AdamCatalyst

Random update: I have been sick with the virus, and it has knocked me off my feet for over a week. While I have been able to get some more sprite work done, progress has mostly stalled, and I am concerned that I don't have the mental acuity to do end of season rating & lineup work with my foggy COVID brain right now. I'm not sure what to do, as I don't want to delay this release, nor do I want to release something that is sub-par. As always, if anyone wants to step in to do some beta testing, it can help me save a bit of time. All you need to do is send me a PM to express interest, and I will send you pre-release builds as they are ready. You in turn just send me any feedback. That's it, not exactly rocket science. I hope everyone is keeping well. Seems to be a lot of folks sick right now in my neck of the woods. All the best to you and yours.

Thanks man, I appreciate it, along with the constructive suggestions. Good call sir! I'm sorry to hear things have been stressful lately, I hope life is treating you fairly.

@kingraph That actually looks really helpful, thank-you for sharing! I'll try it out as soon as I get this CV19 cloudiness to clear my head. BTW, your mutant league screen look awesome. I spend so much time obsessed with “realism,” I really need to take a broader look around and try out some of these fun looking creative mods!

That particular sprite can be changed with nothing more than Tile Molester, a piece of free Windows software. If you want to give it a try, I'll even send you the resource file that will give you a bookmark and colour palette entry for that image so you can play around with it. But be forewarned, that's how all this madness started for me, just wanting to change one single image.

Did you ever figure this out? I’m stuck on the exact same thing, trying to track down a few sprites that elude my eyes when I review the whole binary.

I found this to be brilliantly fast and efficient! Thank-you so much.

Thanks @George! I hope you'll come back for the big update coming out after the end of the season. As for Ron Barr, I decided to leave him as-is. No matter who I choose for him, it will be out of region for some users. Heck, I can't even figure out which single broadcaster I would put there! If you want to replace Mr. Barr yourself, it's not an insurmountable amount of work.

OK @Jpark , it's Seattle review time! I've attached a bunch of images from version 4.1 and a beta of version 4.2, where I tried messing with the Seattle colours as you suggested. As you know, the blue shoulders are, well, wrong. But that being said, I feel like, in play, the blue shoulders end up balancing out the uniform to give a closer impression to the real deal, despite being technically less correct. I could really go either way on this. You are the Seattle fan, let me know which you think give a more authentic sense in motion. PM me if you want me to send you the Beta so you can play with it yourself. cheers, -a p.s. look closely, and you can also see the new face-off animation frames, composite sticks, and more.

Quick update… Been making huge progress lately. Currently beta testing… - composite sticks for everyone, giving the game a more modern look. - revised face-off sticks and shadows and linesman graphics. - slightly revised goalie masks. - revised scorekeepers graphics. - new and improved center ice logos. - refined puck sprite and shadows. …and a myriad of other minor sprite tweaks & fixes. Meanwhile, gameplay refinements for checking and penalties, are at an alpha stage. I’ll wrap up graphic work soon, and spend the rest of my time on gameplay, and seeing if I can quash any more bugs. I won’t have any more time to work on this project after April, so I’m trying to pour as much as I can into this potentially final version. cheers, -Adam

Thanks for your kind words. I promise when I get to my final Seattle tweek, and I will review everything you wrote here.

Hi @Jpark! I will be doing a final review of uniform colours as I re-do the on-ice logos (as the two are forced to share the exact same colour palette), and will test your suggestion with Seattle when I get to doing their end of season review. That being said, the uniform colours were set to look accurate in motion, not necessarily in still, and if I recall correctly, the red stripe stood out way too much when I tested it previously, as this colour is barely visible at all while the players play in real life. That being said, I will take another look, and I will give your suggestion another look for the final version. cheers, -a

@Bobr9988 The fix for Prosvetov has been posted. Thank-you for catching that for me! I am going to leave Melnichuk out of the game for now, as I am only keeping three goalies per team, based on minutes played this season. Melnichuk might still get added in if he can pass Lagace for minutes played by the end of season.

Oh geeze, sorry about that! Will correct it, and re-upload it in just a minute…

v 4.0 finally released. A bazillion updates. Special thanks to everyone who sent me feedback on betas!

Hi folks! Getting some PMs about a trade-deadline version. Good news! It's already done. The last detail was awaiting the league's decision on Dadanov. However, it won't be released for at least a day or two or three, as this is the big 4.0 update, with all new, well, lots of things, and I am still wrapping up all new photos. If you want to play test the beta with all new rosters, ratings, lineups, etc., just send me a PM.

No worries, I totally get that. Just because I am obsessed with my project here, I don't expect you to be. When I go to wrap up the new centre-ice logos, I will review what you wrote here. One of my concerns, that I didn't;t mention before, is making sure that Boston and Pittsburgh are adequately differentiated. I know it's not a real concern, since they never play eachother both wearing road jerseys, but an internal mandate of mine. Anyway, I will review what you wrote, and check out how they did it in Rewind before I finalize that element. Thanks again for sharing!

FYI, I am looking forward to your feedback when version 4.0 come out. Switching to the new rating system has allowed be to better differentiate players, and McKinnon is one of the top players that I think has benefited from this. When I out out v4, I will also upload the ratings in a CSV for anyone who wants to review them, debate them, whatever.

Thanks for all the kind words of support! I've been working on a major revision (4.0) for the past month, likely the biggest changes I will ever make to this thing. Here is what's coming down the pipeline… Player rating system has been switch from a 1-6 scale to a 1-15 scale for more accurate differentiation of players. Every, single, player, has been re-rated. All rosters and lines have been re-done from scratch. Gameplay rebalances: Reduced checking effectiveness & CPU hitting. Gameplay rebalances: Improved CPU goaltending, slightly harder and more accurate shooting. Custom the Stars of the Game formula. All the Player Photos have been re-done with the official 2022 NHL images. Numerous minor graphic tweaks. The gameplay is noticeably different. Even more parity between the best and worst players. A touch slower skating on the high end, a touch faster puck movement on the bottom end, better goaltending across the board, and generally just a bit more realistic gameplay, IMHO. Most of this work is already done, and I should be reaching the first complete alpha release of this within days, followed by a beta for play testing in about a week. Because this will be the most dramatic change, I really want to be certain on the gameplay balance before I release it. Do you have a favourite teams that you are super-opinionated about? If you are interested in reviewing what I have put together for that team, particularly its lines, please feel free to drop be a PM. I will share with you what I have (spreadsheet) for that team, along with the consideration parameters, and I will seriously consider any feedback you have. Version 4.0 should be out within weeks. I hope that you will come back and try this out once it is ready! Furthermore, I intend to put out a final version for the season somewhere between the trade deadline and the playoffs. cheers, -Adam p.s. Furthermore, beyond this, work has started on re-doing all the on-ice logos to better match the perspective of the ice, based on the Rewind version assets. That work won't be a part of the next release, but will almost certainly be released not too far behind. And then there will be at least one more round of refinements, bug fixes, etc…

Sorry, it seems like I struck a nerve… I was curious to see what you would do, as I look up to you and respect your work. And I would *never* promote my work in your thread. Never! In the past I have actively guided conversation in your ROM thread to stick to the subject of your superlative work, and refused to even mention my ROM when outright asked about other ROMs. If you honestly think I've been promoting my ROM in your thread, just let me know which posts, and I will delete those right away, no questions asked! Will start with the one you just quoted.

I wrapped up my experimenting with the Star Points formula from the original game, and the custom formula from the script. I turned my findings into @smozoma, and will leave it to him to decide what to do with it. I somehow doubt this affects anyone, but you never know. I did want to share something else that might be useful to someone out there. I noticed that with the Star Point variables in the original script, it could realistically produce scenarios where the goalie with the worse save percentage would end up taking first star, because of the seer volume of shots they faced. It seems to me, that the variables used for "goal against" and "shot against" end up creating a mandatory minimum save percentage floor in order for a goalie to earn star points. The ratio in the script is set to ~-3:1 ratio, which essentially means that a goalie is accumulating Star Points for every shot faced, as long as their save percentage is over ~.650 (I know… I'm irrationally superstitious with numbers.) If you wanted to enforce a higher minimum save percentage for your goalies to be accumulating Star Points, change this ratio in the variables. I personally found that an -8:1 ratio worked best for me (meaning that my goalies are only racking up star points when they have a save percentage above .875), but even a -4:1 ratio will make a dramatic difference by raising the floor to a .750 save percentage. And of course, you could go the other way, if you wanted to more heavily favour shot volume over save percentage.

@von Ozbourme That is weird! I can confirm that in the original formula, skaters are assigned one Star Point for each second that they are on the ice. I've restored that in order to prevent crashes, and removed the logic for goalie periods played, instead only relying on the logic for goalie faced shots to determine eligibility. I'll share all my findings once I feel more certain about the effects from this change. If you (or anyone) wants to beta test the modified script (or a pre-modded ROM), please send me a PM!

@smozoma May I ask you a favour… would you be willing to share a larger screen cap of your spreadsheet? I am trying to understand the original code that prevented the "no-event" three stars crash, and the excerpts of your notes on that spreadsheet have actually been helpful. I can't promise anything, other than that I will share any potentially useful findings.

LOL - Dude, I get confused by my own notes on manual hacks I made to my ROM last week! I can't imagine remembering this from eleven years ago. Thanks for sharing this.

@smozoma Thanks for your help. I was able to customize the formula to something that worked better for me. I did some experiments on the crash, and here is what I found. It seems like there must be at least three different players who register a goal, or assist, or shot, or check, or save, or allow a goal. If, for instance, two players register body checks, they will show up on the "Stars of the Game" window, but the game will still crash there. The crash state is avoided as long as three different players register something that can be calculated by the formula. For whatever reason, shut-outs alone don't seem to count. I was able to test this by ragging the puck for the most boring but challenging zero event games possible. I've not tested this extensively, but I’d say I’m 90% confident that this is what is happening. For whatever reason, the original code is able to pick stars even with a zero event game. Unfortunately I lack the skills to be able to implement a fix on this one. -a p.s. If anyone else wants to customize values, I highly recommend making a save game right before the final buzzer. You can then adjust values and run different ROM variation through the same save game.