Madden NFL 12 Blog - Franchise Mode in Madden 12

[mattsb84]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

Sky, just today, a article was produced by ESPN. "In the past, we had issues with memory in the game and we could only allow 55 players per team," "Madden 12's" senior designer Josh Looman explained. "This limitation gave us problems with injured reserve and didn't enable us to give people roster downloads that were accurate. So we knew that it was imperative that we fixed that, and now our shipped rosters and our roster updates will be expanded. http://espn.go.com/espn/thelife/vide...more=fullstory

Sounds like rubbish. Broken IR/incorrect roster sizes have plagued madden for over a decade. I can see the argument for last gen not having it due to memory issues...but I'm curious to know why it would take 5+ years to resolve something for an engine that was supposedly rebuilt for current gen.

[bo4345]

Quote: Originally Posted by NaturalSelected

Thanks for confirming this. A little disappointing considering that potential drives a lot of things in Franchise, whether or not it's hidden. Still, if I can change ratings, ultimately adjustments can be made yearly if really necessary.

I know a way to at least raise a players potential which has worked in M10 and 11. You raise their overall to your desired rating then drop it back down to the regular, their potential will be the rating you gave them. But there is no way to lower potential that I know of.

[PSRusse83]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sanchez_Mareno

Love all this HC stuff. Hopefully next year they add play knowledge

That would be awesome and if they also brought in the Production rating to Madden as well I think it would add some depth to the way CPU teams sign and cut players.
Heres to hoping that Looman stays for at least the next three years.

[Sandbox]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

Sky, just today, a article was produced by ESPN. "In the past, we had issues with memory in the game and we could only allow 55 players per team," "Madden 12's" senior designer Josh Looman explained. "This limitation gave us problems with injured reserve and didn't enable us to give people roster downloads that were accurate. So we knew that it was imperative that we fixed that, and now our shipped rosters and our roster updates will be expanded. http://espn.go.com/espn/thelife/vide...more=fullstory

Tibouron may have had their own issues with the memory,
but the reason certainly wasn't a "lack of memory" after moving to next gen, as another poster previously said. Moving from the Xbox to the 360 the RAM available to the devs increased 8-fold. IMO, sounds like excuses for terrible code optimization.

[RedZoneD25]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sandbox

Tibouron may have had their own issues with the memory, but the reason certainly wasn't a "lack of memory" after moving to next gen, as another poster previously said. Moving from the Xbox to the 360 the RAM available to the devs increased 8-fold. IMO, sounds like excuses for terrible code optimization.

It's not an excuse, the developers have said outright that they are very limited due to the code they currently have and it'd be tough to re-write and have ready in one cycle. Whatever the case, they supposedly have it working now so I'm going to call it water under the bridge.

[Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sandbox

Tibouron may have had their own issues with the memory, but the reason certainly wasn't a "lack of memory" after moving to next gen, as another poster previously said. Moving from the Xbox to the 360 the RAM available to the devs increased 8-fold. IMO, sounds like excuses for terrible code optimization.

No, it wasn't an "excuse". Increasing roster limits to 75 has far-reaching effects beyond just allowing the user more flexibility.

Foremost is a RAM issue; RAM used holding bigger rosters in memory can't be used elsewhere, and if Madden was already pushing the limits of the RAM capacity of the 360/PS3 then that sort of change isn't cheap. Particularly in an in-game setting (i.e. Play Now), if 75-man rosters are allowed, that's 20 players worth of memory that was previously used for (presumably) graphical assets that has to be reclaimed.

Another big issue is franchise mode itself. The AI has to be allowed to utilize 75 man rosters as well if the user can, and as such the roster management AI had to be rewritten to account for more roster space. Further, the incremental cut days of the preseason also have to be taken into account; logic had to be added to handle cutdowns. Third, the RAM for the rosters used in franchise mode, along with larger draft classes to keep this roster populated properly, has to come from somewhere.

The bottom line is that EA wasn't lazy, it simply wasn't a change they could make without a dedicated portion of their team working to completely gut Madden to support the change in the roster size. They decided that was important enough starting at the end of the Madden 10 cycle, and we're seeing the results of that process now.

[GiantBlue76]

I don't think anyone can deny that there definitely were some big mistakes made over at Tiburon since 2005. IMHO, from what I have read and heard from people who know, there really was a mess created in the code from previous development efforts. They are basically re-writing Madden piece by piece to fix the damage that was done over the previous years. Now don't get my wrong, as a consumer, it's not my problem that they messed it up and therefore they don't get a free pass. However, what's done is done and the fact that they are really trying to fix it now is what's important.

[Sandbox]

Quote: Originally Posted by CHooe

Foremost is a RAM issue; RAM used holding bigger rosters in memory can't be used elsewhere, and if Madden was already pushing the limits of the RAM capacity of the 360/PS3 then that sort of change isn't cheap. Particularly in an in-game setting (i.e. Play Now), if 75-man rosters are allowed, that's 20 players worth of memory that was previously used for (presumably) graphical assets that has to be reclaimed.

sigh,
while playing Madden, most of the RAM is used to "hold" textures of players (on the field and sidelines). When adding players to the roster they're not increasing the number of players on the field or sidelines. In other words the RAM isn't being used to "hold" textures of players that aren't visually present.
And simply increasing the players in a database(roster) has little impact on memory anyways, since all that is contained are parameters(ratings etc.) for said players. Do you know how big the current Madden roster file is? 624KB, that's very small.
Simply put, the devs have not taken away from "graphical assets" to expand a database, after all they managed to put 3d grass back in this year.
How did they pull that off with all those "memory issues" and still manage to increase roster size?

Quote: Originally Posted by tazdevil20

I don't think anyone can deny that there definitely were some big mistakes made over at Tiburon since 2005. IMHO, from what I have read and heard from people who know, there really was a mess created in the code from previous development efforts. They are basically re-writing Madden piece by piece to fix the damage that was done over the previous years. Now don't get my wrong, as a consumer, it's not my problem that they messed it up and therefore they don't get a free pass. However, what's done is done and the fact that they are really trying to fix it now is what's important.

And that's pretty much what I'm getting at.

Quote: Originally Posted by WTFitsDaveyJ

It's not an excuse

Maybe it's semantics, but I heard "memory issues" instead of poor coding and it sounding like they were passing the blame.

Quote: Originally Posted by WTFitsDaveyJ

the developers have said outright that they are very limited due to the code they currently have and it'd be tough to re-write and have ready in one cycle.

So the devs have admitted as much themselves, I'm surprised but pleased with their honesty.