Rocket Richard Trophy

[thecoolstuff]

I'm sure many people have notice this error in the game: when the two highest goal scoring players who's number of goals happens to be the same, the player with the higher alphabetical order will win the award. This is obviously not what happens in the NHL. I dont know how can the SI make this kind of mistake?

[Minstrel]

I'm not sure what the actual tiebreakers for the real-life trophy are, but are you sure there isn't some other criteria that put the player who happens to also have the higher alpha order?

[Systemfel]

I'm not sure what the actual tiebreakers for the real-life trophy are, but are you sure there isn't some other criteria that put the player who happens to also have the higher alpha order?

I don't think there are any tiebreakers, because in 2004 three players received the reward depite they didn't even play the same number of games (Iginla 81, Nash 80, Kovalchuk 81).

[Minstrel]

I don't think the game has the ability to record tied awards, since for the Jennings which is awarded to a team's goalies they are listed as 1st and 2nd for the award. So I'd guess they had to do something to prevent it from crashing the game

[thecoolstuff]

I don't think the game has the ability to record tied awards, since for the Jennings which is awarded to a team's goalies they are listed as 1st and 2nd for the award. So I'd guess they had to do something to prevent it from crashing the game

How does it make the game crash? No disrespect, but its beyond me that this simple equal goal=share award thing can not be done?

[E5150_ca]

Well, to my knowledge none of us are programmer's, so if Minty's theory is correct, I don't think any of us should be commenting on how stupid their mistake.

[Minstrel]

In case you don't know, as it seems you don't... this project is quite literally the work of two people: Riz and Graeme. To say they work on the game basically non-stop is no exaggeration. Just look at the SI Boards; you'll see both post while taking breaks from working on the game to be there to answer everyone who post's questions. That will sometimes be like 6am their time and they'll be in the office already; you'll also see them post at like 11pm their time and mention they will look into something in the morning because they're on their way out for the day. They've been doing that daily since 2004 came out. They had one additional coder to help them make the transition from 2004 --> 2005. That was the last time this was more than a two man project.

It is the sole reason the game is so darn amazing that we can take for granted the insane amount of changes that occur with the game not once every few years but month by month. They do this expanding of the game's features from their own to-do lists and desired chages while incorporating an amazing amount of direct suggestions and features from us pain in the asses that plague their boards to pain about everything not being perfect.

So I suggest that when you next come accross a minor issue like this; to take a step back and look at how freakin awesome the work they've done to get us from 2004 to this latest update is. This update of course with a new NHL and all according rules is basically a new version that they made available as a patch. So none of us had to pay a darn thing to get it. Then just be thankful that the game is in the hands of the people it is and not some other company that adds a few features and then drops their "New Version" on the users with no follow up support or answering for themselves.

Because yes, I do get a little testy and defensive when people say things like this. The SI guys won't say it but I will for them; give them a darn break

So... that out of the way; as for this particular issue this is I would guess be rooted in an aspect of the system that is responsible for the recording of every record in the game that is associated with a player and the stats attatched to that accolade. The field is set for the name of the record holder and his stats. Most goals, most PIM, most shtouts, most goals in a game, most goals in a season, winner of the Selke, winner of the MVP of the AHL, MVP of the ECHL, MVP of every other league in the game, etc etc. There was likely months of coding in place before this became an issue with one recorded stat in the the entire game universe.

So it's very possible that "Well duh, just change every stat that the game records to hold two names instead of one, gahhhhddd [/Napoleon Dynamite] is equal as tasks go to building the first 60 stories of a 70 story skyscraper before deciding you need to go back an extra set of elevators on the other side of the building.

Just to mention a few things that pop to mind; this obviously means twice as much data stored which then slows load time, save times, game speed and proccessing time each time a record is recorded anywhere in the game universe. It also effectively halves how many stats the game is able to record. It would also change every screen that contains records for players to have to allocate two lines instead of one for that display. That functionally lengthens every screen by around double making more people have to scroll further on more screens so they can come to the board and complain that you have to scroll too much.

Now go back and re-read the part about the team that has to consider if they should tear the game down to it's roots to make it possible for one award to display two (or more; what about three? four? how far do they need to go?) names if two players happen to end a season with the very same number of goals... So they worked around the issue by gaving the display alphabetical preference instead. C'est la effin' vie.

Keep in mind though that we don't even know if that is what they've done! You've seen one example and set it forth like you can see intothe game to know how it decided which name to display. It's very possible that the person who went in as the "winner" was actually the one that satisfied any of another string of variables. In this case it just so happens that the player was the one of the two with the "lower" alphabetical ordering placement too so it may actually be a complete non issue.

So I guess you can see why, yes, it's absolutely inconcievable how they could possibly release a game riddled with such game crippling major issues; you should certainly ask for your money back since one of the 250 coders that worked on inputting the game's code or one of the 1500 in house testers, especially the five set to just deal with records should certainly have caught such a catastrophic situation before allowing it out to the end user and ruining an otherwise okay game!

And yes, this I why I don't (and won't again) respond to these kind of threads but you're just lucky enough to catch me at moment that it just has to be said this once. Congratulations.

[noctambulist]

I would just bet it was a Penguins player who won, and as we all know, the Penguins are a bunch of cheaters. It's hard coded into the game that all ties go to the Penguins.

[thecoolstuff]

It's actually Me vs. Kovalchuk. Both 71 goals. But he gets the award!:rant: and noctambulist, you're partialy right, I am playing for Pittsburgh on the same line with Crosby and Tanguay and let me tell you this line is like 19 7 44 at its prime!

Mintrel, I didnt know about the development part of the game so my apology for offending you that was not my intention. I'm no programmer, so this issue "looks" simple to me and I believe to many others as well, I guess I underestimated the effort needed for coding things like this.

But then again, I think the workload of the only two developers will get easier due to the merging of SI and SEGA. That should give them alot more help and resources, and as a result a good EHM 2007!

[archibalduk]

But then again, I think the workload of the only two developers will get easier due to the merging of SI and SEGA. That should give them alot more help and resources, and as a result a good EHM 2007!

As far as I can remember, it will still be just Riz and Graeme working on the game. I think they said that at the moment, a third person would just get in the way. What you have to remember is how far this game has actually come since the first version. They've done really well. There's no way you can compare it to FM2007 but that's because FM has a huge development team and has been going on for around ten years. Imagine what EHM will be like in ten years!!

[Minstrel]

Didn't mean to jump on you or anyone really I just kinda get that feeling when people say things like that sometimes. Mainly that is due to that I worked on the testing crew between EHM 2004 and EHM 2005 which actually continued through when they released the last patch 1.3 and since that process started, just for us external testers, around seven months prior to the initial Euro/web release of 2005 I get a bit when people say the game obviously wasn't tested or they'd have caught "Problem X". Oh, and I was having a bad day

By no means am I saying people can't complain about the game or SI on the boards; it's just that if you do you should know a bit about why some things are the way they are and that in most cases things people are complaining about have actually already been addressed in the upcoming patch or version as well. They've been working on 2007 since the moment they confirmed the code for the latest patch actually...

Also, for however long any of our "Wish Lists" for additions/features are Graeme's and Riz's are four times that long but they have to work from the perspective of what is most needed for the game to function as well as problem-free as possible before diverting time to work on other issues as there is only so much time between now and their next code deadline.