Notes: These questions were answered by Mike Saperstein and Tony Ragano.

Mike is the Senior Director of High Heat Major League Baseball 2004. Mike has been with the High Heat team for 4 years, as both a Technical Lead and Director, working on PS1 and PS2 versions primarily before HH2004. Mike is a displaced Bostonian -- a big Red Sox, Patriots, and Boston College fan.

Tony is the Director of High Heat Major League Baseball 2004. Tony has also been with the High Heat team for 4 years, mostly focused on the PC and PS2 versions prior to this year. Tony is arguably the hardest-core baseball fan on the team -- a huge Pirates fan -- and a High Heat PC fanatic. He has a High Heat Career Mode game in which his team is in the year 2034 -- and he has played out every game without simming, and only at home on his non-work-time – over 5,500 games in this season alone!

GAMEPLAY
Operation Sports: Can you tell us more about the tuning menu, what have you added to it?

Mike: The tuning menu now has 33 sliders in all. A number of pitch speed sliders have been added, as well as certain sliders being broken down into Human and CPU categories. A few new ones include Pitch Count, Pitcher Control Sim, Pitcher Fatigue, Foul Balls, and Human Contact Ease. These are in direct response to things our customers wished they had better control over in High Heat MLB 2003. And of course there are lots of other options including the Simulation Bar that aren’t even specifically in the Tuning Menu.

Operation Sports: Have you tweaked the substitution AI, it still seemed like the CPU would make wholesale changes too early in the game?

Mike: There have been some slight tweaks in this area. I have not seen any changes you speak of before the seventh inning of any games I have played this year. Note that we’ve at minimum tweaked every area of on-field AI this year, and have completely rewritten all off-the-field CPU roster management logic.

Operation Sports: Fastball pitchers seemed to get hit more easily regardless of how good they are. Has this been tweaked?

Mike: I think this is better in this version. Let me explain…

Our game, as you know, is a balance between statistical simulation and arcade interaction. On the arcade interaction side, one of the keys to good batting performance in High Heat 2003 is “hitting the ball where it’s pitched” -- pushing the controller the proper direction to get the right swing timing for where the ball is going to be at moment of contact. In previous versions our fastball had limited horizontal or vertical movement on it compared to other pitch types. So my theory is that it was easier on default settings for a human hitter to do well in the arcade part of the game than it would be against a pitcher who had curves, cutters, sliders, stuff with more movement

This year there are 27 different pitch types in the game. We came up with this number based on a significant amount of research done by Trip Hawkins, our CEO and resident pitching guru, in conjunction with information from Curt Schilling. Many of these are slight variations on more typical pitch types. So for example we now have a Fastball, Moving Fastball, Tailing Fastball, Rising Fastball, and 2-Seam Fastball. And many of them are slightly unpredictable as far as how much movement they’ll have – similar to what real hitters see when they face guys like Randy Johnson, Kerry Wood, or Roger Clemens in real life.

Anyway, I just faced Clemens in my Red Sox season and he smoked me… L So I think it’s a challenge you can look forward to in High Heat MLB 2004.

Operation Sports: Will bunting be more controllable?

Tony: Given our new animations/animation system, bunting is now immanently more controllable. We have also tuned the ball physics for bunting.

Operation Sports: Are you going to make sure that the pitchers hitting ability is more accurate. Hampton and a few other pitchers can actually hit.

Mike: We have made sure that this is better than in the past. We found a bug in our stats generation code to ensure that this is accurate this time around.

Tony: Well here’s the pickle… We certainly don’t want players coming in, playing a month or two of the season with decent success, and then performing like Barry Bonds. Example? Kevin Maas. So those players who do not have enough at bats to qualify for the batting title, will have their averages brought back towards the league average. The amount they are brought back toward the league average depends entirely on their at-bat totals. Otherwise, players like Matt Stairs and Erubiel Durazo would end up with 65 HR’s in a High Heat season. Since Mike Hampton and Jason Jennings don’t have enough at bats to qualify for the batting title, their averages are brought back towards the league average as well. They’ll still hit much better than other pitchers, but they most likely won’t hit .300 and we think that is fair; if they could, their real-life managers would probably start them in the field on non-pitching days!

GENERAL
Operation Sports: If a team is losing or at the bottom of the standing does this have an effect on the number of fans attending a game?

Tony: It sure does. You won’t find packed houses for the Pirates… Wait, we’re going to be good this year, so make that the Devil Rays.

Operation Sports: Can you please give us more details on the Franchise mode? Farm teams, draft, etc.

Tony: Finally there is a Franchise Mode, High Heat style. As a High Heat gamer, you expect everything: stats, all minor league levels, plenty of info. Well this year, we added salaries and contracts to the mix. We not only include full 25 man rosters for each minor league level, but we also include a contract system for every player who appears in a major league uniform. Users will be given the choice to either use market-size, equal, or even custom budgets.

Initially, major leaguers for each team will be given arbitrary contract lengths based upon how highly High Heat rates them as an overall player. As the user progresses from one season to the next however, their contract demands will vary based on the kind of seasons they have in High Heat, as well as their past history and reputation. All players brought up from the minors will be given the standard 3-year deal at market value price.

I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself when I mentioned “from one season to the next.” It just wouldn’t be High Heat without a multi-season Career Mode tied into all of this, now would it? Tying Career Mode into our new Franchise Mode allows users to not only strategically manage their talent, but also their budget. Users will have to not only keep an eye one which players’ contracts will be up at the end of the year, but whether or not they can afford to re-sign them. The user will have a chance to re-sign each player through contract negotiations, and if that’s not possible, they’ll test free agency.

During Free Agency, each team will have a chance at every player. Each player will have a salary and a contract length demand. Each human-controlled team will have a chance to put in a for any player they want. Players will either sign or adjujst their demands if they don’t like the offers.

Bottom line is that all of this adds up to an off the field experience that is second to none.

Mike: A couple quick additional points…Up to all 30 teams can be human-controlled in our Franchise and Career Modes. If you choose to play Career Mode, you can have all the same gameplay of watching players develop, and maneuvering them among levels, without dealing with financials.

Note that we aren’t allowed to use real salary or money information due to licensing issues.

Operation Sports: Are the stadiums texture mapped so balls bounce off stands/facades? Will we see more improved ball physics and hit placements? Following home run balls into the bleachers would be cool, is this possible?

Mike: Yes, the ball physics are improved and are more varied. No, we weren’t able to add the “ball-bouncing-off-stands” or “follow the ball into the bleachers” technology this year, but we hope to in a future version.

Operation Sports: When creating pitchers you could change the quality of the pitches but the “Stuff” rating you were unable to change. Are we able to change that this year, and what exactly is it?

Tony: Actually no… “Stuff” is computed by the CPU based on how good it thinks the pitcher is. And no, we’ll never reveal our formula!! It’s all part of the gameplay.

Operation Sports: Is that weird camera angle going to be fixed when the ball rolls to the fence?

Mike: There has been some subtle improvement in the cameras. I believe the problem you’re referring to is fixed in almost all cases.

Operation Sports: Will the CPU use the lineups we create?

Tony: Only if the CPU agrees.

Mike: Note that you CAN bypass the CPU roster management logic by making all teams human-controlled. That having been said…

The CPU roster management logic has been completely overhauled for HH2004 on all platforms. It is extremely baseball-savvy, and will do the things it thinks is best to win, including rearranging lineups, sending guys to different levels, cutting unnecessary players, offering trades to other CPU and human-controlled teams, and more. Like any GM – or even hardcore fan -- it has ideas that may not agree with what the real-life counterparts are doing, and this will be reflected in the ways it handles its rosters.

GRAPHICS
Operation Sports: Have the graphics been revamped in this year's game? Many felt last years game had mediocre graphics. Are you using a different graphics engine?

Mike: Yes, we heard the complaints about our graphics in previous versions, and thus our graphics and animation have been 100% overhauled for High Heat 2004 on all platforms. We focused particular attention on animation this year. We are using a brand new graphics engine, have a brand new animation system, and have motion captured from scratch every animation in the game specifically for HH2004 – all new from scratch for HH2004. I am not exaggerating when I say that this year’s game looks WORLDS better than any previous versions of High Heat.

We also have made major improvements in stadium geometry, textures and lighting, brand new player models with much improved body-type-scaling, have new cooler overlay graphics and a high-impact Outer Shell, and have made many other graphics improvements. We are not fully satisfied yet, and probably never will be, but we are very happy with the progress we’ve made and think you will be too.

Operation Sports: Who did your motion capture for the game? Any additional animations added? If so, how many and what type of animations?

Tony: We mo-capped everything at House of Moves in Los Angeles. We didn’t just add additional animations, we re-mocapped all of our existing ones as well. New animations consist of throwing, running, fielding, signature motions, etc. The end result is a much more fluid and realistic gameplay experience.

Operation Sports: Will they ever fix the outfield wall at Comerica Park? The centerfield wall is the same height as the left field wall and the left field wall does not have a slope down from the foul pole. Simply stated, are the outfield walls accurate in regards to their height?

Mike: We get limited visual stadium information each year, and as you can imagine, we do not have easy-access to all 30 stadiums. Wherever possible we get the most current visual and technical information about every stadium and do our best to recreate them accurately in the game.

Operation Sports: On the pitcher view, has the crowd been corrected? You should not see the crowd’s feet. It looked like the seats were on top of the backstop.

Mike: I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking, but yes, our visual crowd has also been improved for this year's game.

MISCELLANEOUS
Operation Sports: Are there in game saves?

Tony: Unfortunately, no. We reworked the architecture of the game to the point where re-enabling this feature was not trivial. It’s in our plans for future versions, however.

Operation Sports: Is there a stadium editor for PC Mods?

Mike: No. There may be for future versions.

Operation Sports: Will there be downloadable rosters for Xbox Live?

Tony: Yes

Operation Sports: Will there be an Xbox Live add-on disk in summer months?

Mike: Not sure, but I am guessing this is unlikely.

Operation Sports: How about a list of names that the computer announcers will recognize if used on a created or edited player?

Mike: I don’t have easy-access to that list. Try it and find out for yourself.

Operation Sports: Can you tell us about the create a player mode? Can you set the player’s age etc.?

Tony: The Create-A-Player mode will be similar to that of High Heat 2003 PS2. There will be a few more variables, but it won’t be as far reaching as that of our previous PC versions. However, further improvements, will be likely be made for future versions.

Operation Sports: Will we be able to edit players accessories and attributes, if so what is available to us?

Tony: I think I already answered this above -- some yes, and we’re definitely going to consider adding a lot of new player editor features.

Operation Sports: Why no mouse support for PC gamers?

Mike: We made a decision to completely overhaul a number of aspects of our PC version this year. Due to this process, a lot of parts of the old game were no longer usable and had to be rewritten from scratch. We focused our effort onto getting as many cool game features in as possible, and because of this, didn’t have the resources to do everything.

We will consider adding mouse support in future versions.

Though we know everyone wants everything, it’s impossible for us to provide that. We think that once our PC customers try the game, they will be happy overall with the product, and the choices we made along the way.

Operation Sports: We would like to thank you for this interview, is there anything you would like to add?

Tony: In case it didn’t come across in this interview, High Heat 2004 is by far, our greatest accomplishment. We didn’t cheat the user out of anything. The game truly does have something for every type of baseball fan and more to the point, video game fan. Whether you’re the casual gamer or a hard-core baseball nut like me, High Heat will suit your needs.

Mike We are fiercely proud of the game. It plays a great game of baseball both on and off the field, and looks great. If you haven’t tried High Heat before, know that if you follow baseball and are looking for a game that feels like the real thing, High Heat is the game for you. If you have played High Heat before, know that this version has the best animation, best graphics, and most depth and challenge of any High Heat game yet – plus lots of customizability, and everything else that has always made High Heat so great. Try it, you’ll probably like it…and after you’ve played a while, let us know what you want improved for High Heat 2005!!

Thanks for having us at Operation Sports!!