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dangler

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Posts posted by dangler

  1. In preparation of starting a line changes league, here's some proposed team rankings to help guide the drafting process. I'm excluding the bottom 5 expansion teams from this list (ANA, FLA, OTT, SJS, TBL) because they can barely ice one good line. So for the remaining 21 teams I will rank them based on my own opinion of who I'd prefer to play with. You'll notice throughout this topic, I will reference the recent SDL draft history to see how many of these players are included. You'll also notice that I will completely ignore goaltenders in my analysis, I'm only looking at the top 9 F and top 6 D because all SNES goalies suck anyways. All proposed lineups are just off the top of my head while trying to balance the top 2 lines slightly as they'll be the most used in a line change league. You'll want to practice some games and juggle some of the lines if things aren't gelling like you'd hoped.

    #1 Calgary Flames

      LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Fleury Roberts Reichel Suter MacInnis
    Line 2 Makarov Otto Nieuwendyk Musil Petit
    Line 3 Ashton Ranheim Lindberg Johansson Dahl

    This is my favourite team for line changes. Look at that depth in the top 2 lines. There is hardly a dropoff at all in skills and the 3rd line can definitely hold its own as well with Lindberg being the only player without SDL draft history.

    #2 Los Angeles Kings

      LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Carson Sandstrom Kurri Zhitnik Blake
    Line 2 Gretzky Robitaille Granato Sydor McSorely
    Line 3 Donnelly Millen Taylor Huddy Hardy

    This lineup is scary good as well. Sandstrom and Robitaille centering the top 2 lines with those lethal shots and very good wingers feeding them can definitely do some damage. A very solid top 4 D core as well. The 3rd line takes a bit of a drop off with Taylor and Hardy having no SDL draft history, but you can shield them by heavily using SC1 and SC2

    #3 Montreal Canadiens

      LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Lebeau Muller Damphousse Schneider Desjardins
    Line 2 Savard Bellows Leclair Daigneault Ramage
    Line 3 Dionne Keane Leeman Odelein Brisebois

    There's no doubt about the forward depth on Montreal. The only question mark in that top 6 is Leclair but he can be very effective when he's having a good game. All 6 defensemen also have SDL draft history and anyone that knows me, knows I typically dress Odelein as a starter and I love me some Bellows. Leeman is the only player with no SDL draft history which actually surprises me because he's a pretty good, reliable player.

    #4 Detroit Red Wings

      LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Fedorov Yzerman Drake Lidstrom Coffey
    Line 2 Ysebaert Ciccarelli Probert Chiasson Konstantov
    Line 3 Gallant Primeau Ogrodnick Howe Racine

    Detroit is one of only two teams with 15/15 players with SDL draft history. I've tried to balance the lines so only the RW position is getting exposed. Right wingers don't kill penalties anyways so that's the best position for a weaker player in my opinion. Two lines centered by Yzerman and Ciccarelli will be a serious threat with those deadly shots. Thanks to AJ for catching me mistakenly having Ogrodnick on D.

    #5 Vancouver Canucks

      LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Bure Linden Ronning Lumme Lidster
    Line 2 Courtnall Nedved Adams Slegr Diduck
    Line 3 Momesso Ward Craven Murzyn Babych

    Vancouver is the other team that has 15/15 players with SDL draft history. They even have a 7th D-man (Plavsic) with some SDL history. That is some impressive depth for a line changes league! There is a bit of a dropoff in talent between line 1 and line 2 which bumps them down the list a bit. I'd be curious to see what Nedved can do with that 6 shot accuracy at 2C. They do probably have the best 3rd line options in the game though.

    #6 New York Rangers

      LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Tikkanen Gartner Nemchinov Leetch Patrick
    Line 2 Turcotte Messier Olczyk Lowe Zubov
    Line 3 Amonte Kovalev Graves Andersson Beukeboom

    No surprise that NYR has some depth in this game. Andersson is the only player without SDL draft experience. I like those top 2 lines especially and the 3rd line is decent enough to not get exposed while it's out there.

    #7 Pittsburgh Penguins

    PIT LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Jagr Lemieux Francis Samuelsson Murphy
    Line 2 Stevens Mullen Tocchet Stanton Samuelsson
    Line 3 Straka McEachern Tippett Taglianeti Ramsey

    It's a bit surprising to see arguably the best team in SNES 94 this far down the list, but their depth is not as good as others for a line changes league. That 3rd line is atrocious and you're not going to want them out here too long but thankfully the top 2 lines will be able to carry the majority of the play.

    #8 Toronto Maple Leafs

    TOR LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Cullen Gilmour Borshevsky Ellett Rouse
    Line 2 Anderson Andreychuk Clark Gill Macoun
    Line 3 Krushelski Zezel Foligno Mironov Berehowsky

    All of Toronto's forwards and all but one defense (Berehowsky) have SDL draft experience which is some impressive depth. The top 2 lines are pretty balanced and will be able to contribute. There's a bit of a drop off in line 3 but that's going to happen with all of the teams going forward.

    #9 Washington Capitals

    WSH LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Bondra Ridley Miller Iafrate Cote
    Line 2 Carpenter Khristich Pivonka Johansson Hatcher
    Line 3 Elynuik Hunter MacDermid Cavallini Langway

    Really good balance in the top 2 lines here with hardly any flaws. I like to spread out Iafrate and Hatcher so you have a heavy D man on each of the top 2 lines.

    #10 Quebec Nordiques

    QUE LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Nolan Sundin Ricci Leschyshyn Duchesne
    Line 2 Kamensky Sakic Kovalenko Gusarov Tatatrinov
    Line 3 Twist Cavallini Young Huffman Foote

    Another well balanced top 2 lines and could be very even to Washington's team but I gave WSH the edge for their defense. There's probably slightly more skill and scoring touch on Quebec's top 6 F group. P.S. Tony Twist is terrible, don't use him. He was drafted once in SDL as a joke which is why he made it on this list. But he also scored 1 goal on 1 shot.. so maybe use him?

    #11 Boston Bruins

    BOS LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Oates Neely Juneau Sweeney Bourque
    Line 2 Kvartalnov Ruzicka Poulin Wesley Featherstone
    Line 3 Donato Heinze Pantaleyev Roberts Shaw

    Another surpise this team has dropped so far in my rankings but other than the top line, and 1 or 2 good spares, the depth is not there. Maybe you could split up Oates and Neely to spread it out a bit more but I still don't love the options with this team and that 3rd line is a severe liability.

    #12 New Jersey Devils

    NJD LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Semak Richer Zelepukin Fetisov Stevens
    Line 2 Stastny Lemieux Holik Niedermayer Driver
    Line 3 Nicholls MacLean Pellerin Albelin Daneyko

    I really like the depth at forward and the top 4 D on this group. I debated ranking them ahead of Boston. That 3rd line is not even that bad. Both top 2 lines have a great mix of skill and size to get the job done.

    #13 Winnipeg Jets

    WPG LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Steen Selanne Shannon Housley Olausson
    Line 2 Davydov Zhamnov Tkachuk Bautin Numminen
    Line 3 Borsato Eagles King Carlyle Ulanov

    The top 4 defense core is really solid without many flaws. The RW position is a bit lacking on both top 2 lines but there is enough balance that both lines can be effective and provide enough offense.

    #14 Chicago Blackhawks

    CHI LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Ruutuu Roenick Murphy Smith Chelios
    Line 2 Sutter Larmer Goulet Marchment Kucera
    Line 3 Murray Graham Noonan Muni Brown

    Again with a big drop off from one of the best teams in the game, but like mentioned above, aside from the top line the depth is not there. Goulet on the 2nd line? Gross.

    #15 Buffalo Sabres

    BUF LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Hawerchuk Mogilny Sweeney Svoboda Smehlik
    Line 2 Khmylev Lafontaine Errey Ledyard Bodger
    Line 3 Patterson Ray Audette Carney Moller

    Here's another team that's struggling with depth outside of the top line, that will be the story for the rest of the teams on this list so I'll stop mentioning it. I tried to spread things out with Lafontaine centering SC2 but he's got some garbage wingers to work with. The top 4 defense can hold their own though.

    #16 St. Louis Blues

    STL LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Janney Hull Sutter Brown Butcher
    Line 2 Emerson Shanahan Miller Giles Quintal
    Line 3 Bassen Wilson Korolev Norwood Zombo

    Not a bad top 2 line options, only the RW position being a bit on the weak end. Bob Bassen on the 3rd line can provide a scoring option as well if he gets out there.

    #17 Edmonton Oilers

    EDM LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Corson Klima Weight Manson Kravchuk
    Line 2 Ciger Simpson MacTavish Richardson Benning
    Line 3 Elik Todd Hudson Werenka Glynn

    Klima and Simpson provide great center options with those shots. EDM also can ice 6 pretty decent and reliable defensemen. The winger options do look a bit ugly outside of Corson though.

    #18 New York Islanders

    NYI LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Hogue Turgeon Ferraro Kasparaitis Malakhov
    Line 2 Thomas King Volek Norton Lachance
    Line 3 Mullen Flatley McInnis Kurvers Krupp

    I debated putting Hogue on line 2 here and it might be the better option to spread things out. Outside of Turgeon and Hogue all the wingers are pretty blah but the defense can hold its own, similar to EDM above.

    #19 Dallas Stars

    DAL LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Gagner Modano Broten Tinordi Sjodin
    Line 2 Dahlen Courtnall Gilchrist Hatcher Matvichuk
    Line 3 Craig McPhee Propp Ludwig Berry

    We're getting into the bottom few teams here and it's starting to show. Ony Tinordi and Sjodin have SDL draft experince on the D end so that is where this team is definitely lacking. The top 6 forwards are not that terrible.

    #20 Philadelphia Flyers

    PHI LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Eklund Lindros Dineen Yushkevich Galley
    Line 2 Brindamour Recchi Beranek Hawgood Nattress
    Line 3 Acton Fedyk Snuggerud Carkner McGill

    Haven't quite figured out what the optimal lineup would be here because it's really limited. There's only 5 forwards and 3 defensemen with SDL draft history on this team... it's bad.

    #21 Hartford Whalers

    HFD LW C RW LD RD
    Line 1 Sanderson Verbeek Janssens Zalapski Burt
    Line 2 Poulin Cassels Kron Weinrich Pederson
    Line 3 Leach Nylander Petrovicky Keczner Houda

    Similar to PHI, there's only 5 forwards and 3 defensemen with SDL draft history on this team and overall they're much worse than Philly.

               
               
               
               
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  2. Hey, you can easily edit the player names and skill points to whatever you want. Check the tools that are posted in the SNES hacking area of the forum. I'm not super familiar with them because I'm on Mac and haven't used them but I believe you can do that stuff with those tools. I use a hex editor to this instead. For the player portraits, that's a different challenge. Nobody has been able to import other images into the rom yet. You are able to update the player images to a different player image. If you use the player card tool I believe it will give a generic player card to each person with a custom name. Feel free to reach out to me on discord if you have any more questions on SNES 94 hex editing.

  3. On 8/6/2020 at 6:23 PM, kingraph said:
    • Graphics in Genesis are broken down into tiles.  Each tile is 8x8 pixels, or 64 pixels in total.
      • Tiles are basically a "paint by number"  - I explain that here
    • Each tile can use one 16 color palette.  
      • There can be 4 different palettes to choose from

    @kingraphVery interesting post! Do you know if this same logic can be applied when looking at SNES graphics? Is SNES also broken into tiles with 8x8 pixels and do we know if SNES also has 4 different palettes of 16 colors? Are SNES logos also 6 X 6 tiles?

  4. 1. Name, age, occupation, location, system?
    John M, 35, Civil Engineer with the Public Water utility, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, SNES.

    2. What hobbies or other interests do you have?
    Ice hockey, ball hockey, golf, sometimes play other sports like soccer and snowboarding. Love the ocean and being on the water. Enjoy traveling although haven't done much in last few years. Prefer to listen to podcasts over music.

    3. When did you get introduced to the game NHL'94?  How did it happen?
    Not sure the exact timeline. I think it was late 90's. My siblings and I weren't allowed to have video game consoles growing up, any games we did play were on the computer. Until sometime in the late 90's my older brother bought a used SNES at a flea market or something. It came with like a dozen games and NHL94 was one of them. I honestly don't remember playing it that often when we first got it. It wasn't until I went to university where I decided to bring the SNES with me to play with my roommates, that's where I fell in love with NHL94. From 2006-2008 I probably played a best of 7 series with my roommates every day. So 100's maybe even 1000 best of 7 series were played over a 2 year span. A couple of my roommates were awful at the game but there was one roommate (Birdman86) who was competitive with me and we had a ton of fun playing it. We'd pickup a 12 pack of beer each from the Alexander Keith's brewery next door and sit down and crush NHL94 until all the beer were gone (about midnight) then head to the bar for a couple hours and often continue playing when we got home until we passed out.

    4. When did you get introduced to nhl94.com and the online community? Were you playing between these two dates?  (That is, between first becoming aware of game, and first becoming aware of nhl94.com.)

    It was in early 2008. Not sure how I found it, maybe just googling the game or something. I knew I was good at the game vs my friends and when I found this online community I was excited to try it out and see how competitive I was. My first online games were against JotaC, who was the defending SNES Classic champ at the time. I split games with him 1-1 using the keyboard and he was pretty shocked I think. He said I should join online and so I ordered a SNES controller adapter off of ebay and signed up for 2008 Spring Classic which I ended up winning with STL.

    After graduating from University in 2008, I bounced around a lot over the next couple years changing jobs and locations, living in areas with very unreliable internet connections so I played a bit online from 2008-10 but my availability became less and less. It eventually became too difficult to sync up with players for games so I stopped playing from 2010-2017 until I was contacted by Halifax about the upcoming Halifax and Las Vegas live tournaments. I attended both of those events but then stopped playing again until SoChel 2020 came around and I fell in love with it again and have been online playing ever since.

    5. What are a couple things that you love about the game?
    I love how competitive it is to play against someone with top end skills. There's no such thing as "cheap goals" against a great player because every goal is defendable with how you play either defensively or how you use your manual goaltender. You can have 10-9 blowout games, or you can have 1-0 super defensive games and either version is so much fun as long as it's competitive.

    6. Are you a gamer in general? What other games do you play?
    Like I said I never really had gaming console systems as a kid, and I've kind of continued that into my adult life. I have a very addictive personality to games (luckily not drugs), so it's probably in my best interests to limit the amount of games I play. NHL94 is pretty much the only game I play although I will join the other community members in the odd game of Haxball or Risk.

    7. Do you follow hockey in real life? Any other sports?
    Yes, I've always liked playing and watching hockey. I'm a big Pittsburgh Penguins fan because I live in the same hometown as Sidney Crosby and have enjoyed following his career. I also follow the NFL and I'm a Patriots fan. I really like watching Golf, especially the majors and enjoy following the Raptors and Bluejays (admittedly only when they have good teams).

    8. If you have been to a live tourney, what was it like meeting the real people behind the screen names? Any big surprises?
    I attended the small live tourney in Halifax, NS in 2017 just prior to going to the Kof94-2 tournament in Las Vegas. It was a lot of fun meeting all the different community members. The Vancouver guys (Jammer, Fed, Kris Mack) were definitely a big surprise that tournament because they were unknown to the community beforehand and they all did so well with Jammer ultimately winning.

    9. What is behind your screen name? (Origin story, if there is one.)
    No real story to it. Anyone who has played me knows that I like to deke a lot which we used to call "dangle" when I played with my friends, so naturally when I had to think of a screen name dangler was my choice because it was an accurate description of my style.

    10. Favorite NHL94 player in game (and why)?
    Probably Jeremy Roenick. I feel he often gets the recognition of being a great Sega player but doesn't get as much respect in SNES because of his size. His skills are just as good in SNES as they are in Sega, you just need to learn how to deal with his size to make him an effective player. If you can avoid the checks, he's certainly one of the top players in the game based on his skills.

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  5. I'm definitely in, don't care on team I'll wait until later and make a selection. Couple comments on editing. I can definitely switch all the players on the teams and set lineups. I'm not aware how to edit home/away advantages or penalty time lengths but if that's desired I could probably figure it out with a little digging into it and discussions with smoz. I'm pretty sure editing is very similar to the Gens version.

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  6. Awesome stuff @kingraph! I agree with everything you've described here. A few thoughts of my own:

    You're absolutely right that most of the "A" level players already have the knowledge parts down, and like you said there are still some players that are slightly better in the knowledge or I'm just going to call it the "skills" department. I think the biggest thing that sets the elite apart from the rest is the mental game. For lower skill levels, I would say that results are 80% skill based and 20% mental. Usually the higher skilled player will win the game and the bigger variance there is in skillset the less mental effort is required to win. What I mean is an A level player will have to focus a bit more to beat a B level player than they would to beat a C level player. As the skill levels increase, and the variance between skills of the opponents decrease there's a huge shift in the skills/mental breakdown to where I think results become based on 20% skill and 80% mental. When it's the best guys playing the best guys, it is a gruelling mental game. They both have the skills to know how to score and how to defend, it really comes down to who has the stronger mental game. Most goals aren't determined by a higher skill level, they're usually caused by one of the opponents making a mental error. I know for me personally the difference between me feeling mentally strong vs not can mean the difference between winning by 5 goals or losing by 5 goals vs the exact same opponent. I think the best of the best are where they are because of their mental strength. They have the ability to get "in the zone" and stay there for the duration of their game/series. 

    I compare it to Tiger Woods in his prime. He was the best because of his mental game. Every player on tour can hit it 300 yards and never miss a 2-putt. So there's not a huge difference in the skills, its the mental game that sets the elite apart. If Tiger had the lead on Sunday, it was an automatic win. He intimidated opponents with his mental game.

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  7. On 10/5/2020 at 12:23 AM, smozoma said:

    Just want to point out that we've had a number of players come back from ~10-year hiatuses recently. Tickenest, scribe, skoolyardpuck, and VocallyCaged, McMarkis all played in the latest classic. I could be missing some other SNES players too since I'm not familiar with them.

    I also came back after a 10 year hiatus. I think my last classic season was in 2010. A bunch of things contributed to me stopping, new job commitments, girlfriend, moving etc. And there was a bit of a lull in committed SNES players at that time. I played in the Vegas tournament in 2017 and got my ass kicked by the Vancouver guys. Came back to online play for the SoChel tourney and got my ass beat again so it motivated me to get back into playing some seasons. 

    Like Dan says in the post, there’s been so many improvements in the last 10 years. Retroarch seems to be working a lot better than other programs we used to use. Discord is a million times better than AIM for communication. Also adding the save states for SNES to track the stats on the website is a huge add that we never had before. I bet if more guys knew how much better it is now it wouldn’t take much convincing to get them back. I’m having a ton of fun again and happy to be back!

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  8. Ok, here it is. Finally finished it. I updated the Rom to the 24 teams that qualified for the 2020 NHL Covid Playoffs. I also added a Top Prospects team of the top 2020 draft eligible players and a Seattle Kraken team of my best guesses at random players that might be available next year. That rounds out the 26 teams, for the All Stars, I updated these to actual SNES players from this past classic season. The attributes for the All Star players were unchanged other than the names. For the NHL teams, every team should have the same rating other than whatever Home/Away advantages each team has. Also, I updated weights for players so that will have an effect on their hit/get hit abilities. I didn't want a completely stacked roster so I threw in some mid to lower tier players as well. I laid out every teams roster the same so the first forward listed is the #1LW and has Pavel Bure's attributes. The second player listed is the #1C and has Jeremy Roenick's attributes. 3rd is the #1RW and is Brett Hull and it goes down through the list like this:

    1LW, C, RW - P. Bure, J. Roenick, B. Hull

    2LW, C, RW - K. Stevens, T. Linden, J. Jagr

    3LW, C, RW - R. Tocchet, P. Falloon, K. Tkachuk

    Ex. - D. Hunter

    1LD, RD - R. Bourque, C. Chelios

    2LD, RD - G. Wesley, S. Smith

    3LD, RD - J. Lummer, D. Lidster

    1G, 2G - E. Belfour, D. Beaupre

    I updated the names, shot handedness and weight for each player, left all the other attributes the same. So some of it is not consistent, like Brenden Dillon has Ray Bourques attributes (99 overall) because he's a LD and John Carlson has Chelios attributes (84 overall) as the RD, Malkin has Trevor Lindens attributes as the 2C, etc... It would have been too time consuming to update all the players attributes individually. This gets it close enough I think where it's still enjoyable game play. Hope you guys can have some fun with it and let me know if you notice any errors with players or any glitches in general with the game and I'll try to fix it.

    NHL94-Covid-2020.smc

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