FHM7 Update 7.2.105 Now Available

[JeffR]

The first update for FHM7, version 7.2.105, has just been released.

To apply the update:

-If you are playing the FastSpring version, just download the setup file and install it over your current installation. There is no need to uninstall or unlicense your current copy! However, you should quit the game before installing it, of course.
-If you are playing the Steam version, the game will auto-update if you have that option active. If you don't see the update in your Steam update queue, you may need to exit and restart your Steam client.

Download link for PC (FastSpring):
Main server: PC Installer Fastspring

Download link for Mac (FastSpring):
Main Server: Mac Installer Fastspring

Your existing savegames will be compatible with the updated game, but some of the update's fixes may not retroactively correct certain problems in existing saves.

The change list for this update was somewhat limited by the timeframe involved; for the most part, the changes are things that could be dealt with and tested in a few days, while leaving a couple of days' safety margin before Christmas to deal with any serious, unanticipated issues that might arise. We did manage to take care of quite a few things, though, so we should be in good shape post-holiday to continue fixing outstanding issues, adding new things to the 2D engine, and begin adding new content to the game.

Speaking of which, now that the NHL has announced the format and dates for the upcoming season, we'll start moving ahead with our plans for the "realistic" starting option for 2020-21 season, with the shorter schedules, realignments, and so on. We're hoping to have this ready around the time of opening night, give or take a few days. We should be able to implement most of what the NHL has announced, although we'll probably need to move some dates to match our July 1 season start - with the Stanley Cup scheduled for mid-July, we may just wind up having the in-game start about a month earlier to make everything fit. Some of the reported roster rules, like requiring the teams to carry 3 goalies, may also need to be adjusted to keep the roster AI from behaving oddly.


2D Engine Changes:

-modding the 2D rink for individual teams is now possible: the modded image should have the format rink_team_name.png (e.g. rink_vancouver_canucks.png) and be placed in the \graphics\rink_pics folder of a quickstart or individual save. The image needs to match playfield_0.png precisely in terms of dimensions (2880 x 1344) and the location of on-ice markings, or you'll see players doing things like skating off the ice, apparent offsides not being called, etc.
-fixed the bug that would show the same player being named on every penalty called after an injury occurred
-after switching goalies manually, the original goalie's icon will no longer remain on the ice
-added play-by-play text during shootouts - we're having some issues with the shootout animation at the moment, which will take a little longer to resolve, but right now if you click the Quick button during the shootout it'll advance through each shot, showing you the play-by-play of what happened, and the shootout score will be displayed on the scoreboard
-fixed incidence of brief flickering of players near centre ice when they leave the ice on a line change during play
-slightly slowed players' speed when moving to the bench during line changes
-made the colour of the clock-related numbers (period, clock, penalty clock) slightly different than the score numbers
-fewer players will now get ejected from faceoffs
-raised overall player speed slightly
-the fatigue requirement for lines to get changed before a faceoff was dropped a bit, so there should be more pre-faceoff line changes
-increased speed of dump-ins
-slightly increased fighting/roughing frequency
-increased frequency of icings, offsides, pucks leaving the ice, and dump-ins
-made players less likely to make risky passes on their own side of the ice and in their defensive zone in particular
-several adjustments to pass targeting and the default behaviour of some tactical roles, which were leading to excessive shots for some players

Other Changes:

-the game will now ignore Windows display scaling settings and show FHM in normal size, regardless of what screen scaling Windows is using
-the extra delay on the player popups is gone
-fixed potential crash in late June
-fixed draft crash in custom leagues with only 2 teams
-corrected broken trading deadline in 20-21 for Liiga and National League in standard games
-fixed crash when trying to sign free agents as a German team
-fixed error in 2010 Olympics that could place a team in multiple places, leading to a crash
-fixed potential crash while simming games with classic engine
-fixed Steam Workshop popup being transparent, making it difficult to read
-scouting for WHL/OHL/QMJHL teams should now properly cover prospects for those leagues
-assistant-run scouting for human teams should choose its top regional priority correctly now
-added a dropdown filter to league-scouting-hire scouts, with the 5 Scouting Coverage maps as options (they filter the list to scouts from that area)
-in custom games, players in leagues that a major league doesn't draft from now have their rights set to free for that league, so they can be signed once they're the appropriate age, rather than not being able to go anywhere after their junior career ends
-adjusted top goalie and MVP award calculations
-fixed a bug in the MVP award nominations that would give a nomination to a player who wasn't in the top 3
-captain status will now be recorded in the player career stats for seasons after the game starts
-added playoff versions of team stats.csv and boxscore csv's to the CSV export should be added, as should a playoff version of the boxscore csv's (or include them in the existing boxscore csv's)
-the Goalie Positioning rating on the filter will now work properly, and the skater Positioning filter won't show goalies
-the award ceremony should now appear properly occurring in saves imported from FHM6
-the AI in non-junior leagues will no longer put players on the trading block if their age is <21 (was lowering their trade value, which made it easier to steal good prospects from the AI teams)
-fixed problem where "AI assign scouts" would place regional priorities from one map into another's list, or blank lines on the list
-all NHL RFA's at the start of a new game should now be willing to negotiate with their teams, instead of behaving as it they had already broken off negotiations
-using "Save As" in a historical random debut game will no longer fail to copy some random debut data, leading to extremely small draft classes
-fixed issue with NHL awards ceremony in some historical seasons being before the nominations, leading to all awards being given to a default player
-when starting a Custom Game with any of the NHL options, the team rivalry data no longer gets randomized
-in a Custom Game with the NHL+AHL(+CHL) options, the AHL and CHL teams no longer have 2-5 copies of each staff member
-changing the number of draft rounds in a historical game will no longer result in all non-expansion teams losing their draft picks for that season
-fixed a couple of issues that were restricting NHL teams' ability to reduce cap total when in cap trouble, leading to odd moves (most commonly seen with Tampa Bay in standard games, their salary structure was a perfect fit for a situation that made them unable to reduce their cap hit via trades, leading to odd player movement and releases)
-reduced excessive usage of the Perimeter Shooter tactical role
-added options to the NHL options in custom games to use the initial draft for the NHL and play the NHL, etc. setups with fictional players
-Awards Announcements no longer disappear after the first season in a custom NHL-only game
-attempting to edit a non-active team (found via the team search) will no longer crash the game
-small data update, a few errors fixed and some moves updated (NHL moves are as of December 20)

[hobbitrjw]

lots of issues trying to download this,the download keeps failing,please use a better server.

[Steven547]

This is for FHM 7, right? The exe says FHM6setup.

[landru22]

As the post before said. The link (at least the Fastspring one) is for FHM 6

[toque]

One issue I noticed yesterday (was waiting for the patch to see if it was in the change list), is that the first year of a modern start there's no Train Camp Development Report at the start of the preseason. Simmed to the start of the regular season in a couple saves and never saw it in either

[seven]

Yes, the Fastspring download for Mac is an old FHM6 version.

[JeffR]

Sorry guys, my bad, I copied the header part from the last 6 update and forgot to change the links. It's fixed now.

[Steven547]

Well, this is disappointing. The laggy framerate during the 2D is back again. Had that fixed, but this update brought it back. Ugh. Also feels slower than before.

[Swedishgamefreak]

I could sim one game and then when i tried to sim the next game, it crashed again. Is my save file corrupted or do i have to restart a new save file to make the changes from the patch work?

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by Swedishgamefreak

I could sim one game and then when i tried to sim the next game, it crashed again. Is my save file corrupted or do i have to restart a new save file to make the changes from the patch work?

Try running AI Setup Organization from the Action menu on your roster screen, that should remove the lineup issue that was causing the crash. After doing that, I was able to run your save through several weeks with no crashes.

[scotty]

"Speaking of which, now that the NHL has announced the format and dates for the upcoming season, we'll start moving ahead with our plans for the "realistic" starting option for 2020-21 season, with the shorter schedules, realignments, and so on. We're hoping to have this ready around the time of opening night, give or take a few days."


Please please include automatic Seattle Kraken expansion in this. Its omission at present is a big miss.

[Adam B]

Originally Posted by scotty

Please please include automatic Seattle Kraken expansion in this. Its omission at present is a big miss.

It's pretty simple to do it yourself. I'm not saying it isn't coming (because at some point it is), and I'm not saying it isn't wanted, but I'm not sure it's a "big" miss.

[KevT90]

Originally Posted by Adam B

It's pretty simple to do it yourself. I'm not saying it isn't coming (because at some point it is), and I'm not saying it isn't wanted, but I'm not sure it's a "big" miss.

Also to get Seattle's correct positioning into the entry draft.

[Adam B]

Originally Posted by kevt90

also to get seattle's correct positioning into the entry draft.

100%.

[scotty]

Originally Posted by Adam B

It's pretty simple to do it yourself. I'm not saying it isn't coming (because at some point it is), and I'm not saying it isn't wanted, but I'm not sure it's a "big" miss.

Hi,
I agree it CAN be done (if you want to mess about with league editting every time you reach the end of the 20/21 season). However, many of us just want to play the game without modding and editting things.


FHM has tons of realism built into it - historic rosters going back decades, leagues from all over the world (I'm currently playing MODO in the Swedish 2nd division). Yet you don't automatically include the addition of the 32nd team into the biggest hockey league in the world ?


I view this as a big miss.

[Adam B]

Originally Posted by scotty

Hi,
I agree it CAN be done (if you want to mess about with league editting every time you reach the end of the 20/21 season). However, many of us just want to play the game without modding and editting things.


FHM has tons of realism built into it - historic rosters going back decades, leagues from all over the world (I'm currently playing MODO in the Swedish 2nd division). Yet you don't automatically include the addition of the 32nd team into the biggest hockey league in the world ?


I view this as a big miss.

No.

If you couldn't expand at all, then yes, that's a big miss. Not having automatic expansion right now? Not really. There's nothing stopping you from doing it even if you're playing with MODO.

The fact is the team doesn't exist yet and won't officially exist until their final payment is in in May (at least I think that's the last payment date). Until then, they are suspended from being apart of Board of Governor's meetings or conducting official business. I tend to think of the team more like the unofficial-official John Spanos rule. I get and understand what you're saying, but I disagree. If there was absolutely no way to do it, then yes, that'd be a huge issue.

[Risk2014]

I guess the AHL and ECHL lines were not fixed? As in you can manually control the lines and create your own lines?

[KillerCraig8]

Originally Posted by scotty

Hi,
I agree it CAN be done (if you want to mess about with league editting every time you reach the end of the 20/21 season). However, many of us just want to play the game without modding and editting things.


FHM has tons of realism built into it - historic rosters going back decades, leagues from all over the world (I'm currently playing MODO in the Swedish 2nd division). Yet you don't automatically include the addition of the 32nd team into the biggest hockey league in the world ?


I view this as a big miss.

I think it is a huge miss. It's a GM sim game. The logo is licensed and on the startup menu, yet expansion still defaults to a fake team that needs to be altered in every way. I am a father of three who likes to sit down, sim a few weeks every evening, in a user friendly way, no 2D Pac man games for me. Keep the game simple without the aggravation. I shell out money every year for this and OOTP in hopes of improvements to the basics. More flair is added and the essence of the GM realism stays the same. I guess as a GM purest, I'd rather leave the Mods, Logos, and Colours to the game developers.

Sorry for the rant. I've supported this group ever since EHM hit the road but this is a big miss, especially when everything else during Covid is mediocre.

[jbaxter]

Originally Posted by KillerCraig8

I think it is a huge miss. It's a GM sim game. The logo is licensed and on the startup menu, yet expansion still defaults to a fake team that needs to be altered in every way. I am a father of three who likes to sit down, sim a few weeks every evening, in a user friendly way, no 2D Pac man games for me. Keep the game simple without the aggravation. I shell out money every year for this and OOTP in hopes of improvements to the basics. More flair is added and the essence of the GM realism stays the same. I guess as a GM purest, I'd rather leave the Mods, Logos, and Colours to the game developers.

Sorry for the rant. I've supported this group ever since EHM hit the road but this is a big miss, especially when everything else during Covid is mediocre.

I agree with KillerCraig. If I wanted an in-game experience, I'd stick to EA. I want a GM sim that tests everything I know about hockey, especially the NHL. Having a more responsive financial model and more information flying at me every day (like what I suspect running a team must be like) would be much more enjoyable than trying to figure out how to match lines.

[tward13]

Who says it's just a GM sim game? OOTP isn't, why would you expect the hockey game to be?

If all I had to do was worry about was the price of hotdogs and other financial stuff some want added I'd be out of here. You build your team, and run the team, from the front office and behind the bench. With the option to do as much of those roles as appeals to you.