EHM Free?

[YZG]

Aw rubbish! Batdad was maybe the last one to buy, and I'm maybe the first one screwed up because I too lost my game (when my old computer died several months ago) and kinda neglected to buy it back. Aww well. Serves me right, I guess.

There are various games online that got redone into a free version that is continuously updated and developped, thus evolving from the original concept to get better - OpenTTD is one such for Transport Tycoon Deluxe. OpenTTD has a large community and a cult following, with a place for user-made customizations - many users designed train, vehicle or house packs fitting various countries or whatever. NHL EHM is made of that kind of material. Sadly, SI's modified copy/paste of it's FM engine and GUI into EHM make such a project much more difficult, at best

Dabo, you're our best hope buddy!

- YZG

[B. Stinson]

There are various games online that got redone into a free version that is continuously updated and developped, thus evolving from the original concept to get better - OpenTTD is one such for Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

This is actually a good point. And to be honest, I think we have that kind of community. Scratch that; I know we have that kind of community - It's been three or four years, and we're still here developing add-ons, and running competitions. The only thing we don't have is an open-source spin-off of our favourite game. But, dabo could very well squash that one soon enough, and if we can hold together until then, we'll be back in business.

[Primis]

As far as I'm concerned now that they've truly stopped selling it or making it available it's now fair game to get into the guts of it. Someone should really work with the hacked .EXE and start figuring out a way to unlock or free up the hardcoded league structures and such, if possible. I truly believe there's got to be a way to make this happen. This sort of thing manages to happen for other games once they've been abandoned, I don't see why NHL EHM would be any different or more-difficult.

There's nothing for anyone (including SI) to lose at this point. It's officially Abandonware...

That said, if SI were smart they'd figure out a way to cheaply distribute and just sell it for $10-15 US a pop. I bet they'd get more takers than they think or realize...

[YZG]

I'd agree with you Primis, EHM is probably no harder to crack and decompile than any other game. But the problem is that it was built using the same game engine that is still (unless it has been totally rebuilt without my knowledge) in use in the still active Football Manager series. So there lies a greyer area of the already grey abandonware area: the game was indeed abandoned, and thus would be considered abandonware, but possibly uses large chunks of codes still in use in active titles by the same company, which SI may not appreciate seeing exposed to the public.

On the other hand, 5 or 6 new iterations of Football Manager have been released since NHL EHM and while NHL EHM's code may reflect a good part of what the game's engine was with FM 2007, it may well have vastly changed since; I don't think SI makes any penny anymore with FM 2007 either.

- YZG

[toffeenut2006]

I'd agree with you Primis, EHM is probably no harder to crack and decompile than any other game. But the problem is that it was built using the same game engine that is still (unless it has been totally rebuilt without my knowledge) in use in the still active Football Manager series. So there lies a greyer area of the already grey abandonware area: the game was indeed abandoned, and thus would be considered abandonware, but possibly uses large chunks of codes still in use in active titles by the same company, which SI may not appreciate seeing exposed to the public.

On the other hand, 5 or 6 new iterations of Football Manager have been released since NHL EHM and while NHL EHM's code may reflect a good part of what the game's engine was with FM 2007, it may well have vastly changed since; I don't think SI makes any penny anymore with FM 2007 either.

- YZG

i think you may well be right which would scupper my plan of, if I ever win the lottery, of buying EHM off SI.

[YZG]

i think you may well be right which would scupper my plan of, if I ever win the lottery, of buying EHM off SI.

Oh, you have that plan? I remember some guy once mentioned he had such intentions on the forums over at SI, was that you?

That's a thing worthy taking into acount, but I don't think it totally rules your chances out. EHM has never been very lucrative for SI, so you could possibly bargain it at a very decent price, especially considering it's better for them to sell a "dead thing" for peanuts than keeping it at no benefit. As far as source code goes, you could perhaps negotiate a clause where you agree to totally rewrite some sensitive parts of coding and to refrain from releasing the code as open source or divulgating parts or totality of the sensitive code. Actually, since that possibly amounts to a fair percentage of the whole thing, you may even bargain it cheaper because of that.

SI needs to want to sell, though. But I see no reason to keep something that has been abandoned. Have you been in touch with them yet?

EDIT: Just noticed the "if I ever win the lottery". Still, my point remains true. Buying the rights to this game might be cheaper than one thinks.

- YZG

[Midas]

I would advise checking out the breakaway forums to see some of what they've done with regards to the .exe.

[chuck]

I would advise checking out the breakaway forums to see some of what they've done with regards to the .exe.

Do you mean this? http://www.thebreakaway.net/forums/show ... ager/page5

This is what prompted me to start looking at the exe. The people on that site have managed to tweak roster restrictions and change some names but not much else. Still very impressive tho. I want to change the start date.

[toffeenut2006]

i think you may well be right which would scupper my plan of, if I ever win the lottery, of buying EHM off SI.

Oh, you have that plan? I remember some guy once mentioned he had such intentions on the forums over at SI, was that you?

That's a thing worthy taking into acount, but I don't think it totally rules your chances out. EHM has never been very lucrative for SI, so you could possibly bargain it at a very decent price, especially considering it's better for them to sell a "dead thing" for peanuts than keeping it at no benefit. As far as source code goes, you could perhaps negotiate a clause where you agree to totally rewrite some sensitive parts of coding and to refrain from releasing the code as open source or divulgating parts or totality of the sensitive code. Actually, since that possibly amounts to a fair percentage of the whole thing, you may even bargain it cheaper because of that.

SI needs to want to sell, though. But I see no reason to keep something that has been abandoned. Have you been in touch with them yet?

EDIT: Just noticed the "if I ever win the lottery". Still, my point remains true. Buying the rights to this game might be cheaper than one thinks.

- YZG

Sorry to raise your hopes but thanks for your reply. I seem to remember someone from SI on the SI forums saying there is still code in FM 11 from something like FM 05.

[Primis]

I would advise checking out the breakaway forums to see some of what they've done with regards to the .exe.

Do you mean this? http://www.thebreakaway.net/forums/show ... ager/page5

This is what prompted me to start looking at the exe. The people on that site have managed to tweak roster restrictions and change some names but not much else. Still very impressive tho. I want to change the start date.

I very much believe that over on TBN they've "held back" as it were. I've followed that thread for some time. They haven't been willing to go all-out and just trying to do tiny little things so as to not attract attention and/or hurt what little sales were coming.

That may now change. Once you stop making a game available, you open Pandora's Box because you can't claim anything is hurting sales...

[Alessandro]

We managed to:

1) Alter the import numbers for the different leagues
2) Edit retired numbers information
3) Alter the leagues' name, although names need to be the same lenght of the original or shorter.

Things we worked on, but failed (for now)
4) Altering the number of teams per league, we tried copying the information from league to league, it kind of works and doesnt work, we need to work further on this, although we managed to alter the number of teams in the Austrian league from the second season going on.
5) Altering the starting date. Unfortunately it crashes on October 1st.

[chuck]

Have you seen what champman0102.co.uk did with Championship Manager? Theyve created a tool that changes the start date: http://champman0102.co.uk/forum/showthr ... tch-Change and http://champman0102.co.uk/forum/downloa ... o=cat&id=3

I found it by Googling 'championship manager change start date'. I read here that EHM is based on Championship Manager. Makes you wonder if this can be done with EHM if it can be done with that soccer game....

Theres more info here
- http://champman0102.co.uk/forum/showthr ... #post69678
- http://champman0102.co.uk/forum/showthr ... post252882

I also found on that site that some other guys have created rugby game using the Championship Manager code somehow. Its amazing what can be done if you have the skills. http://www.rugbyleaguemanager.co.uk/Games.php

[archibalduk]

I don't know whether any of this is useful (it refers to how the start date for Champ Man 01/02 was modified):

1) How did you go about finding the start date in the hex code of the exe? Is there simply a string that states the date or is there more to it than that?

The great Tapani found the start dates, I don't really know how exactly, he can look at code in a hex editor and actually understand what is happening. I have since written a tool for editing the start year but was only able to do so because I found the required offsets by observing which were edited by his patch.

It isn't as simple as changing one value, the start year is stored in multiple places. In some places it is stored relative to the actual start year.

Edit:- Technical details:

These are literal offsets (add 0x400000 for Olly offsets)

Start Year:
0x13386, 0x140e5, 0x224f0, 0x44270, 0x44297, 0x5f4ee, 0x5f97c, 0x5f981, 0x16fc63, 0x18b387, 0x1aee53, 0x1bab86, 0x1bac32, 0x1bb6ab, 0x1bc8b2, 0x1c3068, 0x1db242, 0x2673c3, 0x267495, 0x267582, 0x26766d, 0x26775a, 0x267829, 0x2678f8, 0x2679c6, 0x267aa1, 0x267b81, 0x267c6d, 0x267d5a, 0x267e55, 0x267f50, 0x268043, 0x268149, 0x268236, 0x268324, 0x268411, 0x2684ff, 0x2685ed, 0x2686bc, 0x2687ac, 0x268899, 0x268987, 0x268a77, 0x268b65, 0x268c54, 0x268d40, 0x268e2f, 0x268f1d, 0x26900b, 0x2690da, 0x37d858, 0x3d2410, 0x41b93d, 0x430591, 0x430598, 0x4305dc, 0x430a64, 0x430f8e, 0x430fb4, 0x43129a, 0x4312b4, 0x431608, 0x431622, 0x4318ad, 0x4318c6, 0x431b54, 0x431b6d, 0x431e66, 0x431e80, 0x4320b3, 0x4320cd, 0x432324, 0x432577, 0x43290d, 0x433055, 0x43339d, 0x4336eb, 0x433c84, 0x433f8e, 0x434382, 0x43475d, 0x434aad, 0x434dfd, 0x435297, 0x435c39, 0x435fca, 0x43668e, 0x436a55, 0x436d68, 0x4371a5, 0x4371d5, 0x4374e9, 0x43805d, 0x438357, 0x43869f, 0x456ce0, 0x4fddd2, 0x5041f3


Start Year - 3 0x3e6819

Start Year - 1 0x55fd1, 0xdc02c, 0x12d2e2, 0x3e68fe, 0x3e691f, 0x45e98f

Start Year + 1 0xdc135

Start Year + 2 0x29e84e, 0x45b841, 0x45b898, 0x45c40c

Start Year + 3 0xdc113, 0x19ba24

2) Is the start date also coded into any of the data files or the database?

No, the .dat files only store data about things (people, clubs, stadia etc).


3) Did you have to modify anything in the database in order to make it compatible with the modified start date?

No, just edit the required offsets and the game does the rest.

A few more things worth mentioning:

Tapani himself's not around here any more.

It's unlikely you'll be able to change start year using a hex editor, you'll need a disassembler.

Update teams release databases with dates adjusted for original start year (2001). So for 2010, dates of birth, contract dates etc. are decreased by 9. This is to avoid very young players and contracts all in the future. When using TapaniPatch with a start year of 2010, it increases these dates by 9.

[archibalduk]

I've managed to change the start year of EHM without modifying the game's exe file!!! I've simmed over two complete seasons in the NHL without any issues. However I haven't been able to get it to work for any other leagues yet as I've encountered two problems when starting a new game:

1) Selecting any leagues other than the NHL and the ECHL results in a crash on 1 October 2011; and
2) Selecting the ECHL causes the game to crash when creating the new game.

This is really great news because it shows that the start date can be changed! It's even better that you don't have to go messing about with the game's exe to make these changes either.

I'm going to post some instructions later today on how to change the start date for the NHL (and also details on what attempts I've made to make the other leagues work - perhaps somebody will figure out based on my work how to get the other leagues to work).

In the meantime, here are some screenshots of the working game (if you can't see the entirety of the screenshots below then you can access them via my Photobucket album). Note that on the first test I set a start date of 2010 (hence why the screenshots say 2010), but you can set it to whatever you want.

[nino33]

WOW! Pretty cool!

[archibalduk]

WOW! Pretty cool!

I wonder whether I can change the start year to 1974 (or any other year in the 70s for that matter) for your project... Now that would be pretty cool. I need to continue working on getting the other leagues functioning, but I'll be sure to try this out at some point.

[Primis]

This is good progress.

Can we get a separate thread just for stuff like this now?

[archibalduk]

This is good progress.

Can we get a separate thread just for stuff like this now?

I plan on starting a new thread to discuss my findings.

Edit: Here's the thread: http://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/vi ... =13&t=8087