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[MD] Game Speed, how fast or slow can we go?


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One day, I had decided to play the Genesis and Megadrive version of NHL '98, I noticed how lovely the overall speed of the game had been when I had set it to High/Fast, and ever since that point in time, I truthfully cannot get enough of it, it is a powerful setting that truly could make or break the entirety of a match in full.

Over the past few years, I have countless memories of playing complete games involving a Western All~Stars versus Canada match, the added speed had put their stats to ever so good use; even today, I will usually play as Canada over the Western All~Stars (unless I am doing a 04 Way Play game), and to be truthful, being able to play these games on the highest speed setting have allowed me to have easier coordination, far faster reaction time, easier battle plans in~game, and above all, a very fun experience with NHL '98 as a whole, it actually gave me the liberty to feel free in how I had wanted my game to turn out in the long run.

The functions of the Fast and Slow Game Speed settings are something that I have wondered about for a long time with NHL Hockey '92 to NHL '97, as these six titles did not have them, nor do we have any Speed Hacks of them (that I am aware of, anyway) that allow for faster or slower gameplay by default, and I feel that this needs to be talked about for those that truly are strict about how fast or slow that they want their gameplay speed to be; some of us don't want to have to change the console region in the emulator because it only slows down or speeds up the timer, which is what we don't want to have be our only method for changing the game speed in the first six titles .

In my case, I desire to know how to go about doing this for the Thirty Team ROMs of NHLPA Hockey '93 and NHL '94, as these are the titles that I am working with the most for all of my projects, and this truly would help out, especially for future titles and franchises that we all have in store; given that said, how would one go about in modifying the game speed for each title to make it as fast or slow as probably desired, and would this method affect the speed of the timer or leave it at its original speed without any complications?

Although this thread is made in regard to handling this matter for all titles spanning from '92 to '97, I feel that knowing how to do this for at least '93 and '94 is somewhat mandatory and will help out developers a massive lot, there is nothing worse to some of us than a good ROM hack that gets mixed reviews because the gameplay is either too sluggish for comfort or not fast enough to obtain complete satisfaction and proper difficulty to enhance the game's overall flow and rhythm.

In the event that there also happens to be utilities existent that were made to work on modifying the game speed of any of these six titles, then knowing about the such would definitely come in handy indeed, those probably would make the experience far easier for us if it is faster than editing Hex Values.

I might happen to use this for when I begin getting around to my future ROM hack series for next year, so knowing how to do this ahead of time will save me a massive lot of development time, I am positive.

As we go about into 20I6, knowing something major such as modifying the game speed for each title will definitely make the possibilities in competitive turnouts that much more interesting and worth the views, it would be yet another way to optimize the games more than they already are becoming. (:

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I feel like this is a question I'd have something to say about, but seeing 4 big paragraphs and starting with some stories, I just can't read these super long things every time. Can you ask the question concisely at the start of the post, to give focus, and THEN expand on it with background information, not the other way around? So I don't need to read a 400 words of a 700 word post before I even know if it's something I can answer.

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http://forum.nhl94.com/index.php/topic/1330-got-some-screens-so-i-can-see-em/?p=147278

If I remember correctly there is somewhere in this forum (hacking section I guess) information about offset (location in the rom) with framerate speed.

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I feel like this is a question I'd have something to say about, but seeing 4 big paragraphs and starting with some stories, I just can't read these super long things every time. Can you ask the question concisely at the start of the post, to give focus, and THEN expand on it with background information, not the other way around? So I don't need to read a 400 words of a 700 word post before I even know if it's something I can answer.

Simply put, I am looking for a method to change the default game speed of each NHL title on the Genesis and Megadrive from '92 to '97, most specifically '93 and '94's Thirty Team ROMs, without the usage of the Region Swap method.

The Region Swap method affects the gameplay by a speed shift of -0I7% when doing NTSC to PAL, and +0I7% when doing a PAL to NTSC shift; however, while I do love the change that this delivers to the gameplay, the issue with the Region Swap method is that this speeds up the timer as well, leading for faster or slower times depending on the region that is used.

Compared to the prior titles, NHL '98 was the only one of the original seven that had allowed us to have these speed increases and decreases because of the functions from the Fast and Slow settings without affecting the speed of the in~game timer, retaining that at its normal speed regardless of how fast or slow the game was.

If I had personally wanted to modify the speed of the timer, then I would definitely learn how to do so accordingly, but in this case, all that I would want to learn to have modified is the gameplay's speed; dealing with the timer is not necessary for what I am looking for here at the moment, that could be learned later on.

Edited by Royameadow
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Simply put, I am looking for a method to change the default game speed of each NHL title on the Genesis and Megadrive from '92 to '97, most specifically '93 and '94's Thirty Team ROMs, without the usage of the Region Swap method.

The Region Swap method affects the gameplay by a speed shift of -0I7% when doing NTSC to PAL, and +0I7% when doing a PAL to NTSC shift; however, while I do love the change that this delivers to the gameplay, the issue with the Region Swap method is that this speeds up the timer as well, leading for faster or slower times depending on the region that is used.

Compared to the prior titles, NHL '98 was the only one of the original seven that had allowed us to have these speed increases and decreases because of the functions from the Fast and Slow settings without affecting the speed of the in~game timer, retaining that at its normal speed regardless of how fast or slow the game was.

If I had personally wanted to modify the speed of the timer, then I would definitely learn how to do so accordingly, but in this case, all that I would want to learn to have modified is the gameplay's speed; dealing with the timer is not necessary for what I am looking for here at the moment, that could be learned later on.

Use the region swap method and add 51/102/204 seconds (17 %) in hex editor to each period.

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Hmm, ok, thanks.

I remember both I and Tony H (the guy who wrote the tutorial on here that taught me how to start hacking the game code) both looked into the timer/clock and decided it was not reasonably possible to change the clock speed.

To change the game speed of the older games, I think you could soooort of do it. Everything is based on frames, so you can't simply change some value somewhere and everything goes faster.

You'd need to do at least the following:

Add a multiplier to all the player speed and turning adjustments. (code insertion technique like used for the weight bug with checking attribute hack)

Add a multiplier to all the puck speed and turning adjustments.

Find the gravity constant for the puck and change that, so it doesn't just look like the players are faster/stronger.

Shorten some animations or actions like how long a player is on the ice after a check, how long a player speed boosts for...

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That sounds easy enough to do, from how you put it, the only matter now is actually finding the offsets for each period in each title to actually do this.

It probably will be easiest to do in '94, so I think that I will aim to look into doing this for it first.

When you say to add a multiplier though, I have to ask, how exactly would the multiplier look like in Hex Value form?

That is what I am truly unsure about here, as handling something such as this is not exactly my forte; I presume though that I would only have to change a few values in each respective section that applies to the game speed to get the results that I want, and also assure that those values are the same in each of the respective portions, do correct me on that if my presumption is incorrect though.

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That sounds easy enough to do, from how you put it, the only matter now is actually finding the offsets for each period in each title to actually do this.

It probably will be easiest to do in '94, so I think that I will aim to look into doing this for it first.

When you say to add a multiplier though, I have to ask, how exactly would the multiplier look like in Hex Value form?

That is what I am truly unsure about here, as handling something such as this is not exactly my forte; I presume though that I would only have to change a few values in each respective section that applies to the game speed to get the results that I want, and also assure that those values are the same in each of the respective portions, do correct me on that if my presumption is incorrect though.

To add a multiplier, you'd need to write the assembly code to do something like multiply the acceleration by 5, then divide it by 4, for a speedup of 20%. Same thing for the max speed cutoff (or however that works). If you can find the location to do this, I can write the code for you.

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If I remember correctly there is somewhere in this forum (hacking section I guess) information about offset (location in the rom) with framerate speed.

Oh. I didn't think that would be how it worked, but if it is, that's a pretty good solution, other than that the clock goes faster.

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good find

this one, makes the game calculate 25 frames per second but run at 30fps

http://forum.nhl94.com/index.php/topic/221-nhl-hockey-94-hyper-edition/?p=1945

clock will be faster, but oh well.

might need to force the emulator to NTSC if it detects teh game is PAL.

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So I had done some experimentation with the above mentioned, and it appears as if that actually does something completely different in NHL '94's Thirty Team ROM.

Instead of making the speed of the ROM function in the way that the PAL to NTSC Region Swap method works, when you edit the values of 000076D6 from 0240 to 303C, what actually happens is that the game now becomes fixed, in which even if you start it up with the PAL region enabled, switching it to NTSC~U or NTSC~J will allow it to play at the speed that it was originally intended to be on NTSC consoles, thus meaning that changing the value from 0240 to 303C at offset 000076D6 in the Thirty Team ROM is, in its truest reality, a Regional Speed Bugfix.

In order to obtain Hackmaster Wboy's method in the Thirty Team ROM, to have the game assume that it was already in PAL to begin with, you would have to change 0240 to other select values that work, I have found some but not all within the past two hours and change.

Changing 0240 to DCDF will work this perfectly, and that is what one would use best to get this effect without getting a Black Screen; other value changes that you could do at offset 000076D6 include 0160, 05E6, DD0C, and 7897; there are plentiful others that you could do this with, but setting it to 303C will not give you the luxury of the Hyper Speed effect (as Wboy had put it) in the Thirty Team ROM, only the original game's assembly will do that for you in this scenario, based on my examination of how this works.

Edited by Royameadow
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  • 1 year later...
On 10/14/2015 at 7:19 PM, smozoma said:

I remember both I and Tony H (the guy who wrote the tutorial on here that taught me how to start hacking the game code) both looked into the timer/clock and decided it was not reasonably possible to change the clock speed.

I was reading this thread yesterday and became motivated to see if I could adjust the clock speed accordingly in NHL '94 to what occurs in real-life hockey. (so that when we select 20 minute periods for example the period lasts the full 20 minutes, instead of only 10 minutes with time moving so fast with the double-speed clock) I wanted to let you know that, through some research and man hours last night, well I actually managed to accomplish this feat in NHL '94 on Genesis. I was able to not only slow down the speed of the game clock to real-time, but I was also able to adjust the penalty minutes so that each penalty last 2 full minutes (in real-time) to go along with the real-time game clock. It took some trial and error and hex editing to get it right but now I finally have NHL '94 running properly on Genesis.

Having looked through this forum, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it didn't seem like anyone had been able to accomplish this feat so far for NHL '94 on Genesis, so I decided to sign up here today so that I can share this with the NHL '94 Genesis modding community. I can either upload the mod here or I could go ahead and create a new thread in the Genesis roms section. I wasn't sure how many people would be interested in this but it's really cool. The real-time clock and 2 actual minute penalties works very well for example with the NCAA 07 mod as that gameplay seems to go well with longer period lengths. (that's an awesome mod by the way for NHL '94 on Genesis)

I've been having so much fun playing 20 minute periods with a real-time clock, and trying to find gameplay that's low scoring enough so that scores stay somewhat low scoring for longer matches!! Are you guys interested in this? Should I upload my patched bin with real-time clock and 2 minute penalties so you can try this for yourself in NHL '94?

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26 minutes ago, Brodeur30 said:

I was reading this thread yesterday and became motivated to see if I could adjust the clock speed accordingly in NHL '94 to what occurs in real-life hockey. (so that when we select 20 minute periods for example the period lasts the full 20 minutes, instead of only 10 minutes with time moving so fast with the double-speed clock) I wanted to let you know that, through some research and man hours last night, well I actually managed to accomplish this feat in NHL '94 on Genesis. I was able to not only slow down the speed of the game clock to real-time, but I was also able to adjust the penalty minutes so that each penalty last 2 full minutes (in real-time) to go along with the real-time game clock. It took some trial and error and hex editing to get it right but now I finally have NHL '94 running properly on Genesis.

Having looked through this forum, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it didn't seem like anyone had been able to accomplish this feat so far for NHL '94 on Genesis, so I decided to sign up here today so that I can share this with the NHL '94 Genesis modding community. I can either upload the mod here or I could go ahead and create a new thread in the Genesis roms section. I wasn't sure how many people would be interested in this but it's really cool. The real-time clock and 2 actual minute penalties works very well for example with the NCAA 07 mod as that gameplay seems to go well with longer period lengths. (that's an awesome mod by the way for NHL '94 on Genesis)

I've been having so much fun playing 20 minute periods with a real-time clock, and trying to find gameplay that's low scoring enough so that scores stay somewhat low scoring for longer matches!! Are you guys interested in this? Should I upload my patched bin with real-time clock and 2 minute penalties so you can try this for yourself in NHL '94?

Awesome!  Can you post how to do it in the Editing section?

 

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is Royameadow still around?  if that member doesn't log in anymore, would a staffmember be willing to trim that insane signature down to an inch or two tall instead of a foot?

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8 hours ago, tru said:

is Royameadow still around?  if that member doesn't log in anymore, would a staffmember be willing to trim that insane signature down to an inch or two tall instead of a foot?

I would, but a lot of the mod tools are missing in the new forum version, waiting on a response from the vendor for how to fix it.

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