FHM8 Update 8.4.69 is Now Available

[JeffR]

The third update for FHM8, version 8.4.69, 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


This is our first "content" update for FHM8, adding new features in addition to fixing problems. It's not quite as much as we'd hoped to do this time around; we wanted to get line changes added to the in-game decisions for 2D mode, but that's taking longer than anticipated, so it'll be in the pre-Christmas update about 3 weeks from now.

Current rosters have been added as a starting option; the rosters are as of November 22 (so no new Montreal GM or Pittsburgh ownership yet), but due to the timing of the update we weren't able to do a complete update from the Eliteprospects data this time around (that'll be coming in the next update) so roster changes in lower-level leagues won't be quite as complete as the NHL ones are.

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.

2D changes:

-added historical rink logos for all NHL teams and enabled the standard team_name_year_range.png format for modded arena logos
-enabled modding of deteriorated-ice versions of the rink graphics: rink_team_name.png continues to replace the default ice surface, now rink_team_name_0.png, rink_team_name_1.png, rink_team_name_2.png, and rink_team_name_3.png will show the 3 degraded-ice rinks (see the playfield_*.png images for examples of each level; we also suggest using those as a template)
-overtime goals are now shown in the All Goals view mode (not shootout goals, though; those will hopefully be next, but for now you can see the shootout by switching to full mode)
-fixed issue that was severely limiting the icetime of the visiting team's top defensive pair in 2D mode
-made a number of tactical option-specific changes to player movement choices for the team in control of the puck to get players to follow the team's offensive tactical plan more closely
-decreased chance of rebounds travelling a long distance
-increased preference for open players as passing targets, and tendency of puckhandlers to pass when a target is open
-adjusted scoring chances in high-scoring leagues to produce more realistic goal totals
-improved goalie movement in response to shots and passes
-slightly increased frequency of giveaways, takeaways, and dump-outs
-increased tendency of players to try one-timer shots when close to the net
-slightly decreased player tendency to shoot
-further decreased player tendency to pass again immediately after receiving a pass, particularly in the offensive zone
-once the pregame warmup is begun, the options menu isn't available until it completes (to avoid a freeze caused when switching view modes during the opening animations)
-players will no longer occasionally stay frozen in place after a goal celebration in some view modes
-when switching from all goals/highlights view modes to Full, some the icons for players currently on the ice for both teams will no longer become stuck on the screen until their next shift
-fixed issue that could occasionally result in players staying in place after a goal celebration, when they should have gone off the ice

Other changes:

-added Current roster start option to standard games
-added four new hockey card formats, so there are now separate cards for the following time periods: 1917-1929 (new), 1930-1949 (new), 1950-1969 (new), 1970-1989 (uses the "1980's card" from the release version), 1990-1999 (new), and post-2000 (uses the modern card from the release version.) We're hoping to make the cards fully moddable in either the next update, or the one after that
-the roster screen is will no longer re-sort when clicking the DRE column or on various right-click options
-German promotion/relegation is now enabled: the worst team in the top league is now replaced by the lower league champion
-Suomi-sarja now plays the second part of the split schedule and a two-round playoff (plus pre-playoff) with no final; semifinal winners promoted to Mestis/Suomi-sarja relegation tournament: teams #11-14 in the Mestis and the two Suomi-sarja semifinal winners play home-and-home round-robin tournament; 4 top teams are in Mestis the next season, bottom 2 in Suomi-sarja
-Mestis now has a a pre-playoff, 7v10 and 8v9, to determine who gets the #7 and #8 seeds in the playoffs
-in the Synerglace Ligue Magnus relegation tournament, teams now only start with the records (points, etc.) they had against the 3 other relegation tournament teams
-reduced tendency of teams to increase ticket prices if their price is already above the league average
-reduced costs of High/Very High wage budget options
-adjusted roster AI to increase the frequency of signing free agents during the offseason
-the "Arena Changes" historical editing checkbox should now deactivate all arena changes properly when unselected (some had still been updating)
-the fitness column on the roster screen now sorts properly
-if the owner makes a Special Owner Contribution when the monthly finances are calculated, the GM's job security is now reduced slightly
-fixed crash when attempting to edit imported teams
-adjusted mechanics for AI attempting to sign college players so they're more likely to be able to sign high draft picks out of college
-when NHL teams sign a player from a league with which the NHL has a transfer agreement, the funds from the transfer should now be assigned properly to the other teams' transfer income
-in games started in 1972, players who begin the game in the NHL or one of the nonplayable leagues now have their WHA rights set to Free instead of None
-fixed issue causing some farm team affiliations not to appear in historical games
-when players are called up from a farm team in a playable league, they will no longer retain the training settings they had on the farm team
-the "From-To:" column in the Goalies view for League-History-Player Index no longer cuts off the last two digits of the second year
-fixed issue preventing the "Roy Deal" achievement from completing when trading for some goalies with "Unhappy"-level happiness
-the Signing Deadline column of the Team-Unsigned screen now sorts by date instead of alphabetically
-fixed sorting issues in several columns in the League-Stats-Team stats-Other Ratings screen
-when the user attempts to fire his coach (while in GM-only mode) and the owner refuses to allow it, the user can now override the refusal at a moderate penalty to his job security
-made additional adjustments to AI drafting behaviour, should fix the issue with the AI not taking obvious #1 overall picks, particularly in historical
-if you have the the training screen scrolled down, clicking on a checkbox no longer moves the scroll bar back to the top
-fixed sorting by FO% on League-History-Player index
-after opening a player profile from one of the League-History-Leadeboards subscreens (e.g. Leaderboards-Goals-Career), if you click back (mouse button or the back arrow) it'll no longer take you to a blank screen, rather than the leaderboard you were previously on
-increased the number of unemployed scouts generated at the start of custom games
-changed the U and H headers on the training screen to "Unhappy" and "Level", respectively
-adjusted penalty killing lineup selection to increase preference for players with defensive role types and decrease tendency to use players with offensive role types
-increased the number of AI-to-AI trading attempts on the day of the trade deadline
-fixed error that could cause extremely low ticket prices to decrease below $1, wrapping them around to an extremely high value which led to team revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars
-in historical games with editing turned on and the Team Deactivation option off, teams that play past their historical end date no longer lose their owner
-fixed excessive preference for goalies by the AI in the WHL/OHL/QMJHL drafts
-when a league awards no points for overtime losses, OTL are now included in the regular L column in the autoplay standings screen
-on the Team Info screen's arena section, Luxury Suites, Premium Seats, and Standing Capacity are now listed separately
-on the June 30 Season Score summary, the "Won Championship" status is now also triggered by winning an international tournament
-on the team scouting screen, when viewing the Western Europe map (either on the Scouting or Hire Scouts tab) and clicking on the names of certain scouts, the "Other Europe" countries will no longer disappear from the map
-various text corrections and changes
-fixed potential crash when creating custom games with some combinations of nations and regions
-fixed missing NHL Awards for 20-21 (had been assigned to the (Swiss) National League instead)
-removed Shifts total on the More Leaders screen (which wasn't working correctly for games in 2D mode) and replaced it with Points Per 60 Minutes

[DFyvie]

Awesome! Thanks for the info on line changes!

[JSnow93]

Some of the changes seem like they fix or help the issue where good players go un-signed in free agency?

[Flying_Canuck]

Yay, thanks for the update on deteriorating ice. It's time to make some arena mods

[Risk2014]

Originally Posted by JeffR

The third update for FHM8, version 8.4.69, 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


This is our first "content" update for FHM8, adding new features in addition to fixing problems. It's not quite as much as we'd hoped to do this time around; we wanted to get line changes added to the in-game decisions for 2D mode, but that's taking longer than anticipated, so it'll be in the pre-Christmas update about 3 weeks from now.

Current rosters have been added as a starting option; the rosters are as of November 22 (so no new Montreal GM or Pittsburgh ownership yet), but due to the timing of the update we weren't able to do a complete update from the Eliteprospects data this time around (that'll be coming in the next update) so roster changes in lower-level leagues won't be quite as complete as the NHL ones are.

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.

2D changes:

-added historical rink logos for all NHL teams and enabled the standard team_name_year_range.png format for modded arena logos
-enabled modding of deteriorated-ice versions of the rink graphics: rink_team_name.png continues to replace the default ice surface, now rink_team_name_0.png, rink_team_name_1.png, rink_team_name_2.png, and rink_team_name_3.png will show the 3 degraded-ice rinks (see the playfield_*.png images for examples of each level; we also suggest using those as a template)
-overtime goals are now shown in the All Goals view mode (not shootout goals, though; those will hopefully be next, but for now you can see the shootout by switching to full mode)
-fixed issue that was severely limiting the icetime of the visiting team's top defensive pair in 2D mode
-made a number of tactical option-specific changes to player movement choices for the team in control of the puck to get players to follow the team's offensive tactical plan more closely
-decreased chance of rebounds travelling a long distance
-increased preference for open players as passing targets, and tendency of puckhandlers to pass when a target is open
-adjusted scoring chances in high-scoring leagues to produce more realistic goal totals
-improved goalie movement in response to shots and passes
-slightly increased frequency of giveaways, takeaways, and dump-outs
-increased tendency of players to try one-timer shots when close to the net
-slightly decreased player tendency to shoot
-further decreased player tendency to pass again immediately after receiving a pass, particularly in the offensive zone
-once the pregame warmup is begun, the options menu isn't available until it completes (to avoid a freeze caused when switching view modes during the opening animations)
-players will no longer occasionally stay frozen in place after a goal celebration in some view modes
-when switching from all goals/highlights view modes to Full, some the icons for players currently on the ice for both teams will no longer become stuck on the screen until their next shift
-fixed issue that could occasionally result in players staying in place after a goal celebration, when they should have gone off the ice

Other changes:

-added Current roster start option to standard games
-added four new hockey card formats, so there are now separate cards for the following time periods: 1917-1929 (new), 1930-1949 (new), 1950-1969 (new), 1970-1989 (uses the "1980's card" from the release version), 1990-1999 (new), and post-2000 (uses the modern card from the release version.) We're hoping to make the cards fully moddable in either the next update, or the one after that
-the roster screen is will no longer re-sort when clicking the DRE column or on various right-click options
-German promotion/relegation is now enabled: the worst team in the top league is now replaced by the lower league champion
-Suomi-sarja now plays the second part of the split schedule and a two-round playoff (plus pre-playoff) with no final; semifinal winners promoted to Mestis/Suomi-sarja relegation tournament: teams #11-14 in the Mestis and the two Suomi-sarja semifinal winners play home-and-home round-robin tournament; 4 top teams are in Mestis the next season, bottom 2 in Suomi-sarja
-Mestis now has a a pre-playoff, 7v10 and 8v9, to determine who gets the #7 and #8 seeds in the playoffs
-in the Synerglace Ligue Magnus relegation tournament, teams now only start with the records (points, etc.) they had against the 3 other relegation tournament teams
-reduced tendency of teams to increase ticket prices if their price is already above the league average
-reduced costs of High/Very High wage budget options
-adjusted roster AI to increase the frequency of signing free agents during the offseason
-the "Arena Changes" historical editing checkbox should now deactivate all arena changes properly when unselected (some had still been updating)
-the fitness column on the roster screen now sorts properly
-if the owner makes a Special Owner Contribution when the monthly finances are calculated, the GM's job security is now reduced slightly
-fixed crash when attempting to edit imported teams
-adjusted mechanics for AI attempting to sign college players so they're more likely to be able to sign high draft picks out of college
-when NHL teams sign a player from a league with which the NHL has a transfer agreement, the funds from the transfer should now be assigned properly to the other teams' transfer income
-in games started in 1972, players who begin the game in the NHL or one of the nonplayable leagues now have their WHA rights set to Free instead of None
-fixed issue causing some farm team affiliations not to appear in historical games
-when players are called up from a farm team in a playable league, they will no longer retain the training settings they had on the farm team
-the "From-To:" column in the Goalies view for League-History-Player Index no longer cuts off the last two digits of the second year
-fixed issue preventing the "Roy Deal" achievement from completing when trading for some goalies with "Unhappy"-level happiness
-the Signing Deadline column of the Team-Unsigned screen now sorts by date instead of alphabetically
-fixed sorting issues in several columns in the League-Stats-Team stats-Other Ratings screen
-when the user attempts to fire his coach (while in GM-only mode) and the owner refuses to allow it, the user can now override the refusal at a moderate penalty to his job security
-made additional adjustments to AI drafting behaviour, should fix the issue with the AI not taking obvious #1 overall picks, particularly in historical
-if you have the the training screen scrolled down, clicking on a checkbox no longer moves the scroll bar back to the top
-fixed sorting by FO% on League-History-Player index
-after opening a player profile from one of the League-History-Leadeboards subscreens (e.g. Leaderboards-Goals-Career), if you click back (mouse button or the back arrow) it'll no longer take you to a blank screen, rather than the leaderboard you were previously on
-increased the number of unemployed scouts generated at the start of custom games
-changed the U and H headers on the training screen to "Unhappy" and "Level", respectively
-adjusted penalty killing lineup selection to increase preference for players with defensive role types and decrease tendency to use players with offensive role types
-increased the number of AI-to-AI trading attempts on the day of the trade deadline
-fixed error that could cause extremely low ticket prices to decrease below $1, wrapping them around to an extremely high value which led to team revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars
-in historical games with editing turned on and the Team Deactivation option off, teams that play past their historical end date no longer lose their owner
-fixed excessive preference for goalies by the AI in the WHL/OHL/QMJHL drafts
-when a league awards no points for overtime losses, OTL are now included in the regular L column in the autoplay standings screen
-on the Team Info screen's arena section, Luxury Suites, Premium Seats, and Standing Capacity are now listed separately
-on the June 30 Season Score summary, the "Won Championship" status is now also triggered by winning an international tournament
-on the team scouting screen, when viewing the Western Europe map (either on the Scouting or Hire Scouts tab) and clicking on the names of certain scouts, the "Other Europe" countries will no longer disappear from the map
-various text corrections and changes
-fixed potential crash when creating custom games with some combinations of nations and regions
-fixed missing NHL Awards for 20-21 (had been assigned to the (Swiss) National League instead)
-removed Shifts total on the More Leaders screen (which wasn't working correctly for games in 2D mode) and replaced it with Points Per 60 Minutes

Hey Jeff looks like so many changes. Love it. Can we make game decisions now In AHL or ECHL like we do for our NHL team?

Or will this be included in the next update?

[jumpSeat]

Fired up Steam today and saw the update! Very cool. Thanks again for all your hard work and very much looking forward to the line change option. Cheers.

[RedMachineNeverBreaks]

Hi Jeff, when can we roughly expect special ability and line chemistry edits? Thanks

[TheAlaskan]

Will the adjustment to junior teams and goalie preference in drafts be applied to saved games?

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by TheAlaskan

Will the adjustment to junior teams and goalie preference in drafts be applied to saved games?

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

It should, yes.

[TheAlaskan]

You guys are great!

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

[belial1134]

Originally Posted by JSnow93

Some of the changes seem like they fix or help the issue where good players go un-signed in free agency?

Here's what I'm noticing lately. Some very talented players 4.0 ability+ are getting signed as an unrestricted free agent, but they are signing insanely cheap deals.


A defenseman, although 36 years old, signed a 1 year deal for $750K. His last contract was over 6mil. While I don't expect a contract for an older player to be anywhere near that high, 750K seems awfully low.


Another defenseman who is 27, also signed a 1 yr/$750k contract.
A center who is 30 did the same.
All these players are 4.0 ability.


I see there are also 3 other players who are a 2.5 ability that also signed 750K contracts.


I know there was some talk about UFAs taking less money instead of going unsigned for multiple years, but I wonder if this is a potential bug where all players are taking the same amount instead of a slighty bump for more talented players?


Out of curiosity, I offered a contract to a number of the players who are UFAs and none of the 4.0 or higher players asked for any low contracts. They ranged from 3,950,000 to over 9mil so maybe this is only an issue with AI teams?

[renojedi]

Originally Posted by JeffR

Current rosters have been added as a starting option; the rosters are as of November 22 (so no new Montreal GM or Pittsburgh ownership yet), but due to the timing of the update we weren't able to do a complete update from the Eliteprospects data this time around (that'll be coming in the next update) so roster changes in lower-level leagues won't be quite as complete as the NHL ones are.

When you do these current roster set-ups, do attributes get changed or is it only doing player transactions?

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by renojedi

When you do these current roster set-ups, do attributes get changed or is it only doing player transactions?

Attributes too.

[Risk2014]

Originally Posted by JeffR

Attributes too.

Hey Jeff looks like so many changes. Love it. Can we make game decisions now In AHL or ECHL like we do for our NHL team?

Or will this be included in the next update?