Madden NFL 11 Blog: Locomotion w/ Videos and L.T. Screenshot

[countryboy]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjcheezhead

Your math isn't quite right. Madden 06-11 is 5-6 years worth of development. BB has been in development for 3 years. Madden still has a 2-3 year head start on BB just on these consoles.

I believe he's referring to the amount of time NaturalMotion has had to work with the Euphoria engine(3 years) to get it to do what they want vs what the Madden development team would have, which would be 1 year.

[TheWatcher]

Quote: Originally Posted by canes21

Pro-Tac is nothing but procedural animations. Its all still canned. Natural Motion's engine runs off real time physics and obey's all the laws set by those like Newton. EA's animations may appear to be running of a physics engine that calculates momentum based statistics, but it was all handcrafted. What Natural Motion brings to the table is all real time statistics being calculated every millisecond and beyond.

Of course that only activates for collisions in BB, as stated by the developers. So that means that the rest are standard animations, and to be honest a number of them don't look great at all. The QB footwork looks bad, the passing animations need a ton of work, and the catches seem to have very little variation at all. I'm willing to look past those things on a first try. They have a great system, but clearly they need more time to refine how they're adapting it to football.

Anyway, locomotion upgrades were badly needed in Madden. I complained about that a lot during the Madden 10 cycle. I remember Ian talking last year about implementing FIFA's locomotion at some point. I'm all in favor of that. What I'm interested in seeing is how new animation upgrades will affect post-play movement and interaction, because speaking purely about Madden's 09 and 10... it's a mess.

[Hova57]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

It actually is, and isn't a physics engine. At heart, it's not, but it has a pluggable physic's engine, that's why I posted that Euhporia information earlier. It can plug-n-play with physics engines, but they do provide their own implementation as well, so it's really the developers choice. Go back a few posts and you'll find the Euphoria overview with a diagram.

they use PhysX engine with Agiae , but you are correct Val. euphoria isn't completely the answer it is a good start to build on, but the rest of the animations are mo capped just like madden.

[kjcheezhead]

Quote: Originally Posted by countryboy

I believe he's referring to the amount of time NaturalMotion has had to work with the Euphoria engine(3 years) to get it to do what they want vs what the Madden development team would have, which would be 1 year.

Either way that's not really true either. Madden is on 1 year cycles, but that doesn't mean they can't use 2 or more cycles to get something into the game.


As for Pro-tak, it has a fatal flaw that euphoria doesn't from what I've seen. It seems like it has points of contact where players need to go to start a tackle animation. 2 defenders cannot use the same point and if it doesn't match up the defender has to get slid into the tackle point. Euphoria just creates the tackle animation whenever the player meet.

[countryboy]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjcheezhead

Either way that's not really true either. Madden is on 1 year cycles, but that doesn't mean they can't use 2 or more cycles to get something into the game.

I guess they could hire in more devs to work on the Euphoria technology while the regular dev team works on the next Madden installment.

[Valdarez]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjcheezhead

Your math isn't quite right. Madden 06-11 is 5-6 years worth of development. BB has been in development for 3 years. Madden still has a 2-3 year head start on BB just on these consoles. Also, euphoria doesn't just mean tackling. It's any contact in the game. Blocking, jostling, mid-air collisions betweem dbs and wrs, and of course tackling (including gang tackles). Oh, and we know they have not 1, but 2 customizable franchises and a very in depth logo creator. BB may appear bare-bones, but it's not all tackles.

Not to mention that the BB team is literally 1/10th the size of the Madden team.

[Valdarez]

I just downloaded the latest Fifa World Cup Afrika, and tried the movement out. I basically ran around in circles, switched directions, and the like. To be honest, I don't understand why everyone thinks this is a great locomotion system. In many ways it feels like Madden.

Here's my take-a-way:

• Left Analog stick can be used to move slowly or quickly (touch sensitive)
• RT is still used to Sprint, just like in Madden.
• Missing animations on turns (looked really bad at times here)
• Gliding on many of the movements, even some of the basic / walking / running animations at times
• Very quick stops when running fast
• Momentum feels inconsistent

Did I play the right version of FIFA?

[cdk10]

I did the same thing and I have to agree. Didn't really seem different than maddden, IMO.