Results of the "93 Fighting" study

[wboy]

I decided to fool around with 93 tonight by using the editor to ramp up an entire teams ratings in particular attributes.

I took a default 93 rom and changed the values for Boston players so their Handedness/Fighting abilities where set to the highest Righty (Hex E) or Lefty (Hex F) Fighting rating (100). I also raised the aggression and roughness (12 digit) to Hex F for all players.

I then started a 20 minute demo game, boston vs boston, and let the computer slug it out (note, I set the frame skip to 8 frames in Gens to speed up the research). This game had 5 fights in the 1st, 7 in the second and 4 in the third, for a total of 16 fights.

I then cheated a little, and changed the fighting penalty to 1 minute to see if I could squeeze in more fights. All Hex ratings where left as is. Again, a 20 minute demo game was started. This game had 4 fights in the 1st, 8 in the second and 5 in the third, managed to luckily go into OT and get another 3 fights, for a total of 20 fights.

I then went back to editor, reduced all Boston players aggression and roughness rating to Hex 0, and also set their Handedness/Fighting abilities to the lowest Righty (Hex 0) or Lefty (Hex 1) Fighting rating (0). A 20 minute demo game was started. This game had 0 fights in the 1st, 0 in the second and 0 in the third, for a total of 0 fights. No surprise obviously!

I then returned back to the editor, and simply returned the Boston player's Handedness/Fighting back to the highest Righty (Hex E) or Lefty (Hex F) Fighting rating (100), still leaving agression and roughness set to Hex 0. Another 20 minute demo game was started. This game had 4 fights in the 1st, 7 in the second and 4 in the third, for a total of 15 fights. Nice to see the fighting was backing, and interesting, independant of the aggression and roughness(?) attributes.

From these results I think we can assume that the higher the fighting rating, the higher the chance that a fight can happen in game. The only minor problem with that being that all players are ranked as good fighters and can take a heap of punches, though the amount of punches one can take does get less the more fatigued a players is, so there where better endurance may become a advantage.

Also remember that these results where found using demo games, so I gather a few additional fights could be started by a human player roughing up the opposition. Though on that note, EAH91 & NHL92 seem a lot more susceptible to react to such behaviour than NHL93 appears to.

[wboy]

Well, a bit of good news that could make setting your roms fighting rating to 100 for all players a fun thing to do.

If you search for the text "fighting", you should find the area of the rom that contains the penalty information. It should look something like the screen shot with in Evan's Penalty Editing page.

The byte before the penalty length, Hex 28 (before the lime green highlighted bytes on Evan's pic) seemingly controls the length of time permitted for a fight. Hex 28 = Decimal 40. If I was to take a guess, it gives you around 40 seconds (in game time, not real time seconds) to finish the fight.

If you make the value Hex 01, the fight is over before a punch is even thrown.

If you make the value Hex FF, there is more than enough time for two 100% rated thugs to beat each other till one drop.

I can confirm this find is also true for 91,92, and I gather it will also work for all roms in the series that have fighting enabled as they all basically have the same rule data structure.

[wboy]

Just tested a little more. The byte (mention above) which controls the length permitted length of a fight seems to act basically as a "call/restart delay" for each rule in-game time seconds.

For example, setting the appropriate Offside call delay byte to 0F (15 in-game seconds) gives you a little more time to crash and bump players in attempt to start a fight when an offside occurs. A real shame again that 93 doesn't react as well as 91/2 to such after-the-whistle roughing turning into fights.

[Lou Is God]

Now the real question is, with this data that you've collected do you think enabling fighting in '94 has become a little more clear now?

[wboy]

Now the real question is, with this data that you've collected do you think enabling fighting in '94 has become a little more clear now?

It's not that easy unfortunately. As the 94 rom is missing the player sprites for fighting, it won't be as simple as just changing a byte or two to re-enable it.

[77]

fighting AFTER the whistle in 93 would be nice *hint hint*

[wboy]

fighting AFTER the whistle in 93 would be nice *hint hint*

I'd have to admit if there was something I found more fun than fighting, it was taking control of your best scorer after a goal and mad dashing them out of the celebrations/screen before my 2P buddies could try and crash into him to start a fight and put him in the box for 10. I guess you lose that in 93....

Unfortunately though I lack even basic 68k asm knowledge at the moment... so as much as I would love to hack such changes... it won't happen any time soon...