NHL 2024 ['94] by JKline3 and von Ozbourne

[von Ozbourne]

Alright. First off, sorry this one is a bit late, but in our defence, sometimes life happens at the most inopportune times.
Cutting to the chase, it's time @Jkline3 and I submit:

NHL 2024 - '94 Edition

To start, while I haven't seen any mention of this being the 30th anniversary of this all-time classic in any of the modern releases, [if you're into that sort of thing] it seemed wrong not to address it in some manner.
 
Also, NHL Network continues their "sponsorship" in this edition.

The main menu background didn't change, but some other things have.
 

Since Ray Ferraro left NHL Network, the search was on for another former player turned host that we can call on for riveting in-depth pre-game analysis, and Dave Reid was classy enough to return our call.
 
With the new season, the playoff format is restored so anyone could win it all!

Some minor tweaks to the game menu graphics, where one can view their lines with the updated player rosters and custom player ratings.
 
Zamboni guy improved his posture and changed his sweater.

As well as the new player cards.
 
Yes, I may just be trying show off the new photos at this point.

With the discontinuation of the Reverse Retro program, this year's edition sticks to the regular home and away kits.
 
As well, this version incorporates a new 3-Star calculator thanks to the amazing tutorial work by @AdamCatalyst [It's hard to justify giving the goalie credit for the shutout when he only faced two shots all game]

Obligatory under the hood and minor graphical stuff:

• Original custom player attribute stats based on NHL24 updates.
• Original JKline player sprite mod based on helmet patch for more accurate and varied uniforms.
• Tighter puck collision on boards and net making for pucks that hit closer to the boards sprites and a slighter smaller scoring area on the nets.
• Pucks that also feature original customized sprites that change with team colours.
• The nets that those pucks can go in have also had their sprites redrawn.
• Weight bug fix is applied.
• SmozROM Ratings consistency fix - player ratings will match hot/cold overall.
• Freeze Bug applied so no player stats and player name on second line.
• User Records set to "ON" can still cause crashes with Vegas, Washington and Winnipeg so caution is advised.
• Expanded goalie roaming area. Go out to the edge of the trapezoid or out to the face off dots to cut down the angle.
• Goalie can also carry the puck out to the blue line before the automatic whistle. [if play isn't blown for holding the puck too long]
• Yes we know that the goalie can technically go to the red line, but that would mean having to figure out how to assess delay of game penalties and that's not likely to happen.
• Goalie Y-button control hack applied.
• Edit Lines hack for any player to play at any position. Great for 4-1 Power plays.
• Benches have been edited so the coach mod has been removed.
• EA Sports watermarks have been updated to modern logo.

 

Most recent version:

NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v2.1.bin

 

Previous version:

NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v1.2.bin

 

Original version:

NHL 2024 - Retro 94 x 30th Edition v1.0.bin

Edited May 24 by von Ozbourne

[Tabs3121]

Thank you very much for all the hard work on this project year after year.

 

[AdamCatalyst]

Looks beautiful!!! So many nice bespoke touches. I still can't believe that you pulled off colour photos. Looking forward to dropping this into my console tonight.

[Deckard]

Thanks a lot guys!!

[GannErik]

Thank you for a fantastic job!

[kingraph]

Wow this looks amazing!

[smozoma]

The logo tiles with the jersey striping is a nice touch

Colour player portraits!!

[SinDonuts]

YES! Well done and thanks so much.

Question: Why is every player set to "D". Is that to allow any player to be at any position in the lines?

I'm using the NOSE 1.2 rom editor to check this stuff and make some fixes to the NJ Devils roster, but I noticed everyone is a D now.

A few of the NJ Devils changes I made (so far):

• Switched out Keith Kincaid with Nico Daws
  • Rated Daws a 125 overall
• Lowered the ratings of both Vanacek and Schmid as they're not having a hot year so far in 2024.
  • Sure, Akira was on fire vs the Rags in last year's playoffs, but now he's back down to Earth, so I rated them both under 170.
• Switched out Justin Dowling (C) with Simon Nemec (D)
  • Rated Nemec a 139 overall
• Fixed Brendan Smith's number from 0 to 2

Player List:

Goalies:

Lines:

[Jkline3]

Yes, every player is set to D to allow them to be used at any position.

Rosters were based on opening night with late cuts / injured players / veterans used to fill out the remaining roster spots. Since this was started as a beginning of the season ROM last year's performance weighs heavily on ratings. Just not large enough of a sample size to rerate everyone based on 6 weeks of play. I imagine there will be a roster update or two over the course of the season where updates to performance will be taken into account.

The beauty of NOSE is that you can tweak as you see fit as injuries and call ups occur.

My bad on Smith, I'll update accordingly.

[SinDonuts]

Thanks @Jkline3.

Also, although it pains me to say it as a Devs fan, but I think something is very off about NYR Adam Fox's rating. He is one of the best Dmen in the league and yet he's rated a 69? Is that really how he was rated last year? He finished 2nd in the Norris trophy rankings behind Karlsson and in front of Makar.

Edited November 20, 2023 by SinDonuts
new pic

[Jkline3]

Fox is a tough one to rate in the game because only a few of his individual attributes stand out. I did incorporate NHL Edge data into the ratings this season which hurt his overall even more. He's not fast, not a hitter, has an average shot. Passing and defensive awareness don't make up for that, at least in the calculation of his overall rating.

Comparing Makar to Fox, he's significantly faster, is more of a scoring threat and is slightly more physical. Other than that their ratings are almost the same. I suppose Fox could be bumped up a little to cover his reputation but then that brings into question who else should get the same treatment - which I try to avoid.

Appreciate the questions as it makes me reconsider how I rated players. It's not easy as there 832 players in the game and there's not a whole lot of room for nuance. You're rating on a select few attributes. Just based on how the overall is calculated certain qualities have an oversized impact. Don't want to inflate things just to get to an imaginary overall rating number.

But yeah, Fox probably gets hosed a bit based on what he's good/not good at...

[SinDonuts]

Lol, anything to make Rags fans get their jock straps in a knot is fine by me! 

 

I appreciate your work on this. Excellent job overall! 

[AdamCatalyst]

The Player Cards have never looked as good as they did in this release. Such a joy to just go browsing around. This release is premium.

[GannErik]

Played with Arizona Coyotes vs Ottawa Senators. Karel Vejmelka catches from right hand but is lefty in game. Not sure of the 82 rating as a team for Coyotes is realistic compared with 74 for Sens. Just for addtional infos. Thank you.

[Bobr9988]

Просто топ класс)))

[Bobr9988]

2 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

Карты игроков никогда не выглядели так хорошо, как в этом выпуске. Такая радость просто ходить по окрестностям. Этот выпуск является премиум-версией.

А когда ваш выйдет друг ром?)

[AdamCatalyst]

17 hours ago, Jkline3 said:

Fox is a tough one to rate in the game because only a few of his individual attributes stand out. I did incorporate NHL Edge data into the ratings this season which hurt his overall even more. He's not fast, not a hitter, has an average shot. Passing and defensive awareness don't make up for that, at least in the calculation of his overall rating.

Comparing Makar to Fox, he's significantly faster, is more of a scoring threat and is slightly more physical. Other than that their ratings are almost the same. I suppose Fox could be bumped up a little to cover his reputation but then that brings into question who else should get the same treatment - which I try to avoid.

Appreciate the questions as it makes me reconsider how I rated players. It's not easy as there 832 players in the game and there's not a whole lot of room for nuance. You're rating on a select few attributes. Just based on how the overall is calculated certain qualities have an oversized impact. Don't want to inflate things just to get to an imaginary overall rating number.

But yeah, Fox probably gets hosed a bit based on what he's good/not good at...

I'd love to pick your brain about how to use EDGE data!!! I haven't tried to incorporate this yet, but would very much like to try.

Fox is a tough one to rate IMHO. My rating system this year currently has him at an 83, out of a range of 52-94 (Makar) for D-Men. I've never been able to rectify his acclaim with an objective rating…

[AdamCatalyst]

11 hours ago, Bobr9988 said:

А когда ваш выйдет друг ром?)

[AdamCatalyst]

12 hours ago, GannErik said:

Played with Arizona Coyotes vs Ottawa Senators. Karel Vejmelka catches from right hand but is lefty in game. Not sure of the 82 rating as a team for Coyotes is realistic compared with 74 for Sens. Just for addtional infos. Thank you.

I'm always so curious about how different people rate things… I just checked, and my model currently has those two teams as a 71 and 65 respectively. That's literally the exact same % rating differential between the two teams! That is neat. So… yeah, I think 82 and 74 sound about right.

[AdamCatalyst]

@von Ozbourne Sorry for spamming your thread, but I can't get over how phenomenal your player photo work is. It doesn't just look better, it looks and feels authentic to what the players would have looked like if they were 16-bit video game characters. I love it so much. 

Edited November 21, 2023 by AdamCatalyst

[Jkline3]

13 minutes ago, AdamCatalyst said:

@von Ozbourne Sorry for spamming your thread, but I can't get over how phenomenal your player photo work is. It doesn't just look better, it looks and feels authentic to what the players would have looked like if they were 16-bit video game characters. I love it so much. 

Couldn't agree more. 

[Jkline3]

13 hours ago, GannErik said:

Played with Arizona Coyotes vs Ottawa Senators. Karel Vejmelka catches from right hand but is lefty in game. Not sure of the 82 rating as a team for Coyotes is realistic compared with 74 for Sens. Just for addtional infos. Thank you.

Noted on Vejmelka. Typo on my part and will update for the future.

For the overall team ratings I used a hybrid of a couple different power ratings (TSN, MoneyPuck, etc.) along with my own ratings. To be honest I didn't put too much thought into how individual teams compared to each other but I suspect that Ottawa's slow start and Arizona doing better than expected explains a lot. Glad to see @AdamCatalyst come out with similar results. No bias for/against any teams here. (except maybe Detroit - I kid, I kid...)

[smozoma]

2 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

@von Ozbourne Sorry for spamming your thread, but I can't get over how phenomenal your player photo work is. It doesn't just look better, it looks and feels authentic to what the players would have looked like if they were 16-bit video game characters. I love it so much. 

Yeah I'm curious about the process... What kind of image adjustments you make before putting them in... Saturation and contrast boosts? Then dither with a predefined palette in photoshop?

[kingraph]

Also - you did ALL (?) the player cards?  Not just starters...jeez!

[von Ozbourne]

8 hours ago, smozoma said:

Posted 8 hours ago

10 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

@von Ozbourne Sorry for spamming your thread, but I can't get over how phenomenal your player photo work is. It doesn't just look better, it looks and feels authentic to what the players would have looked like if they were 16-bit video game characters. I love it so much. 

Yeah I'm curious about the process... What kind of image adjustments you make before putting them in... Saturation and contrast boosts? Then dither with a predefined palette in photoshop?

To start, Many thanks.

To be honest, I was actually messing around with the idea of colour photos last year, but the team photographers were so inconsistent with the lighting and colour adjustments that it was just not worth the effort. This year however, they did a much better job of being at least in the same vicinity tonally, even if some teams would have a different fill light here or there or end up with a less vibrant set of images. But, it was all close enough that it seemed worth revisiting. Still wasn't sure though until I actually made that Dave Reid image. I'd gotten it ready for index colouring by setting a custom palette with all eight of the default grey tones and limiting the image to 16 colours and found that it was able to give me that image using only five skin tones. Emboldened with this knowledge, I tried an assortment of player photos using those same five tones and white, black and mid grey and it actually looked nice.

As for what I had to do to the photos, given that they were so close to start, I was able to set up some photoshop actions to bump the vibrancy and contrast and brightness just a little bit before converting to eight colour index. I actually find that vibrancy works better for me than saturation and combined with a subtle brightening with probably a maxed out contrast and after going through the cropping and resizing, probably about 2/3 of them were good enough already.

For some of the duller, darker, washed out players, I did go back and add some preset vibrancy, brightness/contrast adjustments, and that took care of a good chunk more so I think maybe only 10% of the total pictures actually required some manual attention. And even in these cases It was a lot of just going back to those vibrancy and contrast settings. In the more extreme cases, I would use dodge and burn to darken some forehead glare if the flash was too hot or darken the mid tones around areas like the nose or jaw to increase the contrast in just those areas. In some cases I ended up using layers, where I would overlay a copy of the image but with the layer properties changed to "soft light" or "overlay", occasionally in tandem with masking off areas so only certain features were adjusted. And then usually the top layer was a copy of the original but the layer property set to "colour" in order to preserve the original tones. This mind you is only in the extreme cases luckily so I didn't need to do this too many times. And luckily I didn't have to worry about too many bubble players who missed picture day this time, so trying to match a kid's junior photo to everyone else, wasn't an big issue.

Anyway, armed with these tools, while constantly switching to the index colours I settled on after each adjustment, allowed me to see what was going to work in game. I did however restart about a third of the way through due to a change in direction with the dithering. [interesting you both touch on that in a way] I originally settled on a 30% dithering effect since it was subtle enough with the small images, but then I realized that I still didn't so much like it when it was up-scaled as it looked too "retro computery" rather than staying true to what old-school console game art looked like. To me anyway. So I bumped it down to 10% and that's what you see there.

Sorry if this is getting long winded, but I guess the takeaway is that luckily the source images were very consistent this year, otherwise I probably would have just settled on black and white again. But since setting up a few automated batch actions was able accomplish what I needed for the majority of the pictures, I didn't feel like I was wasting my time on a foolish idea this year. Hopefully the team photographers do me a favour and keep this up next year.

[halifax]

Thanks for making this. I put it out on social media. 

[halifax]

Started out at 128 downloads this morning and now over 300!

[Matt55]

Amazing work! Many thanks!

[McMarkis]

This looks phenomenal, can't wait to try it.

[Shawn Sears]

This is incredible! Well done 👍 🏒