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Posted

This is getting possible. I have ported the 93 fighting code into 94 (using the help of the NHL92 source code). 

Luckily, all the conditionals for fighting have been left in the 94 code, and just the sub routines have been removed.

I have added all the logic code. It works! (check the video below)

The sprites have not been added yet, and this will be a work in progress. Right now, it's just a stick fight.

Also, the fighting banner has not been added, but will be in the future.

Currently, I am trying to figure out how to port the 93 fighting sprites over into 94.

You can follow my updates on Discord, and I will also post here.

 

image.png

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Posted

Nice work @chaos  Look forward to your continued findings!

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Posted
On 4/28/2025 at 2:24 PM, chaos said:

The sprites have not been added yet, and this will be a work in progress. Right now, it's just a stick fight.

I mean, there is a “Dr.Hook” McCracken joke in there somewhere, but I'm more interested in seeing how this workin' progresses.

  • Haha 1
Posted (edited)
On 4/28/2025 at 4:24 PM, chaos said:

The sprites have not been added yet, and this will be a work in progress. Right now, it's just a stick fight.

 

 

I don't know why but when you said "stick fight", in my mind, I saw this... not sure why it saw "figure" as well.  
 

stick-figure.gif

Anyway...hoping this becomes a doable thing (as in "hockey fighting") for the game!
 

Edited by Sauce
  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

So we've figured out the layout of the sprites and animation frames for 92-94. The frame data is a little different for 92 than it is for 93/94 (which are the same). Sprites and animation frames have been added. Bonus blood as well. I will post soon about how the animation and frame data is laid out.

Next to add is the fight banner (showing who is fighting), and adding possible injury for game. These were both in 93. But the hard part is over!

Special thanks to @McMarkis and @bcrt2000 for their help with the frame and sprite data!!

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Posted
22 minutes ago, Puck Defender said:

Oh man! This is legendary. This is a million times better than anything that EA is currently working on.

In all fairness, nearly everything anyone works on here meets that incredibly low-standard. :) I mean, is anyone here working on figuring out more monetization schemes and micro-transactions?

  • Haha 3
Posted
9 minutes ago, AdamCatalyst said:

In all fairness, nearly everything anyone works on here meets that incredibly low-standard. :) I mean, is anyone here working on figuring out more monetization schemes and micro-transactions?

Speak for yourself. I will be introducing my era specific pay-to-play pack HUT CHEL THREES ROM in a few short weeks. (Yeah no I won't. To hell with all that stuff.)

In all seriousness I'm waiting on this mod to drop so I can finally give Probert and Nilan and Manson and Hunter their proper dues in my overhauled NHL 90-91 ROM. 

I've been tracking this through the Discord and chatting with Abdul about it - sounds like there's some really cool stuff coming down the pipe in the NHL 94 labs.

Posted
1 minute ago, Drezz said:

I've been tracking this through the Discord and chatting with Abdul about it - sounds like there's some really cool stuff coming down the pipe in the NHL 94 labs.

I'm both thrilled and intimidated by what those guys are doing. I should take a look on Discord. They've clearly crosses a threshold that hasn't ben breached before!

Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, chaos said:

So we've figured out the layout of the sprites and animation frames for 92-94. The frame data is a little different for 92 than it is for 93/94 (which are the same). Sprites and animation frames have been added. Bonus blood as well. I will post soon about how the animation and frame data is laid out.

Fight_Fixed.mov 9.74 MB · 2 downloads

Next to add is the fight banner (showing who is fighting), and adding possible injury for game. These were both in 93. But the hard part is over!

Special thanks to @McMarkis and @bcrt2000 for their help with the frame and sprite data!!

This is awesome!  Great work to all involved!  I have to think that the original game developers/engineers would be impressed with how much has been accomplished, to push this game forward, over 30 years after it was released.  The ingenuity and creativeness, displayed year after year, by folks doing this kind of stuff for free, is fantastic! 

Thanks for sharing your progress on this work.  Looking forward to the end result!

Edited by Sauce
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Posted

Amazing. How compatible is this going to be with things like 32-team patch or the wider screen mod?

Posted

Thanks everyone! I have spent a ton of time on this, and it's nice to see it come together. Especially when it was thought impossible to do back in the day.

With what we learned as far as the animation frames, sprites and sprite tiles, it should be easy enough to add new sprites and animations. With the work of disassembling the 94 code, we can add new functionality to use these added animations (like features that were present in the next gen titles)

37 minutes ago, Sean said:

Amazing. How compatible is this going to be with things like 32-team patch or the wider screen mod?

So right now, my added code and the displaced tables used for sprites and animations have been added to open space in the expanded ROM. These locations can easily be moved though. I would need to look at the 30 and 32 team ROMs to see what addresses are being used for graphics and move my code to make it compatible. This shouldn't be too hard to do.

There are still some bugs to be ironed out, and some customization to be added, but the hard part is over. The code will be designed as a patch, and can easily be applied to any compatible ROM

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Posted

did you just say the P word?!  i think what you meant to say was "buildable source" much like mcmarkis made

Posted
10 minutes ago, 77 said:

did you just say the P word?!  i think what you meant to say was "buildable source" much like mcmarkis made

Buildable source is easy when you have the 92 source code. I have analyzed the hell out of the 94 code using the 92 source. A lot of it is still a mystery though.

Posted

This is incredible. The removal of fighting in NHL 94 was probably the one thing that was missing from this amazing game. I remember it's removal sparked a lot of speculation of why it was removed and this extensive study of the source code sheds a little light. It seems obvious the game was just built off of 93 and 92 so at some point in 94's development cycle it did have fighting, probably left over from 93. Your work really opens up new realms of possibility for the game and adding features from 95 to create the ultimate 16 bit NHL game.

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Posted
12 hours ago, AdamCatalyst said:

In all fairness, nearly everything anyone works on here meets that incredibly low-standard. :) I mean, is anyone here working on figuring out more monetization schemes and micro-transactions?

Don't say monetization! They will try and tariff it.

Posted
17 hours ago, chaos said:

Buildable source is easy when you have the 92 source code. I have analyzed the hell out of the 94 code using the 92 source. A lot of it is still a mystery though.

the 94 disassembly i got from markey jester was buildable

Posted

The project of biblical proportions.

Posted (edited)
On 5/29/2025 at 11:34 PM, chaos said:

So we've figured out the layout of the sprites and animation frames for 92-94. The frame data is a little different for 92 than it is for 93/94 (which are the same). Sprites and animation frames have been added. Bonus blood as well. I will post soon about how the animation and frame data is laid out.

Next to add is the fight banner (showing who is fighting), and adding possible injury for game. These were both in 93. But the hard part is over!

Special thanks to @McMarkis and @bcrt2000 for their help with the frame and sprite data!!

This is so awesome!  Can’t wait to see this become a reality in NHL94 roms!

Edited by BurntBiscuit94
Posted
On 5/30/2025 at 4:49 PM, MadFlava19 said:

This is incredible. The removal of fighting in NHL 94 was probably the one thing that was missing from this amazing game. I remember it's removal sparked a lot of speculation of why it was removed and this extensive study of the source code sheds a little light. It seems obvious the game was just built off of 93 and 92 so at some point in 94's development cycle it did have fighting, probably left over from 93. Your work really opens up new realms of possibility for the game and adding features from 95 to create the ultimate 16 bit NHL game.

Per the speculation, I thought I read (somewhere) that fighting was removed to make the NHL happy.  Meaning that they wouldn’t allow EA to use licensed team logos unless it was removed.  That may be false but I could have sworn I read it somewhere.

Posted (edited)

correct

 

we got sold out for some bullshit cd video footage

Edited by 77
Posted
15 hours ago, BurntBiscuit94 said:

Per the speculation, I thought I read (somewhere) that fighting was removed to make the NHL happy.  Meaning that they wouldn’t allow EA to use licensed team logos unless it was removed.  That may be false but I could have sworn I read it somewhere.

Yes it's discussed in a few interviews. They dropped fighting in order to keep team names and logos, plus game video for sega CD.

I think part of the problem was EA had added the blood on the ice and the horrifically broken legged sprite, and the league, which was trying to clean up its image, really didn't like that. I think there may have been miscommunication about that, and there could have been a middle-ground/compromise, where we got fighting but no blood or broken legs. That was something I picked up on from an unreleased interview with Michael Brook from Mikey's Pixelated Heroes documentary that I was lucky to get a chance to see.

 

Posted
3 hours ago, smozoma said:

Yes it's discussed in a few interviews. They dropped fighting in order to keep team names and logos, plus game video for sega CD.

I think part of the problem was EA had added the blood on the ice and the horrifically broken legged sprite, and the league, which was trying to clean up its image, really didn't like that. I think there may have been miscommunication about that, and there could have been a middle-ground/compromise, where we got fighting but no blood or broken legs. That was something I picked up on from an unreleased interview with Michael Brook from Mikey's Pixelated Heroes documentary that I was lucky to get a chance to see.

 

Thanks for the vids and for confirming!

Posted

I look forward to seeing how well this works out when fully implemented and inevitably trying to...
380px-Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven.jpg

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Posted
6 minutes ago, von Ozbourne said:

I look forward to seeing how well this works out when fully implemented and inevitably trying to...
380px-Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven.jpg

A Spinal Tap reference/image!  You just won the internet for the day!

Assuming anyone gets the reference.  lol

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