[HOW TO] "Winnipeg Freeze Bug" Work Arounds

[seamor 75]

EDIT: @Sauce has shared a solution that was deep within the depths of another thread, also found by Smozoma, just below this post. It's much better, and doesn't double up on the player names. Basically, if you'd like to keep the player records, which already are broken for the most part in 32-team ROMs, use this one. If you'd rather the names only appear once, use his!

Let me just start this off by saying 99.99999% of the credit here goes to @smozoma. All I'm doing is sharing the code!

If you'd like to prevent the freeze on Team 31 and 32, follow as so:

Find offset F8ABO, and change the ensuing set of 6 hex values to 4E 71, 4E 71, 4E 71. After this, find F8B2C, and do the exact same.

Once you boot up the game, the player card screen should act as so (also, a nice sneak peak of my big ROM I'm working on!):

The names will be doubled up, but I definitely view this as the lesser of 2 evils.

Edited November 30, 2020 by seamor

[Sauce 225]

Nice find!

There is another way to "fix it" without the result of double names in the player portrait cards... disable the reading of the player card records.  

@smozoma discovered this fix back in 2016 (11/7/2016 post).  It makes it so the player cards can't be read/reviewed in game mode.  You can still see them in the Team Selection mode and in the Team Matchup page.
 

 

Edited November 30, 2020 by Sauce

[smozoma 484]

14 hours ago, Sauce said:

Nice find!

There is another way to "fix it" without the result of double names in the player portrait cards... disable the reading of the player card records.  

@smozoma discovered this fix back in 2016 (11/7/2016 post).  It makes it so the player cards can't be read/reviewed in game mode.  You can still see them in the Team Selection mode and in the Team Matchup page.
 

 

I totally forgot about this!

[von Ozbourme 30]

Just wanted to post this here as a possible drawback to the "Player card breaking fix".  I've noticed that when using the card disabling fix, the inhibiting of player card data also seems to inhibit saving of playoff series data. Not an concern if you only plan on playing exhibition matches, but worth noting.

What happens is that once completing a playoff game, when the game returns to the main menu, the "Continue Playoffs" will show Team #1 vs Team #1 instead of whatever teams you should be playing. And if you ignore that and try to play the next game, it just starts a new best of 7 playoff bracket from the beginning.
Also, if you accidentally change the play mode, your Continue Playoffs option is just erased and you can't access it anymore when scrolling through the play modes.

Visual aid in case I'm bad at explaining:
Complete Game in single elimination playoff.
Continue screen shows Anaheim intra-squad game instead of Winnipeg vs St.Louis quaterfinal.
Continuing results in starting a new best/7 playoff as Pittsburgh. Well shucks...

[seamor 75]

On 1/12/2021 at 12:38 PM, von Ozbourme said:

Just wanted to post this here as a possible drawback to the "Player card breaking fix".  I've noticed that when using the card disabling fix, the inhibiting of player card data also seems to inhibit saving of playoff series data. Not an concern if you only plan on playing exhibition matches, but worth noting.

What happens is that once completing a playoff game, when the game returns to the main menu, the "Continue Playoffs" will show Team #1 vs Team #1 instead of whatever teams you should be playing. And if you ignore that and try to play the next game, it just starts a new best of 7 playoff bracket from the beginning.
Also, if you accidentally change the play mode, your Continue Playoffs option is just erased and you can't access it anymore when scrolling through the play modes.

Visual aid in case I'm bad at explaining:
Complete Game in single elimination playoff.
Continue screen shows Anaheim intra-squad game instead of Winnipeg vs St.Louis quaterfinal.
Continuing results in starting a new best/7 playoff as Pittsburgh. Well shucks...

That's quite odd. I really only use the ROMs with this fix on my computer or arcade stand, so it's either short play sessions or I grab save states, so it's nice to have some additional information. Someone smarter than me will have to investigate.