Jump to content
NHL'94 Forums

Drezz

Members
  • Posts

    154
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    32

Posts posted by Drezz

  1. A lot of aspects of the game have been price-outs for casual fans. Tickets are a luxury item, and they only become value items if they are bought as season's tickets and resold. Streaming and TV packages are expensive and also rarely worth it unless you are a sports bar, an analyst or a huge fan.

    Now broadcasts have started pushing gambling since they're government backed title sponsors, and they still can't get the revenue they hoped.

    I think Bettmans business hawks need to get their eyes checked. The consumer ultimately drives your financial success, but if you price them out... no amount of advertiser investment will prop up the league.

    Affordability and simplicity. The NHL has so desperately tried to follow the NBA model and it is back in the position now where salaries are bloated and owners are gonna take losses again soon enough.

    All this to say, the NHL has made things excessively complicated to make it look like a bigger entity than it actually is.

    • Like 1
  2. I am outnumbered by Leafies by a count of 2 to 1 at my office, so the sports radio options are always Fan590 and TSN1050 every damn day. If there were two stations that have been sucking the teat of sports betting ad money, it's the Bell Rogers duo. If it isn't the ads every 30 seconds, it's the betting segments on every block of air time.

    Prior to the Online Wagering floodgates opening in Canada, I really hoped Marek would be the one to take Ron Maclean's place on HNIC with Freidman acting like the Harry Neale type industry connected fill in. But now I can't stand listening to Friedman and his incessant noisemaking and completely unprofessional attitude to the segment on air, it drives me bananas. I get that it's supposed to have an informal vibe, but he's supposed to be a professional NHL analyst - not a hobbyist wannabe cracking jokes while drinking beers on his USB mic in his basement. Which brings me to Marek, who often slides in his wagering advice in a manner that feels like he's trying to sell you a used car that you didn't even think you needed.

    And Wyshynski... ugh. I disliked him when he was the Puck Daddy, and I still dislike him now. He reminds me of Patton Oswalt's character on King of Queens, except the Hockey geek version.

    Point is, today's analysts lack the professionalism and don't command the same level of respect their forbearers had. They're literally a bunch of high school nerds who couldn't play, but loved the sport and their encyclopedia game is really good. 

     

    • Like 2
  3. He hates the ads but he's very diplomatic about the things he dislikes so he doesn't ruffle any feathers. But he let it slip in a livestream that he wasn't a big fan of how sports gambling has pervaded every aspect of hockey on television. When panels of analysts start talking about moneylines and over/unders and prop bets or slyly integrating them into their broadcasts (I'm looking at you, Jeff Marek), you know they've jumped the shark and bent over for the corporate money.

    Remember when Huawei was ALL over HNIC branding until the spy-tech scandals. They humped that leg real hard.

    • Like 1
  4. If this helps - here's an updated version of wboy's graphic + the reverse angle version used in instant replays. The difference is the extra spacing used behind the bench, the scorekeepers and the modified areas between the benches. If you match up the tile layout to the offsets, it will give you an idea of placements.

     

    ICE-LAYOUT.png

     

     

    ICE-LAYOUT-REV.png

    • Love 1
    • Thanks 4
  5. DUDES... LOVE IT.

    From the fancy banners to the reverse retro jerseys and the little things... that's what makes a good ROM. The things you discover while playing make these ROM hacks so much fun to play through.

    image.png

    I LOVE the look of these. SO CLEAN and MODERN

    One problem. :lol:Montreal is probably going to lose EVERY game wearing the powder blues (They've worn them about 7-8 times already and lost each time) so that jersey is CURSED!

    • Love 1
  6. On 1/21/2023 at 11:37 AM, AdamCatalyst said:

    Your choice…

    a) do you want me to lie to you?

    or

    b) do you want me to tell you that it is as easy as editing the INI in notepad, and creating a revised BMP, and that if you download my add-on pack and search the two INI files for "AC 2022," you will see all the code that you need to know?

     

    p.s. If I had the knowledge to get into NOSE's guts, oh the places I would go! But unfortunately, I don't think I know enough.

    Huh...

    I must have done something incorrectly then. I tried this exact same thing and it didn't load up the option.

    I'll review how you did it and see where I went wrong.

  7. 7 hours ago, Jkline3 said:

    Not sure if I'm late to the party but I did modify Clockwise's helmet patch version to separate the shoulder stripe from the rest of the details. Been a long time since I've finished a complete ROM but the last one that I did with this version of sprites was the SHL.

    1 - Ice, 2 - Blade, 3 - Boot/Gloves, 4 - Helmet L, 5 - Pants D, 6 - Pants L, 7 - Stick, 8 - Face

    9 - Shoulder Stripe, 10 - Outer Stripe, 11 - Yoke, 12 - Jersey D, 13 - Jersey L, 14 - Helmet D, 15 - Inner Stripe, 16 - Shadow

    2023-01-21 12_46_36-NOSE 1.2b - 2020 SHL.bin.png

    2020 SHL.bin 2 MB · 1 download

    Ah I see it! Interesting layout! So single tone for the skin. Tha works too

  8. @AdamCatalyst Funny how you resurrected this  thread... and I've recently resurrected part of this ambitious plan.

    I do have a ROM with the hacked tileset, but it's different than the originally planned palette. The shoulder stripe remains, but is isolated from the pants stripe. The pants stripes have been eliminated. There are two colours for the jersey, two for the pants, two for the shoulder, two for the arm and sock stripes, two for the helmet, two for the face, two for the ice, one for the skate blade and stick, and one for the eyes and skate boot.

    I'm still reviewing the sprites for errors, but you can definitely have the layout once I've finished it. The problem is, I've altered the goalie mask to have an eye-cage, and it may not be to your liking, so you'll have to review it.

    Also, I haven't updated the bench players, penalty box or the faceoff windows. Still a bit to do yet, but you can have what I've done so far for reference!

  9. 5 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

    OH! Yes, that sounds perfectly logical, the exact combination of players on the ice, their awarenesses, the puck position etc. could all lead to an AI stalemate. Thanks for the insight! I assume this is caused by everyone's awareness being too low to see eachother, is that right? In any case, can you tell me any more, or point me to a relevant forum thread?

    EDIT

    Just reviewed the original ROM ratings distributions for Offence & Defence, and compared them to my distributions of the same. My distributions were done purposely very similar, with one major exception: the median and mode of my Forwards Defensive Awareness is significantly lower. If my understanding of what you are saying is correct, nudging this curve back to conform to the original should reduce the problem. Assuming of course this issue better, not worse, in the original.

    In the 2nd gen of 3D NHL games on PC (2000-2005) when we broke open the AI, there were a bunch of label to some of the functions (stepuptimer, stepupdefault? I think) which were also found in earlier iterations of the series 95-99. The code wasn't commented but fragments of the text were still there.

    Since NHL Hockey and NHL95 on PC were similar in structure to the Genesis version, Ì wouldn't be surprised if that code made its way through every iteration... even up to now.

    • Thanks 1
  10. If he made any tweaks to the cpu defensive awareness, that may happen. EA has this thing called "step-up logic" that they've used in their AI parameters for decades.

    Basically, if a player moves within a certain range of another player they will engage, but if you alter those values to affect the distance between them, it creates dead spots. Offensive players won't move forward, defensive players won't attack. It's a tricky little piece of code to get the balance right.

    • Thanks 1
×
×
  • Create New...