2KHS v0.8 (June 5 2020)

[DJ NEO]

Hello hockey friends, here are the most visible changes and improvements from 0.7 to 0.8 build, that will be downloadable for FREE on Friday, June 5 2020.

Is there any other hockey game from any company where the A.I. can score (or can not score) in so many ways, from basically any realistic position on the ice?




OPTIMIZATION & BUGFIXES

1) LOD optimizations allowed better performance and 100% crash-free experience.
You still need around 4GHZ processor to run the game tho.

2) Textures optimization
Fixed the mipmaps texture issue that forced me to use some of the textures as PNG, which is not a proper gaming format (DDS).
Now when all the textures can be as DDS, the game is stutters free and we can save some additional memory and processing power.

3) The "loop" bug, where the game suddenly hangs during the gameplay, has been fixed.

6) Muted unrealistic "kungfu" sounds for checking, hitting, slashing, shot block and fighting. Muted clicky Wii sounds for passing. Tuned the power needed to trigger the "boards" and "bouncing puck" sounds.

8) turned OFF the "Puck frozen" HUD event during the gameplay.

9) Turned OFF the classic gamey "beep" count sound at the end of periods.
Turned OFF the disturbing music during the replays and intermissions.

10) Turned OFF the intros temporarily. These are not finished yet.

11) Fixed some fonts

12) Fixed some logos graphical glitches


CONTENT & PRESENTATION

13a) Most of the arenas can now render 3D crowd around the boards.

13b) The real-time arena reflections on the ice are now visible during all off-play events and faceoffs. I could force it even during the actual gameplay, but at this moment it would be to a big hit for the overall performance.

14) Broadcast Camera improvements (including faceoffs cameras, close-ups etc.)

15) More layers and improvements to self-shadowing and reflections.


16) The off-play real-time presentation tuning and fixes.

16a) Tuned the speed of movement and skating animations in off-play situations. Players no longer move hyper-fast, like baby dolls on strings.

16b) Tuned the transitions between the off play skating and faceoffs events, for much smoother results

16c) There is a no longer unrealistic delay between scoring the goal, goal celebrations and goalie reactions. Also if a teammate is somewhere around a goal scorer will rather celebrate the goal with his teammate.

16d) Tuned the speed and animations for players jumping over the boards from the bench during the line change. Now they jump over the boards slower during the off-play and quicker during the actual game.

16e) Turned OFF some of the unrealistic (non-hockey) off-play animations (sweat on the helmets)


17) Reworked Ice designs for all teams, ice/snow textures and corrected blue and red lines proportions.

18a) The skate trails on the ice are now white, not blue.

18b) Game is no longer generating blue "clouds" over the ice surface as the match progresses. It's still not ideal tho.


GAMEPLAY

19) Physics-Based Goalies

19a) Goalie animations fixes and tuning

19b) Goalies are now part of the physics engine with realistic speeds and momentum.

19c) Goalies are no longer warping into the "correct" positions and are affected by different types of equipment friction.

19d) Goalies are affected by the incidental contacts or hit, so watch for the goalie interference or charging penalties, that is now called by the referee!

19e) Goalies are no longer a magnet for the puck and the puck can't be “sucked” into the goalie equipment.

19f) Corrected different skating speeds of a goalie, including the goalie skating to the bench.

19g) Goalies now react aggressively on the near free pucks and the play around them.


Physics-Based Skating 2.0 (PBS)




20) "Precision movement" Animations

20a) Precision Accelerations

With the previous (0.7) build we made it possible to differentiate the soft accels from hard accels with the tuning of the existing acceleration animations.

With the current 0.8 release, I took to a next level by adding a whole new layer to the skating engine.

Now you don't have 2 types of accels anymore, but 3.

"Precision", "Regular" and "Hustle". All these are now as part of the skating engine with or without the puck!

On the ice, when you use your controller really softly you will trigger a whole new layer of animations for the very subtle "precision" movement, in any direction.

This new system is attached to the player stamina attributes and actual fatigue, so for example, a player with low stamina att or player that stays for too long on the ice cant use the "Hustle" layer of these animations, until his fatigue goes down again.

And this is not only about the acceleration!


20b) Precision Skating

Another really cool thing about this new system is that now even the A.I. players, that are more tired, are finally smart enough (or are forced) to use less exhausting glide skating animations and soft pushes.

They will usually try to avoid full stop and rather choose to turn, where in previous games they were thinking all the same... either does full hustle or full stop. Which ultimately made the game too jerky, shallow and unrealistic.

21) Current player fatigue has now visible effect on gameplay

This new system as you can imagine will make the gameplay feel even more organic and at the same time farther differentiate the players on the ice,
It will also uncover the additional strategic skills of a player behind the controller.

You really have to be aware of what player you have currently on the ice and how fresh or tired he is.

note: As a positive side effect this new layer of non-hustle animations will also highly reduce the usage of the sprint hustle animation when the puck carrier would unrealistically joggle the puck left/ right on top of his stick.


22) Skaters now pump their legs little higher during regular skating, crossovers or accelerations (It's not the ridiculous NHL 20 level tho Lol)

23) Further fine-tuning to the skating engine and motion model. I have now control over almost every skating animation and speed during this animation within the game.

24a) Tuning to the friction and momentum for almost every situation in the game. This gives me even farther control over things like turning, accels, stopping etc. With or without the puck.

24b) Tuned the speed and player momentum during the puck pickups for more realistic results. This includes the speed of the pickup animations and the range where the pickup animation can be triggered.

25a) tuning to the Offensive/ Defensive skill stick. You can now lay your stick (click LS or LB down) on the ice to block the passing lanes and stay in that position as long as you keep the button pressed.

25b) Shortened time needed to get back from “stick on the ice” position

25c) There is a shorter delay/lag between the regular skating state and extended stick while using an offensive skill stick

26) Highly reduced occurrence of dekes performed by A.I. to a realistic level. You will no longer see the defenders attempting a deke in dangerous situations unless you put their deke attribute slider really high.


27) Shooting Reworked

27a) A.I. tuning for shooting and added a new "chip" shots type of animations to the CPU arsenal.

27b) Reworked A.I. positional tendencies for shots

We, as a community, we were always trying desperately to fix the ongoing issues with CPUs shooting tendencies (and how they scored goals) with the sliders which, let's be honest, had usually very questionable effect on the gameplay itself. What it does, without doubts, it messes up the stats for the simulated games.

In the older games from 2k3 to 2k8 the game was all about the one-timers, which changed with the 2k10 and 2k11 where most of the goals from AI were scored with wrist or snap shots, from the circles or from breakaways.

On non-breakaway situations as soon a CPU player reached the circles he shoots the puck to the goal or does that silly deke to the side.
You could very rarely see CPU defender take a shot from a blue line (no matter how aggressively you tune his shooting tendencies via player attributes), let alone the offensive players.
There is basically no chance that a CPU offensive player takes a slap shot in NHL 2K10 on Xbox 360, for example.

I could go on with the complaints, but this is not the space for it.

Well, wouldn't it be great if we have finally all these tendencies in one single game? And even better, some more?

Hard slappers around the blue line or mid-range from the defenders and offensive players.

Fancy goalies dekes (or shots) from the elite snipers.

Precise wristers around the circles.

Quick chip shots from the close range.

And of course crisp one-timers from close range, but also from the offensive-oriented defenders around the blue line or mid-range.


27c) Tunning to stumble shots

Another very useful thing is that I can finally tune the range or distance from the goal where are the "stumble shots" triggered. This allows me to get rid of these ugly, unrealistic cases where players were forced into usually very long shooting animations that didn't have much sense way too often.

On top of that, these stumble animations were usually running at very fast speed and couldn't be interrupted, so players were forced to finish these animations even without the puck!

Now I can fix a lot of these issues by tunning the range where it can happen and by tuning the speed of these animations in cases where I want to keep them in the game. I don't want to get rid of it completely, yet.

28) Tuned the "sucking" range, animations and A.I. for the one-timers, allowing some realistic goals and errors.

29) Tuned the threshold and speed needed when a player goes to full stop group of animations for shooting and dumping. This fixed some issues where player dumping or shooting the puck stopped for no obvious reason in an attempt to perform unappreciated "full stop" shot or dump animation.

30) Tuning to the timings, speed and A.I. for the blocking animations

31) Tuned the precision of the shots. Now depending on the player angle, distance from the goal and player attributes shots have more variety in precision (low/high, left/right) and power.

32) Tuned the ratio and timing of the goalie dekes taken by A.I.

33) Tuned the animations and speed for the wrist, chip, snap, slap and stumble shots


34) Player (and A.I.) is no longer "sucked" into the hitting or stick lift animations. Much better timing and skill is now needed for a successful hit or stick lift. This also prevents the game from all the forced warping in these situations.


35) Dumping Reworked

35a) This includes the A.I. tendencies and enhanced positioning range of dumping the puck. You will see CPU dumping the puck much more often, from various realistic positions on the ice.

There is also a much bigger variety and errors in dump-ins, from soft bank passes, wobbles to the powerful slappers and everything between.

35b) Tuned the speed, power and how high the dump-ins are.


36) Passing Reworked

36a) Tuned the A.I. tendencies for passing. CPU now plays the puck more often, they can react on the passing possibilities much quicker.

36b) I can finally tune the speed of the passes separately. In other words, I can tune separately the speed of low, high and lob passes.

36c) Tuned the amount of speed error when a player (or CPU) passes the puck from his backhand or from a tough angle.

36d) Added some new passing animations

36e) Added error possibility in pass reception if the pass is too fast and/or too bouncy

note: I also have the code for the overall passing error working, but it still causes some bugs to the goalies, so that's something I have to work on more for the next release and its not part of the 0.8 build, at this moment.


37) Highly reduced the overall glue/magnet effect

38) Faceoffs Tuning

38a) Tuned the speed of all faceoffs animations

38b) Tuned the speed of the skill stick in the faceoffs situations (how fast you can switch the stick from forehand to backhand etc.).

38c) Referee now always waits for the skaters before he drops the puck.

38d) The "jostling" type of faceoffs are now triggered more often.

39) Fixed the cases where the newly added stick vs player detection in 0.7 build prevented the goalie covers the puck or make the regular skater lose the puck during the passing unrealistically often.


40) Checking Physics & A.I.

40a) Tuned the thresholds for incidental contacts including soft bumps, knee falls or full body falls.

40b) Highly reduced tripping penalties to a realistic level, caused by stick vs body incidental contacts (human, ai)

40c) Much bigger variety in checking animations, including tripping, hooking, slashing, spearing, elbowing, charging, shoulder checking and other checking animations and A.I. tendencies.

This has also effect on a bigger variety of penalties called by the referee and announced by the play by play during a match.

40d) Fine tunning of checking animations. Players now get up quicker after soft hits, but stays longer and get up slower after the huge hits.

40e) An enhanced range where players (or A.I.) can initiate board play.


41) Other A.I. Improvements

41a) A.I. defenders now play less risky, keeping a more safe gap between them and the opposite players

41b) A.I. players are now much more aggressive and more likely will hook, slash or check the puck carrier.

41c) A.I. forechecking player skating forward now uses regular forward skating animations, rather than unrealistic "moonwalking", where they could read the inputs and change the direction on the fly, without losing any speed.

41d) Tuned the threshold when the A.I. player that is not in a possession of the puck will react on the puck carrier and gets in a best relative position.


42) Puck Physics Reworked

42a) Greatly enhanced puck physics overall

42b) Improved the puck vs ice vs boards vs goalie detection. With realistic puck size introduced in the last release these problems got obviously even more noticeable, so I'm really glad I could fix that.

42c) Puck can now wobble after passes, dumps, shots, deflections and basically any other contact, as you would expect in a real-world hockey game. The amount of wobble and directions of the puck is now always affected by the actual position of the stick blade, which means not single pass, dump, shot or even deflection can ever be the same.

This, of course, means limitless gameplay possibilities and endless goals variations.

42d) Tuning to the various deflections based on materials and speed variables.
I can now tune separately power of puck deflections from objects like boards "wood", plexi, goal net or steel (post), players equipment like skates, stick and body.

42e) I tuned the puck that it has more weight and feel less floaty during the passing and dump-ins

I could go on and be very technical, but when it comes to something like puck physics its always better to experience it yourself.

Even if still not 100% satisfied, I honestly believe that what we have now in 2KHS is the best and the most realistic puck physics that has ever occurred in any hockey videogame, from any company.


See you on the ice! djneo.


EDIT:

I did some "research" with all the big NHL 2K hockey games to really see the changes, compared it to 2KHS and here are the results. Pretty interesting, I think.

It might even help to answer some questions about what was the best 2K hockey and why we don't have any official 2K hockey anymore, even with all the potential, that was there.




NHL 2K11 v.s. 2KHS after game stats

[nikethebike]

Quote:

DOWNLOAD 2KHS 0.8 HERE

This sounds awesome DJ. Can't wait to try this!

[DJ NEO]

Thanks, but please don't quote all that long post 😀

[scagwi]

Excited to try it in June!

Thx Neo

[nikethebike]

Quote: Originally Posted by DJ NEO

Thanks, but please don't quote all that long post 😀

What quote???? I have noooooooo idea what you're talking about... 😉

[ty5oke]

This sounds amazing. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Thanks for sharing.

[franch1se]

can't wait, but I'm having trouble trying to install 0.7.2 (I think that's what I downloaded, whatever the latest release was).

When I press F8 on the black screen it says "save state was created using an incompatible version Ishiirukua-Dolphin 1098). Save state cannot be loaded".

But it does go to the Connor McDavid loading screen but I can't control using my xbox controller.

Edit - Ok I have the game working, all rosters are updated and I have my controller working. But something has gone wrong and its weird. If I press the comma key on my keyboard I can toggle the game between default and the mod I presume. When I launch the game in modded state I have all the updated rosters, pictures for the players, logos on ice, graphics etc but only a few teams have jerseys. Most teams are just black jerseys. When I press comma and revert the game back (I think thats what's happening) all the jerseys, logos, etc are displayed and working perfectly (except the center ice logos revert to the old ones), however the rosters/pictures revert back to default. It seems to be mixing the two somehow.

[nikethebike]

That is expected. You need to toggle through the available jerseys to find those DJNEO has updated. Its not always the first choice. He has chosen to replace the default ones with that generic black one.