Complete Modded Nhl 2004 Links/installation Info, Everything in 1 post /preview of the mod

Click the thumbnails to see the interface previews in full size:







CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE SCREENSHOTS OF THE REBUILT GAME

Gameplay previews (jerkiness caused by YouTube). Watch in HQ.


Excerpts from a full exhibition game PIT-BOS (8 min. periods, penalties at 3):



ELITSERIEN PREVIEW, DEL PREVIEW.

INTRODUCTION TO MODIFIED NHL 2004 (instructions will follow):
================================================

Yes we know Ernest... most of us own consoles and many NG hockey games. I have them all (save NHL 2k9 and the newest NHL 10 from EA).

I admit it might sound weird for people who have been brainwashed to "newest is always better", or "play it for a year and throw it away" mentality. That's pretty much how the gaming communities have always behaved. I always thought this game is the "million monkeys thing" for EA... they actually made a superb PC sports simulation for once (well, MVP 2005 is another). Who forces you to play and modify the newest one anyway? Personally, I'd much rather stick with the best one.

But since you asked, I try to explain the main reasons (Of course 2004 has some shortcomings but I only concentrate on the good points here).

- Agility. In my opinion, no other hockey game has as realistic player movements. Yes, they have skating engines that are visually more pleasing but in our mod, with zeroed player agility, you'll get a noticeable "slide" when you stop the skating from full speed, and it also increases the amazing board play. And board play is not there "just for the sake of it"... it's an actual & important gameplay element. I think both of these features are unique among hockey games.

Performing 360 degree turns on the ice is pretty realistic as well. In many other hockey games (esp. 2k games, EA next-gen games are much better in this regard) players are able to make that full turn at insane speeds. If you compare standard video hockey game to an actual hockey broadcast, you're bound to realize how stupid those games look... players move and behave like robots (or Duracell-bunnies). Some people claim that modded 2004 controls become "unresponsive" because of the low agility. To each their own of course, but I don't know how people refuse to see that terrible and fundamental flaw in gameplay... those ultra-agile players, non-existant slide in skating and the superfast body movements. Anyway, for many of us this "sloppy player response" is yet another thing that we like about 2004.

- Reduced puck control. This is another notorious problem with ALL hockey games... yes, even with 2004. And our manually zeroed puck control is still too strong. The puck is too much "glued to the stick" when you carry it.

But at least you're not able to make those circles on the ice while simultaneously maintaining 100% flawless puck possession. The forechecking ai is very strong on 2004... it hits you, poke checks you, hooks you, and simply takes the puck away when you're trying to make fancy moves with an average player. In real hockey there isn't much time to figure skate in the offensive zone... and especially not in front of the opposing teams' goal.

Zeroed puck control increases "sloppy" neutral zone play too, which actually happens a lot in real hockey. Real hockey isn't constant dekes and gigantic, bone crushing hits. In my view, there must be certain amount of sloppiness and uncontrollable "bouncing" when the players receive the passes or fight for the puck possession. If you watch the embedded gameplay clip from 2:00 to 2:30, you'll see that poke check is very heavy and useful tool to defend and forecheck, and enables this mod have more of just that... occasional bad passes & realistic general "sloppiness" (for both player and CPU).

- More challenging passing game. In many hockey games you can make those previously mentioned sick turns on the ice and simultaneously throw perfect passes at full speed, even behind your back! That's simply ridiculous... it's not going to happen in this mod.

- Best interface in any non-manager sports game. This is a bold statement but it's easily backed up... you only have to look at the previews above. And it's constantly developing. How does "write your own hockey game" sound? Well, at least it's partially true with 2004... there are virtually no limits at all what we can add to the html-based frontend. Personally, I find this extremely fascinating.

Statistics are very important part of hockey. Following the simulated games and team reports, injuries, etc. is a big part of genuine season "atmosphere" and fun. In newer EA games you can't even see the basic game boxscores. Not from your own games, let alone from the simulated ones. Our mod has pretty much all imaginary statistics available, plus an automated boxscore extractor which saves every single user played game (full scoring & penalty summary & player/goalie stats) to your \stats folder. You can maintain a perfect "season archive" this way, and go back and see what happened in your old season games. Show me a better and deeper interface in ANY (non-manager) sports game and I'll show you a three legged woman.

- Challenge. There are always countless ways to make this game more challenging. Through roster tweaks, from player/cpu advantage slider or from AI. You can never master this game fully. There is the one-timer goal which is the best way to score in 2004, but when the pass interception level and pass assistance have been reduced accordingly, even those are tough to execute. There is a surprising amount of different ways to score in 2004, as long as the goalie attributes have been properly set. The game is pretty hard and genuinely challenging (without being unfair). That's probably the biggest reason why this game has maintained its popularity and cult following, and even dramatically increased it lately. It's the same reason why PES 5 & 6 are preferred over the fancier looking new titles. It's called "artificial intelligence" = ai. We think that NHL 2004 ai is unique and it completely "stands out" from other EA PC titles. It's also extremely reponsive to all kinds of tweaks... that's why we chose to build our efforts around it. It's far from perfect and the game shows its age in certain departments (mostly in stuff like replays and goalie animations, etc.)... and there are no absolute truths about "best hockey game"... but for us it's the best and most realistic "overall package" from all available titles.

- Friendships. I doubt there is another sports game title (besides MVP 2005 baseball) that has as dedicated and passionate group of contributors. I think it's safe to say that we have completely transformed this game, and have had TONS of fun during the process. Of course a lot of credit and thanks go to the original Superpack creators, original interface contributors... and geniuses like Egorgiy and vod, and the whole NHL 09 community. And of course my old pal Randy with whom I started tweaking and adjusting hockey games nearly a decade ago.

- Adjustability. Besides adjusting rosters with a gamepad you can't make any serious mods to a console game. You're in the mercy of the gaming companies. We don't really like that... our mod gets new stuff and updates virtually every day. And it's nice to have superb interface, all genuine rosters, jerseys, ices, boards, team specific genuine musics and countless of other features that console games can never offer.

- Feeling. I was a hockey defenseman... a bad one... but good enough to stay in the local junior leagues up until I was 17... and I played in our local "beer leagues" after that. I know hockey and I'm not stupid enough to claim that any video game could represent the sport ultra realistically... just like all sports simulations, 2004 has many glaring flaws... but trust me, I have played them all for PC and consoles... but in 2004 there's just something that you can't put your finger on... you can list the flaws as much as you want, but for me it has always been the only game that has the "hardcore balls-to-the-walls hockey feel". I still find it extremely fun and challenging. But don't take my word for it... try it. If you don't have the game, pm me and I might give you a good tip where to find the base game real cheap.



GETTING STARTED
==============

Read everything extra carefully and double check before you post about problems. 99% of the problems occur because people don't read the instructions properly. 99% of the addons have instruction txt files inside them. DON'T BE IN A HURRY! You gotta accept that downloading and installing everything properly takes several hours.

All files have been compressed with WinRAR. In order to get them work, you have to uncompress the files to their respective folders. i.e TRANS.RAR -> TRANS.VIV. Some users report that WinZIP doesn't extract these files correctly, so always use WinRAR.


Before we start:
DO NOT INSTALL THE GAME TO DEFAULT \Program Files path! Use something simple as D:\nhl 2004. This is because the interface might have difficulties to handle the long paths with spaces for some users. All "path not found" errors are caused by this and the whole mod won't even work with Windows7 if it's in that default path. Just don't do it...!!


SECOND: NEVER, EVER INSTALL ANYTHING "FOREIGN" OUT OF THIS STICKY. NO EA OFFICIAL PATCHES, NO OTHER ADDONS, NO NOTHING. Don't be a moron and "fix" things that don't need fixing. It's extremely delicate package. If you break the mod with your soloing (installing foreign patches, etc.), you can only blame yourself for your stupidity.

THIRD: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, INSTALL THE ANCIENT "SUPERPACK" from the download sites over these addons. It will take your NHL 2004 back to stoneage. I intially downloaded the SuperPack when Abba was just starting and Phil Collins still had lots of hair. Seriously, it was a great package and a legendary creation, but now outdated, and it doesn't contain anything that these following updates don't have.

FOURTH: Play the game using the "medium" difficulty setting. AI is very good in medium, and playing with the most difficult setting will not make the game more challenging. Au contrary, it only increases agility, gamespeed and boost (which will immediately increase seasoned NHL-players' advantage over the AI). Superhuman player agility and game speed have always been the biggest problems in all EA games... and those exact two things that have always been our priority to reduce, so don't increase those game characteristics by playing with "pro". Believe me, the game WILL get even more challenging as the season goes on, and medium with right AI is difficult enough for most. If you're a "super player", there are many things that you can tweak in your own teams' season roster with NHLView to add even more challenge. Switching to "pro" is not the solution. Trust me on this, we have played & tweaked this game for over 5 years.

Big thanks to all ultra talented addon makers (too many to list here) to make this amazing game possible!


STEP BY STEP INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE NEWBIES WITH COMPLETE LINKS TO EVERYTHING YOU NEED:
==========================================================================================

REQUIRED FILES & ACTIONS:


1. Install the game and start it once to the interface.
You need to do this, so the game creates the default My Documents folders for NHL 2004.

2. Load full rebuilt interface VERSION 5.2 HERE. (update 27. January 2010) Major Internet Explorer 8 fix...!!

No bat files, unrar everything to your main \nhl 2004 game directory. Rewrite over the old files when queued. WinZip won't extract the interface properly. Use WinRAR!

This interface update includes

-All member made html additions ever created.
-Endless replay patch
-Vod's music mod (team specific music for every team)
-Gameclock selector and new gameclocks
-Poro24's ESPN menu graphics & updated menu logos
-New arena previews for NHL, SM-liiga, Elitserien & DEL
-New torfs
-actor.viv, players.viv & trans.viv (new referees, ingame logos, etc.)
-automatic boxscore saving to \nhl 2004\stats\ folder (Egorgiy). This allows you to archive your season and post your game stats to season report threads like this, by using the [dohtml][/dohtml] code with the html box score table.
-NHL 2004 no-cd EXE
-Full DEL & SMliiga (leagueloader.exe by Egorgiy) 3 points for win...!!


Please note that Project1.exe, RusPatch.exe and teammusic.exe have to be trusted/approved programs in your AntiVir/Firewall programs so they won't get blocked and prevent the game from working!


3. Go back to the Windows and load a PNHL-compatible Flyermania roster

Currently the most updated one is HERE. Updated 7.February, 2010.

Now, pay attention! Badly installed rosters is the most common problem when the game isn't working. Period. You have to do it right so once again, pay serious attention to this:

The *.exh and *.exha files inside the rar package go to C:\My Documents\NHL 2004\DB folder (Vista: C:\Users\[username]\Documents\NHL 2004\DB), and the file db.viv goes to the actual game install folder, which is (default) C:\Program Files\ea sports\nhl 2004\db\, which is not recommended. Use a short path like D:\nhl 2004.

When you start a season/dynasty, ideal settings are PERIOD LENGTH: 6, PENALTIES: 3. ALWAYS USE "MEDIUM" DIFFICULTY!

In order to work, the PNHL/Flyermania rosters need a new arena.viv-file, and vice versa. They're both "dependent" of eachother. The most common sympton of badly installed rosters/lack of new arena viv is that the game halts and will continue to load forever in the game preview screen.

But no stress... you don't have to start the game yet. Read on...

Copy the file "trents ai settings.ai" from the roster rar package to C:\documents and settings\nhl 2004\ai

Some users may have to create that AI folder manually. To be exact, Vista users don't have \My Documents\ folder... it's called C:\Users\"User Name"\Documents\NHL 2004\ai

Now start the game again and go to the options -> AI. You have to load that particular AI-file (trents ai settings.ai). You have to load this (or your own) AI setting every time once, when you start a new season or dynasty.

Now you have rosters and AI installed. Don't start the game yet, because the new arena.viv isn't installed yet. Now let's go back to the desktop and


4. Load facepacks (Updated 2. January 2010)

NOTICE THAT THERE ARE 2 PACKAGES... menufaces and ingame faces!!!

- Download menufaces HERE. and unrar to your \nhl 2004 folder.
- ingame faces are HERE. Note: gamedata.viv goes to \nhl 2004\ugi folder.


5. Load arena.viv HERE. (Updated 31. January, 2010)

UnRAR the file to \nhl 2004\gamedata\ folder directly over the old file


6. Load masks.viv HERE. MIRROR. Updated December, 22 2009.

UnRAR it to \nhl 2004\gamedata\ folder, over the old file.


7. Load scripts.viv HERE. MIRROR.

Same thing. UnRAR to the gamedata folder.


8. Load jerseys.viv HERE. Updated 7.February, 2010

Unrar to \nhl 2004\gamedata.


9. Load new goal horns HERE. MIRROR. Update 1st of September, 2009

UnRAR the package to your \nhl 2004 folder and overwrite everything. They won't work before you set ingame music = imported from your game interface sound options.


10. Load new commentary/pbp file HERE. MIRROR. Updated 31.October, 2009.

UnRAR the contents of the RAR package to your \NHL 2004 game folder.

This gives you completely new commentary, thanks to Vosto and Spy everything has been ripped from NHL 09.


11. Download FACE2004.VIV HERE. Updated 1. February, 2010.

These are the cyberfaces. UnRAR to your \nhl 2004\gamedata folder.

Download a playoff beard/regular season cyberface selector by Spy here. (optional)



OPTIONAL FILES:

Some great additions (not necessary, but very nice to have):


DITTIES AND MUSIC:

CAPTAIN MAZDA'S FULL DITTY PACK. Amazing, complete ditty pack for 2004 which supports vod's individual team specific goal song mod.

Some generic, typical NHL game organ music/ditties here.

You can get these working ONLY when you have game music = imported in your sound options. Unzip to folder C:\documents and settings\nhl 2004\user\ditties\

Load GOAL AWAY-music HERE. Typical songs from NHL when the visiting team scores. Unrar to the ditties folder: GOAL AWAY.

Load all NHL & SM-liiga goal songs for each team HERE. and unrar the package to your C:\documents and settings\ea sports\nhl 2004\user\ditties\ folder. Thanks to vod's goal song mod, the game is now able to play them individually for all teams.

Load DEL goal songs here and Elitserien goal songs here.

Load nice and realistic crowd noise for the fights HERE. Save to C:\documents and settings\nhl 2004\user\ditties\fights folder.

Load PENALTY HOME and PENALTY AWAY ditties HERE. Unrar the *.asf files to the respective DITTIES folder.

Load PUCK OVER GLASS ditties HERE.

New menu interface music: ESPN, Versus, NBC, ABC, NHL2Night, etc. DOWNLOAD NEW MENU TUNES HERE and extract into your \nhl 2004\feaudio folder, over the old files.

Some team specific END_OF_PERIOD musics here.


ADDITIONAL MISC. FILES:

!!! IMPORTANT: IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THE DYNASTY MODE READ THIS:

Jumbotrons, heavy ice textures, new nets, etc. tend to overload the arena.viv file so much that it can create occasional crashes for some users. However, this problem isn't present in the season/exhibition mode, only the dynasty games are affected (for whatever reason). THIS file will revert back the old simple jumbotrons and should fix all issues. Report all possible problems in this thread.

HDR Mod makes NHL 2004 graphics jump to the next decade. Amazing little mod. Simply extract to your main game installation folder and play with the ini settings if you want to tweak it to more your liking (with Notepad). Download HDR mod. You need at least somewhat modern machine for this mod + a decent graphics card (it won't run smoothly with an integrated POS). If your performance isn't sufficient and you get a jerky gameplay, simply remove the two small files (that come with this RAR package) from your installation folder.

Alternative interface. This version uses NHL.com skins and graphics instead of ESPN. Download HERE. The interface is outdated and doesn't have the same features as the ESPN version.

Alternative player indicators. Download here, unRAR to your game folder and run PlyrInd.bat.

Load CgyFlames' awesome 3d-crowd (fanvamp) HERE.

Read the instructions from the *.txt file and run the exe files in your \nhl 2004\ main game folder. These executables allow you to alternate between regular season and playoff fans. The regular season fans are installed in the arena.viv as a default.

Get NHL 2004 stats exporter HERE. Allows you to extract all stats from your season roster and archive the data to word processor format.

Get all no-CD EXE files (v1.0...v1.03) from Gamecopyworld HERE. Again, don't use 1.04. These might come in handy for people who have weird crashing problems.

Get invisible player indicator by krt here. Enables some really wild and different gameplay.

PS: All files are 100% compatible and tested with the Flyermania/PNHL roster.



TIPS & MISC. INFORMATION:

TO VISTA USERS: Reports say that NHL 2004 works well with Vista, and directly for most... but if the game halts to the white blank screen, you can try right clicking over the NHL2004.EXE and check compatibility mode to XP -> run the file as administrator. This fixed my brother's 32-bit Vista install. Please note what I wrote earlier about game installation path as well.

This post contains links to absolutely every significant in-game addon for NHL 2004.

At this point I highly recommend that you save your fully rebuilt NHL 2004 game directory to a DVD. It's very easy to just "copy over" the original game install (if you have to format your hard drive/change machine/OS in the future).

Congratulations, now you should have the best hockey game for PC properly installed.


TIPS TO MAKE THE GAME MORE CHALLENGING FOR THE "SUPER PLAYERS":

1. Play with manual line changes!!! I can't stress enough how important this is. You'll get an immediate challenge boost + much better atmosphere. One of the few AI issues with 2004 is that the goalies don't close the puck enough and create enough breaks. Breaks are part of hockey and increase the realistic atmosphere. Playing with manual line changes cause your lines to fatigue, and thus will also increase the occasional need of icing and closing the puck with your goalie (when you don't have a chance to switch lines).

2. Go to NHLView and open your season roster (*.sea). Then set the faceoff attribute to 50 from all your players. It's too easy to win faceoffs against AI and this definitely fixes the problem.

3. Give one click of boost advantage for the CPU. The interface remembers this setting as long as you set it again. This is an excellent setting for advanced players. Press <PLAY> -> and go to the <STARTING LINEUP> from the menu and set the advantage (-1 for the player).

4. Set the pass assist all the way to 0 if you find scoring from one-timers too easy.

And don't forget: Have fun!

THAT's what I call comprehensive.

Great instructions, but this is confusing some people.

There is actually 4 .bat files:

PNHL_Patch_DynastyIce
PNHL_Patch_HiResIce
PNHL_Patch_PNHLGoalies
PNHL_Patch_StandardGoalies

Do all of these have to be installed?

Also over at Sportsgamer, there are updated arenas (for 05-06 I think) that have nicer, more accurate, jumbotron models for the NHL teams. Like you said, the PNHL stuff is way out dated.

I think I'm going to start over to install all this stuff though WOW. I want the goal replays patch.

I've un-stickied the other threads and stickied this one for easier use.

Thanks guys. Please let me know about all possible NHL 2004 updates, and I will keep them in this one post. Keeping absolutely everything in one post is the best way (imho).

Are there alternative cyberfaces, besides Jimbo's? Jimbos pack is utterly awesome but according to many at FHR, it causes the game to crash. Same for me... lots of crashes when I try to start an exhibition game... even when I try to launch with Jimbos own roster set. Buffalo, Florida and Boston home games seem to be problematic for some reason. Weird thing is that when you start a season with any of those teams and play a home game, no problem. But the exhibition games won't work (for me).

And immediately, when I put the old cyberpack in (spy/krt), everything works like a Swiss watch. It's possible that's just my system/ game setup though.

Randy, you can also remove the pbp sticky thread as this has links to pbp. Sticking the same info twice is just confusing.

@Poro: Yeah... I believe all PNHL files have to be installed. I recall you didn't get it working at FHR without them, either. I'm not 100% sure about this, because it's been ages since I installed my game from the scratch.

Edit: Ah, I read it sloppily. I didn't notice that there are even more PNHL *.bat files (hires ice).

Can someone confirm what PNHL files need to be installed.

Thanks.

The PNHL files I installed were:

* PNHLR_DynastyIce.zip
* PNHLR_StandardGoalies.zip
* PNHLR_StandardModels.zip
* PNHLR_ StandardUniforms.zip

These are the files that will make 2004 run smoothly on older systems. Higher-res stuff may work, but also increases the odds of crashes happening.

Done.

Thanks R.

I updated the post. I think it should be error-free now. I also made some sort of an introduction.

hey trent thanks for the step by step process it's been a while since i had to reinstall 04 these steps made it much easier.......i have one question where you able to get the Jeebus calendar patch to work with the replay addon it seems to me one will work over the other ....if you were able to get both working what steps did you take to make this happen?....... talk to later

Hi Cornuto... cool to see you back man... I use a combination of all three interface addons: Branchifequals, Delyno's 1.5 + Trade Patch 1.7, which gives me all possible goodies, including those super cool player cards when you double click any player in the "Player stats" section. Download my interface here

There's one small problem though... it creates a few script errors in the dynasty mode. I think they're harmless functionally. It also creates a script error in the season mode when I click "trade player", although the function works perfectly. The dynasty menu looks absolutely stunning in Delyno's 1.5 as well.

My js/html pack has been set to work with the replay patch + 1.00 no-cd NHL2004.EXE from Gamecopyworld. You have to install the replay patch before you overwrite these js/html folders of course.

I only play the season without cpu trades (always have), so everything works perfectly for me. Delyno's calendar looks stunning with those team logos and all. If someone knows how to remove those 2-3 script error messages from the dynasty mode, this is the best possible pack we can get (for now).

It complains about "RatingIcon1 = undefined" in the html/js files, but I can't find that text string from anywhere. But hey... I'm just a clueless schmuck. It'd be amazing if someone could fix this... then we'd have a perfect interface pack with all imaginable interface features installed in one.

As I've said many times, a html/java guru is needed now... I have many ideas how to improve the interface even further. Someone with html knowledge could add virtually anything there... like "NHL Player of the Week" announcements, even more detailed game stats, etc. Stuff that Branchifequal, Delyno, Jeebus and others made are just amazing... and proves that only sky is the limit with this game. The newer ones are impossible to modify, because all menus are console code.

I can be wrong here but don't we need ea's official 1.04 patch in order to get PNHL addons to work properly ?

Edit: Nevermind should have read better

There are no instructions in the file so it could be an idea to add somes because for thoses who inatall such things for the first time it's... well you know.

As well as for the team logos no instructions there either.

masks.viv file link updated with Jimbo's goalie equipment.

Should work directly, without any hassle. I will check that every single goalie have the right equipment numbers in my next roster update.

Download the new masks.viv file now from the initial post (if you didn't have Jimbo's goalies before).

@BillHABS: I agree. I will add instructions into both of those, and will upload to my filefront. logos should be updated anyway as ANA and BUF are outdated in the old packages. Thanks for the feeback, will fix this asap.

All this is great, but what about official Online League patch can only be installed on 1.04 version? That sounds like the reason to install 1.04 for me.