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kingraph

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Everything posted by kingraph

  1. Inspired by smozoma's Classic IIHF Rankings, I did a similar ranking for Blitz. I changed some of the rules regarding missing prior/future seasons -- mostly to keep everything automated (easy to update), and partly my own preference. The Rules At the end of each season, you get points. The values of the top 10 positions: Rk Value 01 1200 02 1160 03 1120 04 1100 05 1060 06 1040 07 1020 08 1000 09 960 10 940 From 11 onwards the difference is always 20 points. Each playoff series win, the teams get 'reseeded' in the rankings, so in the end, the champion is 1st, runner up 2nd, and semi-finalists 3rd and 4th based on Pts%. The remaining spots are filled in based on regular season performance. The top two B coaches, I rank ahead of the A coaches who didn't make the playoffs in each season. (If 8 make playoffs, B champ and runner-up are #9 & #10). Also B Semifinalists rank ahead of bottom 2 A coaches). Missing past seasons points are filled in using the next more recent season's rank minus 3 score Missing 'future' seasons are filled in with the prior season's rank minus 4 score Missing interim seasons are filled in with an average rank score of the next nearest seasons. The TOTAL VALUE is calculated by adding the values from each previous season, but previous seasons depreciate according to this table: Season 1: 100% Season 2: 75% Season 3: 50% Season 4: 25% Below are the results, and this will be updated after each season (thank you Google Docs).
  2. Lol at this. Awesome, can't wait to try it out. Thanks wookie!
  3. Bump for anyone who would like respond to this survey who hasn't already.
  4. If you have the spreadsheet, but not the time, I'd be happy to take a crack at updating this for Fall'10, Spring'11 and Fall'11 (when completed).
  5. Wow, looks like an intense series. Congrats to Flasox. Vids would be much appreciated!
  6. VC hasn't logged his home game scores yet, not sure why. Just want to get them down before we forget. NYR @ WSH Game 1: NYR 1 WSH 4 NYR @ WSH Game 2: NYR 3 WSH 1 I think that's right.
  7. Maybe we should start a new thread of useful suggestions/improvements to the '94 site. But with real, practical examples from people who may know something about web design/development/administration -- not just wishlists/complaints. Unfortunately I'm not a web designer or developer, so I can't offer much help here. I'll ask around and see if I can get some useful advice from people who do this for a living. If anything comes up we can always drop a note to Evan's suggestion box (or start that thread). It'd be great to hook up with a school that has a web design class. I'm sure there are projects out there where students have to design or re-design a website. Potentially a nice way to land some ideas gratis!
  8. I'd check out the online league forums for a list of active leagues: http://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/forum/19-online-leagues/ The NHL94.com homepage could use a good overhaul, as has been mentioned a bunch of times, and this idea of having links/information/latest scores/etc. to the various active leagues out there would be a great addition to that homepage. As long as it's done right, it would attract more people to play. This is a pretty active community, but it's not apparent unless you're scouting the forums. If the nhl94.com homepage would reflect that current activity better, it'd be a win/win for everyone. People browsing through would be more likely to stick around, and the active community can have a single portal to the various leagues out there.
  9. Backhandfloater said it best (see my signature)
  10. That player was me, . No problems playing on server, but I ran out of time to guide through ham. His aim is somewhere on another forum.
  11. zalex = zal-ex (the "a" like alex, animal, angry) HOKKEEFAN= HAH-KEY SEBE= say-beh (one syllable though) freydey= fray day smozoma = sm OH z. (the "o" like l,m,n,O,p) halifax - holly fakes HABS - HABS
  12. What I meant to say was, "dude will win C", lol. Congrats to dawookie, one of the awesome additions to the '94 world. Comeback for the Spring Classic!
  13. I think you are being too kind -- it's a flaming pile of ****. The book safe idea is a good one though. My official review
  14. KingRaph's review of Inside NHL'94 Official Guide If the introduction to the book doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will. In fact, I think the introduction is the best part of this entire strategy guide! Corey Sandler starts off by saying in this great game,"There are ten skaters on the ice, each moving independently." There are actually 12 players on the ice with the goalies, but of course Corey Sandler knows that. He probably meant 10 move independently as 2 players are under control of the players, assuming 2 active users. See, this book is full of mysterious messages that may be confusing to the untrained reader, but after deeper thought, they demonstrate Mr. Sandler's amazing '94 acumen. Corey also states in the introduction that "All the laws of physics are included." If there's one thing I dislike about the previous hockey games out there, it's that the designers forgot to include ALL the laws of physics! It's refreshing to finally see that bug rectified in this version of the game and it's probably one of the first things you'll notice when you start playing. Aside from the fact that time moves much faster in the game than real life (5 minutes in EA time is more like 3 minutes of real time), the puck shatters the top portion of the glass on occasion (impossible), players who miss passes fly at hypersonic speeds, one-timers from 2 feet away are still rockets that fly off a players forehand or backhand, etc., the physics are spot on. Again, this is all part of the introduction! We haven't even gotten to page one yet. Corey Sandler continues to get you excited about NHL'94 by explaining that all of the most important rules of hockey are followed. This could not be more true! This hockey game has the same rules as the actual sport of hockey. I never noticed that, and without this sharp strategy guide, I may never have. Okay, on to the real juicy stuff! In Chapter 1 (NHL rules), Corey Sandler comes up with the greatest description of the "real" game of hockey I have ever read: "The ultimate purpose is very simple: to push a three-inch-wide, two-inch-thick, six-ounce, disk-shaped slab of frozen rubber into a six-foot-wide, four-foot-tall opening and to do it at least one more time than your opponent. " Ladies and gentlemen -- Corey Sandler give us the ultimate purpose! I, for one, find this description very straightforward and easy to remember. I wish I had thought of it before. He goes on to explain some of the rules of hockey, devoting considerable time to rink size and the exceptions of rink sizes in the NHL (something very valuable to unlocking the secrets of NHL'94), as well as offsides, and icing. He completely ignores certain facets of the game such as how many players are on the ice at one time, different types of penalties, power play, penalty shots, number of periods, length of period, etc. At first, it may seem that this is a glaring omission of facts that have a direct impact on the understanding of the game and would be useful as a starting point, but this is not so! Corey Sandler knew that you would figure it all out by playing the game itself, so he wouldn't have to include any of those explanations in his 270+ page guide book! This omission allowed him to include "actual team results from the 92-93 regular season" , which is much better IMHO. Clever, very clever. Chapter 2 begins in the classic Corey Sandler-using-hyphen-loaded-sentences-to-deliver-points-that-are-simple style (see the ultimate purpose of hockey above) He builds up excitement by saying "you see all the usual plays by nearly supernatural players: * Pavel Bure bursts across the blue-line like a you-know-what out of you-know-where" What is great about this bullet point is that Corey Sandler makes you stop and think for a moment. It's a subtle stroke of brilliance in this strategy guide, and it allows the reader to build and develop his/her own unique experience with the material. DO you know what?? And DO you know where? Some may simply say "bat out of hell", but leaving it a mystery is a part of Corey Sandler's genius. He doesn't just fill the book with riddles, he shows off his brilliant writing with the remaining bullet points: "Super Mario (the hockey player Lemiuex, not the Italian princess-hunting plumber) is the center of attention every time he is on the ice." "Teemu Selanne materialized like a ghost with the puck in front of the net, with his stick coiled like a viper ready to strike" "Patrick Roy plays the net as if he were six-feet-tall and four-feet wide" Did you see what Corey Sandler did right there? In Chapter 1, he explains in the ultimate purpose of hockey that the "opening is six-foot-wide and four-foot tall". In the previous bullet on Patrick Roy, he says Roy "plays the net as if he were six-feet-tall and four-feet-wide"! Those who were paying attention and are clever enough to figure this out would now understand that the "opening" is the same as the "net" and that Patrick Roy is a player that plays as if he were the size of the entire net! Brilliant! It's important to note that Mr Sandler assumes that by Chapter 2 you have a good understanding of hockey and who these specific players are as he did not cover this in the first chapter that detailed NHL rink dimensions. In case you didn't, he reminds you that "later in the book" he tells you "everything you need to know about all the individual players" Anyway, chapter 2 lasts from page 9-72 and is a rework of the instruction manual that came with the Genesis and SNES game. Instead of having the instructions in one place and this kick-ass strategy guide in another, Corey Sandler puts it all in one place for you for your convenience! Mr. Sandler does, however, clear up some things that may have been confusing in the original instruction manual, as this excerpt shows: "Do you suffer from weak ankles? Is the farthest distance you have recently traveled on the ice the length of the frozen puddle in front of your garage door? One of the truly great things about this computer simulation of a hockey game is that you don't have to learn how to skate like an NHL pro to play the game; the computer takes care of the skating for you." - p. 19 I wish I would have known that before I bought myself a new pair of ice skates! That information alone makes this official strategy guide worth $12.95 ($16.95 CAN)! Though I would never question NHL'94 master Corey Sandler's wisdom, it should be noted that the checking ability on the Genesis game is determined solely by weight, not checking as Sandler notes. Also, lighter guys check better than heavier guys, due to a bug in the game. My guess is this omission was probably an error by the publisher, and not Mr. Sandler. Chapter 3 is another manual, but covers the PC version of the game. The PC version required its own chapter because there are tons of useful tidbits of information to help you master '94, such as: "A megabit is one million bits of information (1,048,576 bits to be exact). Larger computers deal in megabytes (MB), which are computer "words" made up of eight bits. A megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. To convert bits to bytes, you divide bits by eight; to convert from bytes to bits, you multiply bytes by eight." Corey Sandler's knowledge isn't limited to hockey and simulations of hockey games! I can feel myself getting better in '94 at this very moment. Instead of continuing the cutting-edge, inside-the-game strategy, Corey stops to provide us with the NHL season statistics from the 1992-93 season (Chapter 4), followed by a condensed '93-'94 season stats (Chapter 5). While this may initially look like useless data that has no real application to the game, it's gives readers a background of the players in the game. Readers can spend a free summer translating those statistics to the player ratings in the game (note: game player ratings found in the game are not included in strategy guide). It's a fun project that Corey Sandler gives to the readers! Chapter 6 is where the genius of Corey Sandler shines. In four (4) action-packed pages (the whole chapter), Mr. Sandler combines the NHL statistics (using total points and +/- stat) from the previous season with the overall rating and speed rating in the game to come up with a CyberSports Rating! Speed, he determined,directly translates into success. While he doesn't provide any analysis or strategy for using speed to succeed in the game per se, we can trust that Corey Sandler knows what he's talking about. Why would a strategy guide provide you with direct strategy? The most important factor in the CyberSports score is to "multiply the results by 10 to come up with a whole number". Again, pretty solid advice, as decimals are impossible to deal with. We now have magic tools needed to calculate the best starting lines for each team in the game. While one would expect an application of this strategy to the game, the following chapter instead gives us more data! Chapter 7 provides a synopsis of every real NHL team (including their rookie of the year, yay!) and the default starting lines with their calculated CyberSports ratings. Wow, this is the kind of expert analysis one can use to dominate NHL'94! And what NHL'94 strategy guide would be complete without the final chapter dedicated to Wayne Gretzky? A whopping 4 pages of career statistics and records. This may be a puzzling "chapter" for many people, including myself, but I have to believe that Corey Sandler included this for a reason. Having a completely useless set of statistics and a paragraph just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of this amazing strategy guide. As if you weren't satisfied enough, there is a bonus section not listed in the book that provides COLOR photos of exciting game play and captions! For example, there is an action shot of the game stats with a description that reads, "the end-of-game statistics provide a portrait of the action just completed" Straightforward? Maybe, but remember that common sense is not so common! All in all, Corey Sandler provides us with gameplay instructions and NHL data, along with a magical CyberSport ranking (strangely called CyberQuest ranking in the bonus section), and leaves it to the reader to figure out how to apply it all in NHL'94. If you were looking for a clear, well-crafted strategy guide that you can use to improve your '94 game, you've come to the wrong place! Corey Sandler won't make it easy for you. In fact, it may take you months to decipher where the actual strategy lies in this book. Enjoy!
  15. Hey, sign up on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and let us know your name...its the main way we communicate and set up games.
  16. Haha...why is it "luh" and not "leh". Oh and, *singing* .."you say zay-lex, I say zah-lex...zay-lex! zah-lex!"...
  17. Gg, and great play by play! The interruption @min 6 was hilarious.
  18. GUILTY as charged. However, I do it as a bad habit when letting up a bad goal, rather than intentionally killing the crowd level. I can't say the same thing about the pause/unpause on the 4th rendition of the Sabre Dance though.
  19. I guess that would be true, lol. It'd make more sense if the boost happens when your break the record AND you are at the peak for the game. It makes me think about the timeout effect. When things are spiraling out control, some people believe calling a timeout can change the flow of the game (me included). I believe the timeout knocks the crowd meter down, so maybe it does have an effect on gameplay? These are the types of things I'd like to see covered in a strategy guide.
  20. On page 71 of Inside NHL'94 Official Guide (my official review coming soon), it says: "If the current game is at a level that breaks the record for the arena, both teams speed up play by about 10 percent" -- Corey Sandler, '94 guru I have no idea if that is true, or what exactly "speed up play" means, but it does suggest that crowd meter will have an effect. Also, this post from Clockwise shows that crowd level is mostly affected by goalie save attempts. He got to a decibel level of 259, which is incredible since the loudest sound possible is 194 db.
  21. I hope to get a good amount of games over Thanksgiving weekend, starting Friday, through Sunday. Hope to catch you all then!
  22. Thought so too -- some good goaltending on both sides.
  23. Very entertaining series fellas, looking forward to seeing it unfold.
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