This will be the final major update for FHM7 - if we discover any new serious problems after this release, we'll deal with them in a hotfix as usual, but this will be the last update that adds a significant amount of new content to the game. (If you find any problems with this update, particularly fixes that aren't working or unexpected issues arising out of the changes made, please report them the usual channels - preferably the tech support forum on our boards, the Steam board, or /r/franchisehockey on Reddit, those get checked daily.) We'll now be moving on to full-time development of FHM8, which will hopefully release at something closer to our usual October release this time around; we've already started on that and are making good progress at adding some new and exciting things to the game. 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. [b]New Features:[/b] -added injury frequency options to File-Setup/Options, with options for fewer/very few/almost no/no injuries; can be adjusted in mid-game -new functions added to multiplayer leagues on the Setup/Options-Online League screen: Creating and uploading the league files (with two options, the "complete" version includes graphics, "basic" doesn't) and Downloading and updating the league files -added 10 new Historical Challenges (with accompanying achievements) -added a "SIM" button beside the VIEW button on the league schedule screen, that sims the game without needing to open the pregame screen to use the SIM GAME button there -added new set of advanced stats, viewable in the Advanced (2) option of the stats dropdown for roster-type screens: zone starts, shootout stats, and 3-star selections -the autoplay standings (and the league-standings screen) now shows preseason player stats leaders during the preseason, then switches to regular season leaders once that begins -added a ratings filter to the staff filter -Tournament games now appear on team schedules with a light green background, overriding the usual blue home/red away -added the ability to select the template on the "Create Player" option (using the template names on the player edit screen) -addition to the new scounting reports: in standard and custom games (i.e. not historical) if the team is in a league that has any drafts with a minimum age >17, a section is added that lists the top 5 players (ranked by their potential as viewed by the team) eligible for each of those drafts in the next 3 seasons after the current one, e.g. while playing in the NHL in 20-21 it'll show the top 5 players for the 2022, 2023, and 2024 NHL Entry Drafts, listed as "Projected Top Picks for (Season) (Draft Name):" -"Last Day for Contract Renewals/Qualifying Offers" added to the league events list on June 30 for all leagues -user can now edit the uniform numbers of players on any team when commissioner mode is on -the injury list counter is now editable in commissioner mode -suspension length is now editable in the Status section of the player edit screen -on the development reports, after the player's age the current league-relative (to the team owning the development report) talent and potential have been added, e.g. "C John Smith (27, 3.0/4.0), Chicago Blackhawks (NHL)" -added a ROW column to the standings screens between DIFF and HOME (Regulation and Overtime Wins, used as a standings tiebreaker) -added a dropdown to the team transaction log that filters the list by each specific transaction type -AI-run European teams will now give a foreign player it wants to send to its farm team the option of mutually terminating the contract instead -when starting a new historical game in the seasons 1972-1978, if a player on a WHA team has any NHL teams in his career history, his NHL rights are now set to the NHL team he played for last -added an additional Historical editing checkbox to Manager Options: "Schedule Lengths: Leagues" will change their season lengths when they did historically if this is checked (i.e. the league schedule length will be updated from the database on July 1 (if there's no entry for the league for that season, e.g. if the user let the WHA continue after 1979, it won't change) -the awards ceremony screen now lists the award nominees in they grey square before revealing the winner -added text to Tactical Settings descriptions to describe specifing positioning of players where it deviates from a normal positioning setup (e.g. which forwards is the deep forechecker in a 1-1-3) -current database updated to post-NHL trading deadline status (it's a little later than we've done in previous years, about a week after the deadline, which in particular gets a few more of the late NHL signings in) [b]Other Fixes and Changes:[/b] -fixed crash when using the "Clear A" button on the team scouting watch list under some circumstances -in multiplayer games, the AI will no longer override human-selected protected lists for waiver/intraleague drafts -made another modification to scouting priority mechanics for junior leagues to place players outside the team's region but in the same nation at the bottom of the queue -the new section of the scouting report that's supposed to show the top free agents/available players at the team's weakness appears no longer shows them for the team's strengths instead -shifted weighting of stat-adjusted talent for F/D to emphasize scoring more at the expense of game rating -fixed a few issues in the world database, mainly in non-hockey countries, that were resulting in some cities being listed as part of the wrong country -the back button should now work normally when navigating within international tournament histories, i.e. clicking back won't return you to a blank page in some places -the World Menu's Tournaments section now defaults to the Olympic tournament unless the user has previously selected another tournament (previously, there was no default, so if you wentto standings at the start of the game it would point to the NHL playoffs) -if the user creates a custom league with an initial draft and then expands the league before the draft, the expansion teams will now take part in the draft and won't sign players on July 1 before they can be drafted -while viewing the Info tab of a club team's team page, if you then use the World menu to switch to a national team and then click on one of the other sub-tabs on that screen (e.g. Team Data) tab, you no longer get a mixture of national team and club data -autoplay standings screen no longer shows the previous's seasons GAA and Save % leaders from July 1 to the preseason -if a player has a minor (orange) injury, he will now be sorted properly along with the other players when clicking on the fitness column of the roster screen -removed redundant "player returned from the injury list" popup -adjusted mock draft criteria again to weight current ability and overall potential more highly -the scouting update message no longer uses the language of the user's Windows setup to show the month, instead of the English month name -added minimum language acquisition speed for all players, should prevent players from never learning a language despite remaining in a country for a long time -teams on the Team-Transactions-Transaction Summary screen are now sorted alphabetically -AI should now handle goalies better during the preseason, calling up any goalies it has on the farm that are better than the ones on the current roster (and thereby not exposing them to season-start waivers) -fixed the ES AT, PP AT, and SH AT amounts on the player screen-season stats tab-third "Split" section -at 1600x900 (fullscreen), the "Next International" line on the team home page no longer gets partially cut off at the bottom -on the postgame screen, in the Injuries section at the bottom, if there are a lot of injuries the list will they now wrap around instead of continuing past the right edge of the box -in boxscore_period_penalties_summary.csv and boxscore_period_scoring_summary.csv, OT period numbers are now specified -the "Players playing against their former team" and "Players visiting their hometown" fields in the game preview screen's pregame notes section should now display proper results instead of always being "None" -on the League-League Home screen, the Transactions tab now lists trades and waiver claims in addition to signings -fixed issue with 2021 draft picks being tradeable after the draft in some circumstances -with historical editing turned on and the team activation option selected, expansion drafts will now occur as they did historically instead of requiring that you re-add them manually -added icons for the following awards after the player's name on his profile screen: Sportsmanship Award, Player's MVP Award, Leadership Award, Dedication Award -in leagues where ties are possible, the standings screen now shows the OTL column as T -in team-scouting, with the "Hire Scouts" screen open, clicking on an individual scout to see their profile and then pressing the back button to return to the map will no longer change the map to show 0.3 (red) in all regions -changed the default sort order on World-National Data-Nation Profile to Population (descending) -if a player is restricted from signing by the Iron Curtain rule, he will not be shown in the list of eligible players to be selected during the draft -lowered the effect games played has on Goalie Stat-Adjusted Talent -in the player screen history tab, mock draft results are no longer off by 1, e.g. #1 was shown as #0 -the CHL import draft order should now be calculated correctly, and rotate picks between leagues (requires new game) -on the contract negotiation screen, one of the salary amounts is no longer shown in $US even if the currency symbol has been changed -on the depth chart screen, right-clicking one of the Right Wings will no longer shift all the players to the left, cutting off the first letter of the goalies' names -clicking on a player's name in the training screen now opens his profile -adjusted goalie development to significantly reduce the chances of them exceeding their potential, which was happening much too often -removed the 2021 Memorial Cup from the real 20-21 start now that it has been officially cancelled -corrected a small data interpretation problem in historical that was resulting in some players starting as free agents instead of with their correct team -the team-roster-contracts tab will now have a default sort the same as the active roster unless the user has changed it -if a player's contract is edited to be an ELC, the contract created no longer ends in UFA status for the player -with the draft off in historical mode, players who are added to their historical team on July 1 of their first season should now have their league rights assigned properly instead of being set to None -in the postgame notes section of the postgame screen, all unused players will be listed, not just the visiting goalie -in historical games, players who begin the game retired no longer have an entry in their highlights that they retired on January 1, 1900 -the Hall of Fame should now work properly again in historical mode -in the pregame notes section of the game preview screen in leagues where games can end in a tie, the coach's record is no longer shown with the ties missing -the "Auto-Play to Event..." options for the Awards Ceremony and Intra-League draft are now no longer shown until the league's season ends, since the dates of those are dependent on the date the season ends and the date shown at the start of the season will be inaccurate -the "Set to Inactive" option in the league structure editor is now disabled in historical (had been left on unintentionally, but turning a league off like that will lead to extreme instability in historical mode) -AI should now skip picks more often during waiver and intraleague drafts -when generating/regenerating a league schedule, if trading/transfer deadlines are are later than 30 days before the final date of the regenerated schedule, they'll be moved to 30 days before the end date -hitting the space bar now continues the game properly while on the free agent centre screen -adjusted AI's behaviour when choosing goalies for protected lists (expansion/waiver/intraleague drafts) so it chooses low-ability, high- (or even middle-) potential goalies over established ones -special characters (e.g. umlaut) should now appear properly in the text of the contract negotiation screen -Regina Historical Challenge is now successful after a WCHL playoff championship, as originally intdended -decreased AI's tendency to pick up marginal players on waivers -fixed issue with team editing that would make it impossible for user control of farm lines to work on newly-created teams -fixed crash that could result when a team is deactivated before removing its farm team affiliations; this will auto-fix games with the existing problems -fixed numerous players showing up as free agents in a 2004-05 historical start when they should have been on a team -the Hall of Fame announcement screen no longer ignores post-game-start championship wins -"Replace With" now works properly on a farm team when the user is managing its parent has the control lines option on -adjusted role scores for enforcer, goon, and agitator roles so players who fight frequently will score higher in the first two and lower in the third -fixed a crash when right-clicking on a player's name under some circumstances -the talent/potential numbers that were added to the development reports now appear for players who have attribute decreases as well as the ones who improved -the AI will no longer refuse to trade players they acquired recently, but have put on the trading block -added a 3-star points total to Stats: Advanced (awarded on a 5-3-1 basis for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stars, respectively) -3-star selections in Stats: Advanced (2) are now recorded properly for goalies -added tooltips for the new Advanced (2) stat columns -fixed potential lineup data updating issue in multiplayer games that could cause a crash during game simulation -changing a team name and abbreviation on July 1 no longer changes the name in all previous years in the draft log -the InD (injury days lost) column on Leagues-Stats-Team Stats now properly counts days lost to injuries that were added by editing a player -the Memorial Cup in custom games will now no longer function if any of the 3 CHL leagues have been deactivated (rather than crashing when it attempts to schedule the tournament) [b]2D Mode Changes:[/b] -added multiple view zoom options to 2D, including one that shows the whole ice surface ("Fit to screen") -added support for a separate goalie icon with a "goalie" (rather than "player") prefix , e.g. if goalie_chicago_blackhawks_home.png exists, it will be used for the goalie instead of player_chicago_blackhawks_home.png -sped up player movement towards the bench on a line change -offensive non-puckhandlers' movement should now be a little more forward-directed during breakouts and in the neutral zone (it had a tendency to to a little too side-to-side, which was creating problems when the puckhandler was usually getting well ahead of his wingers/rushing D) -defencemen on the puckhandling team no longer worry about covering opponents who are lingering so far behind the play as to be a non-factor in a potential turnover situation -players should now move correctly during shot attempts, instead of the odd pause they were taking while the shot moved -made some rebalancing moves to get stats back into their proper ranges after the previous changes to gameplay distorted them, particularly shooting percentage, shot attempts, hits, and fights