NBA Elite 11 Video: Kevin Durant, Brandon Jennings & Stephen Curry Talk New Controls

[rEAnimator]

Quote: Originally Posted by noshun

Man another controls vid? They milking these control videos. The part when Jennings drives to the hoop, Martin is facing Jennings right there in the lane and then turns to his left like he doesn't even notice him as he drives right on by?

Don't worry, it's only July. There are going to be a lot of videos released between now and October. My understanding is that there will be videos dedicated to AI, presentation and game modes amongst other things.

Physics too I think...I did some on camera interview about that stuff. We'll see if I make the cut

Seriously though, I completely agree when it comes to the player awareness. It's a work in progress, but I don't want to use that as an excuse.

It's something that is already better since when this video was captured, and there are things in the works which will improve it even more before we ship.

[thomonkey]

Quote: Originally Posted by rEAnimator

We've got another thread talking about the early/late shot mechanic, and I think there are some valid points and good suggestions in that thread. However, I don't feel that this criticism is really fair. Let me explain why. My understanding of the controls in Live last year is that the timing of the button release would influence the likelihood that the shot would go in. But you had little to no control over when the shot would be released. Not only that, but the "perfect" release time was the peak of the jump shot when the player released the ball (more or less). The blocked shot you're referring to in the video happens at the peak of the shot, which is also the "perfect" time to release the ball in Elite. This is not different from last year, and is pretty much common practice in basketball sim games (as far as I understand it). Now in Elite this year, you have the freedom to release the shot at ANY time in the shot animation. That level of control is unprecedented. The timing window will be smaller/larger depending on ratings and the difficulty of the shot. What this means is that the shot in this video may very well have still gone in had the user released earlier. Remember, you don't have to wait until the "perfect" release point to get the basket. If you have a skilled shooter, are close to the net or have an uncontested shot you can release early or late and still get the shot in. How early and how late depends on a lot of factors as I mentioned. But these are things that you can learn, and with practice you can get better and better over time. Had the shot HUD been displayed in this video you would have seen all the options open to the shooter. And you'll get that info when playing the game in practice mode. I hope what I've explained makes sense. There are definitely animation glitches in the video which is to be expected with a work in progress. But don't take the fact that this one shot happened to be blocked to mean that the shooting system is fundamentally broken. The bottom line is you have an incredible amount of control over your shots in Elite, more so than any other basketball game that I've seen. I can't wait until you guys get a chance to try the demo when it comes out, and you'll understand what I mean.

thanks for chiming in i was trying to do my best to explain but all i have to say is second hand, so i didn't want to say too much and misrepresent you guys.

in another thread you had mentioned that you guys were dealing with the perfect looking shot not being the perfect release point because the peak of the jump is the perfect release point. Why don't you guys just make the perfect looking release the perfect release point and have the peak of the jump a late release. I mean, whenever i shoot in a basketball game i am trying to make the shot look the best because i assume that is the best release point. I think that if the perfect release point is not the best looking shot its going to be annoying/difficult. It's intuitive that when the shot you put up looks ugly you think that you released incorrectly.

thanks

[ajknows]

Quote: Originally Posted by Haval93

Your wrong, it's taught that you should always be in your stance on defense. So you ready to move with your player and ready to help. That's what I have been taught and see when people are playing basketball. But yes, at times they aren't for whatever reason in a defensive stance, if that's the case then they are just standing around and will get yelled at and get taken out of the game. I say keep it the way it is.

Same vid but real players.

[rEAnimator]

Quote: Originally Posted by Teebone21

I agree 100% this is a poor showing for WIP. Yes i am a 2k fan since 2k3 but EA needs to get these player models and jumpshot animations fixed ive been supporting Elite this year. Those graphics were horrible and shooting looks stiff. EA i advise you NOT to show anymore WIP vids just final product. Demos release in 1.5 months so time to get it right

Really? I thought you guys would appreciate a chance to peek behind the curtain and see what a video game looks like months before it is released.

We've already received some great feedback from the community, both on the boards and from the guys who came to the studio for community day.

I don't think I've seen EA release as much early, work in progress videos as I've seen with Elite. Personally I like it. It opens things up quite a bit. Gives us a chance to show things off before it's too late to change them.

But they are taking a chance I guess. If people see a video and think its the final product and it turns them off the game I suppose that could hurt us.

I hope people understand the significance of the "work in progress" label and give the demo a shot before making up their minds, one way or the other.

Personally, I'd like to see us be this open every year. Hopefully taking the chance pays off so we can keep doing it in future.

[rEAnimator]

Quote: Originally Posted by dirtypuppet

Only going to touch on the negatives here, constructive feedback for the devs. 1:11 - 1:14, Curry spinning past Brooks: Brooks shows no awareness of Curry. Even if he gets beat off the dribble, his head/ eyes should be showing some sort of awareness of the person he's guarding. He's just blankly staring into space. 1:29 - 1:31, Jennings shoots a floater over Billups: Obviously the sharp blend of animations is due to giving the user a sharp response time, but if there could be at least a 1, or 2 frame blend between the animations. 1:34 - 1:36, Maggette and Scola boxing out along the baseline: - Maggette Running Baseline just causes Scola to slide backwards, and then they eventually enter (a horrible, dated, over the top) box out animation. Pretty sure I remember seeing this animation in about Live 05 when EA was touting the '5 Man Mo-Cap. In general, boxing out animations are too over the top. 2:12 - 2:15, Curry shoots a floater in the lane: Same as the floater over Billups. A one or two frame blend shouldn't hurt the feeling of responsiveness. 2:15 - 2:18, Hill attempts to block Durants jumper: The generic block animations that Hill does (I've seen this in earlier videos as well) is just very bad. Whether this was taken from mo-cap or manually animated, it's a very rigid animation with bad posing. I run an animation studio and I have a very good sense for movement, and this does not look like it should. Hill also probably jumps too high (I could say that about a lot of the animations I've seen in the earlier videos too). As mentioned earlier, the net is moving a few frames before it's actually interacted with. 2:27 - 2:30, same shot block attempt as before, different angle: You can also see from this angle that Hill looks like he should be lunging forward slightly, yet he is jumping straight up. I think there just just needs to be more and varied situational blocking animations. Are any of these issues likely to be looked at?

1. Agreed, this will be addressed.

2. This does look pretty jarring in the video. I'm impressed you noticed. I had to watch it a few times myself to be sure of what I was seeing, with the cross fade happening at the same time.

I just went into ANT (our animation and gameplay tool) and verified that there are 12 frames of blend from dribbling to a quick shot gather.

So I cannot explain what's in the video, but I was not able to reproduce that problem here.

Could be a bug, or could be something that has already been fixed.

3. Boxouts are still only really early in development, and I have no idea when this video was taken. So I'm not too worried and will give the guy working on them a bit more time before pointing out issues.

4. Same answer as 2.

5 & 6. The look of the blocks is being worked on now. We needed to get the feel and success/failure rate first right to define the requirements for the animations. Now that we have those requirements, the animations will improve as they are tuned and variety is added.

Thanks for all the feedback.

[bls]

Quote: Originally Posted by Supersonic_BR

Not feeling this game so far. I hope i'm wrong, but some of those animations are just eye soring, and that had to be the focus this year, not the controls, the controls were fine.

I agree the controls were fine. They really needed to add tons more animations but I'm starting to see that just like Maddens engine I don't think it's possible to be done or it's something with their tech that's causing them not to go all out in this area.

Vid was just horrific and I've been pulling for Live the last couple of years. I really liked Live 09 and if they had just touched up on things along with the added animations for these past 2 years I believe they would have been close to catching up by now. This looks worse than 10. Sad to say the least.

[taxinem]

Quote: Originally Posted by rEAnimator

We've got another thread talking about the early/late shot mechanic, and I think there are some valid points and good suggestions in that thread. However, I don't feel that this criticism is really fair. Let me explain why. My understanding of the controls in Live last year is that the timing of the button release would influence the likelihood that the shot would go in. But you had little to no control over when the shot would be released. Not only that, but the "perfect" release time was the peak of the jump shot when the player released the ball (more or less). The blocked shot you're referring to in the video happens at the peak of the shot, which is also the "perfect" time to release the ball in Elite. This is not different from last year, and is pretty much common practice in basketball sim games (as far as I understand it). Now in Elite this year, you have the freedom to release the shot at ANY time in the shot animation. That level of control is unprecedented. The timing window will be smaller/larger depending on ratings and the difficulty of the shot. What this means is that the shot in this video may very well have still gone in had the user released earlier. Remember, you don't have to wait until the "perfect" release point to get the basket. If you have a skilled shooter, are close to the net or have an uncontested shot you can release early or late and still get the shot in. How early and how late depends on a lot of factors as I mentioned. But these are things that you can learn, and with practice you can get better and better over time. Had the shot HUD been displayed in this video you would have seen all the options open to the shooter. And you'll get that info when playing the game in practice mode. I hope what I've explained makes sense. There are definitely animation glitches in the video which is to be expected with a work in progress. But don't take the fact that this one shot happened to be blocked to mean that the shooting system is fundamentally broken. The bottom line is you have an incredible amount of control over your shots in Elite, more so than any other basketball game that I've seen. I can't wait until you guys get a chance to try the demo when it comes out, and you'll understand what I mean.

thanx 4 tha feedback and I totally understand wut ur sayin.... if it was the users fault that grants shot was blocked then u have merit!! but if he held on to tha ball for the sake of more power than that wud b tha problem I was referring to! I can't wait for the demo to c for myself... but hope, will help a man
facing death keep his faith! so I hope everything will b smoothed out by gametime cuz u guys have alot of our faith riding on this one! and I say that bcuz there were quite a few things that I was not pleased with in that video, not just the blocked shot.... and with 2 months left til money time for u guys... I'm beginning to feel like wut we see is wut were goin to get bcuz u guys keep showin it to us!!!

so once again.. thanx for the feedback, and I still believe in u guys!!

[rEAnimator]

Quote: Originally Posted by joel0078

It's funny how people see the same thing so differently! I like that they put out all these videos and all this promoting of the game, because 2k puts out just about zero when it comes to advertising this early and getting to see previews about next years title always gets me eager.... But the bottom line remains that ultimately, no one can comment on how great or terrible this game will be until we've each played it for ourselves. The one thing I don't understand is how guys who have played previous versions of Live, can say these videos look great are are even impressive at all. On the surface, it looks the same as Live 09 and Live 10. The ONLY reason I know this is "Elite" and not a previous version of the Live series, is because the developers are saying so and because the controller icon at the bottom of the screen.

It's tough to explain a massive improvement in control any other way. Control is something you only appreciate when you feel it. It will never impress anyone through a video.

We could have released beautiful videos of canned mocap anims and just talked about control. But that would have been disingenuous.

All I ask is that you not judge us completely until you're picked up a controller and felt the improvements. The demo will be enough for you to understand what we're talking about.

If you still don't like it, so be it.

But understand the tradeoff between look and feel, and appreciate how early in development we're releasing these videos.

Thanks.