Welcome to my home page. Here you will find the latest news, programs and tools for my favourite games, such as NHL Hockey by EA Sports and Grand Theft Auto by Rockstar North.

NEWS

January 2, 2013

Happy New Year everyone, especially to those who still visit this page. One day it will happen - new NHLView will see the light of day. Today is not that day, but some exciting news does come for PS3 owners. Recent developments in PS3 reverse engineering made it finally possible to decrypt and re-encrypt roster save files for NHL 11, 12 and 13 (previous save games were not encrypted). Now the only real obstacle left is time.
In the meantime, I created a poll in the forum to help me evaluate how many people play the game on various platforms. Please cast your vote, you do not even need to be registered (although I would appreciate if you do, or at least log-in if you have an account). Thank you.

October 8, 2011

The forum has moved to a new location. Please Ctrl-F5 this page if you still see the old URL.

September 30, 2011

I know there hasn't been a lot of updates in a while, but there are a couple of good reasons for it. Firstly, I tore my ACL last winter and only now I have a feeling that I recovered well enough from the surgery to resume playing sport and other everyday activities. Now I know first-hand what all those players go through - and it ain't pretty. Secondly, and more importantly, me and my wife had a son just a month ago. Isn't he cute:
As for software updates, I have a somewhat unexpected release. StrEdit 3.0 has been released with an update that was due a long time ago. With this version you can finally modify string hash values which will allow you, among other things, to change team abbreviations in the front-end. Visit the page of StrEdit to see the screenshot of Atlanta Thrashers changing its name to Winnipeg Jets in my installation of NHL 09. The process is not super obvious, but I described it as well as I could in the readme. Maybe eventually it will make its way into NHLView.
As for NHLView NG progress, I have nothing new to report really. I do not unfortunatelly have enough time at the moment to keep working on it. One day, one day...

February 11, 2011

Here is an update on what's going on with NHLView NG and related research: I'm sure a lot of PS3 owners have heard of a little project called PSGroove which, with help of some other tools, allows you to copy your Blue-ray game onto external hard drive and play the game off it. One nifty thing about this process is that files are stored on the hard drive unencrypted which means one can freely look at them. This is of great help for NHLView NG research because it turned out that EA left the whole DB structure metadata on NHL11 BD. With this information I now have complete description of roster format. This information may even help uncover the meaning of some previously unknown fields from PC rosters. I present you this screenshot of a development build of TDBView which has NHL11 default roster open along with metadata information:
Now, this does not solve the problem of NHL 11 saves being encrypted so save files can still not be edited; however, it opens the possibility of modifying the default (and consequently exhibition) roster for PS3 users who are willing to use PSGroove. In any case, I'm working with the assumption that it will be eventually possible to easily extract the roster and pack it back on PS3 (this is already the case in NHL10 and below). Roster extraction is not the main focus of NHLView NG development; having the roster file I'm concentrating on adding support for editing of its main constituents: players, teams and line ups. Hopefully by then there will be tools to integarte the modified rosters in the game. Now that PS3 is wide open, this is not far fetched. Good job PS3 homebrew community, maybe we'll see NHL modding days resurrect with vengence! I certainly hope so.
In other news, forum has been cleaned up. Sorry for the mess, I have little time these days to keep it clean on a regular basis.

September 17, 2010

I just got my copy of NHL 11 for PS3 today. It's sad, but unfortunately this year the roster files are encrypted and therefore cannot be either edited or even copied between two consoles. So no NHLView for NHL 11. I will however keep working on the editor for NHL 10 as time permits.

April 12, 2010

For those who've been wondering waiting for updates, I'm finally at a stage where I can post one. With NHL franchise dead on PC, it is unlikely NHLView will keep evolving. That doesn't mean however that new versions of NHLView are not going to be released in the future. I'm working on adding support for Next-Gen platforms: PS3 and Xbox 360. I've made some progress in the last few weeks: NHLView can now read players, teams and rosters (including free agents). It's far from being ready, but here are some screenshots of progress to date.

May 22, 2009

NHLView 6.1.5.22 released. New release concentrates on bug fixing based on reports in the Forum. I also included a new Rules & Options Editor, although it is incomplete. A complete changelog can be found in the read me inside the archive.

December 24, 2008

NHLView 6.0.12.24 released. I apologize for the delay, but hopefully new features will be worth the wait. One of the new cool features of NHLView is its ability to preview in-game graphics and play-by-play. Enjoy and Merry Christmas to everybody. As usual you can leave the bug reports in the Forums.

October 27, 2008

Updated Key Remapper to work with NHL 09.
Starting from this year, none of the newer programs will support Windows 9x. Key Remapper is the first one.

April 15, 2008

My hosting provider has been moving to a new platform lately so some things might not have worked as expected, but everything is back to normal now. In particular, the forum is functioning properly again and those of you who received Trojan warning in the antivirus by visiting the site should be fine now. Big thanks to Dan Sgambelluri for the heads up!

February 12, 2008

Just to update you on lack of updates: I'm still working on the next version of NHLView. It takes longer than I expected because I've been caught up in work and personal matters.

November 25, 2007

NHLView 5.0.11.25 released. This is mostly a bug fixing release from reports that I received in forums. No new features were added in this release; however, next version will have a very interesting new feature. Check these News for updates. Thanks to everybody who took time to report the problems.

October 27, 2007

NHLView 5.0.10.27 released. Added support for NHL 08 and some new cool features such as draft pick trading in dynasties. Note that if you used a temporary trick to rename nhl2008pc.tdb to nhl2007pc.tdb to load db.viv, please remove nhl2007pc.tdb from db.viv. Otherwise, NHLView will detect the roster as NHL 07. As always, leave bug reports in the forum.

September 14, 2007

Updated Key Remapper to work with NHL 08.

September 10, 2007

The forum has been upgraded to PhpBB 3 Release Candidate 5. I hope this will slow down the amount of spam on the forum. Also the URL of the forum has been changed, it is now http://www.artemkh.com/board. Please update your bookmarks.
With regards to NHLView for NHL 08, I do not have any updates. Once the game is released, I will post an announcement regarding my plans to support it.

September 19, 2006

StrEdit 2.0 released. This program allows you to edit text files of NHL games from NHL 98 to NHL 07.

September 17, 2006

TDBAccess 2.7.9.17 released. Fixed a serious bug where writing a value bigger than field size could cause values in other fields of the same record to be overwritten. All users are advised to upgrade.
NHLView 4.0.9.17 released. Fixed miscellaneous bugs reported for NHLView 3.2, 3.3 and 4.0.9.16.
NHLView 4.0.9.16 released with NHL 07 support. Use with caution and report bugs in the forum.
Updated Key Remapper to work with NHL 07. It will not allow you to revert Pass/Switch Player functionality, just assign any key to already defined actions.
Just so you know, Stream Editor for NHL06 seems to work with NHL 07 as well.

June 27, 2006

Small intermediary CSS changes to the site. This is not what I meant by design change yesterday. A whole new layout will be done shortly.

June 26, 2006

The site has permanently moved to this new address: www.artemkh.com. Moreover, it will soon undergo a design change. I have not been updating the site much ever since I started working, so some fresh look-and-feel to go along with the new domain will do good.
On NHL side, there will probably not be many updates until NHL 07 is out.
GTA: Liberty City components updated for developers looking to join the community effort.
GTA: Vice City version detection library added. It is required for LC components to work.

January 2, 2006

Before I go back to by winter hibernation, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year 2006. To celebrate the occasion, NHLView 3.3 has been released. While I didn't focus a lot on smaller reported bugs, I did introduce two new features in this version. You can now edit player's career stats as well as team strategies. Also, I added an option to synchronize static player pool with exhibition player pool in NHL06. This should reduce (although probably not eliminate) the number of problems people had with dynasties.
Meanwhile the alert of TDBAccess and .NET 2.0 turned out to be false. You can use the current version of the library with the new Microsoft platform.
Finally, I'd like to apologize for the lack of e-mail and forum support from my side in the last few months. I'll try to reply to the messages I received shortly.

December 4, 2005

It appears that TDBAccess is not compatible with .NET 2.0. I will release a fix as soon as possible, but for now you'll have to use .NET 1.1.
Updated GTA: LC page. Added the latest source for the launcher. Despite the release of GTA: SA and GTA: LCS, Liberty City project is still alive and well. New version will be released shortly and for those who haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend to visit the official "site". It's truly amazing how one game can be so completely transformed into another (for the record, GTA: LC is a mod for GTA: Vice City).

October 16, 2005

NHLView 3.2 released. I fixed most of the issues reported on the Forums relating to player creation. I appologize for releasing such a buggy version. If you edited player data in your seasons with NHLView 3.1 chances are your whole roster is only good for Recycle Bin.

October 10, 2005

NHLView 3.1 released with NHL06 support. Note that I haven't had the time to test it with NHL06 Patch #2 because it just came out.
TDBAccess 2.6 SP3 released. No new features, it is just recompiled with the new TDB engine used in the latest NHLView.

September 29, 2005

NHL06 Streams Editor released. With this program you can import your own audio into NHL06.

September 12, 2005

Many of you already know that user.log of NHL 06 didn't change from 2005 so the old Key redefiner still works. But the descriptions for some buttons have changed so I released a new version which can switch between 2005 and 2006 key descriptions. Grab it in Miscellaneous.

August 2, 2005

NHLView 2.2.8.2 is released. Among other things, new in this update are the ability to choose player ID on creation and the fixes to the bugs with additionals and placeholders.
TDBAccess 2.6.8.2 is released. The update is very minor and will not conflict with previous version, so you ca just safely use it. It simply fixes a minor issue in the TDB engine, related to the fact that NHLView wasn't working well with additionals. Nothing has been changed in the interface, only the internals.

July 21, 2005

Given the negative attitude of some people toward "Hot Coffee Mod" for San Andreas and subsequent re-rating of the game, the link to the mod has now been removed from the site. I'm still in shock over this whole story. There are so many mods out there that let you put "adult content" in all kinds of games, from Sims to Leisure Suit Larry, which is already adult enough to merit a higher rating that San Andreas. But no, GTA is the evil of all games, always has been. Anyway, I'll end my rant here and go back to my summer hibertation.
But just before I go, I can assure you that I will make everything possible to add support for NHL 2006 to NHLView.

July 9, 2005

While playing GTA: San Andreas, I encountered yet another common bug. All the basketballs disappeared from my game. Since I haven't seen any working solutions for the problem, I decided to write a fix myself. If you experience this problem, you can download the fix in GTA: San Andreas section. Note that it has only been tested on GTA San Andreas v1.0 US and will work only on unmodified main.scm.

July 5, 2005

The design of the whole web site is finally changed. The old, unnecessarily cluttered pages are gone and a more convenient menu is now in place on the left. If you feel the new site can be improved, don't hesitate to leave your feedback in the Forum.
The site has several new sections with interesting new contents:
- With the release of GTA: San Andreas, there is a new section devoted to this game. I have written several programs for it, and you can find them there.
- Some of you may know about the existance of the community project, GTA: Liberty City, aimed to port the game GTA 3 on the GTA: Vice City engine. I have been involved in this project for a long time and I think it's time I devote some time to it on my site.
- Not many personal web pages have no information about its author. Mine was until recently one of the few. This has now changed with the addition of the new sections, About Me and My Projects. In the former, I talk a little bit about myself and in the latter I present some of my other works, not directly related to the gaming contents.
GTA: San Andreas GXT Editor 1.3 is released. New in this version are faster interface, import from/export to a text file, character map editor and other small improvements.
It is very likely that new version of NHLView will not be released until NHL 2006 comes out. But given the fact that everybody (myself included) will be three times more excited this season than before, I promise that NHLView will support NHL 2006.
It is also possible that an all new Play-by-play Studio written totally from scratch will be released some day. To remind those of you who have not heard, I put a cross on it prior to NHL 2005 release because the audio format of the new play-by-play files was different than previous years. But it is not as bad as it first looked.
News from the old site have been removed to forget as quickly as possible about the old web site.