very simple request

[trudatman]

edit: due to what this thread has become and how far from "very simple" I feel it has strayed, I am changing the start of this thread into a "thank you" to Smozoma and Shaftman and Xstioph and Statto and anybody else repping the SNES and/or helping me learn to fux with ROMs.

THANK YOU.

---

here is the original request:

working off the assumption that doing this on my own with a Mac would be nearly impossible, could somebody make me a ROM file with a certain name written over one of the other players on the Rangers (Amonte, Broten)? if you are morally opposed to such a project, but would be willing to do the same with the Bruins, that'd be okay, too. want to help? thanks for existing, y'all.

Edited August 28, 2010 by trudatman

[shaftman]

so you just want jake howard on the top line with the rangers in the classic rom?

....

Done.

sdpif.rar

[shaftman]

Upload successful

[trudatman]

wow. that easy, eh? thanks! just played the 2010 roster hack (nice!) for the first time. so now I kind of want to play for the 2010 Bruins, but I don't really want to replace a key player... well, anyway, THANKS! off to see if I'm Messier or Gartner...

[trudatman]

too cool. was a bit too easy to whoop and I figure I should be a scrub. could you do it again and use Broten instead of Amonte? thanks, again, homey.

[shaftman]

np

sdpif.rar

[trudatman]

feel free to tell me where to put my requests, but as scrubby as Paully Broten is, he's still putting up 'tricks on Belfour. can you make him Greg Smyth-like? bring ALL of his stats as low as popsicle, weight included... and give him number 72... I'd be doing this myself, had I a PC. heck, I'd be spending all of my time making modifications to this game.... a pair of all-scrub teams where the All-Star teams are, with the names of people I know in real life. I'd probably start with the 2010 rosters ROM as the basis. that or the Real '94 ROM, which could use some housekeeping work anyway. yeah, so thanks for the two ROMs, yo! am I shooting myself in the foot on this new request by admitting I'm a Bruins fan?

[smozoma]

just get a hex editor, open the ROM with it, and edit someone's name who has the same number of characters as the desired name : )

then, the characters following his name are his attributes. the first is his number, then it's weight,, agility, speed, etc.

Edited June 7, 2010 by smozoma

[trudatman]

thanks. attempting to learn the stuff past changing the names, but having trouble. trying.

[trudatman]

well, the update is that I've gotten good at changing the text in the game (instant replay reads as "what was that?"), but I need some help in the area of changing the player attribute stats. I remember seeing somewhere a chart of what digits after the names equal what and which values change it to what else, but I can't find it now. know what I mean? link me!

edit: found this http://nhl94.com/html/editing/edit_bin_player_info.php and I guess I thought I would need a SNES specific chart... off to try this out.

Edited June 7, 2010 by trudatman

[shaftman]

The values are reversed or something when going from gens to snes I think? ( .bin - .smc).

[trudatman]

I ain't figuring it out and I can't find an explanation. I also can't figure out how to type in the values. I hit 3 to start 37 and it puts in 03. ? I need a tutor. been haxing the fux out of Street Fighter II these past few days, though. still just the text, but good stuff.

Edited June 8, 2010 by trudatman

[statto]

I ain't figuring it out and I can't find an explanation. I also can't figure out how to type in the values. I hit 3 to start 37 and it puts in 03. ? I need a tutor. been haxing the fux out of Street Fighter II these past few days, though. still just the text, but good stuff.

There a problem with the editor?

[smozoma]

I ain't figuring it out and I can't find an explanation. I also can't figure out how to type in the values. I hit 3 to start 37 and it puts in 03. ? I need a tutor. been haxing the fux out of Street Fighter II these past few days, though. still just the text, but good stuff.

there should be two sides of the hex editor display, one where you input text (like player names), and another where you input raw data (player attributes..).

There a problem with the editor?

He's on Mac

But trudatman, doesn't mac have WINE (windows emulation) built in now to run windows programs?

If it's not built in, here are some installation instructions: http://wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX. you need an intel mac, though, not an old powerpc mac.

here's the editor http://forum.nhl94.com/index.php?showtopic=10502

[trudatman]

using the Fiend editor, when I select a value to change, I can't figure out how to get it to take numbers. it wants a zero in front of whatever I type, it seems. I'll explore it more and report back.

[trudatman]

got it. just keep typing. got confused by the zeroes it assumes. brought some players down to 25 average and they are much better than Greg Smyth. they're too good, still. next to try = worse than Beauregard level goalies.

[trudatman]

things I noticed about home/away advantages:

so, I made a ROM with some serious scrubs (for the challenge) and found that the center was FAST when I was at home and one of the defensemen seemed amped when we were away. this was with Boston. my theory is that slight advantage at home gives the center a boost and that slight advantage away boosts one defenseman. I suspect that strong advantages would boost the other forwards at home and both of the defensemen away. just a guess, as I haven't bother to see what Boston actually sports in the advantages factor.

more later, I suppose. holler.

Edited June 11, 2010 by trudatman

[smozoma]

things I noticed about home/away advantages:

so, I mad a ROM with some serious scrubs (for the challenge) and found that the center was FAST when I was at home and one of the defensemen seemed amped when we were away. this was with Boston. my theory is that slight advantage at home gives the center a boost and that slight advantage away boosts one defenseman. I suspect that strong advantages would boost the other forwards at home and both of the defensemen away. just a guess, as I haven't bother to see what Boston actually sports in the advantages factor.

more later, I suppose. holler.

there is a random variation in a bunch of the skills, every game. the base skill values go from 0-6, but in the game, they get scaled up, so the game takes the raw value (say a guy has 4 speed) and multiplies it by some number (i think it was 5), so he gets a 20 speed.. but then it adds or subtracts up to 3 points, so it's like a guy with 4 speed can vary from 3.5 to 4.5 in different games. maybe home/away affects it a bit, but i'm not sure..

[trudatman]

what follows is what I've done so far (2010 roster hack was the starting point). serious scrubs on Boston and Anaheim (my friends and myself), including the goalies and nearly every piece of text in the game has been changed. check it out: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=F7QVZJ0P

Edited June 11, 2010 by trudatman

[shaftman]

things I noticed about home/away advantages:

so, I mad a ROM with some serious scrubs (for the challenge) and found that the center was FAST when I was at home and one of the defensemen seemed amped when we were away. this was with Boston. my theory is that slight advantage at home gives the center a boost and that slight advantage away boosts one defenseman. I suspect that strong advantages would boost the other forwards at home and both of the defensemen away. just a guess, as I haven't bother to see what Boston actually sports in the advantages factor.

more later, I suppose. holler.

For the genesis I think they proved the stats were random and not effected by anything.

Might not be the same for SNES.

I do know we have some hacked roms with the home and away advantages taken away for complete fairness.

I think Metz did it..........

[trudatman]

there is a random variation in a bunch of the skills, every game. the base skill values go from 0-6, but in the game, they get scaled up, so the game takes the raw value (say a guy has 4 speed) and multiplies it by some number (i think it was 5), so he gets a 20 speed.. but then it adds or subtracts up to 3 points, so it's like a guy with 4 speed can vary from 3.5 to 4.5 in different games. maybe home/away affects it a bit, but i'm not sure..

right, but this is not what I mean. these players are all 25s, across the boards. the FAST center was only at 25 speed at the time he was zooming around. I really suspect the advantage was home/away based. testing on PP/PK to follow, I figure.

[trudatman]

....they proved the stats were random....

which stats?

[shaftman]

Downloaded the rom. You can use your forum post to submit roms for download here in the thread! (cool feature)

The stats, the one you see in game when checking players. Those are random, the actual values are 0-6 and 0-14 (in hex) for weight.

Like you discovered?

[trudatman]

okay. I guess I don't understand. they are not random, right? if I'm a 25, I might be a 23 or a 28 or something close, but never a 72... I may be missing your point to a huge degree, but mine is that I believe that home advantage gave my 25 (0) center a MAD speed boost.

oh, and I couldn't upload the file as the type wasn't allowed here and I have no condensing program. it was easier to host it elsewhere than get a zipmaker or whatever.

Edited June 9, 2010 by trudatman

[smozoma]

okay. I guess I don't understand. they are not random, right? if I'm a 25, I might be a 23 or a 28 or something close, but never a 72... I may be missing your point to a huge degree, but mine is that I believe that home advantage gave my 25 (0) center a MAD speed boost.

oh, and I couldn't upload the file as the type wasn't allowed here and I have no condensing program. it was easier to host it elsewhere than get a zipmaker or whatever.

you should try to get WINE working on your mac so you can use NOSE, if you want to edit lines and stuff. it could save you so much work in the long run.

mac doesn't have zip? what is up with that...

there is sort of a bug in the game... it shows variation on the player skills in the edit lines/team rosters pages, but those values do not reflect the random variation the players actually get on the ice. so it might say a guy is a 98 speed that game (base 5.. 85-98 range), but he won't necessarily be extra fast that game. it's just not related, it's a bug/oversight.

but you're right, i don't think they ever get a full point boost, from say a 3 to a 4 base skill. so when you say that the centre was really fast at home, i'd be curious to see if you see that in every game you play, because i'm pretty sure it's random (maybe influenced a bit by home away..)

[trudatman]

try it out. use my ROMmy with Boston's scrubs and see how fast the center is at home. I bet removing home/away advantage altogether would slow him back to his prescribed 25.

Mac can zip, I just don't think I have one already. I only ever unzip and the program I use for that is stripped down to just that function. NOSE would let me see/edit the images in the ROM, eh? worth doing. I have a 10.4.11 and I don't think it would just run a Windows program, but I am curious enough to try to get it set up with WINE. I should clean up my desktop, first, as I have a nearly full drive with mad music projects saved as WAVs and Audacity files. I doubt I'd have room right now to add a complex EXE to run Windows software. but it may be built in... I doubt it, but I don't really know.

Edited June 9, 2010 by trudatman

[shaftman]

Gentlemen, a page from the book of Wboy.

Trudatman keep in mind this is for genesis. I know on SNES max is 100 and not 99..

Edit - I just read it, interesting findings..

Well after some considerable analysis of NHL94 and later rom years (admittedly made a hell of a lot easier using the upcoming editor to test values ), I think I've worked out how ingame displayed ratings work in reference to the Hex 0-6 scaling first used in NHL94, reverting from the original Hex 0-F scales used by NHL93 and earlier roms.

I tested this by setting an entire team's players to the same rating... e.g. first all 0's, check the ingame ratings... then change to all 1's... check ingame rating, repeat... etc until Hex 6 reached.

Interesting, while all players where in theory the same, they did all potentially show some mild variances in their attribute ratings. These are not always consistent either! A player's overall and individal attributes rating may be "what you expect" for your first game, the higher for the next, then back to "what you expect"/got first game, then lower the following game?!?!

To prove this, take the original NHL94 rom. Play a regular game with DETROIT. Before the game starts, go to the team roster and check the starting line's player overall ratings. With some luck, they will match the documented overall ratings as found in the roster section (off the main site) of Evan's NHL94 website. Reset the rom, choose the exact same teams/settings again. Check the roster, and now, the overall rating for the players will most likey be different than before. Reset again, and with some luck, yet another new rating for the same players.

It doesn't appear to be completely random. Its as if there is three or four different typical scenarios that you will recieve. Every time you get the same scenario (testing with the same teams), you should also find that it is the same HOT or COLD players. Within the team roster, each player's overall and individual attributes talents will be exact as of the previous time you noticed you've had the same scenario. A predefined random possibly?

So why is this, and how come a whole team of players with the same hex attributes can have what appears to be quite different scalings in the same rating?

I have a theory that *may* be somewhat right, but for now what I can quite accurately tell you is this. Dependant on the hex rating of a attribute, the following info will give you general indication of what ingame attribute rating you could possibly expect for that player.

Hex 0, attribute rating will always range from 25 to 29 (maximum difference of 4)

Hex 1, attribute rating will always range from 29 to 38 (maximum difference of 9)

Hex 2, attribute rating will always range from 38 to 47 (maximum difference of 9)

Hex 3, attribute rating will always range from 47 to 62 (maximum difference of 15)

Hex 4, attribute rating will always range from 63 to 80 (maximum difference of 17)

Hex 5, attribute rating will always range from 81 to 98 (maximum difference of 17)

Hex 6, attribute rating will always be 99 (no possible difference)

From this I had the idea that the game possibly uses the Hex 0-6 rating to dynamically assign Hex 0 -F to the players based on potential ranges of the rating scale shown above. This could be done in attempt to simulate players having good (hot) or bad (cold) days and thus potentially creating a more random game.

Interestingly NHL95 appears to go by these exact ratings except for the Stick Handling, which is different to NHL94, as it supports Hex 0-F.

Checking the ranges of the assigned hex values of the Stick Handling attribute show this:

Hex 0, attribute rating will always range from 25 to 29

Hex 1, 2, attribute rating will always range from 29 to 38

Hex 3, 4, 5, attribute rating will always range from 38 to 47

Hex 6, 7, 8, attribute rating will always range from 47 to 62

Hex 9, A, B, attribute rating will always range from 63 to 80

Hex C, D, E, attribute rating will always range from 81 to 98

Hex F, attribute rating will always be 99

While I originally thought this confirmed my theory, unfortunately the ingame displayed ratings didn't seem to match the finding. By that I mean with the stick handling attribute set to Hex E for all players, I expected all the ratings to be within 92 and 98... the top third values of the range expected for Hex E. Unforunately that was not the case, as values ranged from 81 to 98. Either the displayed value may display wrong (highly unlikey), or doesn't make a difference at all if its Hex C, D or E.

Going back to NHL94, this may mean that a Hex 5 is a Hex 5, irrespective if the players is Hot and rated 98, verus the other who is Cold, and rated 81 for the same attribute. One attribute that could possible test this theory would be SPEED. If both players are the effectively same, are at different ends of the Hex 5 scale (e.g. hot-98, cold-81), but are as fast as each other ingame, then the whole Hot/Cold rating difference is really more of a misleading attempt by EA to make the game appear more complex that it is?

I'll look at hacking a rom soon that could test this theory, and I'll let you know when its done so I few people can test it and give me their thoughts/findings.

Doing similar tests with 96, I vaguely remember a scenario where the same "cold" player rated higher than the same opposings teams equivalent player who was normal. Mind you, I will check that again to confirm. If that is the case, the hot/cold rating may really mean noting ingame. Time will hopefully tell.

The end.

[trudatman]

did that guy die before finishing his testing? I suspect the idea was to make them vary, but in the reality of 0-6 it couldn't be done. I suspect the home/away advantages boost up one or two values on the hex 0-6 range, though. my center sure wasn't 25-29 for speed (displayed as 25!). he likely was 38-47. he was MUCH faster than the other 25s on the ice.

[smozoma]

try it out. use my ROMmy with Boston's scrubs and see how fast the center is at home. I bet removing home/away advantage altogether would slow him back to his prescribed 25.

Mac can zip, I just don't think I have one already. I only ever unzip and the program I use for that is stripped down to just that function. NOSE would let me see/edit the images in the ROM, eh? worth doing. I have a 10.4.11 and I don't think it would just run a Windows program, but I am curious enough to try to get it set up with WINE. I should clean up my desktop, first, as I have a nearly full drive with mad music projects saved as WAVs and Audacity files. I doubt I'd have room right now to add a complex EXE to run Windows software. but it may be built in... I doubt it, but I don't really know.

Wine is actually quite small, it appears. 17 meg download.. must be less than 100 decompressed/installed. you'll probably have to google around for instructions for installing on mac os 10.4, though.

[trudatman]

H O L Y

F U C K I N G

I M P O S S I B L E !

wow. need x11 (have) and xcode (think I have) to run WINE. downloaded WINE and it is some serious computer geek action. no exe and I need to alter the "terminal" file to say a lot of things I don't understand. that'd be fine if I knew what/where the terminal file was. all of the online help for WINE is in geekspeak and makes it look like it'd be easier to write all of the code from scratch. I give up. WAY too hard to use WINE. way over my head with "echo export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:\$PATH$'\n'export MANPATH=/opt/local/man:\$MANPATH | sudo tee -a /etc/profile" that I don't even know where to put. wow.