DMD Q&A with Risto Remes - EHM 2005

[cujoblue]

Q. How come there is no love for users with the 1024x768 resolution who want window'd mode? (Optikal)

A. The actual game window is 1024x768. To play in windowed mode, you'd need a higher res since a Windows window adds its own graphical elements (the titlebar and the window borders) to the edges of the actual game window. And since the actual game window itself is 1024x768, these elements would make the actual Windows window of the game a few pixels bigger in all directions. Which is why on exactly 1024x768 res it only goes full screen. You can still alt-tab between other apps and the game though.


Q. Game goes on forever, right? Like, you can just keep continuing year after year? (Slapshot)

A. Yes, there are no artificial limits hard-coded into the game. After several seasons (50+) you may experience the game getting slower just due to the vast amounts of stats and data stored throughout the years. Last year we ran some test games into the 2300 and beyond, this year we haven’t tried for a similar ultra-long test but the usual soak tests we do at the office have gone 50+ seasons easily.

Q. Is the game based on the 04/05 season? So teams that played in a league that season will be playing in the same league in the game, even though they were for example relegated? (Teus)

A. The game starts with the 2004/05 season and all leagues, teams and rosters are modeled after that season.

Q. Is it possible to get hired to a better team if you're in Great Britain or France? I don't remember if it was totally impossible, but no one could ever get a job in even the lowest European leagues if they were a GM in Great Britain or France or some other country like that. (Slapshot)

A. It should be easier to get better jobs now in NHL EHM 2005 and we are continuing to tweak things with the updates to accommodate for any feedback we receive from the community.

Q. Are you currently trying to resolve the licensing issues with the college athletes? (Thomas)

A. As for NCAA, the player names cannot be licensed. Not by us, not by EA, not by Microsoft, not by anyone. You can throw as much money as you want at NCAA but all you get is the team/league names. Because of the NCAA rules, athletes must keep their amateur status and while I don't know the full detailed contents of these agreements, it means the athletes cannot get paid in any way. Which means that college athletes' names cannot be licensed out as it would create income for the athletes thus revoking their amateur status'.

Players who have already moved to be professionals and have actually moved to an NHL/AHL/ECHL team should be in with their proper names as long as they are covered by the appropriate license.


Q. Also what hockey game(s) does SI play? And living in Finland how did you become a Rangers fan  (Malignant)

A. We usually play NHL 2k4 or NHL 2k5 at the office. We had a few games with NHL Hitz back in the first year of dev on the first NHL EHM but since then we’ve only played a game of 2k4 or 2k5 every once in a while. The arcade games are fun to play but I still cringe when I take a closer look at the plays and realism in them. I became a Rangers fan because I started following the NHL closely around the time hockey cards were a big thing in Finland (early 90’s) and I had to pick a team to collect and support. So I decided on the Rangers because of some interesting prospects they had (Kovalev to name one). Been bleeding blue ever since 

Q. Will there (or is there) the same sort of developer relationship between SI and 2K games? (who made ESPN NHL 2K5 last year) (Malignant)

A. We’ve got no special relationships with other developers, although we got a great deal of help and advice from Visual Concepts with the first NHL EHM about the licensing process with the NHL, as they had gone through it all before.

Q. Are you going to improve the ingame 'broadcast' to replace the text with graphics? (Antti)

A. Yes, we are planning on moving into a FM-type real time 2D view for the in-game play-by-play sometime in the future. But commentary will still be there on the side, it will not be scrapped completely.

Q. Any changes to online leagues? What new features are included in EHM 2005 that we didn't see last year? (Rob)

A. As always, we try to listen to the feedback we receive from the community and we worked on some networking enhancements as well as some new helpful options for hosting the online games. We are far away from the optimal online league playability and for example the level of HTML output we’d like to support, but with a small dev team, we have to focus on the core game at this stage before we can work on the additional features meant primarily for online leagues.

Q. Will there be an option to include a salary cap in the NHL assuming their will be one once the NHL starts up again? (Leaf Fan)

A. We are coding all the leagues in our games modeled on the real life leagues and currently the structures don’t support customizable league rules for any leagues. That’s something we are looking into for the future with help from the OOTP team who have had a great level of customization in their games before. And at the moment, our plan for the North American release of NHL EHM 2005, which is planned to go ahead around the start of the 05/06 hockey season, is to update all the game data including league rules and rosters to reflect the new season. So any new rules in place by then, will hopefully be also incorporated in the updated version of the game.

Q. Is there multiple skill levels? (Mizu)

A. No. For an easier game, you can always pick a team that is loaded with funds and has an established roster. But there are just too many variables in the game to allow for a simple slidebar or a toggle for different difficulty levels.

Q. Are you ever going to have the SM-Liiga license, and any others that are still missing? (rtafts)

A. We'll keep trying every version to get licenses for the leagues that we didn't get them for this year. We got a few new ones this year, so perhaps we'll be lucky again next time round and be able to get a few more.


Q. What things can we edit/customize out of the box? (Mizu)

A. You can change the looks of the game quite dramatically with the new and improved skinning system, which allows you not only to replace all the graphical interface elements of the game, but also allows defining different colors used in the different text displays and such. There are numerous places where you can add in your own graphics files such as player pictures for player profiles, team logos for team screens and schedules as well as rink graphics. You can even put in your own goal horns for specific teams.

As for editing, there are some config file commands that allow you to alter some data like affiliations but nothing too specific like player abilities. There are a few fan-based projects to create a proper editor for the game but we don’t have the resources to develop one ourselves with the EHM team at the moment.


Q. I have been wondering how the different ice sizes work. Does players, who are used to big ice have problems adjusting to smaller ice surface in North America (or in the World Cup of Hockey) and vice versa. In addition are all the World Cup of Hockey matches played on small ice surface, because the European group playes in European arenas that use the wide ice surface according to the database. So, does the game logic use small surface in all matches, even in wide ice surface arena, thus downsizing the rink size temporarily or will the game just pick the rink size from the database? (TWolf)

A. The game takes into affect the rink size in the in-game calculations but doesn’t model it too detailed, nor are there detailed calculations for adapting to rink size in particular when moving between continents. This is simply because the current engine can not go into that much detail about the actual physical dimensions of the rink when simulating a game. I’m expecting to make these elements count a bit more once we move onto a real time 2D presentation one day. All games use the rink size from the arena where the game is played, so in World Cup games the rink size is determined by the arena rink size in the database.

Q. Any word on the NA release date or the digital download?

A. The North American release is still planned to take place later this year, around the start of the new season. Naturally with updated data and rules for the new season. As for the digital download, we are finalizing the contracts at the moment and hope to have the game available to be bought online within the next week or so. Keep an eye on www.sigames.com for more updates on this.

I would like to thank Riz for taking the time and answering our questions

I should get back to starting my pens franchise

[Mizu]

:) That answered most of my questions but something else rised up, Risto if you read this and have time to answer...

You mentioned that the North American version will most likely have updated data and rules, what about us Europeans ? Will there be downloadable update ?

[SlapShot]

Good stuff :).

Thanks Riz for being able to do this for us.

[BigE]

Originally Posted by Mizu

:) That answered most of my questions but something else rised up, Risto if you read this and have time to answer...

You mentioned that the North American version will most likely have updated data and rules, what about us Europeans ? Will there be downloadable update ?

The updates coming with the NA release will also be available to those that have already purchased EHM 2005 via a patch download. :)

[Mizu]

Originally Posted by BigE

The updates coming with the NA release will also be available to those that have already purchased EHM 2005 via a patch download. :)

Thanks for your reply. :)

[Cujo_31]

Originally Posted by Rob

Q. How come there is no love for users with the 1024x768 resolution who want window'd mode? (Optikal)

A. The actual game window is 1024x768. To play in windowed mode, you'd need a higher res since a Windows window adds its own graphical elements (the titlebar and the window borders) to the edges of the actual game window. And since the actual game window itself is 1024x768, these elements would make the actual Windows window of the game a few pixels bigger in all directions. Which is why on exactly 1024x768 res it only goes full screen. You can still alt-tab between other apps and the game though.

Does this mean I can play on windowed mode say if I was using a 1280x1024 pixels?? if anyone knows, please let me know, thanks:)

[cujoblue]

Originally Posted by Cujo_31

Does this mean I can play on windowed mode say if I was using a 1280x1024 pixels?? if anyone knows, please let me know, thanks:)

Yup, that's what I do.

[Cujo_31]

Originally Posted by Rob

Yup, that's what I do.

Awesome!! Thanks for the quick response Rob

[Malignant]

I nearly missed this thread.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. However, the last question I sent was never answered. :( Any answer to this would be great...


In the new game do NHL teams ever decide to switch AHL affiliates? Or is this impossible due to the licensing issues?

You can set up an affiliate switch in the config files, but it wont happen in-game without being told to. It's also something you cannot influence yourself in-game