NBA Live 10 Blog: Passing Controls

[stephensonmc]

Check out the new NBA Live 10 blog, going over passing controls.

Quote:

"So for this week, we’re going to take a look at passing. Passing is one of those features that hasn’t seen a ton of new innovation in recent iterations. Everyone just expects to be able to get the ball from one player to another with as little frustration as possible. Sometimes that’s easier said than done. It seems like every year people complain about “directional passing,” saying that their passes are getting thrown to a different player than the guy they’re pointing at. We spent quite a bit of time working on the directional passing logic and re-tuning the system to accommodate the tendencies of different people. You’d be surprised at how different the expected behavior is from one person to the next when trying to throw a simple pass. Some people flick the stick, some swing it, and some people are always just off a little bit because they can’t compensate for the camera angle. Another tool we gave the user this year is the player indicator direction arrow. If you’ve seen videos of gameplay you’ve probably noticed a little arrow protruding from the ball handler’s indicator. That arrow represents exactly what you’re doing on the left analog stick at all times."

Again guys, lower difficulty to showcase a certain feature.

[Stumbleweed]

Back on the grind I see, and earlier than normal!

Can't wait for this one... reading now.

EDIT: Where are you "splashy net" people now, huh?? That was gorgeous.

And yeah, these off-ball controls are very intuitive... MUCH better than the controls we had in 2K8-9 where you have to scroll through the players then choose what they do, etc.

Is there a give-and-go mechanic where you can pass to a man, cut to the rack, then call for the ball back? I always enjoyed that.

The game looks GREAT. I assume it was on lower difficulty again to show stuff off more easily, but I was just taken aback by how smooth it looked after seeing these videos from people who don't really know the game. Seeing Mike play it makes it look so much better... loved the contact/fall animation by Salmons.

[youngfaze01]

Damn, already!?! Lol Thanks Steph.

[23]

Can someone post it here

[WTF]

Passing Controls
28-August-2009

Hi everyone, for the next couple of gameplay blogs, we thought we’d switch things up a little. Since the demo’s dropping in a couple of weeks we thought it would be a good idea to give you guys some quick tutorials on how to use some of the new control mechanics in this year’s game. Hopefully it’ll give everyone a little head start so when you get the demo you can kinda hit the ground running and get into the game faster.

So for this week, we’re going to take a look at passing. Passing is one of those features that hasn’t seen a ton of new innovation in recent iterations. Everyone just expects to be able to get the ball from one player to another with as little frustration as possible. Sometimes that’s easier said than done. It seems like every year people complain about “directional passing,” saying that their passes are getting thrown to a different player than the guy they’re pointing at. We spent quite a bit of time working on the directional passing logic and re-tuning the system to accommodate the tendencies of different people. You’d be surprised at how different the expected behavior is from one person to the next when trying to throw a simple pass. Some people flick the stick, some swing it, and some people are always just off a little bit because they can’t compensate for the camera angle. Another tool we gave the user this year is the player indicator direction arrow. If you’ve seen videos of gameplay you’ve probably noticed a little arrow protruding from the ball handler’s indicator. That arrow represents exactly what you’re doing on the left analog stick at all times. We like to think of it as the player’s eyes. The original purpose behind the arrow was to act as an aid for the onball defender. Early on in the year, people were having a tough time guarding the ball so we introduced the arrow to give the defender just a few frames of anticipation time to read where the dribbler was attempting to go. The nice thing about the arrow is that it acts as double duty for the passer as well. We found that most people automatically became more accurate with their directional passing because they could see more clearly where their left analog stick was pointing. So it’s a small but nice little touch that you guys will hopefully be able to use as well.



Now the real meat of the passing control changes that we’re going to focus on today are Direct Pass Receiver Control and Freestyle Passing. The video I made below will give you a better run down of how to actually use the mechanics, so I’ll just briefly explain them here.

Direct Pass Receiver Control is one of my favorite additions to the passing game. The idea behind it was we wanted to give the user a lot more control over his receivers and really allow him to play better team basketball. The offball AI has improved by leaps and bounds this year. But no matter how much time we spend on it, we’re never going to be able to read the user’s mind… and AI teammates will sometimes just not be where you want them to be. Enter Direct Pass Receiver Control. With this feature you can grab a teammate and move him anywhere you want before throwing the pass. So whether you want to nudge him just a bit to give him a better angle to the passer or if you want to do something more elaborate like run Rip Hamilton off an offball screen for a baseline curl catch & shoot, it’s all in your hands. Take a look at the vid and you’ll see just how easy it is to use. And believe me, once you start to rely on it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

With Freestyle Passing, the goal was to give the user the ability to quickly flick a pass one way while moving another. One big downfall of regular directional passing is that if you’re running toward the basket for example, and want to throw a pass behind you, you have to throw your left stick in the opposite direction before throwing the pass. That often forces your ballhandler to kill his momentum, come to a stop, pivot and throw a standing pass. Not to mention, take a little too long. With Freestyle Passing you can use the right analog stick to throw passes. Originally, Freestyle Passing was going to be limited to just fancy passes like no-looks and behind the backs but the mechanic just felt so good that we decided to make it an all encompassing pass stick for all players. Now using the right stick to throw passes isn’t a new thing. The first game to do it was Inside Drive if I remember correctly (may it rest in peace.) But the nice thing about Freestyle Passing in Live 10 is that we didn’t have to sacrifice any features to incorporate it into the default control scheme. So dribble moves are still on the right analog stick but the moment you press and hold the Direct Pass button, the stick toggles to a pass stick. It feels really good and I encourage everybody to give it a spin because it’s hard to go back to old school passing once you get used to it.

So that’s the backdrop for the video I made below. It’s not the highest quality feed but hopefully it gives you a better sense of how to use the passing features in NBA Live 10. Stay tuned next week for another tutorial video on shooting. Enjoy!

- Mike

[23]

Thanks WT

[WTF]

NP... game looks absolutely sick. LOVE the new control.

[23]

I see you guys put the disclaimer up! lol Great job