NHL 06; Widescreen Gurus, I beg of you

mva5580 · Post by **mva5580** » 27 Apr 2006, 23:23

PLEASE, there has to be a solution to be able to get this game running in widescreen. Did EA SERIOUSLY create this game to where the resolution could not be altered in ANY way? MVP has been fixed, Tiger Woods, etc., and so many other games, has no one even possibly gotten close to a solution?? I absolutely love this game. Seeing those players stretched like that is getting depressing!!

If there's anyone here who can come up with a solution to this, I'll pay. I'm desperate. I've tried messing with a few things myself, just haven't gotten anywhere though. So I'm putting a bounty out on NHL 06, and if a solution is found, I will gladly pay up.

bcrt2000 · Post by **bcrt2000** » 28 Apr 2006, 10:02

I already posted a possible solution in an old thread, and no one responded to it: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=31716&highlight=#31716

It's been 37 days since I posted that, so either people are way too lazy to try that possible solution, or they didn't care enough to try it.

If that doesn't do the trick, I'm willing to bet it's another variable in the same file, and it may be best to contact the author of that program.

Please respond to this thread or the other thread if you tried it out and it didn't do anything. I might be able to pull some strings and see if someone can figure it out-- I know 2 guys from the NHL community who've made some major programs for the game: Arushan who has made the texture importer, and he also figured out how to hack the game to allow it to run in a windowed mode; and Suchy who created the roster editor.

mva5580 · Post by **mva5580** » 28 Apr 2006, 17:39

Yeah, I messed with that a bit yesterday, and wasn't really able to get anywhere with it. To me, it seems that mod just moves the camera left or right when it comes to the "border" setting of it. It doesn't really alter the view to "stretch" out and fit on a different resolution. I'm with you though, I've gotta think the solution is somewhere in that same file.

If there are any strings you can pull, something, I would appreciate it so much. Maybe I'm just not using that mod the exact right way, but it seems to me that it's just for kind of altering the camera angle and not really changing the resolution quality in any way. But again, I agree that the solution probably lies somewhere in that .viv file or another one similar to it. Thanks man, hopefully we can come up with something.

Gabbo · Post by **Gabbo** » 01 May 2006, 01:24

Unfortunately, it seems that pretty much all of the recent EA sports games have alluded all of us. I tried like hell to edit the .exe of NBA Live 06 to get it to go to widescreen. I know a lot of others have tried too. They simply won't budge from their 4:3 aspect ratios and resolutions. I am guessing you are going to have as tough a time with NHL 06.

EA Sports will hopefully come around to supporting WS as the new consoles are WS native. But then again, it wouldn't surprise me if EA Sports dropped WS support on the PC in titles that support it on the Xbox 360. :evil:

What we need is for 2k games to start making their sports titles for the PC as well so we can all move on and never have to hear "EA Sports.... it's in the game" ever again!

bcrt2000 · Post by **bcrt2000** » 01 May 2006, 17:19

Unfortunately, it seems that pretty much all of the recent EA sports games have alluded all of us. I tried like hell to edit the .exe of NBA Live 06 to get it to go to widescreen. I know a lot of others have tried too. They simply won't budge from their 4:3 aspect ratios and resolutions. I am guessing you are going to have as tough a time with NHL 06.

EA Sports will hopefully come around to supporting WS as the new consoles are WS native. But then again, it wouldn't surprise me if EA Sports dropped WS support on the PC in titles that support it on the Xbox 360. :evil:

What we need is for 2k games to start making their sports titles for the PC as well so we can all move on and never have to hear "EA Sports.... it's in the game" ever again!

In one of the viv files in NHL2006, it controls all of the resolution settings in the game, i'll try to see if I can find out which one it was.

In terms of EA vs. 2K... I have to say I've never liked the gameplay of a 2K game over an EA game.. their sim management parts are always better, but the gameplay isn't always a mix that works unless you are a hardcore gamer who only likes to play by yourself or online (and not with your casual gamer friends). That being said, EA screwed up with NHL 06, the defense and goalie AI was much better in 2005, the only thing that was bad was the magnetic powerful checks. If they had only fixed that and kept the defense/goalie AI intact and not made them dummies, the game would have been great.

I think EA's games will support widescreen next year anyway; I was in downtown Toronto on Friday and I passed this store which was selling a 19" widescreen LCD for like $300 CDN. Now I'm not sure if thats a normal price (I haven't kept up with the hardware market) or if it's a bad quality model, but with prices like that, everyone is eventually gonna go to widescreen in the next few years.

mva5580 · Post by **mva5580** » 01 May 2006, 21:05

bcrt <<<< If you could find out which file that is, I would be sooooooooooooooooo appreciative of it. I was looking like crazy last night and I just can't come up with anything. Please keep me posted!

Also there are A LOT of files at http://www.doubleminor.net that really alter the CPU AI of NHL 06 and make it a MUCH better game. That's really the main reason I'm here, it's such a fun game but it just kills me to see all the players so stretched out! Please keep in touch if you find the proper .viv file!

bcrt2000 · Post by **bcrt2000** » 04 May 2006, 07:40

okay i'm pretty sure it's contained in fmisc.viv (theres a chance I could be wrong?)... again, sorry for the lame ass info, but arushan (the guy who made oedit and fshx) doesn't really remember what he modified in the file and he doesn't have the game anymore.

by the way, arushan also suggests to try hooking the d3d9.dll file.

mva5580 · Post by **mva5580** » 04 May 2006, 20:40

I'll take a look at fmisc.viv tonight, hopefully I can find something.

Also, what do you mean by "hooking?" Not familiar with what you're talking about there.

And also, I have this posted on another forum, and there is this guy who is SWEARING to me that he can play NHL 06 at 1600 x 1200 resolution. He's saying that whatever resolutions are compatible with your monitor, those will show up automatically in game. I'm really having a hard time buying it, is there anyone else who can vouche for this? Basically, is there anyone here who can play this game at a resolution other than 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, or 1280 x 1024? This guy seems pretty convincing to me but I've never heard of anyone else being able to select a resolution by default higher than the 1280.

FramerateUK · Post by **FramerateUK** » 04 May 2006, 20:47

Arent all of EA'as .exe's encrypted anyway?

I tried my best to get Rugby 2006 to work in widescreen but no luck.

You could use Art Money to adjust the variables while the game is running, which would probably work, but its such a time consuming fix thats its not worth the hassle.

mva5580 · Post by **mva5580** » 04 May 2006, 21:04

Arent all of EA'as .exe's encrypted anyway?

I tried my best to get Rugby 2006 to work in widescreen but no luck.

You could use Art Money to adjust the variables while the game is running, which would probably work, but its such a time consuming fix thats its not worth the hassle.

There's always issues with EA's games, but a lot of them have been hacked. IE you could alter the MVP 2005 exe file to work in widescreen, and there were also some things that could be done for Tiger Woods golf to make it work as well.

If this ArtMoney thing would work, I would GLADLY go through the hassle that it takes to get it to work.

FramerateUK · Post by **FramerateUK** » 04 May 2006, 21:33

Check about half way down this page:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/5884

This was the hack for NFS: Most Wanted, but the method for using ArtMoney would be the same, if you follow that, you might get there in the end!

Good luck!

mva5580 · Post by **mva5580** » 05 May 2006, 02:39

UPDATE:

Ok. I tried artmoney on the NHL 06 exe file, and really didn't have any luck there. BUT, I used Biggui to extract the files from fmisc.viv, and I think in there may lie the beginning of a solution. There are files in there called:

"sgsm" going from sgsm - sgsm4 and "sgsmw" with the same ranges. There is also a file called sgsmFE. I haven't figured out that file yet but it also may be important. All of those files essentially say the same thing, and they include resolution information. Here is an example, file sgsm1:

DeviceWidth 800
DeviceHeight 600
BackBufferFormat PC_X8R8G8B8
DepthBufferFormat PC_DBTYPE_DEPTHSTENCIL_32BIT
EnableVsync true
Windowed false

now. I went into this file and altered the DeviceWidth and Height to 1680 x 1050 respectively. Odd thing is, it just seems to shrink that resolution into a window on my monitor, although parts of the game still attempt to show up in the non-windowed portion. Example would be that on ice gameplay goes on in the window, but if a penaly is called, the penalty information still tries to display at the bottom of the screen where there isn't any gameplay. I also tried the 1280 x 1024 file like this, and while it comes closer to filling up the entire screen, it still doesn't seem to me like it's actually changing the resolution.

So at this point, I'm a bit happier because we might actually be getting somewhere, but still not quite sure where to go from here. I'll keep messing around with it, but if any other NHL 06 users are desperate to get this working, download biggui and extract all the files in fmisc.viv, and see if we can't get this thing figured out. Thanks for all your continue input!

mva5580 · Post by **mva5580** » 05 May 2006, 08:02

I've decided to upload an image so people can see what I'm talking about. This is what I get in the gameplay, with these exact settings for the file sgsm3.cfg:

DeviceWidth 1680
DeviceHeight 1050
BackBufferFormat PC_X8R8G8B8
DepthBufferFormat PC_DBTYPE_DEPTHSTENCIL_32BIT
EnableVsync true
Windowed false

And here is what you get with those settings in game:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/mva5580/NHL06.jpg

mva5580 · Post by **mva5580** » 28 May 2006, 03:00

I'm gonna give this a bump up to see if anyone else could get any further than I have? It's so, so terribly depressing that it just doesn't seem possible to get this game in widescreen =(

Flashman · Post by **Flashman** » 29 May 2006, 06:05

I'm afraid this is a bit beyond me, but the screen looks like the only option you came across to edit was the menu/overlay option, and the rest of the game displays as normal.

bcrt2000 · Post by **bcrt2000** » 03 Oct 2006, 20:30

No, these are definately the resolution settings. Perhaps a certain combination of an acceptable resolution, backbufferformat, and depthbufferformat could get it running in widescreen.

Widescreen Gaming Forum