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kingraph

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Posts posted by kingraph

  1. 2 hours ago, Soitanen said:

    Tried to use search for answer, but had no luck. What is correct method to calculate team rating to display during Ron Barr speech? Is it average of all players in roster, or only players in Lines, or even startup Line?

    The overall team rating is a "hardcoded" number in the game, not a calculation that the game does.  There's a number for each team, more information can be found here:  https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/1332-how-can-you-edit-the-overall-team-rating/#findComment-85846

     

  2. It's been a while since I've really delved into hacking, but from what I remember I liked the r57shell for the VRAM and trace/hook options.  Something was missing from Kmod, I just forgot what.  I never really had feedback on emulation accuracy or reasons to look elsewhere, so I just stuck with what I knew.  

    believe with all the work that @chaos and @McMarkis (SNES, but he snoops around Genesis too) have been doing recently they are using IDA Pro, which can set breakpoints (a area of code that when triggered, pauses the game), that are extremely useful.  I'll let those guys comment as I don't have the experience of how that works or interfaces with some other emulator.

    • Like 1
  3. On 6/3/2025 at 1:00 PM, smozoma said:

    1/2. Neat, I never noticed that!

    3. It turns out whenever a stat would be "cold", it instead gets boosted to 100. So when a slow player's speed would be cold, it becomes 100. Doesn't need to be 38, it will happen to any player. (I may not have that 100% correct, but that's the idea, it can happen to anyone when they would be "cold")

    Correct -- link to the reference for this interested: https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/33959-how-to-fix-hotcold-bonus-bug-snes/

     

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  4. 3 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

    @kingraph This is still my most used post. Thank-you so much for putting this together. I wanted to ask if you had any tricks or tips for finding image Headers that are not in the expected position. I'm looking for Headers for the Instant Replay controls, and other similar overlay windows.

    The only way I've found headers is looking for a group of tiles in TM, and finding the first tile as best I can.  Note the hex location.  If it's a straightforward graphic, the header should be 10 bytes before that first tile, so I'll look in a hex editor around that first tile location.   

    It's not foolproof, some graphics in games are not as straightforward.  I think some graphics are created during the game via some decompression routine or something I don't fully understand.  Said another way, I think there are graphics in Sega games that can't be found by tile searching in TM.  

     

  5. SNES Balanced League (SBL)

    ROM: NHL '94 (USA)_Hot_Cold_Patched.sfc

    Season 01 will use an SNES ROM with the following hack applied:

    Fix hot/cold bonus bug

    Reference: https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/33959-how-to-fix-hotcold-bonus-bug-snes/

     

    League Format

    • Classic Style League (Pick one team for season)
    • 40 Game Regular Season
    • 16 Team cap
    • 4 Divisions, 2 Conferences (assumed 16 teams)
    • Single League (no A/B)
    • Waitlist possible after 16
    • Team Draft will be weighted based on coaches Elo (lowest Elo draft first)
    • Season duration: 4 weeks (~10 games a week)

    Playoff Format

    • 12 Teams
    • Conference winners are top 2 seeds
    • Regular season points to make playoffs, seeding based on win %
    • Will be same if all games played.  
    • No reseeding
    • Duration: To be played promptly.  Streamed live or recorded/streamed if possible.   

    1st Round
    Top 4 seeds get first round bye
    5 vs 12
    6 vs 11
    7 vs 10
    8 vs 9

    2nd Round
    1 vs (winner of 8 vs 9)
    2 vs (winner of 7 vs 10)
    3 vs (winner of 6 vs 11)
    4 vs (winner of 5 vs 12)

    • Love 1
  6. 2 hours ago, Lomez said:

    I think they mean why not use 97/98 as the base rom instead of 94. Well, because 94 is the best!

    I agree!  But in that regard it does appear some folks are also making updates to '98 as well.  

  7. On 3/1/2025 at 1:39 PM, dzenmaster said:

    Why don't you use "NHL 97/98" as base image? Or may be someone have done it already?

    Are you saying convert NHL'98 player stats and teams to a '94 ROM?  Here are some examples that I found:

     @CoachMac did one here: https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/19792-1951-1970-and-1971-1999-roms/#findComment-180098

    @naples39 did deadline ROMs: https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/15608-my-deadline-roms/

     

    @slapshot67https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/4327-70s80s90s00s-roms/page/4/#findComment-180065

     

     

    To be honest, I haven't played/tried them so can't speak to any specifics.  

     

  8. On 2/12/2025 at 1:33 PM, Goldglv said:

    I've used GensTracer mostly to try and debug the code, got as far as actually disabling the passing window but then it turns the QB into a running back, meaning A dives, B spins and C sprints as opposed to throwing the ball to the receiver.  This was done by changing the hex from 6700 to 6000 at a certain point in the file.  

     

    The code 6700 is the instruction in the game to "Branch on Equal" and the code 6000 is "Branch Always".  

    I haven't delved into the code, but I assume the game was doing a test to see if the player was supposed to have the QB functions or if it was a player after a catch/run.  

    Again, this is just a guess but the code you changed was probably something like:

    * Check if the active player is QB or runner.  If it's a runner (branch on equal), go to (branch) to the function to make the player a runner. 

    Changed to 

    * Always goto runner (branch always).  

    So from it sounds like, when you press the pass button, that routine now just says "this is a runner".  Which yes, bypasses the passing window, but is not the desired outcome.  

    I agree, the leading assumption would be that there is a function that calls up thet passing window routine and you can just bypass that.  I'll try to help.

     

  9. 12 hours ago, Drezz said:

    Was it proven that the letters aren't original region codes? It isn't inconceivable that the lots would be distributed to specific regions to start, with bigger retailers sending them all over to fulfill orders in areas where they sell more? Just a thought.

    TBD.  It's tough to figure out since we don't have a large sample to begin with and even smaller with geographic location.  Agree that a regional distribution makes sense, but it could also be printing machine, factory, random, etc.  A little while back @McMikey asked Sean Ramjagsingh (current NHL EA Sports) if he or anyone at EA knew what the letters represented, but no dice.  

     

    FYI, we have only captured afraction of the estimated first round numbers out there.  As of today, 460 copies, which is 0.13% of an estimated 350,000.  And even fewer where we captured the current location of the box.  And even then we can't determine if that was the original sale location.  

     oct724.png

    • Love 1
  10. 9 hours ago, R0B0T_ST0P said:

     

     

    Bonus question: how do you guys not let the game (including 94) get stale WITHOUT season mode?

    LEAGUES AND LEAGUES AND LEAGUES: https://nhl94online.com/, and there is a '95 Discord with their own leagues: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GBDlaeQQriDsBREbpbdMsb61Ccgq9YkqcnsrW722MTA/edit

    Classic league, draft leagues, different roster leagues, different rules leagues, etc.  The hardcore folks on the forums barely play any games vs the CPU.  Ironically a season mode would ultimately not be exciting for us, outside of the accomplisment of hacking it into the game.  Nothing wrong with it, and I agree a 32 team season mode in '95 would be tons of fun for the majority of people.  

  11. Do you have a location of the ref and faceoff overlay graphics?  Like, any tile will do.  What I would suggest, and I can try to do this, is to see if we can find the header of that faceoff and ref overlay graphics.  It should be located at the beginning of those graphics.  IF we find that, we can probably find where in the ROM that graphic is called up, maybe a pointer.  From there, we can investigate and see if there is an x/y location part of the graphic which is found in the menu, clock, etc.  

  12. 11 hours ago, Cowscrazy said:

    Stalled as in gave up trying.  Or stalled as in its not possible at all.   I wish I was smart enough to do stuff like this.  Like this feels so close but yet so far.    

    I never really gave the season expansion a try.  I'm not sure if it's possible or not.  Season mode, you start getting into the RAM and saved RAM (SRAM) areas.  You'd have to map all of that out to see if there's room to expand teams, schedules, results, standings, etc.  I imagine so since I don't think that kind of data takes up as much space as graphics for example, but really the whole RAM areas were unexplored territory for me.  

  13. CDL 09 Official ROM:CDL_season_09.bin

    • 26 Drafted Teams of 12 players!
    • Hot/Cold Reduced to "Warm/Cool".  Boosts are limited to +1, 0, -1 vs original ROM -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2
    • 1 minute penalties
    • 12 second Penalty Shot Time (reduced from 25)
    • Body Checks after whistle don't count in stats
    • +/- stat added for boxscores
    • Reduced time to switch to Manual Goalie
    • Slightly Increased Goalie Roaming Range
    • Boosted Goaltenders - All goalies get +1 to Agility and Stick/Glove Ratings, except Roy & Belfour
    • 312 Updated Player Cards
    • All 12 player cards cycle on start menu

     

    26 Unique Teams

    teams.png

    Drafted by these rather dapper gentlemen:

    CDL_season_09_001.png

    Eddie Belfour graces the cover in his Sharks uniform!

    CDL_season_09_002.png

    Commissioner @chaos returns to the announcing action

    CDL_season_09_018.png

    Updated menu screen featuring some familiar backgrounds from NHL '96

    CDL_season_09_003.png

    Pringles has sponsored CDL 09!

    CDL_season_09_020.png

    ESPN remains the 3 stars of the game sponsor:

    stars.png

    • Love 2
    • Wow 1
  14. On 6/14/2024 at 10:57 AM, AdamCatalyst said:

    Interesting. I had assumed that it scrolled through matchups more linearly, but you're saying there is an element of randomness? I feel like someone *must* have written about this in the forums awhile back.

    This intrigued me, so I did a little research into how this works as I didn't see anything on the forums.

    From what I can tell, there definitely seems to be a random element. 

    • The code loads up the playoff draw table
    • Then (apparently) a random number, always a multiple of 16, is added
      • This essentially selects a random playoff draw from the 32 playoff draws from the table by creating that new offset.
    • The game first checks if the Team 1 is less than 25 (which is 26 teams given we start at 0). This was the limit for "no all-star teams", which since has been hacked away to allow for all 30/32 teams to be selected.   
    • Game checks if Team 1 is listed in the playoff draw row, going incrementally from 1-16  
    • If Team 1 isn't in that playoff draw (i.e. after 16 instances), it loads up the next playoff draw row and starts again
    • Once Team 1 is found, if finds the opposing team and loads Team 2.

    I started the original '94 game from the beginning and traced 3-4 times from the start with Montreal and had different outcomes each time.  Meaning, the entire sequence was the same, but the "random" assignment changed.  I also selected the next team, NJ, and the random number changed again. 

    So I can't confirm if the number is truly random, but the code where that number is generated is a lot of multiplication and the infamous $D066 RAM value is called, which from what I remember @chaosnoted is used in the RNG calcs.  So I feel pretty confident that it's meant to be RNG, and I'm not going to decipher more of this :lol:.

     

     

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  15. On 9/20/2016 at 3:34 PM, kingraph said:

    Not sure if this ever came up, but has anyone wondered what the title screen photo is for NHL'94?

    http://i.imgur.com/jV8MpDk.png

    I'm almost certain this is Bryan Marchment (#2, Chicago) getting checked by Scott LaChance (#7, New York Islanders).

    http://www.tradingcarddb.com/Images/Cards/Hockey/4991/4991-369Bk.jpg

    From the jerseys, this was a home game for the Islanders. So I'm guessing this was from the 1992-93 season, which would make it the April 8, 1993 game where the Hawks won 3-2. It's the only time those two teams met in New York that year.

    Anyway, I'd love to be able to get the original photo and/or game footage. Just think it'd be fun to have it...that is all.

    Posting here for posterity:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF449QxbBqQ

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