perkabrod

I modded my megadrive yesterday to allow 60hz (Genesis) mode. All the graphics I had done using the guide above will have to be redone But I feel I'd rather make the graphics suit the US Genesis than the European Megadrive consoles... So, I will measure and update the guide with Genesis notes. Here's the mod: And here's a video showing the difference: http://djoman.dyndns.org/rom-edit/50hz60hz/nhl94_50hz_vs_60hz.mov The music doesn't change because the game senses if it's 50 or 60 hz (megadrive or genesis). Some games like Aladdin didn't do this so when I test my PAL Aladdin on 60hz the music is 20% faster... No matter what happens with the audio, the game speed for all PAL consoles (megadrive) will always be slower than intended. I tried with NTSC Aladdin at 60hz and the music sounds okay, game speed is 20% faster than the PAL version (at 50hz). The PAL Aladdin at 60hz however runs at the same game speed, but music will be too fast if you run PAL cartridge at 60hz. Luckily the NHL 94 used the same version for both PAL and NTSC and just made some code to sense if it was hooked into a Genesis or Megadrive, making adjustment to the music. Another thing that happens is that all games played on Megadrive (Megadrive is PAL, Genesis is NTSC) gets borders around the game, also, it stretches the game in vertically, that's why everything looks wrong on Megadrive. Finally I can enjoy all games at proper speed and full screen. New guide to NTSC, Genesis will be posted here soon. Just need to take my "research ROM" and measure aspects for the graphics on my TV.

Good eye, seems off. Will have a look. It's not my crease, I think it's the one from the 30 bin ROM, don't remember if I've edited though

Thank you, made perfect sense. Now that I read your post I remember that when I was editing the ice I actually knew that some was for the highlights and stuff, as explained in the tutorial on the main page. Will round my value to C (instead of D) just to be proper. Yeah the ice is pretty bright, even on TV. I usually only have 1 or 2 backlight on my LCD because I'm sensitive to display brightness, can't understand how people can sit in a black room in front of a iMac/Macbook with their brightness set to MAX It's like looking to a flashlight, the iPad 2 on the lowest setting is too bright IMO... so yes, I'm sensitive (and like to use google in the middle of the night when lying in bed)

How is the hex related to color in the image below? ORIGINAL ICE: 0EE8, 0EEE, 0EEC #1 First of all, is it only the last two hex numbers that changes the color? Seems like it. #2 If the answer to #1 is Yes, then we got: E8, EE, EC Let's separate with comma, so we got R,G,B #3 If I write that in html color code, the closest color I could mix using those hex would be 8E,EE,EC That would mean that the red slot is backwards, in the ROM it says 0EE8, we only need E8, then we read that backwards making it 8E. For the green color I haven't ran tests because it was EE, no point trying reverse it For the blue color, it seems that it wouldn't be reversed, so 0EEC, we use EC, and DON'T reverse it...keeping it EC Is that how it works? RED, GREEN, BLUE Reverse, ??, Non-reverse so in HTML color language, the color #8EEEEC would be 0EE8 0EEE 0EEC #4 In Tile Molester, 224 is the brightest color for the palettes I've come across so far.. But the color EE is 238 in decimal (and 238 in Tile Molester doesn't work, it snaps to 224). So, for the ice, what decimal values can be used to blend your color? For Tile Molester I've noticed it being: 0 32 64 96 128 160 192 224 But what about the possible decimals for ice color?

it's from the original nhl 94 (!) ROM except the colors modded, so nothing done with the crease..though I recall a thread with a discussion about "crease misalignment", think it was in the net/crease how-to thread

I think I'll use something like this for my ROM, I don't have anything against the star really.. but it's colors are ugly... New ice color in this one too: Ice color reference: edit: wrong image... damn I need to start preview my posts By the way, what is the PALETTE offset for the player indication? Haven't found them. I'm using 30 team ROM by wboy.

I dig. I thought the same thing when writing about how they programmed the layers... seems unlikely that an all transparent image would make the underlying outline star disappear...however, worth a check. I'll post my results, will have a look, just need to finish 2 more logos for my elitserien mod first. edit: well, i just realized that it won't work that way because in the original graphics there's transparency (cyan) around the "player have puck" graphics, and it still shows the outline star "below"... haha, too tired for this. Well, you could make your dots the same colors as the ice but it would look funky when you cross the rink lines and such

if you find out a way to have the outlined star dissapear when the player has the puck.. please write a how-to here I've fiddle a little bit a few weeks ago with the indicator just to see how it is built up... At least the "player has the puck"-graphics goes on top of the "player does not have the puck outlined star". Have you tried having an empty sprite for when the player has the puck, all cyan colored that is... if yes, did that replace the outlined star "controlled player does not have the puck" icon? Or is the outline star still visible? Don't know how the programmed the transparency, if it is layer by layer... Interesting thread. Let us know if you find something

Nice thought. Could very likely be that way. I just found out too why scanlines are automatically added for old fat TV's (CRT) Before the sixth generation of videogame consoles, most videogames generated a video signal lacking the half scan line needed to make interlace happen. This subtle simplification caused NTSC sets to scan 240p/60 instead of 480i/60, with similar results for PAL. While this actually improved picture quality for the kind of images that videogames of this era generated, such a signal modification could cause problems in a broadcast environment as the signal behaviour is outside the original television system specifications. Genlocking -- but not timebase correction -- are the recommended broadcast engineering solutions. So, I guess that means that since 240 lines vertically can't make interlacing happen, the TV shows it as 240 lines, without interlacing, meaning every odd or even line (whichever it is) will be black to fill up the 480 possible vertical lines on the TV

Photoshop doesn't. Yeah, Irfan View is a great piece of software for lots of things. There's also a software which can be good at times called ImageJ. It can do weird things like saving your image to a convolve text document and such Lanczos often do a great job of keeping sharpness when reducing image size...(to any readers who wonders what Lanczos is) EDIT: Convolve Kernel that is... like if you want to make your own blur/defocus algorithm and need a base kernel to start off. You could just make a 32x32 image and make a radial gradient then save that out as a 32x32 convole kernel in text format and pump into your dev tool

...and I thought I had gone off-topic in this thread

Thanks, sounds reasonable! Yes 16-235 (0-255 compressed with blacks at 16 and whites at 235) is what is used in the TV industry. I think that's an old standard that still lives on. You might have seen the term "Super white" in some occassions, I think you can choose that on the PS3. That maps the whites to 255 instead of 235, 16-235 is meant for CRT tube TV's because they show noticeable flickr when you feed them R255 G255 B255.

Thanks. Great info! Btw, Is 224 always the whitest color in NHL 94, no matter which palette? In the TV standard world it is usually 235.. and blacks should be 16 for TV mastering.

Ron Barr doesn't show up at the offset in the original GoodGen V3 NHL 94 (!) ROM so that's why I got a few problems. However now when you mentioned screenshots I think It will be good result if I run the NHL 94 (!) in an emulator in 200% or 400% without graphics filters as you said, take a screenshot, optimize image for Tile Molester as well as palette. Thanks. I've found a workflow for getting really good results when taking an image from photoshop, pasting it into Tile Molester. Tile Molester always tries to optimize the pasted image to fit the palette in the ROM, which is a nice feature but often you get a little bit disappointed and want to run a manual approach for superb results. So, what I've done for graphics is: 1. Calculating Tile Molester tiles to pixels. 2. Make a new document in Photoshop in the appropriate pixel size. For example 48x48 pixels for team selection logos. However I rather design in 480x480 then resize (with a good resize filter) to 48x48 3. When I have the 48x48 pixel inside photoshop, in 8-bit RGB (or 24bit depending on how you count). I check in Tile Molester how many colors slots I can use in the palette, say that it is 8 or 9 for the team selection logos, don't remember exactly (wboy's screenshot for reference) 4. I take the eyedropper tool in Photoshop and carefully selecting the first "important" color. After I've plotted the color, I click on the color and make sure all values are 0,32,64,96,128,160,192,224 for R G B, rounding them to the closest... for example if the eyedropper said R=40 G=100 B=187 I would change the color to R=32 G=96 B=192. I then draw a tiny box beside my graphics. I repeat this for the other colors, in this example 8 or 9... 5. When I'm done I have a picture like this: 6. I choose Save for Web in the File menu. Choose GIF as output. Clear the GIF palette and use the eyedropper tool to insert only the "swatches" into the GIF Palette. Then saving the GIF (with transparency clicked off). 7. I switch to tile molester and before pasting, I change all the colors in the palette to match the colors I had in the Photoshop GIF palette. It's possible to choose save for web again in photoshop because the settings are saved within the .PSD document, don't forget to LOCK your palette! So it's easy to hover and see what colors I need to add in Tile Molester. Just switching between Tile Molester and Photoshop. 8. After the palette is done in Tile Molester I go Edit->Paste from... Choose my GIF image and then it will look EXACTLY as it looked in Photoshop, with all the nice dithering/noise effect and stuff in case I had used them. Hmmm, I thought this would just be a brief explanation of something I have plans on making a tutorial off... maybe it is clear enough to actually qualify as a tutorial. However, is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks. Good thing I don't have to go over the rosters and change anything then... Just completed the Elitserien 2011 (2010-2011) rosters. Our home team lost in the finals and we had lots of local talented players which will be gone to NHL upcoming season. That's what inspired me to make a mod. I'm amazed at the level of knowledge on this board. It has been days since I started the hex editor, thanks to the tools provided here.

Sorry for not making myself clear.. In NOSE, there's one place where you can change if a skater is left or right handed. It is called "Handed/Fighting". So, for a left handed skater, does it matter if I choose Lefty/0 or Lefty/100 when modding NHL 94? Since there is no fighting in the NHL 94 game I got confused if it would matter... Also, this is for Genesis, didn't write that because I thought NOSE only worked for Genesis?

Lefty/0 vs Lefty/100 in NHL 94, does it matter when editing NHL 94 ROM?

nope, it was Jochen that came up with it www.arcadeforge.de But it isn't housed in an enclosure so you buy the 3 boards you need (scart sync, scaler/line doubler and scanline generator) hook them up to each other... and make a little case for it if you don't want the soldered boards just lying on the floor EDIT: The scanline generator is a passive unit, no power needed for it to work. So for everything that uses VGA, you can just put the scanline generator on the VGA cord and when you turn it on every other line will be black (if you have opacity at 100%, there's a knob to adjust opacity). However if you run resolutions higher than 640x480 the lines will be extremely thin so no point really.. but for people building arcade machines and stuff it's great. or to couple together with the other 2 boards to convert rgb scart to vga 640x480 then add scanlines then hook up to a new TV

still vintage correct, it did look like that back in 94 on CRT TV's, if it looks better or not with scanlines has nothing to do with the fact that there was scanlines back in '94 this option is just a click away in most emulators, some like it some don't. I like it. This guy likes it too: watch from 9:22 complete explanation by the same dude: nope, but I go retro for the things that I think beats the new technology... using the same argument you used, you could ask yourself why you play nhl 94 when there's nhl 11?

old fat TV's (CRT) had scanlines which you could see pretty clearly when playing nes, snes, genesis, megadrive, gamecube, n64, ps1 etc.. that's how I remember it to look. So when I connected the megadrive to the LCD TV for the first time I thought it looked like s**t, I'm happy now that I got the lines back... vintage correct

Will try. Obviously the hardware on the megadrive is a whole different story than playing in emulators. The referee whistle sometimes changes pitch and stuff depending on sounds intercepting each other right when the whistle blows... but as for the music I can't recall it being actually out of tune on any of the songs, in the original game. It's like the organist had a few beers Finished an enclosure for a scanline generator today, so now I have scanlines on my LCD TV when playing all game consoles that supports RGB Scart http://images.instagram.com/media/2011/07/27/fb584bcf81be4f61b999f5394c38a5e0_7.jpg and the enclosure: http://distillery.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2011/07/07/d4c161e058174117afc44a1dffa0f58a_7.jpg it goes, scart sync board (scart input and vga output), scaler board (the big in the middle, vga carrying scart-signal IN and normal/analog VGA 640x480 out) and then the scanline generator which has on/off and a potentiometer for adjusting opacity of the lines... it has vga in and vga out.. then just hook vga to the tv and voilà though this photo might be more appropriate in this forum http://images.instagram.com/media/2011/07/27/9bfbdbd14f8e446aa802c5e7bb883de3_7.jpg

I've been playing a few mods that I guess all are based on the 30 team rom by wboy and we've noticed that sometimes when you pass, the puck goes hard as hell, as if it is a shot. Haven't noticed that in the original nhl 94 game, is it in the original game too? Does it happen more often in the 30 team ROM? Why does it happen? ROMs I've played is the NHL2010.bin and NHL2011.bin, both with the huge NHL 94 logo for the second splash screen. Also, both those ROMs shared the same title screen that says NHL 2010 and a website link to this site.. hope you know which ROM I'm talking about... ::::::::::::::: Next, I wanna mention the organ. I don't know what tune it is, but in one of the tunes there's some low notes that sounds out of key, don't remember that happening in the original nhl 94... Any thoughts?

Does anyone know how to swap the Ron Barr photo back to the colored one used in the original genesis game? Don't like him in black & white.

# 1 Screenshot 15. Team Selection Logos When you say don't use colors 2 thru 7, which colors do you mean? How do I know which 2-7 color swatches you mean? EDIT: Seems to be first row since those are the only ones that keep being the same colors throughout all teams # 2 Screenshot 14. Home & Visitor Team Selection Banner Palette Is there only one Navigation Offset for all Team selection Banners? Meaning I will only change the palettes when I mod? I'm pretty confused about this one even though I guess it's explained pretty good in the text.

Wrote some stuff today: http://djoman.dyndns.org/rom-edit/aspect_ratio/index.html At the bottom of that page you'll find a link to pixel sizes and stuff, to make your images look good on your TV when you play the ROM on a Megadrive console Use 30 team rom by wboy and have a look in the Tile Molester reference thread here at the forum for info about the offsets. I have a xml with bookmarks coming for Tile Molester, just confused about the Team rink logos which says to have their palettes affected when you alter the rosters.. don't know if I should bookmark them or not.