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NHL 2004 Launcher 1.45 - 01/09/14; Adds new features incl. widescreen
Topic Started: Jun 16 2013, 07:54 AM (79,759 Views)
Vod
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neonfish,12 May 2014
1:52 PM
Listen Vod .I need some explanaiton :)

What is the process of creating such modding tools like biggui or playbyplay studio etc.

How do the coders "decrypt" the files and make them readable and editable without the original algorytm from EA sports?

for example audio files that are in *dat format. What is  the process of making a program to be able to play a *.dat file?

It requires lots of time, caffeine and a punching bag so you don't damage your walls. :P

Reverse engineering audio files is especially hard unless there is some information already out there. One common way of reverse engineering data files is by decompiling the .exe or using a debugger and examining the assembly output to see how the game loads the file, which itself can be very hard to make sense of. Programmers tend to use similar techniques for encoding certain file types, so trying to think like the original programmer can be a big help. I can't point you to a single guide that will explain everything for you since it requires knowledge in many different areas, but information about the ASF format might help:

https://tombexcavator.googlecode.com/svn/br...docs/EA-ASF.txt
NHL 2004 Launcher | My Changelog | NHL 2004 Preservation | NHL 2004 Debugger
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neonfish
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thanks for explanation vod
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Vod
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neonfish,13 May 2014
3:46 AM
thanks for explanation vod

No problem :)
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hodgydot
Junior League
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Hey everything works fine from the launcher until i try and go into a game then it crashes. Any ideas?

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Vod
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So it only crashes if you use the launcher, not if you directly run nhl2004.exe?
NHL 2004 Launcher | My Changelog | NHL 2004 Preservation | NHL 2004 Debugger
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hodgydot
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Correct, i replaced it with the 1.03 one that posted as well to try and fix it.

It works fine if i boot up the nhl04.exe but when i try the launcher it crashes after team select when it would go to show the line up.


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Vod
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hodgydot,15 May 2014
3:29 PM
Correct, i replaced it with the 1.03 one that posted as well to try and fix it.

It works fine if i boot up the nhl04.exe but when i try the launcher it crashes after team select when it would go to show the line up.

1.04 from the rebuilt interface is the only nhl2004.exe that is supported. You can enable logging by adding CreateLog=1 to launcher.ini. The log file it creates is "Launcher Log.txt"
NHL 2004 Launcher | My Changelog | NHL 2004 Preservation | NHL 2004 Debugger
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hodgydot
Junior League
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Logging? replaced the exe with the newer one and added the log text.

It did not crash now but the screen is 99% black with just edges showing the game

EDIT: Tried to print screen you a photo and it crashed.


Changed my game reso back to the normal and it worked perfect man, it looks NICEEEE
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hRafnagud
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I really love this launcher and i was wandering if it's possible to add support for the DX8 to DX9 converter and make it compatible with SweetFX?

http://enbdev.com/download_convertor_dx8todx9.htm

The converter and SweetFX are working fine with this game using the default way of launching but the launcher is not working with other d3d hooks. Is it possible to fix this?

If not, can you please post all the hexedit strings(resolution, aspectratio, FOV) for a 1920x1080 resolution?

Thanx a lot.

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Vod
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hRafnagud,16 May 2014
2:10 PM
I really love this launcher and i was wandering if it's possible to add support for the DX8 to DX9 converter and make it compatible with SweetFX?

http://enbdev.com/download_convertor_dx8todx9.htm

The converter and SweetFX are working fine with this game using the default way of launching but the launcher is not working with other d3d hooks. Is it possible to fix this?

If not, can you please post all the hexedit strings(resolution, aspectratio, FOV) for a 1920x1080 resolution?

Thanx a lot.

Unfortunately, you can't just use a hex editor. You'll need to write a program that hooks the function at 0x5CDB00. The first argument is the FOV, the second argument is the Aspect ratio. What features from sweetfx do you want to use?
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hRafnagud
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Thanks for yor reply.

The settings i'm interested in for NHL 2004 are LumaSharpen, Cineon DPX, Tonemap, Vibrance,
and Curves. I like hings to pop out more, a little bit more details and better colors.

I can change my nVidia driver settings the way i want but it never gives the same result as using SweetFX.
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neonfish
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Are we able to change the colour of the game to look more like games in TV in circa 1994 with these graphical mods?

NHL2004 seems too bright to me sometimes:)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqI1Ku1FZ04
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Vod
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neonfish,17 May 2014
2:19 AM
Are we able to change the colour of the game to look more like games in TV in circa 1994 with these graphical mods?

NHL2004 seems too bright to me sometimes:)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqI1Ku1FZ04

The launcher will have the ability to inject pixel shaders, so post-processing effects will be possible. I agree about the brightness (the crowd in particular), so I use a custom crowd texture. You can see it in the recent screenshot I posted.

I would like to eventually update the DX version, but that probably won't be for a while because of the amount of work involved.
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kariasi
Rookie
Thanks Vod! This is awesome. I had some lagging issues in gameplay until I made these settings;

Game resolution: 1366x768, 60 Hz
Multisample Antialiasing: 16x samples
Texture filtering: Bilinear
FOV Modifier: 0

VSync: ON and Triple Buffering: ON

Now the game plays very smooth without lag but sometimes players disappears (break in play animations). What is your opinion is these settings good or do i have to make some changes? I think VSync is the reason why i dont have any lagging anymore?

Thanks for the answer!
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redonred
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Thanks vod, its incredible how much vsync helps in overall the game play. also being able to adjust the FOV is wonderful!!!!
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