2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

I saw this post on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2khockeysim...96594250463751


Thanks for giving an update on the goalie situation. For now I use auto aim so that I can't abuse the weakness more than the computer does.

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

@DJNEO, perhaps you could work on a "COVID-19 mod" that removes the crowd and creates a HUB-city feel? I am pretty sure this will lower CPU requirement a bit if there was an option to remove the crowd?


It would be an optional mod... Do you think this would be possible?

[Soedy]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

I installed nikethebike's 2k20 roster (thanks for that) and save my game with F5. As long as the emulator is open, I can jump back to that save with F8 without problems. But when I close the game and restart it (with NHL2K20.bat) and hit F8, I am always back at the "Roster loading screen". Any suggestions?

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

I installed nikethebike's 2k20 roster (thanks for that) and save my game with F5. As long as the emulator is open, I can jump back to that save with F8 without problems. But when I close the game and restart it (with NHL2K20.bat) and hit F8, I am always back at the "Roster loading screen". Any suggestions?

Start it with the dolphin exe and hit F8 if you don't want the roster loading screen.

[Soedy]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

Start it with the dolphin exe and hit F8 if you don't want the roster loading screen.

That worked, thanks. I noticed two bugs with the roster: Zack Werenski is written "Werenka" and Grubauer has neon green pads. Looks like a missing texture.

Otherwise, great work. I can only play pond hockey properly, time to upgrade my CPU I guess. Is there a slider to increase the game speed a bit?

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

That worked, thanks. I noticed two bugs with the roster: Zack Werenski is written "Werenka" and Grubauer has neon green pads. Looks like a missing texture.
Otherwise, great work. I can only play pond hockey properly, time to upgrade my CPU I guess. Is there a slider to increase the game speed a bit?

Yeah I chose to misspell some players on purpose in order for them to have in game commentary.
As has been discussed before 2KHS is very cpu hungry. About a stable 4ghz CPU is necessary.
The green pad thing is an issue on a couple of keepers please post if you find more so I can bug fix.
If you want, try simming the franchise mode and tell me if you find any issues. That you can do with a lesser cpu.


Thanks for the feedback mate!

[Soedy]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

Yeah I chose to misspell some players on purpose in order for them to have in game commentary.
As has been discussed before 2KHS is very cpu hungry. About a stable 4ghz CPU is necessary.
The green pad thing is an issue on a couple of keepers please post if you find more so I can bug fix.
If you want, try simming the franchise mode and tell me if you find any issues. That you can do with a lesser cpu.


Thanks for the feedback mate!

Ah ok, nice. I'll do. Just waiting for Ryzen 4000

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

At last I found a way to start the game without having to press F8 manually!

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

@DJNEO:
I might have found a way to improve sound and presentation in the game (note improve, not replace everything). It is a rather unconventional approach and might require a lot of work, but some of the things I've been able to do is quite cool...

For example I've been able to trigger any sound on the selection screen (playing the 2020 Montreal goal horn when selecting Montreal as playable team for example). It is possible to play videos - I can replace the intro with any video I want.

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

So now I have triggers working to add music to the pause menu and also a trigger detecting a match is running that cancels the music.


You can only trigger one sound at a time but still this seems to actually work quite decently.


Perhaps new crowd background noise could be added to improve the ingame experience?

[DJ NEO]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

Interesting.

Yeah, that's how it works with modding (doing things from outside), everything takes awful amount of time and very often you don't know if the added "mod" or new feature will be usable or at the end of the grind you realize that it break something else and all that work is useless. Happened to me many times

Anyway.

I was thinking about writing some external app that would trigger the new sounds from harddisk. That is probably the only way how to add new sounds and really improve the sonic quality overall.

Do you think you can do that? Can you trigger a new sound for something like slap shot, for example? Is there any lag or delay?

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

I've been thinking about the slap shot and passing or receiving a pass sounds that were actually better in the older games. Why a slapshot sound like someone is firing a gun on the wii is beyond me!


However the question is how to trigger the sounds. I am right now triggering through image on screen detection which won't work for shots unless you can color a pixel somewhere on the screen or something like that so that I know what sound to play. For a user controlled player perhaps controller input could be used.


The first step would be to use this for presentation stuff. Perhaps goal horns when scoring could work. I already mentioned intro videos. Cut scenes with music. Menu music. Stuff that would make the game feel more modern and complete.


But perhaps even a completely new interface could be created with this method. New menus with added mouse support or other things.


A lot is possible but it has its limitations and so far I have only tested on one computer so I can't tell how much problems that may turn up.

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

DJNEO, what can you achieve when a slap shot is made or a pass is received?

Can you change the color of a certain pixel on the screen? Do something that I can look for in a very limited area on screen with image detection? Can you simulate a keyboard button press? Is something like that possible with the way you are hacking the game?

Some things that should be possible ingame:
1. Detect player names of puck holder that can be used for commentary if you use player name indicators on screen.
2. Program something that detect when score goes up so that home team goal horns can be played.
3. Add new background crowd noise as some kind of loop with better sound than what is currently ingame.
4. Add new background realistic skating noise also as a loop though, so would not really be dependent on what actually happens.
5. Add random home team chants.
6. Add louder background crowd noise level during overtime.
7. Add period ending buzzer when clock reaches 0:00.



Basically anything that can consistently indicate something on the screen could potentially be used.



The setback is that I noticed that too many images to detect slows down performance of the detection a lot but logic to limit what images are searched for and where on the screen to look could be possible to implement. The more you can limit the area to search, the better. I need to experiment with image scaling as well to support different resolutions if possible. I've used 5x (3200x2640) full screen with crop for my tests.

In other words, yes I can write a program that adds stuff from outside since I already did it.








Edit:


Hmm.. There might actually be a way that I might be able to listen for a sound and when the program detects it I can play another one. Don't know how well it would work and how much lag this approach would create. I was thinking you could lower the sound level and the program could still detect so the old sound might be able to be "replaced" that way.


However it would still be interesting to know if you can help me @DJNEO.

[nikethebike]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

Gave up on 2KHS heavy?




What if it was possible to hook results from 2KHS into a game like this one?

https://www.ootpdevelopments.com/franchise-hockey-manager-home/

There are some other hockey manager sims out there, if we could find one where it was possible to hook stats into that game after a match that would be really interesting. I can mod save files, auto load them and should be able to step through the gui automatically. Imagine the combined game we could create. The depth...


I was thinking of perhaps making a POC of this someday.

[DJ NEO]

Re: 2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

hah, not at all, I never give up I'll do both games.

It's just that I don't see much interest here understandably and I realize that maybe posting here, where 95% of people can't even run it properly, showing some info/graphs etc. of how actually not so good the old, but beloved 2K hockey games are might be a bit disrespectful for people that work on rosters for these old games, so to speak

Look at the rating of these threads here Lol

As for the audio... Let's say if I give you AR code that can mute that pistol "slap" shot/dump (in 2k10/11), can you attach on this code a custom sound from harddisk?

If you can find a way, do a working prototype for this particular sound then I think with a lot of effort and time I can find a specific codes/addresses for other sounds that we wanna switch.

The other way would be to find a way how to decompress the ISO itself, but then you might run into some copyright issues (how would you want it to share it with others etc.)