Custom Start Date Patch / ArtMoney Development Thread

[CeeBee]

Archi for Prime Minister, or King or President or The Man of the year!!!!!

[dabo]

[MKoivuFan]

archi will u be taking paypal donations with all of ur hard work with all of this?

[archibalduk]

archi will u be taking paypal donations with all of ur hard work with all of this?

Oh no absolutely not. I do this purely for the love of the game and nothing else - just like the website.

[archibalduk]

I freaking hate you Archi. Now I have to figure out how to use some other kind of program on my computer. You say it is easy...I know I will find a way to mess it up. hate you.

Haha!! All those hours of testing and experimenting were worth it just to irritate you!

I'll do my best to make it as straightforward as possible. I think I'll make the third button on the patch smaller so as to avoid any confusion. Also perhaps some better brief explanation within the patch window itself so it acts as a helpful reminder.

I left a quick season sim going this morning whilst I did some work at home. Everything seems okay apart from one very very tiny glitch - there isn't a host for the World Championships Under 20s Division 1 for the first season. The competition runs okay but it's just the games take place in different cities throughout the world and no host is recorded in the competition history. Seems I must have missed an offset somewhere. I know roughly where the source of the glitch should be and so I'm running some tests at the moment. I'm not going to let it hold things up and, regardless as to whether I fix this or not, the final beta will be with my kind testers tomorrow. I will however ensure the glitch is fixed before the final version is released (hopefully this weekend or early next week).

It's really nice to see the buzz that has been generated by this project. It feels like a really exciting time for the EHM community! This is only the beginning - we'll have new rosters to look forward too as well as updated league rules and structures (which Alessandro and Marek have started work on and for which I'll be writing a patch).

[ElQuapo]

I left a quick season sim going this morning whilst I did some work at home. Everything seems okay apart from one very very tiny glitch - there isn't a host for the World Championships Under 20s Division 1 for the first season. The competition runs okay but it's just the games take place in different cities throughout the world and no host is recorded in the competition history. Seems I must have missed an offset somewhere. I know roughly where the source of the glitch should be and so I'm running some tests at the moment. I'm not going to let it hold things up and, regardless as to whether I fix this or not, the final beta will be with my kind testers tomorrow. I will however ensure the glitch is fixed before the final version is released (hopefully this weekend or early next week).

Thanks for all the work Archi.

This reminds me - do you think we will be able to change the hosts for the various international championships? Or will the 2006/7 hosts become hosts for 2011/12 in the game and the 2007/8 hosts become the hosts for 2012/13 etc.?

Also - has anyone simmed to the Olympics in 2014? Do they work correctly with Russia as the host?

[YZG]

It's really nice to see the buzz that has been generated by this project. It feels like a really exciting time for the EHM community! This is only the beginning - we'll have new rosters to look forward too as well as updated league rules and structures (which Alessandro and Marek have started work on and for which I'll be writing a patch).

This patch is actually like man walking on the Moon. It's a "simple" step for one man (travel was long, but the result is a simple patch with three buttons), but a big step for the Community. It suddenly opens tons of doors that were thought as impossible to unlock. The implications of this success are immense, and within a year, we'll probably be able to, at the very least, play with the real KHL, have a totally updated hockey world, be able to customize current leagues the way we want and perhaps even be able to add playable leagues.

Sky's the new limit.

- YZG

[Nikki Nine]

perhaps even be able to add playable leagues.

- YZG

This is something I have been thinking about. Is this even remotely possible?

[YZG]

I don't know... but we know we can change offsets in the .exe and twist some aspects of the game in a way we like. Perhaps by changing some others or inserting the right ones at the right place it becomes possible? We can at least dream of trying now, which is already a major improvement from a few months ago only.

- YZG

[archibalduk]

This reminds me - do you think we will be able to change the hosts for the various international championships? Or will the 2006/7 hosts become hosts for 2011/12 in the game and the 2007/8 hosts become the hosts for 2012/13 etc.?

Theoretically it should be possible to change this. I expect this can be found using ArtMoney. The difficulty is finding the correct place in the hex/memory data. I have created a basic map of the hex code which would help us find the correct offset but I can only narrow it down to several hundred or thousand offsets. However, we can easily find out the nation ID for Russia from the nation.dat file (the ID for Russia is A1 in hex) and so this will help narrow it down (i.e. we just search the relevant area in the memory for "A1". If we can find the offset then it can easily be added to my patch.

An alternative location for the host data is in nation_comp.dat. That file seems to mostly simply store the names of the international competitions but it might be worth just checking what else is in there.

As YZG rightly says, the sky is the limit. There are so many things we all would like to change. I need to prioritise the CSD Patch, helping Manimal with the contract expiries in order to make his rosters work fully with the patch, and helping Marek and Alessandro with their league structures/rules. However once this has all been completed, I would really like to look into things such as updating the teams in the WC as well of the hosts. Hopefully I'll be able to work on these in the coming months.

Also - has anyone simmed to the Olympics in 2014? Do they work correctly with Russia as the host?

That's a very good question and something that we will most definitely need to test before releasing the patch.

I don't know... but we know we can change offsets in the .exe and twist some aspects of the game in a way we like. Perhaps by changing some others or inserting the right ones at the right place it becomes possible? We can at least dream of trying now, which is already a major improvement from a few months ago only.

- YZG

I guess now we have the start date sorted, swapping around the playable leagues is pretty much the "ultimate dream" IMHO. I would love to coach some of the smaller leagues such as the NCAA and I've always thought the Swiss league has been an obvious omission from EHM. The NCAA is probably not possible (because of the complex way it is organised), but I wonder whether you could do some simple straight swapping (e.g. swap one league for another). It would likely be very complex to achieve though. It is probably not just a case of changing one offset - there are so many processes that go on behind the scenes in EHM and so it could be extremely complex to pull off. However, I'd like to think it's possible. For example, I managed to quite easily change the Canadian leagues to the Afghan leagues (i.e. the OHL, QMJHL and WHL became Afghan)!

I doubt it's possible to add leagues; just swapping them.

[visualdarkness]

I don't know... but we know we can change offsets in the .exe and twist some aspects of the game in a way we like. Perhaps by changing some others or inserting the right ones at the right place it becomes possible? We can at least dream of trying now, which is already a major improvement from a few months ago only.

- YZG

Surahammar IF, Swedish division 1C, here I come!

[CeeBee]

One big question......Is there any hope of changing the number of teams in a league? :Like the AHL having 30, or the WHL having 22 or maybe the NHL having 6, or 12 or 24? That is one big question that really interests me.

[Viking]

Another question: It it possible to add the Stanley Cup and other league winners for the past years somehow, or will there be a gap in the history? I could'nt find that option in the editor.

[Alessandro]

One big question......Is there any hope of changing the number of teams in a league? :Like the AHL having 30, or the WHL having 22 or maybe the NHL having 6, or 12 or 24? That is one big question that really interests me.

It is technically feasable, but it will be hard, and I am not sure about the grade of its flexibility.

[Alessandro]

Another question: It it possible to add the Stanley Cup and other league winners for the past years somehow, or will there be a gap in the history? I could'nt find that option in the editor.

It's editable via hex editing, see the other thread for an explanation

[archibalduk]

A note for all beta testers:

I've uploaded a slightly newer version of the patch (version 0.08b). Nikki Nine is having difficulty using the two "Patch and Launch" buttons. Please let me know whether these work for you.

Still nothing I'm afraid. I have tried using with and without Run as Administrator on the game as well, nothing. I am running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit Edition.

The newest patch (0.08b) tells me that I must enable run as administrator, which I already have.

So you run the Patch with 'Run as Administrator' from within the EHM 2007 folder. Then you click on one of the Patch and Launch buttons. Does EHM load up when you do this?

I take it the Apply Patch button still works?

[Nikki Nine]

Problem solved.

[archibalduk]

Thanks Nikki. There was an ever so small syntax mistake in the code. It's funny that it worked without issue on my laptop - I guess it's because I have all the Visual Studio C++ developer libraries installed which perhaps makes it all a bit more forgiving. This goes to show exactly why testing on different computers is so important.

[B. Stinson]

It seems I'm also having trouble with the patch-and-launch options.

- Right-click > 'Run as Admin'
- Tick 'Run as Admin' option in Compatibility tab + double-click patch.exe
- Tick 'Run as Admin' option in Compatibility tab + Right-click > 'Run as Admin'

They all resulted in errors warning you to run the patch as Admin.

However, loading the game, and then using the "patch only" option worked fine. With that, I've got a test in progress right now, and will report back soon

EDIT: Forget what I just said. I completely forgot to move the patch to my EHM folder I'll give it another go after my current test, and see how it goes.

[archibalduk]

I'll make that error message clearer because the source of the error can either be that it isn't in the EHM 2007 folder or because Run as Admin hasn't been enabled.

P.s. I earlier uploaded version 0.08b - make sure you have this version rather than v0.08. The version number is in the top right corner of the Patch window.

[Ogilthorpe]

Using the patch was successful on the very first try, it is very easy to use.

The only problem I had was trying to remember was where to put the Lidas file, after what seemed like forever I finally got it right.

[YZG]

Made the same mistake as B, I ran the patch from the desktop and thus could only use the third option. A sim is going right now and every time I checked, everything went as expected, with all leagues selected.

- YZG

[YZG]

OK, I've reached the WJCs. Actually, I see nothing overly wrong. The elite div is jointly hosted by Russia, Germany and Czech Republic (odd, but not that bad), whereas the div. 1 is held by the US and Canada jointly. The choice of nations is not logical, but it is not so bad either - I was actually expecting something like a game in Shanghai, one in Johannesburg and then the next day in Washington DC.

If an issue, it is a very minor one, which may well have nothing to do with the patch itself.

- YZG

[Nightmare]

I'll make that error message clearer because the source of the error can either be that it isn't in the EHM 2007 folder or because Run as Admin hasn't been enabled.

P.s. I earlier uploaded version 0.08b - make sure you have this version rather than v0.08. The version number is in the top right corner of the Patch window.

Hi again! Could i Get this version of the patch and the interface you created as well to see if it works, though it might not as well. I just realized that the artmoney version might not have worked because I am trying it on my work laptop and as such mt administrative privileges might be limited. Still, I would still very much appreciate it if you could let me try your newest version of the patch. Merci beaucoup!

[Alessandro]

Btw Archi, I want to get rid of the "no foreigner goalie" bug in Russia. Could you search in the original exe an offset for 2009 year? That is the cut date for foreigner goalies in Russia. Let me know if you'll find anything.