HOW TO: Sprite Update / Helmet Patch

[clockwise]

This patch, from 2011, has all of the sprites redrawn and updated to allow you to update the helmet and shoulder colors for more accurate uniforms.

In the original, unedited sprites, the helmet color was shared with the jersey. Classic NHL'94 teams such as San Jose, Montreal, Chicago, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and other teams look inauthentic before this update, to me.
There are 2 colors for the helmets and 1 for the shoulder.

NOTE: make sure to replace the, '92 Strip.bmp,' used in the NOSE directory or the colors for the strips won't appear accurately. 

Here are some sample pics, from pixelpuck.com; 2011, of teams that benefit from the patch. 

sprite_patch.zip

Bonus for downloading, 1 free, rotating Stanley Cup and Sprite voxel animation:

[dwyersp]

Hi there! 

 

I was hoping you might provide me with some assistance regarding issues following applying your patch to the " NHL 20 by Skip & Slapshot67" mod. After following the instructions and changing the uniforms for Montreal uisng NOSE 1.2 (2018), the game appears to have issues with certain pixels behind the nets, the goal crease and the benches going crazy, appearing distorted (the uniform edits did work, however) . Is this a common issue with a workaround or is this just an inherit issue with applying this patch to a modded rom like the one I mentioned? 

 

Thanks for your help.

-Sean

[Soitanen]

On 11/30/2019 at 10:41 PM, dwyersp said:

Hi there! 

 

I was hoping you might provide me with some assistance regarding issues following applying your patch to the " NHL 20 by Skip & Slapshot67" mod. After following the instructions and changing the uniforms for Montreal uisng NOSE 1.2 (2018), the game appears to have issues with certain pixels behind the nets, the goal crease and the benches going crazy, appearing distorted (the uniform edits did work, however) . Is this a common issue with a workaround or is this just an inherit issue with applying this patch to a modded rom like the one I mentioned? 

 

Thanks for your help.

-Sean

Experience the same issue. If I apply patch to clean 94 ROM, I have trapezoid area behind the net, but broken lines in goalie area. If I apply this patch to "Classic 30 team ROM", recommended for start with modification, I got issues with strange gray rectangles near faceoff brackets.

[Sauce]

4 hours ago, Soitanen said:

Experience the same issue. If I apply patch to clean 94 ROM, I have trapezoid area behind the net, but broken lines in goalie area. If I apply this patch to "Classic 30 team ROM", recommended for start with modification, I got issues with strange gray rectangles near faceoff brackets.

I forgot the exact reason why this sometimes happens.  I had a PM with Clockwise in which he explained the why but I have since lost it.  I think it has something to do with the patch being created for roms that will use the new trapezoid art/edits (which the classic original 94 & classic 30 team roms do not).  Anyway...when you apply the patch, it "flips" certain tiles to be black/grey and messes up the goal area by adding a trapezoid that includes some funky lines.  This can be corrected.  You can use the map below to determine the hex location where the black/grey tile is occurring in your rom.  Then, using a hex editor, change it back to what the hex code should be for those locations.  The same approach should also work with the trapezoid as well.  I recommend having your new modded rom and the original 30 team version open, side by side, to determine what hex code to switch it back to for desired results.  Top advice... save a back up version of your modded rom in case you make a mistake and need to start over.

 

Edited May 21 by Sauce

[von Ozbourne]

On 5/21/2025 at 2:06 AM, Soitanen said:

I got issues with strange gray rectangles near faceoff brackets.

Sounds like you're getting something like this, except instead of colour shifted Pro-Set logos, you might be getting floor/board/glass tiles.

The thing with these patches is that they basically are just meant to change some digits in the code to different digits, which then translates visually to different uniform colours, ice markings, logos, etc.., but the stipulation is that the ROM you applying the patch to needs to be starting from the same point that the patch was designed for in order for everything to work as intended. Otherwise you get something like this example where the code is referencing a specific tile, but that tile no longer looks the same and the patch wasn't designed to address that.

Depending on what ROM you started with and what you are looking to get for a final design, it might simply be a matter of changing the face off dots to use a different tile, or changing those grey tiles back to face off dots. Without seeing it I wouldn't be able to say for certain what needs to be done there, but a good tutorial on how to look at it yourself is this part here.

There is a nice big sprite map near the bottom of that comment too.

[Soitanen]

Yeah, I even did some experiments (I don't know really why, but did).

Took original clean nhl94.bin rom and tried to apply the patch. And game doesn't run, black screen instead of first intro.

But first time when I applied the patch original rom was modified by SMOZpatch and NOSE, and it runs.

Then I take clean Classic 30 team mod and applied patch. Game works, I see this issues on the ice (near faceoff dot). Didn't get time to investigate deeper, just stuck at massive player names import, so will get into this issue later.