A New Way Forward: Give me some control! - RaychelSnr's Blog

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RaychelSnr's Blog

A New Way Forward: Give me some control! Stuck

Posted on February 25, 2010 at 04:06 PM.

(5)

You round the corner of the line, the green space ahead of you is expansive. Suddenly a defensive player comes near you just as you plan to do a spin move and you are forced into a tackle animation with no hope of a spin move playing out, no matter how good your timing was.

What about the time you drove through the lane and instead of shooting the ball off the back of the backboard you intended to do a lay-up but you were stuck in an animation?

Are you feeling me here?

While many sports gaming developers have defended animation systems and said they are truly the best way to make sports games, I think the truth is more like they are the most convenient way. The best way to make a sports game work would be to have free-form models which are smart and can react dynamically to the environment around them, but I'd also like a personal robot bringing me coffee each morning and making me dinner as well.

What developers probably need to do with the systems and realities in place is to enhance our control of the game and to make animations more free and dynamic. Madden did a great job of moving in that direction, several other sports games are also doing a good job of this. In fact, of all of the trends I'm highlighting this week, we are closer to total control than any of the rest.

But more can be done and I'm sure more will be done. So, at least one time this week, I'm going to leave this blog with a positive trend. I think by the end of this console generation, the issue of being stuck in an animation will be almost extinct (it's already progressing there).

Do you have any horror stories of being stuck in an animation? Has it ever cost you a game?

Comments

# 1 jyoung @ Feb 25

The reason I stopped playing the 2K basketball series is because the games got too bogged down in animations.

I hope Backbreaker and Icebreaker push all these animation-heavy games to the wayside.

# 2 eeyor @ Feb 26

http://www.operationsports.com/eeyor...ting-our-toys/

As my point of view on your ideas would be a little long to post it here you can find it at my blog

# 3 SHAKYR @ Feb 26

@eeyor, I read your blog and don't agree with you. Sports fans should demand more from their sports games, especially when they are marketed as sim or a realistic representation of a said sport. These gaming companies have 2 so-called versions of a sport for the fans, but they both seem aimed at the same market.

# 4 shavane @ Feb 26

I don't mind sports titles calling themselves simulations. I don't think that faulty AI or crappy gameplay disqualifies it from being a sim style game because realistically they are, they just aren't done well.

The thing that does rubs me the wrong way is when I feel that the companies that represent our favorite sports aren't doing everything in their power to represent them better. We all know the technology is out there to produce more realistic games but for whatever reason companies like EA have chosen not to.

If this is a next gen system no way should M10 be in a conversation about if its better than 2k5 on a Ps2. Every year it seems like the anger and disrespect towards EAs newest edition of Madden has grown. We have been more than patient waiting for a next gen football game and we all expected it to be provided by Madden or at the least 2k. Instead we continue to get rehashed...half a$$ed, glitchy, mediocre games that we spend $60s on faithfully. Its like all the years Coke would be like taste our brand new Coke and they could legally call it that because they changed the design on the can.

Fortunately for us NM decided to take the step in the right direction and do away with canned animations which theoretically should improve gameplay. If nothing else comes out of NM at the least it should be the beginning of the end for canned animations. Personally, I think BB is going to be huge and completly revolutionize the way sports games are done. I'm estatic they have a 4 or 5 yr head start on these other companies because they seem to care about giving their fans what they want in a sports game. The further they are ahead of EA in this aspect the better they will be. EA should have bought this technology when they had the chance because now the ball is in NM court. Good luck with M11 EA, I can't wait to see what marketing angle they take to get people hype about this one.

# 5 tril @ Feb 28

I disagree and agree.
I think most games do have total control, when user play these sports games ina fundamentally sound way.
Players get stuck in animations when they try to pull of complex moves. If you wre to pull off some of these moves in real life you wouldnt all of a sudden be able to stop and do something else.

i think games like NBA 2k try to accomplish this by incorporating these types of physics into the game. you can string certain moves together and break out of them while others you cant. the ones that you cant, are the ones you probably couldnt do in real life.

if you are able to break out of these animations then teh game will become unrealistic, similar to aracdy type sporst sims. imagine going up for a dunk and being able to switch back and forth a number of times while in midflight (think arch rivals,nba jam). that would be more unrealistic than the animations some players get stuck in.