AdamCatalyst

Thanks man! Honestly, I don't remember, but I *do* remember screwing it up before I got it right. Perhaps tell me a bit more, or show me a screen cap of what is happening to you, and maybe it will jog my memory? I can tell you that I used an old version of Tile Molester, and trial and error, but I hardly think that is useful. Tell me and/or show me more, and I will do my best to help you over that hump.

Good cover pick! He should’ve won the Hart, IMHO.

Hi @Jpark, Thank-you so much. I am honestly done for now, will let it stand as-is unless someone reports a bug, or discover an error I can't live with. I'm not sure if I will back next season, but I hope to. Who knows what life will look like then. It would be great to have the more authentic 3v3 overtime for regular season games, but I don't know how to do such a thing. I could really use a more tech-savvy collaborator. Thanks again for playing, and contributing valuable feedback. I hope you're enjoying your summer!

Thanks @Fastlane. Cheers to enjoying the present!

To anyone who might have read this post in the past, please note that the first posting has been updated for version 6.0, which includes some new insights and hacks.

Hey folks, Version 6.0, the final major version of my ROM has been posted, in the first post as usual. Before I get to the details, I just want to thank everyone who has put time in Beta testing and writing me feedback. This more refined gameplay never have been possible without you. Thank-you again! ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2022 06 12 - Version 6.0 “The [Gameplay’s] the thing.” This final major version is overwhelmingly focused on rebuilding the gameplay to a more realistic & contemporary feel & balance. This version also introduces two patches, a Rookie Mode to make scoring goals easier, and an Arcade Mode for faster action. And you can finally control the goalie immediately with a 6-button controller. Of course there are other improvements, but the biggest changes are invisible to the eye… Main Menu - Settings: Default teams set for the 2022 Stanley Cup finals. - Graphics: Over one third (>64) of all Player Photos were re-scaled and re-cropped for better visual balance. - Graphics: A couple of player photos were replaced. Arena - Sprites: Zamboni driver wave hand colours adjusted. - Graphics: Arena glass in corners have seams removed. - Graphics: Coaches (implied) arms shortened. In-Play - Graphics: EDM & OTT Home uniforms and on-ice logos revised. - Graphics: CHI & MIN Away uniforms revised. - Sprites: Bench players animation uniforms, shading, & shadows improved. - Sprites: Face-off pop-over graphics further refined, cosmetic glitches from original removed. Rosters & Lines, & Ratings - Rosters & Lines: Minor changes to some teams. - Ratings: Major changes to everyone. All ratings completely re-done (a third time) to conform to provide a new gameplay balance & feel. Gameplay & Ratings: - Speed: Attributes for skating, shooting, passing have been balanced to have a much more realistic ratio between the relative speed of these motions in real-life. - Skaters: All players, especially the low-end players are now more responsive in their skating & shooting. - Penalties: Aggression & Checking distributions have been conformed to (slightly) reduce penalties. - Defencemen: On average, defencemen are now rated a little higher for contemporary gameplay balance. - Goaltenders: All attributes re-rated with a new attribute distribution, in order to provide better goaltending throughout. Gameplay - Players: Energy Depletion rate slightly decreased, for better gameplay balance. - Players: Stopping & Crossover rate quickened, for more realistically responsive skating. - Controls: Goalie control can now be accessed immediately by pressing the (Y) button with a six-button controller. Miscellaneous - Penalties: “Kneeing” penalty for injuring a player restored to its original name, “Roughing.” - Graphics: Referee pop-over refined. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you enjoy! cheers, -Adam

lol - I have gone through the exact same process as you. I've tinkered with so many things, that the timing is just off. I would like to think it demands better timing to pull off the same stuff. I'd like to think that. I am so close to finishing, all I am doing is running simulations to make sure the penalty and body checking rates are appropriate. It seems to vary so much per game, I want at least a hundred simulations before I am comfortable releasing it.

@8bittheologian Thanks for testing it out! I really appreciate it. I don't think there is anything else you need to do. I was able to locate a bit-perfect emulator, plus its been months and no-one has reported an issue, and now with your contribution, I feel secure enough to say this safely works. Also, welcome to the site!I hope you have fun here.

@fastlane You rule! Thanks again for all the feedback, it really helps. lol - I'm so sorry that your goalie doesn't like you. I agree with your assessment of the arcade mode, but after the first one, just about everyone asked for faster, so… it's faster. I know it can be crazy unrealistic sometimes. It sounds like Rookie mode works now! Great. Will just implement the final fixes, and put out one final version just to make sure there are no errors. But no major changes. No minor changes even. Just final fixes. Thanks again for you all your help!

Thanks for all the feedback @George! I'm feeling really good about the base version, just one last issue that probably no-one else will ever notice, but I know is there. As for the patches, my apologies, I should have been clearer. They can *only* be applied to the corresponding ROM, i.e v6b2 patches will only work with v6b2 ROM. If applied to any other ROM, it will probably break it, which is why I used BPS to implement a checksum safeguard. I will make that much clearer in the final release!

Thank-you to everyone who has downloaded and provided feedback in the last 24 hours! Based on all your feedback, here is a second Beta of 6.0! Key changes from the first Beta… Game has fewer penalties, and a few very minor tweaks. Arcade patch has faster skating. Rookie patch has the most changes, hopefully making it easier to score goals, and to learn the goalies weaknesses. If you are reading this, and confused as to what the heck I am talking about with the “patches”, check out the linked post above. As always, any and all feedback is welcome and encouraged. At this point, there is only one extremely minor tweak I can think to make. Unless you folks can find any errors or issues, it looks like the final version could be published on Friday. cheers, -a

@Fastlane AWESOME, thank-you so much for all the feedback! lol - thanks for the clip. Was it something you said? I've never had the goalie disappear on me before, but I have heard that error exists. Check out this crazy list: https://nhl94.com/html/bugs.php I've been so lucky t have you and a few others send me feedback in the last 24 hours, enough that I can put up another Beta tonight. Have made Rookie easier. Arcade faster. And the main version, slightly fewer penalties. If you have time to download test, and provide feedback again, that would be great! If you don't have time, no worries. I'm just happy to hear that you are having fun.

Thanks man, I appreciate all the feedback!

OK, first public Beta of 6.0 is ready! Any and all feedback is welcome and encouraged, but I should stop to explain what I'm trying to do with this for context. I am trying to revise & refine the gameplay to be both more realistic, and more characteristic of how NHL hockey is played today. More realistic… Energy should deplete & recover at a more realistic rate, where more realistic shift lengths are rewarded, while tired players recharge much faster on the bench If you are playing with line changes on, you should have to deal with the real life decision of putting on fresh third liners or keeping yoru best out there even though they are showing signs of fatigue The puck should move faster than the players! Seriously, I know this sounds obvious, but in the original it was possible to outstate a wrist shot in some circumstances, while passes were were often faster than than shots. I've tried to balance the speed of skating, to passing, to shooting, with consideration for how quickly objects move across fixed sections of the ice (like skating time from blue-line to blue-line). More realistic speed burst. Harder to score goals. More contemporary… Faster and more agile skating. Much faster shooting. Fewer hits & penalties. More parity (less disparity) between the best and the worst of the league. Much better goaltending. Of course there is much more to it than this, but I think that's a pretty decent overview of what I'm trying to do. Now, because I know not everyone shares my same desire for more of a Simulation style gameplay, I am releasing two patches with this ROM to customize the game. One patch will give you a Rookie mode, where the defence it a little more tame, and the goalies aren't quite as sharp. The other introduces an Arcade mode, where the puck and the players move even faster, and the original exaggerated speed boost is restored. One more thing. I am not going to provide multiple ROMs for version 6.0, just one ROM, but multiple optional patches. Those are located in the ZIP with the ROM. If you don't know how to install a patch over a ROM, I assure you that it is super easy, and can even be done online. I am just too exhausted to support anyone on doing that, so I hope the community can point people in the right direction. If you are using a Mac, I highly recommend the free software Multipatch https://projects.sappharad.com/multipatch/ You will know you have installed the patch properly, because the opening credits will indicate "Rookie Mode" or "Arcade Mode" or "2022 Edition" accordingly. I am really looking forward to your feedback. And PLEASE point out any errors if you see them! There's been a myriad of minor fixes and improvements, but I won't detail them now. cheers, -Adam @Fastlane The rookie mode is essentially for you, so please let me know how it does and does not work for you, so I can tweak it! @George Please let me know how you think we are doing on the penalty front! @Tabs3121 The Arcade patch is here, let me know if this is what you had in mind!

Cool! Thanks for the feedback guys. For sure then, let's do a… Rookie Mode patch with less aggressive defensive and less effective goaltending for those still learning how to play-make and score. Arcade Mode patch for those who want a less realistic faster paced experience. I might still do a Bettman Mode path, depending on how the penalties in v6 sort out. Will ask George for his opinion. Based on the feedback I've heard, that should cover it, but if anyone else has a burning suggestion, don't be shy!

Hey Fastlane, thanks for the feedback! You can definitely get some helpful tips and tricks on how to score from the forums here. It helped me improve my game big-time! The new incoming version will be even more difficult to score goals. Because it's impossibe to please all the people all the time, I've actually been thinking of releasing a few patches with the ROM, so that people can play my intended gameplay balance, or patch it for a personally more desirable gameplay profile. Would only do a few patches, something like a "Rookie" balance for folks like you, a "Bettman" balance (less hitting and penalties) for folks like @George, and an "Arcade" balance for people who want the fastest most boistrous experience possible. Something like that. Would that interest anyone?

Thanks for the info! That is helpful to know. yes, Some teams take substantially more penalties than others, and lay twice as many body checks (I.e. Nashville compared to Buffalo). i will hit you up with a Beta build soon !

I've got a few questions for you, but only one to start… what team(s) are you playing with when you get too many penalties? I ask because there is a huge disparity between the most aggressive team in the league (Nashville) and the least (Buffalo), and I'm wondering where your experiences lie in that continuum.

So, there is going to be a version 6.0, despite my honest intentions to give the project a rest. It's going to be an almost entirely invisible update, it's all about the gameplay. I've completely re-done the goaltending, and I'm very happy with how the goaltenders are playing now. I'm still adjusting the body checking and penalty rates. Been working on game pace. Further stamina depletion & recovery balancing. Play testing. Balancing. More play testing. More balancing. See you back here soon with a Beta to test. If you send me a PM, I will be sure to send you one back as soon as the Beta is ready, which should be any day now. Feedback is so helpful. If you have any requests for v6.0 please let me know. I can't promise anything, but I've taken into consideration every piece of feedback I've gotten, and been able to make some solid improvements from it. Your feedback matters!

Interesting! I am convinced that my data on the CPU-only games was accurate, as even with such a small sample size, the effect was so high with clear polarized clusters in the data. But even if Aggression & Checking ratings affects human controlled player penalty rates (and I'm not asserting that they do!) it seems like it is trivial in comparison to how you actually play with the players. And it also seems to me like there is something else going on, perhaps random, and definitely beyond my understanding. FYI, what I did for every rating, was… - Test full teams with a single attribute rated the exact same, and kept adjusting these ratings until I could find a minimum and maximum value that delivered acceptable player performance. For instance, I found that a 15/15 shot power was acceptable as an extremely rare value, and that 9/15 was acceptable as a minimum common value, but that 8/15 shot power was too slow for me. So the dynamic range for Shot Power was limited to 9-15/15. - From there I could build a composite best & worst player that defined an acceptable range of talent parity. Teams of them were tested to make sure these extreme scenarios would still deliver players that were fun to play, have clear differentiation, and somewhat realistic disparity. This caused me to re-think my maximums & minimum in some cases. Shot accuracy of 15/15 and 14/15 were just too good, while shot accuracy below 6/15 was just not believable. So that range was set at 6-13. (@smozoma have I thanked you for that hack? Because I never could have done this without it. I needed the extra resolution it provided big-time!) - Once I was certain about the upper and lower limits for each attribute, I conformed the results of my internal rating system to an appropriate distribution type. This was done by hand, to try and respect innate characteristics of the data. This was informed by the original distributions, even though most of mine deviate substantially. And then of course play tested. So much testing. All that being said, in the case of Aggression I found that 0-8 gave me enough differentiation between the most and least penalized players in the league, with the fewest amount of penalties called. With Checking however, I found that I needed a dynamic range from 1-13 to adequately differentiate players, again with a minimum amount of penalties called. And in the case of both of these, I used distributions that approximated the original. Gameplay just seemed off until I did this. I'm not sure who, if anyone, is interested in this kind of thing. But nonetheless, there it is.

FYI to anyone who might have missed this. I am keeping an up-to-date thread to document every manual hack in this ROM, with instructions so that people can lift these mods, or adjust them to their own personal liking:

Yes, energy depletion & recovery rates are substantially different from the original. If you play with very long shifts, you will very likely find players get sluggish. I found that reducing the speed boost noticeably decreases the whole speed of gameplay, since it is such an easy way to get momentum. The players in my ROM have been set with a higher speed and agility in part to compensate. IIRC, I ran four sets of 16 simulation games with everything constant except all players adjusted to have… Aggression Max, Checking Max. Aggression Max, Checking Zero. Aggression Zero, Checking Max. Aggression Zero, Checking Zero. I then recorded the total penalty minutes per game, the number of penalties, the number of body check, shots, and some other stuff I don't recall. I never held on to my raw data, but what my I remember is… Both higher Aggression & Checking attributes had similar impacts on increasing CPU Body Checks thrown & CPU Penalty Minutes. In both cases, the Checking attribute seemed to have a slightly more pronounced affect than Aggression. The difference between Aggression & Checking Max vs Zero, was substantial, like 3x or 4x more penalty minutes on average. I didn't notice any other meaningful correlations. I also played a small handful of games with these test teams. I didn't notice any substantial correlation between the penalties called on me and the Aggression attribute. Maybe a slight impact from the Checking attribute, but too small a sample, too casual a methodology, and too fuzzy a memory to be sure of anything there. Are you saying that the Blitz League stats indicated that Checking attribute doesn't do anything for the Player when throwing a Body Check, or just doesn't do anything to increase the likelihood of a penalty call?

Hey, Posted a Beta for you and anyone else to test. But bottom line, I don’t think the penalty call rate will be much lower. I’m pretty much at the floor as far as being able to lower aggression, while still having enough resolution in the rating range to accurately differentiate players. In any case, make sure you compare it to the original. If it is better in the original, than more can be done. If not, we might be at the floor, at least based on my limited knowledge of what makes it tick. -a

Attached is a Beta RC1 of v 5.5. It needs testing of everything below, but most importantly… Energy Depletion & Recovery rates? Penalty call rates? Player photos? If you notice anything is off, please let me know. -------------------------------------------------- Full change-log as follows: Main Menu - Graphics: ~64 Player Photos were re-scaled and re-cropped for better visual balance. Arena - Sprites: Zamboni driver wave hand colours adjusted. - Graphics: Coaches (implied) arm shortened. Rosters & Lines, & Ratings - Ratings: Minor changes to virtually all Aggression Ratings. - Ratings: Minor ratings changes to many Goaltenders, and minor changes to Anaheim’s Defence. - Rosters & Rosters: Minor changes to Anaheim’s Defence. Gameplay - Players: Energy Recovery rate slightly increased, for better gameplay balance. -------------------------------------------------- EDIT: Beta has been pulled, as it is out of date. If you downloaded this and have any feedback, I'd love to hear it!

I’m not clear what you are asking… Are you asking about simulating overclocking or some kind of water playback mode with your emulator software? I wouldn’t really know about that, but I am under the impression it is possible with some emulators, with some games.