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NHL 94: 2022 Edition by Adam Catalyst


AdamCatalyst

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1 minute ago, Jpark said:

Ohh! Gotcha! Thanks for explaining everything! Wasn't sure if it was a glitch or not, I see now. Keep doing what you're doing :)

No prob! You too, keep doing what you’re doing! Your feedback is always appreciated. :thumbs_up:

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6 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

I can’t make up my mind with the battle of Alberta, but I suppose I want to watch as much McDavid as I can…

I'm all in on the Edmonton bandwagon. Play La Bamba baby!

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On 5/18/2022 at 1:46 AM, Jpark said:

Started playing tonight and I love how you've redone the on ice logos of every team. They all look great. A glitch that I've found so far, is once you select your teams and you get past the overall ratings of the teams and you get to the versus screen (pause menu), the colors of some teams are messed up. I noticed it first with Seattle, and they seem to have it the worst, but I went through every team and found that Colorado, Columbus, Minnesota, Florida, San Jose, Nashville, Washington, Winnipeg and Seattle have this issue. 

111.jpg

 

Hey guys. I am still preparing notes and images, and realized, that I hadn't quite got the face-off animations perfect. I couldn't let this one go, and got them refined and thoroughly tested last night. SO… version 5.1 incoming. But before I spit that one out, I had an idea. I can't do the in-game banners any better than I have, but I can tweak the Playoff banners different. Can anyone let me know which colours they prefer for the Playoff banners?

NHL 94 - Screenshots - 10. Play-Off Banners -AC.png

On the left is version 5.0. On the right is the proposed change for version 5.1. The colours are more accurate, but I wonder if some are too bright. Any and all feedback welcome & encouraged.

 

 

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I agree that the colors in 5.1 look more accurate, and I like them more than 5.0.  I think in many cases the colors are legacy holdovers from previous iterations and haven't been updated as the team's have changed their uniforms.

I do feel like there could be an effort made to vary the banners a little more.  For example, there's a lot of black-top/color-bottom styles; in fact I see none here that are the reverse (color-top/black-bottom) and I feel like Dallas and Chicago both could go that route.  To me it would make sense if those banners reflected the sweater (top) and pants (bottom) colors of the "home" (color) jersey, but I see a few teams already in my research where black is the color for both the sweater and pants, so that should be considered as well.  I just feel like the banners need a bit more personality and variation.  If it were me I would simply go through each team's Wikipedia article and pick the first two colors for each team and try to match both the color and order.

Edited by The Dopefish
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3 hours ago, The Dopefish said:

I agree that the colors in 5.1 look more accurate, and I like them more than 5.0.  I think in many cases the colors are legacy holdovers from previous iterations and haven't been updated as the team's have changed their uniforms.

I do feel like there could be an effort made to vary the banners a little more.  For example, there's a lot of black-top/color-bottom styles; in fact I see none here that are the reverse (color-top/black-bottom) and I feel like Dallas and Chicago both could go that route.  To me it would make sense if those banners reflected the sweater (top) and pants (bottom) colors of the "home" (color) jersey, but I see a few teams already in my research where black is the color for both the sweater and pants, so that should be considered as well.  I just feel like the banners need a bit more personality and variation.  If it were me I would simply go through each team's Wikipedia article and pick the first two colors for each team and try to match both the color and order.

Thanks for the feedback! I've slept on it, and still definitely like it better today.

Those were't old colours before, I'd already updated them more than once! It’s just an extremely restrictive scenario on that page, and dithering only occurred to me last week, and then another workaround occurred to me where I could tweak the definitions of the colours for just the Face-Off window (can't do much more about the Arena banners, at least, I can't with the limitations of my skillset).

OK, you like, I like, let's do it!

-a

 

p.s. I literally tried *every* method you described (great minds think alike?). I can't recall why I landed on what I have here formula, but I can assure you, it’s a nightmare trying to balance authenticity, consistency, and preferred art direction, when you are limited to just a handful of colours that have to be used for other things. I’m also 100% sure that it can be done better, it always can. :)

 

Edited by AdamCatalyst
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OK folks, so version 5.1 has dropped in the first post. Just two things to see here:

- Face-Off sprites have been further refined. Some of the sticks looked a bit curved before, and there was still some minor shadow overlapping problems. All 108 sprite combinations have been tested, it is perfect now.

- Play-Off tree Banner colours have been made more authentic.

Edited by AdamCatalyst
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  • AdamCatalyst changed the title to NHL 94: 2022 Edition v5.2 by Adam Catalyst

I was archiving my files for this project, and realized that there was one more hack that I had researched, but not implemented. And this actually has a significant affect on gameplay, and so…

2022 05 20 - Version 5.2 released (in the first post as alway)
Once more with feeling…

Gameplay

  • Players: Speed Burst reduced by 25%, for a more realistic feel, and higher difficulty. No more winning every loose puck race.
  • Players: Stamina Depletion & Recovery rates both raised.

And that should be it.

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Hi there folks,

The last update I made (v5.2) had a significant change on gameplay, with the player Speed Burst, Energy Depletion & Recovery all changed. I want to explain how you can change this and more yourself, to customize the ROM to suit your own tastes. If that interests you, please check out this linked post below where I document some of the hacks in this ROM, and how you can customize them.

cheers,

-Adam

 

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  • AdamCatalyst changed the title to NHL 94: 2022 Edition v5.3 by Adam Catalyst

2022 05 21 - Version 5.3 released (in the first post as alway)
Sprites: St. Louis home uniforms had a wrong dark blue colour specified.

I discovered this issue as I was archiving the very last of my notes, on team colours. Project frozen now, unless anyone reports a bug.

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  • AdamCatalyst changed the title to NHL 94: 2022 Edition v5.4 by Adam Catalyst

I admit I haven't truly taken the time to appreciate the work here until recently.  The attention to detail, the extra graphic work done, the organization and explanation is a damn masterpiece.  Thank you, it's going to take me some time to fully digest it all @AdamCatalyst!

 

:dal_skater_hand_grab:

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In playing like ~10 games in a row I noticed there are too many penalties called. And it's just random. It's usually for something the AI did I think. Also injuries from a direct body check happen.. I wouldn't say frequently but 5-6 times in 10 games or something. Maybe that's how the original game is, I don't remember but it's just... not realistic. Then I get a penalty for kneeing... ok...  otherwise good.

Edited by George
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11 hours ago, kingraph said:

I admit I haven't truly taken the time to appreciate the work here until recently.  The attention to detail, the extra graphic work done, the organization and explanation is a damn masterpiece.  Thank you, it's going to take me some time to fully digest it all @AdamCatalyst!

 

:dal_skater_hand_grab:

Thank-you so much. Your kind words mean so much to me. Thank-you again. And thank-you for early on tipping me off about Rewind's graphic treatments, which I ended up scraping and using either as references, or the basis of many revised logos.

 

 

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6 hours ago, George said:

In playing like ~10 games in a row I noticed there are too many penalties called. And it's just random. It's usually for something the AI did I think. Also injuries from a direct body check happen.. I wouldn't say frequently but 5-6 times in 10 games or something. Maybe that's how the original game is, I don't remember but it's just... not realistic. Then I get a penalty for kneeing... ok...  otherwise good.

Hi there,

Thanks for the feedback! Lately I’ve been playing a 20 minute game a night, and I know exactly what you are talking about. Most of my games are fine, but the other night I was Edmonton playing Calgary, and Calgary just lost their mind and took penalty after penalty. And I hate when I get called for a penalty on a hit where I've not charged the opponent. 

I'm not sure what I can do about this, but I will share with you what I did, in case you can think of a way to do it better! And so that you can tweak it to suit your own tastes better.

I ran simulations with a myriad of Player Rating combinations, and found that two attributes had the most significant impact on penalties being called…

1. Aggressiveness. This was exactly what I expected.

2. Checking. The checking rating doesn’t just affect the quality of a players body checks, but it also a higher rating also increased the frequency and tendency to body check in a scenario.

I learn this stuff by trying settings, then running 24 games at once, and tracking the statistics from those games. What I found was that both of these settings had a similar affect on Penalties called AND Body Check thrown by the CPU. Setting them both to zero would reduce penalties called, but reduce body checks thrown to the point that it made the CPU easier. In the end, I relied on Naples & Smozoma’s excellent research, and conformed my checking & aggressiveness ratings curves to the original distributions, but a tiny bit lower on checking, and a tiny bit more lower on aggressiveness. This *should* produce results similar to the original, with very slightly fewer penalties called, and I believe I verified this in testing. I say “should” & “I believe” because I can't find any records of that test! Of course I would have done it, but of course I make mistakes and forget things sometimes. If you were willing to run a bunch of demo simulations of the original vs mine, and report back, I would appreciate it!

There is a third things that affects penalties called…

3. Randomness. Bear in mind that every player attribute is varied by a random amount each game. It is entirely possible that this random process will sometimes disproportionately give a team higher aggressiveness ratings.

I will be releasing a version 5.5, that has minor updates to a myriad of things, but it won’t be released until I get more feedback and have logged more playtime hours to make sure that 5.5 is stable.

Right now my focus has been on getting the energy Depletion & Recovery rates right, as I am still unhappy with how they play in some games.

I would be willing to include an adjustment to the Aggressiveness ratings (but not the Checking ratings), if it reduced penalties without making the CPU easier to play. If you wanted to run any tests and make any suggestions, I would definitely consider them. I have tried to incorporate every piece of feedback I have received to date. But at this point I don’t have time to do anything other than fit in a game for fun, and make notes on what I’d observed, and tweak a value here and there. So I would need your help. :)

cheers,

-Adam

 

NHL 94 - Screenshots - 12. Testing.png

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Hi everyone,

Just a quick note, related to my post above.

I will be releasing a version 5.5, that has minor updates to a myriad of things, but it won’t be released until I get more feedback and have logged more playtime hours.

Right now my focus has been on getting the energy Depletion & Recovery rates right, as I am still unhappy with how they play in some games.

In my current v5.5 betas, I have got it better, but still not quite right. If there is anything else in the game that you notice that you think could be better, please let me know ASAP!

I won't be making any big revolutionary changes, but I do want to make sure that every mod has been thoroughly play tested, and any issue teased out. And your input on this is both welcome and encouraged.

cheers,

-Adam

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, George said:

Maybe reduce the amount of randomness?

Unfortuneately that would have a ripple effect on other things. 

I am going to try remapping the Aggression distribution. It should make a minor difference.  Would you be willing to Beta test this for me?

 

 

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sure I can beta test it.

Is the ripple effect such a problem? Player stats should remain relatively constant I would think. Maybe sometimes a player went to sleep late or ate too much steak the day before but like you know a players stats are a players stats lol

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Doesn't this already have hot/cold randomness minimized? It says "less variance in Hot/Cold rating randomization" in the description. If this is Chaos's hack, then it reduces the hot/cold effect from +/- 6ish percent down to 3 percent.

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5 hours ago, George said:

sure I can beta test it.

Is the ripple effect such a problem? Player stats should remain relatively constant I would think. Maybe sometimes a player went to sleep late or ate too much steak the day before but like you know a players stats are a players stats lol

Is it such a problem? Well, the unknown is the problem, and I don’t want to invite the unforeseen. The randomization settings have already been thoroughly tested, and I don’t want to disrupt that.

Whether or not player attributes should remain constant game to game is a matter of opinion or preference. I'm happy with the way the variance has been managed, reducing, it from the original, but still keeping some minor variance game to game, situation to situation, to keep things fresh.

 

Edited by AdamCatalyst
typo
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1 hour ago, smozoma said:

Doesn't this already have hot/cold randomness minimized? It says "less variance in Hot/Cold rating randomization" in the description. If this is Chaos's hack, then it reduces the hot/cold effect from +/- 6ish percent down to 3 percent.

Yeah, but I actually didn’t set it as low as he did (4), I’ve got it somewhere in-between (7). I’m embarrassed to say I never could quite wrap my head around the seemingly simple logic, but set it based on play-testing instead. If I understand you & chaos correctly…

 

 

…the original RNG of 9 plays out as…

~6% (1/18) odds of -3   (random values -9)
~17% (3/18) odds of -2   (random values -8,-7,-6)
~17% (3/18) odds of -1   (random values -5,-4,-3)
~28% (5/18) odds of 0   (random values -2,-1, 0,+1,+2)
~17% (3/18) odds of +1   (random values +3,+4,+5)
~17% (3/18) odds of +2  (random value of +6,+7,+8)
 

…while my RNG value of 7 should plays out as follows…

~14% (2/14) odds of -2   (random values -7,-6)
~21% (3/14) odds of -1   (random values -5,-4,-3)
~36% (5/14) odds of 0   (random values -2,-1, 0,+1,+2)
~21% (3/14) odds of +1   (random values +3,+4,+5)
~7% (2/14) odds of +2  (random value of +6)
 

Not a huge change, but I like it this way. :) Most importantly to me, it reduced the chance that an attribute will be boosted or cut by more than 1 from 40%, to 21%.

Edited by AdamCatalyst
typos
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5 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

Yeah, but I actually didn’t set it as low as he did (4), I’ve got it somewhere in-between (7). I’m embarrassed to say I never could quite wrap my head around the seemingly simple logic, but set it based on play-testing instead. If I understand you & chaos correctly…

 

 

…the original RNG of 9 plays out as…

~6% (1/18) odds of -3   (random values -9)
~17% (3/18) odds of -2   (random values -8,-7,-6)
~17% (3/18) odds of -1   (random values -5,-4,-3)
~28% (5/18) odds of 0   (random values -2,-1, 0,+1,+2)
~17% (3/18) odds of +1   (random values +3,+4,+5)
~17% (3/18) odds of +2  (random value of +6,+7,+8)
 

…while my RNG value of 7 should plays out as follows…

~14% (2/14) odds of -2   (random values -7,-6)
~21% (3/14) odds of -1   (random values -5,-4,-3)
~36% (5/14) odds of 0   (random values -2,-1, 0,+1,+2)
~21% (3/14) odds of +1   (random values +3,+4,+5)
~7% (2/14) odds of +2  (random value of +6)
 

Not a huge change, but I like it this way. :) Most importantly to me, it reduced the chance that an attribute will be boosted or cut by more than 1 from 40%, to 21%.

You've got it right

The nice thing about going with your RNG value of 7 (or a value of 8) instead of the original 9 is that it eliminates the overlap case where a player rated 1 higher than another in attribute (on the base 0-6 ratings) can be equal to a player rated 1 lower, if the better player is max cold and the other is max hot.  

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On another note, is it possible to increase the speed at which this is emulated or something? It seems to run slower than I remember it or maybe it's just me. But it would be nice to speed up the game a bit.

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15 hours ago, George said:

On another note, is it possible to increase the speed at which this is emulated or something? It seems to run slower than I remember it or maybe it's just me. But it would be nice to speed up the game a bit.

I’m not clear what you are asking… Are you asking about simulating overclocking or some kind of water playback mode with your emulator software? I wouldn’t really know about that, but I am under the impression it is possible with some emulators, with some games.

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Attached is a Beta RC1 of v 5.5. It needs testing of everything below, but most importantly…

  • Energy Depletion & Recovery rates?
  • Penalty call rates? 
  • Player photos?

If you notice anything  is off, please let me know.

--------------------------------------------------

Full change-log as follows:

Main Menu
- Graphics: ~64 Player Photos were re-scaled and re-cropped for better visual balance.

Arena
- Sprites: Zamboni driver wave hand colours adjusted.
- Graphics: Coaches (implied) arm shortened.

Rosters & Lines, & Ratings
- Ratings: Minor changes to virtually all Aggression Ratings.
- Ratings: Minor ratings changes to many Goaltenders, and minor changes to Anaheim’s Defence.
- Rosters & Rosters: Minor changes to Anaheim’s Defence.

Gameplay
- Players: Energy Recovery rate slightly increased, for better gameplay balance. 

 

--------------------------------------------------

EDIT: Beta has been pulled, as it is out of date. If you downloaded this and have any feedback, I'd love to hear it!

Edited by AdamCatalyst
Out-of-date Beta build pulled.
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20 hours ago, George said:

ok fair enough :thumbs_up:

Hey,

Posted a Beta for you and anyone else to test. But bottom line, I don’t think the penalty call rate will be much lower. I’m pretty much at the floor as far as being able to lower aggression, while still having enough resolution in the rating range to accurately differentiate players. In any case, make sure you compare it to the original. If it is better in the original, than more can be done. If not, we might be at the floor, at least based on my limited knowledge of what makes it tick.

-a

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19 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

I’m not clear what you are asking… Are you asking about simulating overclocking or some kind of water playback mode with your emulator software? I wouldn’t really know about that, but I am under the impression it is possible with some emulators, with some games.

I suspect it's the speed boost nerf that makes the game feel slow. Did you increase the energy depletion rate, too?

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