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Olympic Hockey 1920 game


von Ozbourne

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Alright, been plugging away at a couple rather large projects for some time, and needed a palette cleanser. Been a while since I've played around with the 30-team 94 ROM and man, it is so much easier to work with. So we have a fun opportunity to dive into the history.

Presenting:
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Unlike other World Championships [which technically the Olympics doubled as up until 1968] there was no way of pretending that this could have been a contemporary release. However, last year was the centennial of that first Olympic hockey tournament...
Suppose if last year wasn't such a mess, I'd have remembered to "release" this one then.

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Original Ligue Internationale de Hockey sur Glace logo over interior shot of the Palais de Glace d'Anvers [Ice Palace of Antwerp] where all games were played.

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7th Olympic games [Summer, there were no winter games yet] Dutch/French postcard fills in the splash screen nicely.

Old and New
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Red Ensign vs 48 Star banner and ice markings.

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William Abraham Hewitt [yes, the father of Foster] was the honorary team manager of the gold medal winning Canadian representative Winnipeg Falcons team, but while there he still managed to fulfill his roll as sports editor, whose columns were printed in such papers as the Toronto Star and Winnipeg Tribune. This is also the first tournament for the Czecho-Slovaks since they unified the regions around the old country of Bohemia.

Old and New
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Interestingly enough, at the time, the only markings on the unpainted ice were the blue lines and center ice dot. The referee at the time was just a guy in a suit. Occasionally in those early days, games were even officiated by the managers or coaches of other teams.

Old and New
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While there was no painted crease in those days, it helped to scuff up the goaltender area. Also, the old box frame built net.

Old and New
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Brought back the period correct "Zamboni" as well. In lieu of an ad, settled on an '20 style art deco clock.

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Had tried to rig the seven participants into a staggered playoff format. Annoyingly, despite how much I nerfed some unplayable teams to effectively create a "bye round" scenario, there was still a 25% chance that the horribly unskilled placeholder team would manage to get credit with a win anyway. So to spite the AI, having NPC teams play themselves to guarantee the bye was the way to go.

Removed previous versions as they were broken and sucked.

Olympic Hockey - 1920 Antwerp [1.3].bin

 

 

Edited by von Ozbourne
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Full disclosure, I did run into some annoying problems trying to fix the ref in the other images.
image.png  image.png  image.png
The tiling for these guys are a bit jumbled up with other code so I was just as likely to glitch the entire window as I was to black out the stripes, so I opted to leave it alone.

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On another note, I was thought it would be cool to clear the bench as most teams only had the six skaters. [Teams still used the rover in these Olympics, but recoding the game to allow for the extra attacker and goalie to be on the ice at the same time, that's a bit of an ask] This too was kyboshed by the fact that when the bench players move, they share sprites with their on-ice counterparts.

Well, that's one solved at least.

 

Edited by von Ozbourme
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12 hours ago, Jkline3 said:

Regarding the bench, not sure if there would be any side effects elsewhere but you can remove the bench animation by making the sprites at ED1BA transparent.

Sunuva... That was the one I was looking for! Although admittedly I was kind of tired of the Ref by that point.
Basically:
Hmm, try the white pixels in this section... <broken>
Hmm, try the striped pixels in this tile... <broken>
Hmm, try these two pixels here... <broken>
Hmm, try never minding this bollocks... <never minded>

It just looked to me that the sprites were based on the on-ice players, so I figured they probably just pointed to some of them to save memory.
The good news is that It doesn't seem to affect anything else. This does mean that the benched Rover player doesn't move at all, but it's an okay trade off.

However, now you got me looking at one other thing I was debating doing... Going to conduct some tests. V1.1 update should be ready by tomorrow.

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6 hours ago, von Ozbourme said:

Sunuva... That was the one I was looking for! Although admittedly I was kind of tired of the Ref by that point.
Basically:
Hmm, try the white pixels in this section... <broken>
Hmm, try the striped pixels in this tile... <broken>
Hmm, try these two pixels here... <broken>
Hmm, try never minding this bollocks... <never minded>

It just looked to me that the sprites were based on the on-ice players, so I figured they probably just pointed to some of them to save memory.
The good news is that It doesn't seem to affect anything else. This does mean that the benched Rover player doesn't move at all, but it's an okay trade off.

However, now you got me looking at one other thing I was debating doing... Going to conduct some tests. V1.1 update should be ready by tomorrow.

I feel your pain. When I was trying to remove the kickplate in the ref window I would change one yellow pixel to white, save, test.

Repeat.

Crash.

Quit... 

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So, it is with thanks to @Jkline3, that I was able to get that cleared bench I was looking for. And I figured while I was at it, I might as well go with a few more period accurate touches.

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Rover is thinking "I should be out there."

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I like the more scattered snow look in this goal area better.
The seats appear really far away without the glass, but it's not out of the ordinary in European rinks.

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Not much keeping the fans separated from the action, or the penalized player, but at least he won't have to share a bench with an adversary from the other team like in some old rinks. Decided against the old tongue-and-groove slats look for the rink boards as that was just way too busy, but behind the bench works.

Updated the main post as well, but I'll keep the original in there to in case anyone wants to use it for reference.

 

Olympic Hockey 1920 V1.1.bin

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Really enjoy the attention to detail that makes it feel like more than '94 with different names. Also enjoy the muted colors of the crowd - almost makes you think something bad, like a depression, could be on the way...

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On 8/24/2021 at 2:11 PM, Jkline3 said:

Really enjoy the attention to detail that makes it feel like more than '94 with different names. Also enjoy the muted colors of the crowd - almost makes you think something bad, like a depression, could be on the way...

Heh. Yeah, I figured if I wasn't going to completely redraw the entire crowd to be wearing Edwardian 3-piece suits and ankle length skirts, then they should at least be less vibrant.

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Damn, great work. Gonna echo the props for the attention to detail and the muted colours on everything just making everything feel super old-timey, it's really immersive.

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  • 3 months later...

The weather outside is frightful, but the games are so delightful.
And the hockey's great in retro, Score a goal. Score a goal. Score a goal.

I'd been going back to this one off and on and figured I might as well post an update. Technically this one is build 1.8, but I'm renaming the ROM
Olympic Hockey - 1920 Antwerp.
Among a bunch of minor tweaks [most of which I don't even remember what they are anymore] the major and most noticeable differences will be:

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Slight rebranding of the title screen.

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With an assist from the indispensable @Jkline3, an updated helmet[less] patch for that authentic 1920's look.

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Goaltenders get some love with a set of heavy leather pads. ....wait.

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Hockey was a rough sport back in those days.

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Not sure how I forgot to use this patch until now, but we managed get the 3-stars sponsor back in there.

Link will be placed in the main post as well,
Barring any further developments, such as figuring out how to get the rover in there, this is probably the final form. Please enjoy responsibly.

Olympic Hockey - 1920 Antwerp.bin

Edited by von Ozbourme
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  • 3 weeks later...

Had to make a quick update to this one. Despite not having any complaints, there were a few glaring issues plus a few nagging things that I wanted to improve.

Changes found in this one include, but not limited to, editing the main menu banner to match the pause menu fonts.
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Fixed the face off official. [Apparently when I switched to @Jkline3's No-Helmet sprites, I accidentally undid some of my ref edits.
Took the opportunity to adjust that middle animation sprite to have him look down before dropping the puck.
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Subdued the colours in the crowd to something more fitting of post-war Europe.
Striped the goal of its paint.
Speaking of the puck, took the opportunity to switch the sprites to a more 3D effect and aligned the shadow properly.
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Greyed up this crowd angle too. Shovelling kid shocking them with his colourful hat.
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Under the hood stuff includes:

  • Turning on line changes, as I figured it added to the realism that these guys are effectively playing ironman hockey, but using the fatigue hack, the player's will tire very slowly and recharge very quickly.
  • Given that there are very few subs, this can obviously be turned off as some players may not get a whole lot of opportunities to rest up.
  • Puck collision is tightened up slightly to add some challenge to scoring and bring the puck closer to the boards. [but not the plexi as there is none]

Updated the original post as well.

Olympic Hockey - 1920 Antwerp [1.3].bin

Edited by von Ozbourne
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