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*lmao* · 03-07-2022, 03:40 PM

Why the SHL should move from Franchise Hockey Manager to NHL 2004 (or another famous EA game...)

(TL;DR skip to end if you want)

After reading that title, you probably have an obvious question. Why should the league move from a simulation game that is being actively being worked on, to a game that has been left in the dust by EA after its release 18 years ago?

It’s true that EA has left NHL 2004 in the dust to keep working on their yearly new releases (*cough* roster updates). However, the game itself has not been left in the dust at all. If you haven’t heard of it, let me introduce you to the wondrous world of NHL 04 Rebuilt:

NHL04 Rebuilt 2022 - The official modding community (tapatalk.com)

Yes, there are actually insane souls out there modding a 18 year old game to act as if it’s a present day NHL game. I’m sure that most of us are aware that there has not been a release of a non-sim NHL game on PC since NHL 09. Many are actually still modding NHL 09 for present day NHL and Europe gameplay. I have also previously been a part of a sim league that used NHL 09 before joining the SHL.

For example, want to play as the Canucks?

Yes, your goalie will be Thatcher Demko, not Dan Cloutier (F)
Yes, you’ll play at Rogers Arena, not General Motors Place
Sorry Canucks fans, the Canucks GM photo is still Jim Benning… but uh everything else is updated!

Everything is completely updated. Now imagine your SHL team being able to customize every aspect of your arena graphically:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/nhl04reb...re%203.jpg
[Image: BLTabygp5LOjN3Z3xCbl-Qmdi8Tqx8OEyTUWC82y...UR6IRS6L2m]

[Image: BLTabygp5LOjN3Z3xCbl-Qmdi8Tqx8OEyTUWC82y...UR6IRS6L2m]

Immersion

That takes me to my first topic related to why the SHL should move to NHL 2004: immersion.

We’re all familiar with Franchise Hockey Manager live sims. Nothing against them, but they lack a certain amount of… interesting. Yes, seeing some text based play by play commentary and some X’s on a 2D ice surface isn’t too bad. We’ve seen FHM 7’s new 2D live gameplay, which while cool, is still a bunch of circles moving around on a 2D ice surface. And, it’s a simulation with a lack of a 2D translation that looks remotely like any of us are used to when watching hockey in real life.

A lot of SHL users have joined the Simulation Soccer League and noted how nice the simulations of Football Manager 21 look. Meanwhile, if you compare Football Manager to any non-simulation sports game, you’ll find that its 3D simulation looks somewhat more like NHL 98 than any modern sports game on console or PC. And god knows how long it will take for Franchise Hockey Manager to move to a 3D simulation engine, given that the 2D live simulation barely resembles actual hockey.

If we move to NHL 2004, you will actually be able to see your player skate on the ice surface. Hell, you’ll actually be able to see where the puck is during the sim! You’d be able to customize your face. There are so many possibilities…

The SHL has a great graphics community. To be honest, I don’t have much graphical skill, and not much experience with the SHL graphics community. But in previous sim leagues I have been a part of, we had great graphics people working on things like:

Custom facepacks / virtual faces (see your player as you’d like to in-game and in the game interface)
Custom jerseys
Custom equipment (pretty much everything, skates, helmets, sticks, goalie equipment)
Custom arenas and ice surfaces

Being able to see all of these things would increase immersion in the league greatly. I mean, instead of text-based fights, wouldn’t you want to see your player actually punching another player right in the face before pumping up the crowd on the way to the box?

Strategy and parity

The next topic on why the SHL should move to NHL 2004 is a topic that has been discussed thoroughly in recent days, and that is the lack of parity in the SHL, and potential gaming of FHM’s strategy options. Now, moving to a game such as NHL 2004, a much simpler game since it isn’t made with simulation in mind, would greatly ease the cognitive load needed to coach a team effectively. This would increase parity among GMs in the league, and reduce the need to spend hundreds of hours in FHM just to figure out how to get your team competing at the highest level.

Let’s go through the options you have for strategy in NHL 2004:

[Image: K_Zzp4jrH-0VEkbroZcLmboFSf2og004w_RCwj-O...pux32M7fQ3]

[Image: K_Zzp4jrH-0VEkbroZcLmboFSf2og004w_RCwj-O...pux32M7fQ3]

You can edit your lines. Yes, I think this should be simple enough to figure out. But if you can’t, you can even choose BEST LINES and the very smart EA AI will give you optimal line combinations. That’s great. And no need to figure out what those pesky icons mean, NHL 2004 tells you right on the same screen. Yes, a guy with the fist can drop the gloves.

[Image: fJC-VgQcCRkSzQC1XuRB_oggTLSjmMXj3R7YqWRA...x-bODqJggj]

[Image: fJC-VgQcCRkSzQC1XuRB_oggTLSjmMXj3R7YqWRA...x-bODqJggj]

Ah, strategies. The thing we need to exploit in order to get our team to the Four Star cup. But, try exploiting this!

Okay, so first you need to figure out your quick play strategy. You can see that I’m not being too wild and keeping this at Standard. But if you so desire, you can pick between: Defend Lead, Conservative, Standard, Aggressive, and All Out Attack. So simple even I could figure it out when I was 10 years old playing this beautiful game.

Now, you can set your strategy for each line. No need to set up 50 different sliders for each line though, you can simply choose from a list of strategies. Again, pretty simple to figure out.

Same goes for your powerplay and penalty kill strategies, choose from strategies such as umbrella on the powerplay, or passive box on the penalty kill. Again, all things lots of people will already be familiar with.

Now let’s go into the deeper parts of setting your team’s strategy in NHL 2004… oh wait there aren’t any. No individual player settings, nice! Just choose your quick play strategies, choose your one strategy for each line, set your lineup, and you’re done! Try exploiting this sim engine without everyone else in the league figuring it out as well.

The obvious drawback

Now, the obvious drawback. Yes, this would take a huge amount of work to get everything set up. It’s hard enough to move to a new version of FHM from our current version of FHM 6. It would take a significant amount of investment just to port builds over from FHM’s attribute system to EA’s attribute system. It would also take a significant amount of effort to get everything set up graphically (though, that could be done gradually, possibly with SHL lore being that the SHL was forced to play in NHL arenas while new franchises were set up).

But, I will leave you with these three words as to why it can be done:

Anything is possible.

Ok, sure, anything is possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth the effort you might say. But why am I saying that anything is possible?

Well, let’s take a look at one of the most beloved EA NHL games of all time: NHL 94. So beloved that EA has even revamped it to work on consoles and allowed you to play it in some of the most recent iterations of the EA NHL games. You wouldn’t think these games could be easily modded. NHL 94 was made back when programmers were still making games in archaic languages like C, or even just programming in assembly. For those not familiar with assembly languages, it’s basically the lowest level you can get to before a computer translates code into binary 0’s and 1’s. It’s basically just instructions for moving numbers around the computer and adding them together in various ways (extremely simplified example below):

Code:
AREA MyProgram, CODE, READONLY

ENTRY

MOV r0,#4  ;load the number 4 into register 0

MOV r1,#5  ;load the number 5 into register 1

ADD r2,r0,r1  ;add register 0 and register 1 together and store the result in register 2

END

Yes, people actually used to program games like this. In fact, Roller Coaster Tycoon is a famous example of a game that was programmed only in assembly language.

Now, to mod NHL 94, you’d need to modify the program itself, not any database files or graphical files, which you would look for to mod things in games like NHL 2004 or FHM. Basically, the entire program of NHL 94 is encoded as a very long list of hex numbers. (Background: hex numbers are just like decimal numbers which go from 0-9, but instead of stopping at 9, they go 0, 1, …, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F to store more data in each digit).

So if you looked at NHL 94, you’d see a long string of numbers like this:

Code:
01 A8 99 02 20 FF FA F7 91 …

That might seem like complete nonsense to look at, but remember, people love NHL 94 for the same reason that people love old games, they love nostalgia. So, unexpectedly, people have definitely tried to mod old games that are more mainstream than NHL 94. And some very smart people have worked on:

NOSE - NHL'94 Forums (nhl94.com)

NOSE! This stands for NHL Old School Editor. Yes, that’s right, you can customize and modify every part of NHL 94 that you desire.

[Image: QiYU6zh8Y-jSeuehvK1uAJiA7_AKem2nmgajvies..._UIyQvclcu]

[Image: QiYU6zh8Y-jSeuehvK1uAJiA7_AKem2nmgajvies..._UIyQvclcu]

https://forum.nhl94.com/uploads/monthly_...858a38.png

There’s an example of customizing all of the teams available in NHL 94. As you can see, it is much simpler than customizing teams in a more modern game like NHL 2004. The same goes for customizing graphics and customizing rosters. All of this would be much simpler, thanks to the hard work put in by people who have developed NHL Old School Editor.

I have actually also been part of an NHL 94 sim league and it was quite fun. If anyone’s interested, you can take a look at an old sim stream that I uploaded here:

[Image: rvduVfgaaKwrRUSdcS_NA9pCgBfWL3hBGoG2K0ZS...RUl0aJH-uf]

[Image: rvduVfgaaKwrRUSdcS_NA9pCgBfWL3hBGoG2K0ZS...RUl0aJH-uf]

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1f1aWqub34][/url]

In my opinion, this old style gameplay is pretty charming and cool to watch, I find it much better than watching FHM’s text commentary. And who doesn’t want to see their player shove another player through the glass!

So to conclude, NHL 2004 would give much cooler immersion than Franchise Hockey Manager, and would be much more difficult to game tactically, increasing parity.

BUT, NHL 94 would be much simpler to mod, give very cool and immersive live sims that look better than FHM, and be impossible to game tactically.

So, in short, let’s get this league on NHL 94!

(This article may or may not be completely serious)

Code:
Approx. 1850 words

***CampinKiller*** · 03-07-2022, 03:47 PM

Seeing that assembly language gave me PTSD flashbacks to that class in undergrad

visceralpotamus · 03-07-2022, 04:00 PM

Lost me at Jim Benning

*Good_Ole_Kimmy* · 03-07-2022, 04:12 PM

Its definitely a cool idea but it seems like a ton of work for people that are already putting in a ton of work behind the scenes.

***Chevy*** · 03-07-2022, 04:22 PM

03-07-2022, 03:47 PMCampinKiller Wrote: Seeing that assembly language gave me PTSD flashbacks to that class in undergrad

Don't give me those nightmares back.

Side note: Moving to some sort of 3d stuff would be pretty ballin, not gonna lie.

Serpe x 13 · 03-07-2022, 04:41 PM

how about we use the sims

Zema · 03-07-2022, 04:41 PM

Fuck it, I approve.

*leviadan* · 03-07-2022, 04:48 PM

I absolutely love the idea of moving the SHL to the modded NHL 04, but holy shit it would be such an unbelievable undertaking. Just an insane amount of work. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to take that on without getting paid real dollars to do it.

[Image: pin1_1.gif?ex=661a1734&is=6607a234&hm=b8...1bf5caed8&]

Omniscius · 03-07-2022, 04:52 PM

When I first read the title I was like wtf, but now I'm gonna go get me NHL 04 and look at these mods. This is my all-time favourite NHL game and would love to see it in the SHL

Shylo_Moxii · 03-07-2022, 04:52 PM

Few things I want to add in. FHM 8 is far superior 2D wise than what you have seen in 7 or 6. Other thing NHL is a ton of work to be editing players, now you are gonna want to add different equipment, and now you have to have a certain face style for rendering now. It becomes this huge thing with a ton of work. Other thing simulation and parity while yes I understand where you are going with it you forget you can’t turn off auto management so every time you have to either do the rosters for each team or let them auto manage. 3 you can’t just hand the file to a bunch of people to sim on you’d be basically dedicating it to one person and one person only and that’s if you are lucky enough to have NHL 2004 laying around. 4 player tendencies and strategy much like roster lines being auto Management so too are the line strategies so in theory you are putting another 20-30 minutes on top of each game being simulated plus all the work through out the off-season to customize each player and team, and we don’t even know if it does a 20 Team or 14 Team league.

*lmao* · 03-07-2022, 05:03 PM

Really appreciate detailed responses because I wasn't expecting anyone to take this seriously :D

I just wanted to mention that I don't want to discount anyone's work to keep our league going, because I really do enjoy it and know it takes a ton of work. Writing this up was kind of a way to reminisce on some of my old sim leagues. This wasn't intended to shit on FHM or anything!

Migrating to a more "modern" NHL game would definitely be a HUGE undertaking and I don't even think it'd be possible with a league this size. Was just kinda fun to imagine.

I'm definitely glad to hear that FHM 8 has a decent 2D sim now.

***brickwall35*** · 03-07-2022, 05:42 PM

I would love to see maybe something like the All Star Games be played in NHL 2004. We could offer up a big salary to those willing to get it set up and stream it. Would be a cool reward for those who make the All-Star squad

***boom*** · 03-08-2022, 05:07 AM

03-07-2022, 05:42 PMbrickwall35 Wrote: I would love to see maybe something like the All Star Games be played in NHL 2004. We could offer up a big salary to those willing to get it set up and stream it. Would be a cool reward for those who make the All-Star squad

As @sve7en mentioned in the other thread about this, they tried more or less this exact thing (with 2k5) a few seasons ago and it didn’t really take.

caltroit_red_flames · 03-08-2022, 11:41 AM

03-07-2022, 04:48 PMleviadan Wrote: I absolutely love the idea of moving the SHL to the modded NHL 04, but holy shit it would be such an unbelievable undertaking. Just an insane amount of work. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to take that on without getting paid real dollars to do it.

You should see the shit that we already do for free

That said, no thanks. FHM might not be perfect, but it's being improved and supported by a company that is reasonably expected to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. NHL 04 doesn't have that and if you've watched PBE go from S1 to S30 you know the difference a couple years makes in OOTP Developments' games.

Shylo_Moxii · 03-08-2022, 05:55 PM

03-08-2022, 11:41 AMcaltroit_red_flames Wrote:
03-07-2022, 04:48 PMleviadan Wrote: I absolutely love the idea of moving the SHL to the modded NHL 04, but holy shit it would be such an unbelievable undertaking. Just an insane amount of work. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to take that on without getting paid real dollars to do it.
You should see the shit that we already do for free

That said, no thanks. FHM might not be perfect, but it's being improved and supported by a company that is reasonably expected to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. NHL 04 doesn't have that and if you've watched PBE go from S1 to S30 you know the difference a couple years makes in OOTP Developments' games.

Hopefully FHM will get there one day!

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