Yeah, it'll be after all the moves...wouldn't make a lot of sense to code in a bunch of stuff like a special entry draft, free agent buyouts, etc., that'd only get used for one season.

Rosters will be updated as much as humanly possible - at all levels, not just the NHL. The researchers handling the update are going full-speed, getting 04-05 stats updated and players moved (the private research forum at SI's site has got hundreds of move requests in it right now, most of them with 'done' notes beside them.)

Anyone ever get the wrong record for their team displayed?

On the screen that shows the days games, it never shows the correct records for the teams.

Also, some teams on the NHL standings are named by city (Colorado, Nashville), others by Team name (Kings, Wild).

Any ideas?

I also though the records were wrong, but they are the records in the last 10 games.

I am wondering if the team names have to do with not getting license agreements for those nicknames since the team nicknames all have TM after them.

Right about the last 10 games; the team names thing is actually some weird quirk with the way the NHL has those names trademarked. I don't understand the details, but the effect is the short version of a few teams' names have to be referred to by the city and not the nickname. Which make writing news items that make grammatical sense an enormous pain in the ass.

Anyway to change that?

Not currently. Maybe we can make it display the whole season record in the next version ?

You mean, kind of like someone said you should do back during the alpha-testing, because it was confusing and would generate a lot of user questions? ;)

I think it would be awesome to have the option. If only one could be displayed, I'd go for overall records, personally.

Thanks for stopping by!

Not a problem :D

With all the buzz around NHL and hockey right now, we're loving it !

I agree. I'm not a fan of the last 10 games thing.

The game itself though is great and I'm having a blast. I'm really looking forward to the NA update.

Can someone tell me what the "scouted only" feature is? I thought it meant it would only show players that your scouts have reported on (which would be very useful), but all it seems to do is filter everyone out.

It only lists guys who you've specifically told your scouts to look at (i.e., used the "scout player" option from the player screen.) And yeah, it's not very useful like that.

No kidding. It would be great (especially in the draft) if it weeded out players you have no information on.

FWIW, I bought EHM2k5 a couple of hours ago, after spending 4-5 hours with the demo since last night.

The variety of possible challenges, such as NHL or ECHL, and a much better hockey "feel" (to me) than the original release, made this a relatively easy purchase overall.

Thanks. Hopefully we can keep the same direction in the future and bring the game forward in every respect :D

Thought I would give EHM a shot, so I fired up the demo and started a game as the Bruins. Set the North American leagues to be active which gives me a database of about 17,000 players. I opted to turn off the real player names, just so that I don’t have any preconceptions about who to go after, but…

The resultant player names in the universe are very limited. I’m not sure if it’s a bug with the how names get generated, or if there are not enough names in the database, but there are lots of players with the exact same name as someone else, and very large numbers of players with the same last name. I understand that there could be some occasional duplication, but here are some examples:

19 players have a last name of Adamek.

There are 5 Tom Adameks and 5 Ray Adameks currently playing hockey.

40 players have a last name of Adams. Of these, there are…

2 Tom Adams, 4 Matt Adams, 5 Bernard Adams, 6 Trevor Adams, and a whopping 15 hockey players have the name Ray Adams.

There are 10 Ray Whites, 4 Bernard Bennetts, 5 Ray Beckers, 6 Bernard McLeans…and it goes on and on. Every page on the player search screens (when listing players alphabetically) has three or more groups of players with the exact same name (there is one entire page for the Ray Adams!). One would expect an occasional player with the same name, but this takes things a bit far. Just for kicks, I compared a generated database of names from one game with the database of names from a game using real names, and in the real database there is a much wider range of last names and only rare players with the same name as someone else.

Needless to say it makes keeping track of things a bit challenging.

Regarding this, is there a way to go in and edit the name .dat files? I tried opening them up in Excel, but they don’t open up cleanly. I’d like to go in and add some names to the files to see if that helps things out. I imagine they are sorted by geographic region somehow as well?

*muted grumbling about spending hundreds of hours working to get the players rated realistically, only to have people turn the damn names off* ;)


Looks like there were a couple of reports of something like that a week or so ago on the SI forum, but no responses yet - the guys are a little tied up with working on the North American release/update. But Riz will, I'm sure, notice this and check it out.

I think you could use the unofficial pregame editor to add names, but I doubt that will do anything; this looks like a bug. There's no shortage of variety in the Canadian and American names in the db.

I'll take a look at the player names issue. It uses the same code that gets used to randomise the player names for the unlicensed leagues/regions, and I've never seen anybody complain about those ;). It could be an issue with the cut-down version of the database, that's causing some unwanted bias somewhere. When faking the unlicensed dudes, it's done in the database extractor and the full list of people are there. But when you start a new game, not everyone is included.

Also, there's no way to change the names in the dat files without messing things up really (they're binary so that's why they won't open in notepad).

Should have said it louder ;) - it only took me 2 minutes.

It's trickier to spot there because the sample size is much smaller, but I did notice some similarities of the generated names in the real player database and the generated names in the fictional database. I think you'd have to be looking for it to spot it in the beginning of a real names game, but I bet it would become more obvious as the league matures.

If the names database is rather large, I would venture a guess that there is a problem with the way the code is selecting names. Some observations:

In particular, Ray and Bernard are getting chosen for first names much too frequently. Others like Tom and Phillipe and Trevor also show up too often. The range of used first names is quite narrow.

The range of used last names is narrow as well, which results in the overabundance of similar last names.

Can you play with a team in the Central Hockey League in EHM? Also, when is the American version due out and will it have many changes?

You can sorta play with a team in the Central Hockey League - but in the game it won't be listed as the Central Hockey League. There are rosters out there that can "unfake" that for you though.

I think the only changes to the North American version are actual league changes (like items from the new CBA, expansion teams in the minors) and updated rosters.

"Only"? What, the Quebec databases not enough work for you? Want that orphaned French one, too? ;)

No date on the North American release yet, other than "Fall".

*joins the rush*

Only...only ??!!! :D

The new CBA and its effects are...well...interesting to say the least. Both in real life (so far) and in code.

Oh, seeing as this thread has evolved quite a bit outside its original scope about the release date and licenses, would it be possible to get the thread re-named ?

I've always coveted a "Alright boyz...." thread for EHM over here, could this be it then ? :D

Riz

just edit your first post and your able to change the title if you want.

D'oh....me dum-dum

*done*

Well done!

Considering the amount of views this thread has got so far, I had to do a good job :D

I'll take a pass on that. :eek:

And of course by only I meant not to expect any big new features - not to say that updating the league info and rosters is a small task by any means. :)

How do you view standings by Division (I.e. Pacific)

Can't in the NHL. That part of the game became broke in 2.02 and won't be fixed until the NA patch/release. The 8-10 dependable testers must have missed that one.

Yeah, that stinks.

BTW, my Thrasher's career:

First Year: Playoffs, beat in the first round in 7
Second Year: Stanley Cup Runners up (lost in 7)
Third Season: Stanley Cup Win (Won in 6) :D

Actually, I saw it and figured it had been done on purpose. Most leagues in the game only display the standings format needed to calculate the playoff race.

Sorry, if Riz or someone from SI has already given an idea but, anyone gota guess-estimate of when the North American patch will be released so we can get going on are Nhl leagues? Please no when it's ready answers?

I would guess that we won't see the NA patch until after preseason starts (Spetember 16th)

We certainly won't see it until all the UFA and RFA loose ends are tied up.

When it's not unready.

I'd be taking my life in my hands if I hinted about the release date, but I will say that, given the extremely tight deadlines, getting it ready has been relatively problem-free compared to previous releases and major patches. Of course, by saying that, I've just jinxed the whole thing and an hour from now we'll discover some disastrous bug that'll take days or weeks to eradicate. See what happens when you ask 'how soon'?

We are currently staying over at the office for the night to test the network game again. As the tradition goes, we are competing over the Eastside Cup. Live coverage here

It's a blast I can tell ya :D

North American release is closing in:

GameStop are now taking pre-orders for the NA version :D

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?...ct%5Fid=646381

Will non USA guys be able to buy the downloadable version of it or will be any kind of country filter to avoid it?

The online versions will use the same territorial pricing as before I would guess (the different pricing for $US, £UK and euro). Anyhow, the people who already own the european release version will be catered with a free update to bring their game up-to-date with all the new rules and regulations that have been coded for the North American version.

ETA: 10/3/05:(
I was hoping this would be released in the next week or two. Five weeks would that be the case for the patch for the European version. I mean will patch come out sooner for the European version as opposed to the NA version?

According to whom?

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?...ct%5Fid=646381

The update (it's not really a patch, but a free seasonal update) for euro versions will come out at the same time as the NA versions hits the streets. And I would like to take this opportunity to say that we have not yet announced the official released date for the NA version so all the dates on sites other than SIGames.com are guesswork.

Release date for the NA version now confirmed: 27th of September 2005 !

See link for a bit of more info:
http://community.sigames.com/groupee...5/m/4792021751

Screenshots of the North American release version, showing rule changes, updated rosters, etc.: http://www.sigames.com/softography.p...23#screenshots

so the latest rosters will be how it is by end of August?

will there be another updated roster patch for opening day?


also on the new screenshots. Pittsburg Roster dont show Sidney Crosby on there.

I thought the Leaves cut Owen Nolan?
Also, what happens if you go over the cap?

Due to NHLPA rules games can not include a player if he has not played in the NHL, so Crosby will probably be on his junior team, with his rights assigned to Pittsburgh. You will get a chance to sign him to a contract before training camp.