puck sometimes. I can try tuning him to wait less on short slow moving pucks. I'm SO glad to hear the goalie lateral movement cap solves part of your small net problem. I know you've been passionate about that for years. As for the goalie hitting players, etc. I actually didn't intentionally do anything there, but I changed how goalie speed and acceleration works. IIRC in the original, Goalie acceleration is doubled, then halved outside of the crease, (then halved again if he gets the puck). I left goalie speed and acceleration the same as skaters (except when he has the puck), and instead gave him 2x acceleration with either no speed cap, or a 2x speed cap (I can't remember) ONLY when he goes to make a save. This means he skates with less force in the crease, UNTIL he is surging to make a save, where he is faster than before. I suspect this might be causing him to knock down players less? I don't know for sure.

New version 0.2.1 on the main page. Keep the bug reports coming, VERY helpful!

Its any time after the whistle, EXCEPT the final whistle.

@Brodeur30 That sounds like a mistake. I will look into it! So the skater acceleration, handling, and stopping was all increased, but skater top speed was reduced. The net time it takes to cover a lap is the same in 0.1.0 and 0.2.0: a player with max Agility & Speed (McDavid) complete a lap of the rink in 13s (McDavid's time), and a player with min. Agility & Speed complete a lap of the rink in 15.9s (a 22.5% differential). So while top speed is down, effective speed over long distance has not changed, and short distance speed has actually increased. Shot speeds were also increased slightly, and whenever anything gets faster, it can make other things looks slower in comparison. But the biggest change was the skater AI, which has a ripple effect on everything. EDIT: A bugfix left too much friction on the puck, slowing gameplay down! Thank-you for catching this!!! Actually not random. There are just more face-off setup templates, and the game grabs the template for the scenario, and then adjusts it based on where it is on the ice. I'm really happy with how this turned out! That glove save was always in the ROM, but it only showed up for some goalies, in some circumstances. I honestly don't know what I did, but I was working on enabling it to test it out, and it started showing up all the time, and I liked it, so I left it. Goalie puck retrieval logic is brand new in 0.2.0, but I had been working on it for at least two years. It still needs tuning, but I am really happy with how it is working now.

So here is the funny thing. Framerate is much better on my ROM than the original, but EVO skating is slightly more CPU intensive, which means you may see frame drops in different places than you are used to, which can cause them to stand out more. I'm constantly trying to find ways to save frames. It averages ~0.8% dropped frames on my last build, with is about 90% less than the original. The original NHL 94 gameplay requires ~141,000 CPU cycles, but the Sega Mega Drive can only provide 128,000 CPU cycles, so it is a constant battle, particularly when you are adding more features. Nonetheless my goal is still a locked 60, but I’m increasingly running out of ideas for that. If you are curious, or want to brainstorm, you can read about the optimizations I am using in the release note. I just use the default hybrid controls. The honest truth? I have never even played with the rest. They were designed based on things people asked for in the forums, and then considering ergonomics of different pad types. I'm actually very curious to know what other people prefer for the controls! For all I know, some are useless, and there is a more ideal configuration people would like. Thanks again for doing private beta testing! I really appreciate it.

@Brodeur30 I have no idea how to respond to your thoughtful message. It feels really nice to have someone notice all those tiny details, and appreciate the time it took. I will respond to some of the technical particulars later, but for now I wanted to address goalie movement. I clamped Goalie’s +/- 26px lateral range to +/- 20px in v.0.1.0, and the results was an improvement in stopping crease cuts and in close goes, but an even greater worsening in giving up short-sided goals, both in-close and at distance. Nonetheless, this code may still be useful to you, with your penchant for narrow nets: Flat 20 px clamp Hook @ 0x00D98C Original: C3C4 5044 C1C4Revised: 4EF9 XXXX XXXXBlock @ XXXX XXXX (36 bytes) C3C4 5044 C1C4 81C2 83C2 0C40 0014 6F04 303C 0014 0C40 FFEC 6C04 303C FFEC 4EF9 0000 D996If you want to tune it, there are four +/-20 px values: $0014 $0014 $FFEC $FFEC. Version 0.2.0 uses a modified scheme, where the clamp is variable, starting at 20px if the puck is on or behind the goal line, then increasing by 1px laterally for every vertical 8px away from the net, stopping at +6px @ 48px. This was the LAST change to 0.2.0 before it went live, so it is the least tested aspect of the ROM. If it turns out to work as well as the test data suggests, I will send you a version of the finished code. But with your small net ROM, the non-variable clamp included here may actually work better.

New version on the first page!

That is so weird! And you weren't playing Minnesota, right? I believe you, but mystified how that could happen. There are fighting mode fixes coming today, but I'm not going to lie, I have no idea if it is fixed as I have no idea how that could ever happen.

@halifax Were you by any chance playing with "Classic" gameplay OR in the '94 League? Neither of those scale in difficulty modes (yet), and the option shouldn't have shown up for those.

Thanks for this! Re: dopey AI skater, that is a definite problem. It will be better on v0.2.0 coming out today, but please let me know if it is still not good enough. Re: fighting… I'm not sure what you are saying… can you tell me more?

Thanks Soitanen! I THINK I know exactly what you mean. Pass goes to player, player appears to almost tip the pass, and the puck now has higher speed than before. Is that what you are seeing? If so, it is fixed, will be out in 0.2.0 later today. If that's not it, can you tell me more?

All the modern players. Starting line players for legacy teams.

Thanks man! I really appreciate it. Yeah, the CPU behaviour is NOT done yet, lots of oddities, and even some randomness. Please report any weird behaviour you see from them!

Thanks, this helps. I had no checksum on the playoff block though, adding that now! Didn't use your patch actually. After the first $2000, reading everything in SRAM directly when needed.

I did not actually. Did it from scratch, reading Mega Drive specs. SRAM save and restore has been pretty thoroughly tested countless times. I do have VonOz's SRAM, and its fine, it has real stats, etc. valid values for everything. I will look through your spec to see if there is something I missed.