Sedge

It's doable. I got it to work on a test ROM some years ago but I don't have that file anymore. I remember that for some reason the copied version of the title music doesn't loop like in the original game but maybe I forgot to copy a loop-point byte or something. Like I said, this was some years ago.

Please forgive the necrobump but this seemed like the most relevant topic to post to without just starting a new one. I've recently gotten a Mega EverDrive X3 direct from Krikzz but I haven't been able to use it yet. I was trying to use a SanDisk 32gb with it since they say they support cards up to that size and that was the smallest one I could find locally, but I keep getting an "SD card not found" error. Before I order one online, I felt I should get a little advice on the subject. What kind of SD cards do you have in your EverDrives?

Ah, thanks. That'll come in handy when I look at it again eventually. Sedge was something I made up on a bit of a whim. I didn't really have any ideas for the second splash screen since the legalese screen I used on the 94 version seemed redundant with the way 95's title screen works. So, I thought some kind of spoof of the Sonic Team screen would be funny. I was looking at what letters I had available to work with and just kind of hit on Sedge since I'd heard it somewhere recently. It's a plant but it also sounds to me like an unorthodox way to abbreviate straight-edge, which has been part of my identity for 20 years now. I may use that branding moving forward if I do any other edits. I like how it sounds. Certainly shorter than Determined Apathy anyway, haha.

So, here's the version for 95. There was a slight name change, partially because I couldn't make "Icethetics Hockey League" fit the opening copyright scroll and partially because it helps distinguish it from the 94 version. Welcome to the Impact Hockey League. To be honest I didn't enjoy this one as much as I thought I would. I do like how the title screen turned out, though. Stats are mostly ported from the other version. I may release a revision some day with more varied stats but for now I think it's fit for public viewing. Apparently the game uses two different sets of team overall ratings, one for with line changes and one for NLC. I never did find the set for line changes on but then I usually play NLC anyway. Probably should've rerated the teams after I realized that, come to think of it. Maybe for a future revision. Impact Hockey League.bin

You do have some good points there. Incidentally, naming the divisions after prominent figures was my backup idea. Yeah, trying to account for geography when I was picking teams and arranging divisions did give me a bit of a headache. I ended up having to shoehorn one of the "new" teams (Montreal) into what's currently the Midwest division, since it's a little closer to that region than the east coast. Also, my Atlantic division is full anyway. If you think that's weird, the actual IceHL project put New Orleans in their Western conference. I think that was mostly because the Eastern conference was so full but still. EDIT: Alright, I've reached a decision on something. Thanks for the suggestions.

I appreciate the suggestion but it looks like I need something that's nine letters or less to fit the space given. At the moment I'm leaning towards Southwest, which makes me think more of Arizona and New Mexico but might fit in the context of relative geography. Like, California would be southwest compared to Manitoba or something. I dunno, it's just kind of a weird geographic group to me. The Texas teams feel too far east to call it Pacific, and Mountain probably only fits Boulder and maybe SLC. I'm probably overthinking this.

I may as well bump this one to ask a question about the next one. I have my conferences set up for season mode but I'm stuck for a name for one of the divisions. I kept the conferences as Eastern and Western, and the divisions are continuing the geographic theme. The division in question is one of the Western divisions. Its teams are Boulder, California, Houston, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Texas. The best I have right now is "Expanse" but that almost sounds like they're all expansion teams or something. I do have an alternate idea for a division naming scheme if it comes to it but I thought I would ask for suggestions first.

No, I looked through what information is currently available and it doesn't look like there's anything on 95's music yet. I also tried searching for the relevant hex just in case but it looks like it's in a different format than 94. So, I'm not sure where it is yet. Actually, the only reason I was able to alter the music in the first place was because someone else had posted on here somewhere about how to change the instruments. It does make a nice way to make a ROM more distinctive, though, so I was grateful to have found it. Also, I was looking at your IIHF 95 ROMs again and I noticed you had made a small subtle change to the main menu background. Just out of curiosity, was that very difficult to do? I know the address is in the step-by-step guide already but it didn't look like its graphics line up as neatly as some of the other screens.

Nice, I'm happy to inspire people with their own projects with this. Anyway, I looked through my notes and that amusing snare sample I mentioned is 6B in hex. If you want to hear it for yourself, that would go in 45090 for the title screen, 46DAA for the between-periods menu, or 490FC for the pregame matchup. I also found my early test screens from when I put them into 95 first. They're a little rougher in quality since it was just a quick test but they still matched nicely with 95's anesthetics. I'm interested in giving it another go now.

Thanks again, guys. I actually tried it on 95 first when I thought about experimenting with color for the player cards, but I appreciate the heads-up all the same since I hadn't tested it as thoroughly yet. I felt like they probably worked the same way, though. I had to give it a lot of thought because I wasn't sure if it could work for realistic photos given the limited size, but looking at the larger palette in the Ron Barr window gave me an idea. To be honest my graphics program (Photoshop Elements) did most of the heavy lifting here. I got my pictures from one of those AI generator sites, shrank them in steps to conserve detail, adjusted brightness/contrast if necessary, moved them onto a separate file that had the palette indexed, and it dithered everything for me. All I did was manual cleanup. As for the music, that was just a lot of experimenting with different values until I liked how it sounded. I particularly like how the between-periods music turned out, which is good since I heard it the most. I remember finding one in the snares that made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it. I'll have to go through my notes later to find it again.

Haha, thanks. I was really pleased with how the color portraits turned out. Would love to know how they look on a TV but I don't have an EverDrive yet. Anyway, the IceHL was a sort of community design project turned fantasy league that went from the late 00s until about 2017, judging by the last version of its page: https://www.icethetics.co/the-icehl I did think about including a readme that gives a brief overview of each team but I wasn't really sure how to describe most of them. I can offer some insight into my design process, though. For a while I was going to make this a 16-team playoff ROM. The Other Scores screen needs a minimum of 18 teams, though, so I had California and Washington as secret cameo teams at first. Everyone on Broadus's team (California) is named after a real life musician. The pictures aren't actually them since it's not meant to literally be them, but there's still a fair resemblance. Some more than others. Washington is mainly inspired by movies that are either about hockey or have a hockey scene. For the most part they have the actor's first name and character's last name. When I decided to expand to 24 teams, I kept their cameo origins for fun. And honestly it was hard not to expand further with the options available. A lot of the players in the ROM either came from various projects I've done throughout my life or were generated specifically for this one. This is actually a pretty personal project for me. The two teams on the title screen were mainly chosen for the practical reason of having similar palettes, but I decided to run with it and made them the default teams as well. So, the "canon" for the previous season is that Calgary and New York met in the finals, with Calgary coming away as champion. If you look in NOSE, the first playoff draw is how the rest of that tree looked. The Wheeler Cup is something I made up for the ROM. I chose Wheeler since it's the same length as Stanley and got it from one of the logo designers for the IceHL. He designed the logos for Winnipeg and Seattle as well as a few others I didn't use here. Milwaukee was originally designed to be a wildcard team for Cinderella runs when this was still a playoff ROM. They're also one of my favorites because I had a lot of fun with the player names. Minnesota is intended to be one of the better teams in the game. Not only do they have the highest rated player, they also have a top tier defender as well as one of the best goalies. Salt Lake City's concept happened on a whim while setting up stats. Basically they're a mediocre team that happens to have a breakout star on its roster. He may have a 93 OVR but they still averaged out to one of the lowest team ratings in the game. Honestly, a lot of the stats were done arbitrarily. Looking at them again I sorta wonder why some of them are set the way they are. That's something to think about more carefully when I try again on adapting the concept to 95.

So, this has been brewing for a very long time but I've been making a concentrated effort over the last few months and finally have a ROM of my own ready to share. There are still some adjustments I might make once I figure them out but this is suitable for now. Anyway, this is a combination of ideas I've had. The team logos are adapted from the IceHL project that used to be part of the Icethetics website. The rosters are essentially my own creation, though there are a few homages here and there. I haven't entirely settled on what I want to do with player attributes yet. I did have a few concepts in mind but there's also a fair bit of copying random players from the original game. Eventually I'd also like to extend the idea to 95 but past attempts kept hitting snags. I don't know if 95 is more finicky or I'm just not exercising enough caution. Anyway, features include: -24 team fantasy league with Blitz-sized rosters -No icing -Edited menu music -Color portraits -Other miscellaneous fixes Of course, massive thanks to everyone here for the wealth of information available as well as the Icethetics community for the logos. IHL Hockey.bin

So here's a weird thing I discovered today. In the vanilla Genesis ROM for 95, there's a playoff draw where Dallas is seeded twice. In one bracket they face Calgary and in another they face San Jose. It's the third draw (offset 5854) if you want to see for yourself. I haven't verified this on an actual cartridge yet since it's kinda hard to actually land on it. Dallas is in 29 of the 32 draws, and 10 of those are against either Calgary or San Jose without being the double entry. It took some luck just getting it with savestates. When I did finally land on it (VS San Jose on the menu), the playoff tree had both entries blink but still put me against my listed opponent. While it's hypothetically possible to reach a mirror match later, it's pretty unlikely since the two Dallases (Dallii?) are at opposite ends of the tree and would both have to make it to the conference final. Losing ends the playoffs like normal. Also, I checked the rest of the Genesis games out of curiosity and this is apparently the only one with an error like that.

I appreciate this but would it be possible to get an addendum where the team select text for Boston says Boston instead of Bruins? I know it's a little thing but the inconsistency bugs me.

I found two at a quick glance. 2005 edition on NHL94: https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/2638-ahl-2005-rom-posted-here/ 2021 edition on NHL95: https://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?/topic/20029-ahl-2021-nhl95/

So, I was messing with the 99 ROM earlier and encountered a bug. For some reason the game will sometimes crash on the Hot/Cold screen with one of the unranked teams. I don't know if it’s all of them but it did seem to be specific to teams in that group. I haven't tested many of the ranked teams yet, though. I don't know what’s causing it exactly because it doesn't happen every time, but having it happen the first time I tried a match with one (specifically, South Africa) was noticeable. I also tried the 98F ROM since it uses the same base and was able to replicate the issue, though not as easily for some reason. This happened both on Kega Fusion and ClassicBoy.

Those logos are a thing of beauty. Also, just out of curiosity, what is the story behind the "Team 1920" branding you use for your ROMs?

I'm impressed with how well the color portraits turned out, and I also appreciate the attention to detail in changing the credits scroll to be SNK staff.

Any Gens players ever tried this one? The gameplay is kinda eh but the title music is neat. Mostly I'm bringing it up because I was going through my files and found screenshots of a couple of the more amusing team descriptions.

A relatively small idea I've thought about would be to fix a couple of things in NHL 96. Mainly I'd like to see the Nordiques replaced by the Avalanche as they were during that actual season. Also, it kinda bugs me that Boston is listed as "Bruins" on the team select screen when all the other teams use their location.

Sorry, somehow this got posted in the wrong thread.

I finally had a chance to try this out and was treated to a fight immediately after the first faceoff. I think it's gonna be a keeper.

It may technically have taken less doing than the IIHF series but I still appreciate how much effort you put into this, including the manual.

That is beautiful.

This is great but I do have to report a small typo in one of the team names. "Flordia."