League Rules/Structure Patch: Development Thread

[Midas]

I sort of successfully tested altering AHL team numbers for EHM. I ran through a complete, no-crash season sim earlier with 30 AHL teams instead of 27 using hobbit13's advice, but the 3 teams are still not scheduled into the AHL and all the divisions remain the same.

Any suggestions on how to get them involved in season scheduling? Mainly aimed at hobbit, Alessandro and Lazion?

[Alessandro]

Start telling us what exactly you changed and then we'll try to see where to intervene

[Midas]

Sure.

Essentially all I did was change the league structure according to Hobbit13's tutorial from the AHL variables to the NHL variables. So D0 ED 88 > 90 09 8F, etc. I then added 3 teams to the AHL in the editor (unnamed), simmed a season, and it didn't crash; but the teams don't play season games, aren't placed in divisions and just sit around doing nothing.

[Alessandro]

Changing that alone makes no sense (as you seen yourself). You should also change the other 3 blocks indicated in the guide. Take them from the NHL and look what happens. It might work, but you have to set conferences and divisions the same way as in the NHL (numbers-wise) in the db

[Midas]

How do you set the conferences like that though, with the way the AHL's done? It only has 4.. would I need to create more? Or would it be using some other division I'd have to find/guess in the db.

[Alessandro]

Sorry, I'm not really familiar with how the AHL is set up. Can you tell me how many conferences and divisions are there, and with how many teams?
Thanks

[Loosie]

Sorry, I'm not really familiar with how the AHL is set up. Can you tell me how many conferences and divisions are there, and with how many teams?
Thanks

They re-alligned this year to match the NHL 2 Conferences/3 Divisions each/5 teams per division.

Eastern Conference:

Atlantic Division:
Manchester Monarchs
Portland Pirates
Providence Bruins
St. John's IceCaps
Worcester Sharks

Northeast Division:
Adirondack Phantoms
Albany Devils
Bridgeport Sound Tigers
Connecticut Whale
Springfield Falcons

East Division:
Binghamton Senators
Hershey Bears
Norfolk Admirals
Syracuse Crunch
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins

Western Conference:

North Division:
Grand Rapids Griffins
Hamilton Bulldogs
Lake Erie Monsters
Rochester Americans
Toronto Marlies

Midwest Division:
Charlotte Checkers
Chicago Wolves
Milwaukee Admirals
Peoria Rivermen
Rockford IceHogs

West Division:
Abbotsford Heat
Houston Aeros
Oklahoma City Barons
San Antonio Rampage
Texas Stars

[Alessandro]

Then I would replicate the same pattern to the AHL, if possible. Does the in-game AHL have 2 conferences and 6 divisions?

[Loosie]

I don't think so. The in-game AHL has 27 teams, and I think it was 2 Conference with 2 divisions each (7, 7, 7 and 6 teams)

[Alessandro]

Hm, the original db had the chance to actually add and code a division into a conference, unfortunately Neil didn't code this in the pregame editor. However, I would still try and edit those 4 figures as Marek explained in his tutorial, but then it might not create playoffs schedule. I would test it myself, but I have no time...

[Midas]

Looking back I followed Marek's instructions but something's obviously up. Interestingly, upon further inspection the game actually WAS making a schedule for the teams. I have the Delaware Phantoms, supposed to be in the Western Division of the AHL but don't show up in the standings at all (even after a year) playing a full NHL-style schedule for points (like other teams are going to get those points...)

Which is weird. So what I need to do is somehow get the AHL to recognize these teams within the standings and playoffs.

[Alessandro]

Can you write what values did you change and how?

[archibalduk]

Just to say that I haven't forgotten about developing a patch for this. It's just that I've been sidetracked with other things. It's my intention to add a feature to the CSD Patch which will allow you to load a text file containing whatever hex changes you want.

[Midas]

Here's the altered code from the ahl.cpp:

Code: Select all

B4 DD BD 00 70 04 89 00 20 EF 8B 00 E0 06 8C 00 70 D1 5D 00 90 33 52 00 40 E5 88 00 50 05 89 00 50 5F 89 00 20 84 8C 00 20 93 8C 00 0A 89 00 00 80 4A 90 00 C0 D4 88 00 A0 E2 8B 00 30 E2 88 00 80 E3 88 00 E0 6B 8F 00 D0 5A 8F 00 80 35 8C 00 70 D1 5D 00 D0 5A 8F 00 D0 5A 8F 00 80 F3 91 00 90 09 8F 00 70 F3 91 00 60 65 89 00 E0 85 8C 00 20 68 89 00 E0 E5 88 00 90 6A 89 00 30 EA 88 00 80 1D 8C 00 D0 86 8C 00 30 04 89 00 40 EB 88 00 D0 EB 88 00 90 E4 88 00 C0 1A 8C 00 30 2C 8C 00 10 E2 8B 00 50 E2 8B 00 30 E2 8B 00 10 EC 8B 00 80 19 8C 00 30 8A 8C 00 60 1A 8C 00 E0 6B 8F 00 80 85 8C 00 43 3A

[Alessandro]

Ok I'll try to get some time to have a look over the weekend, but I can't promise anything

[archibalduk]

I've been working some more on the Patch. I've changed it so that rather than the changes being hardcoded into the Patch, you put the values and offsets into a csv file which the Patch then applies to EHM.

Unfortunately it causes the game to crash when the changes are applied (but the changes are actually applied). I need to work some more on it to try and figure out what is causing the crash.

[andrejko20]

Hi Would you please help me the change roster rules in WHL,OHl,QMJHL leagues, that I changed the number of foreign players at 10 and number of overaged players 10 too .

Thank you !

[Midas]

Not league rules related, but I've found a way to successfully "swap" nations. Of course I'm not sure what effect this has on naming conventions between nations.. it crashes if you do it by anything other than name, and you can only swap nations with the same amount of letters between them (so no "Russia" to "Soviet Union") however I've got it to not crash at this point. I'll have to test whether after a few years, if you swap with unranked teams (but give them a full player base to work from) they can get into things like the WJCs and Olympics.

[archibalduk]

Let me know how you get on, Midas. I got some fairly crazy (and unstable) results by swapping nations in nation.dat and nat_club.dat. I was able to change the nationality of players and of playable leagues by doing this (but I think in most cases, it eventually crashed halfway through the season).

I'm planning on seeing what effect the rankings saved in nation.dat have. I'm hoping that by editing this, it will be possible to update the WC and WJCs for the 2011/12 season.

[Midas]

Basically you need to do three things to successfully "swap" a nation:

Replace the nation's full name (i.e. "Russia", "United States", etc.) in the .exe.
Replace the nation's full name, abbreviated name (i.e. "U.S.A.", but often just same name repeated) and three-letter abbreviation in the nat_club.dat
Replace the nation's full name, abbreviated name (i.e. "U.S.A.", but often just same name repeated), three-letter abbreviation and ethnicity in the nation.dat

Here I've replaced Guadeloupe (a tiny French island in the Carribbean) and Turks and Caicos (likewise, but British) with Quebec. If you do a control-f "Guadeloupe" (just Guad is fine) or Turks and Caicos (just Turks is fine) you can find the necessary names in each. It's important to remember that the number of characters has to be consistent within the names- so you can't add or remove characters when you're editing them. If there's not enough room, there's simply not_enough_room and you have to find another nation to move instead. If you have extra spaces, as is the case in both of these, just use nulls (00 in hex) to empty up the space (it won't show up). Make sure to change it all as if you miss something, it will show up in game as the base nation. I forgot to change the abbreviation on my CSA for some time and I was frustrated with it showing up as the Turks and Caicos still, but once I did that it was a-ok.

Though it takes a bit of time and tinkering (always save backups!) the end results are good! And in my experience, it doesn't crash. Have a look at Quebec, the CSA and what it looks like in the player list.

However, until we get an excel importer/exporter out I'm afraid the tediousness of swapping will make it eh... very undesirable. I managed to do the CSA/QUE for a personal database of mine, and despite only having I dunno.. around 600+ players it took a good 3-4 hours to swap them all into their proper nations and such. I can't imagine the same if you wanted to swap say Russia and Canada, to make the NHL the KHL- which would be... unthinkably longer. This is also straight name swapping.. if you try to do more, I've had very inconsistent results. Some nations appear to be very easy to swap (mostly non-league nations) but like you, I get a lot of crashes if I try to swap say Russia and the Czech Republic.

[nino33]

I just wanted to say keep up the good work Midas!
And for me something that would take a lot more than 3-4 hours is still nothing....most every one of the basic tasks I've done with the 1974 db have taken dozens of hours!

[Leeman14]

Alright, I need some clarification on something.

I've been working on the Swiss NLA/NLB and Elite Jr. A leagues, Elite Jr. B and Div 3 and 4 (staff, players, attributes, etc.) and while I thought I understood quite clearly the league rules, there seems to be a free agent signing rule which I was unaware of until recently--clubs in the same league may sign players with contracts expiring at the end of the season from an opposing team.

For instance, Player X plays for Biel in the NLA and has a contract expiring at the end of 2011-12. It's December 2011 and he's still contracted and playing for Biel. One of the opposing NLA teams, Lugano, signs him for 2012-13 and announces this right away.

I know this doesn't fall under "League Rules" per se, but I've been chasing my tail on this one as the information I'm compiling on each and every player in Swiss hockey could be subject to this. I've followed some discussion in this thread about making the NLA/NLB playable leagues in a future update. If this is the case, am I correct in assuming this "signing rule" cannot be integrated into the game? If no, this will help me tremendously as I won't have to track each individual roster move related to these types of intra-league signings. (And this is a heavy job with a newborn, active 3 year-old and home renovations underway--it won't be completed until after Christmas)

Much appreciated!


Leeman14

[Manimal]

The signing of signed-but-outgoing-contract players are common in European hockey. I doubt it can be implemented into the game. We can add future transfers in the extra_config file.

[Leeman14]

If that's all it takes, then I will continue to track these contracts. If it can't be implemented in-game, then we can at least try to add them each time a new Manimal patch is made for realism.


Thanks.

[Alessandro]

It's now ready! Download the file here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/j0w3k7

Contents:
- EHM2007.exe file - you'll need this to get a part of the new rules (in particular, the Austrian 10-team league and the Finnish new foreign rules). ATTENTION: THIS IS NOT A NO-CD CRACK OR ANYTHING SIMILAR. IN ORDER TO USE THIS FILE YOU'LL NEED TO HAVE A PURCHASED, VALID AND LEGIT LICENSE.
- Superpatch2.amt file - The needed table for Art Money.
- A readme file (with the same information)

How to use the patch:
Step 1
Download Art Money from here: http://www.artmoney.ru/e_download.htm (Free version, of course) and install it.
Step 2
Launch Art Money, ignore the ad then go to Search > Options, then select Save/Load values in file-table. Close Art Money.
Step 3
Take a backup of your ehm2007.exe original file. Unzip the downloaded patch: the ehm2007.exe file should go in the main EHM 2007 installation folder, the .amt file can go anywhere, however, it would be better to unzip it within the Table folder of the Art Money directory.
Step 4
In order to make the game work if we're going to select the Austrian league, we need to add 2 teams with the Pre Game Editor. You can add any team you wish, but you must always have a correct number of teams in other leagues in order to avoid crashes.
Step 5
Launch EHM and wait until you'll get to the main screen, where you can choose load saved game, start a new game, etc.
Step 6
Launch Art Money, select the EHM process from the process bar on the top of the screen under the menu bar. Click on Load on the bottom of the page and open the file Superpatch2.amt
Step 7
Control that your table was loaded correctly. In order to do so, the latest entries should have a 9999 value. If 2008 appears, reload the patch until you see 9999 (one attempt should be enough).
Step 8
Optional: Use at this point only the CSD patch in order to change the game starting data. Select a year then click "Apply patch only" and wait for the little program to close.
Step 9
Create a new game with your desired selected leagues (If you didn't add teams to Austria, remember NOT to select Austria)
Step 10
Control that the game was created correctly. Austrian league should have about 16-17 games played (it's a known issue) with a North American start date. If the Austrian league has 0 games, it will crash on June 30th, and you should redo the process (this happened to me only once in about 30 tests)

You'll always need to run Art Money when using this patch.

What will it have:

· Shoot-outs are added for:
o CZ league
o RUS
o SWE (Elitserien+Allsvenskan)
o FIN (SM Liiga, Mestis, Suomi division)
· And also for:
o Czech U20 Tournament
o Swedish U20 Tournament
o Finnish U20 Tournament
o Russian U20 Tournament
o Continental Cup
o European Champions Cup
· Import restrictions for:
o CZ (from 3 to 6 foreigners)
o DEN (from no restrictions to 8 foreigners) – problematic with DB since many teams have 10 or more foreigners but gameplay test is more important
o RUS (to 5 foreigners - no more foreign goalies ban!!)
o FIN (to 2 non-EU. We know that it's not 100% correct, but for now we can't do better)
· Special: Austrian EBEL league brought to 10 teams! To do this you'll need to add two new teams to the EBEL league with the pregame editor

100% COMPATIBLE WITH CSD PATCH
THE INCLUDED EXE WON'T WORK IF YOU DON'T HAVE A PURCHASED, LEGIT LICENSE