Madden NFL 25 Video Interview with Some Early Gameplay Shown (GotGame)

[TreFacTor]

Quote: Originally Posted by Sausage

I would like them to discuss whether player morphing and predetermined animations will override the physics and what is humanly possible. I know they won't, but maybe they have tuned it better.

This is what bothers most people about the McFadden run in the video. The stumble animation seems to override the fact that McFadden should fall. They need to make the stumble animation only occur if the player has one foot on the ground otherwise let him fall. Things like that occur in the NFL so let it play out. I'm certain no one would have complained...as a matter of fact they should have picked another clip altogether... who made the decision that was the best clip to showcase?

[Trick13]

Quote: Originally Posted by TreFacTor

...who made the decision that was the best clip to showcase?

After reading the OS blog about "working in the ...industry", this doesn't surprise me at all, but your point is well taken.

I wonder if sometimes, even the guys on the dev crew, they watch the game on screen so much that they lose track of "reality" in terms of physics. I mean if all you see all week long at work is Madden running, then it is possible that your perspective, relative to actual NFL footage, gets jacked up.

If I were in charge of Madden's development, there would be lots of NFL footage running on screens all over the place, so that it would be a grounding effect and an easy thing to find examples of what they are shooting for...

[TreFacTor]

Quote: Originally Posted by Trick13

After reading the OS blog about "working in the ...industry", this doesn't surprise me at all, but your point is well taken. I wonder if sometimes, even the guys on the dev crew, they watch the game on screen so much that they lose track of "reality" in terms of physics. I mean if all you see all week long at work is Madden running, then it is possible that your perspective, relative to actual NFL footage, gets jacked up. If I were in charge of Madden's development, there would be lots of NFL footage running on screens all over the place, so that it would be a grounding effect and an easy thing to find examples of what they are shooting for...

I don't remember what video I watched, but there was a pretty big guy in a motion capture suit and it appeared that they were attempting to mocap a hurdle move. The thing is the person wasn't hurdling a rolling object or even a moving one as would be the case in an NFL situation...it was a stationary block about 2 ft by 2 ft... this is where they need all the film they can get. I think they put too much faith in their animation library and it's reaching a point of hubris. They seem to mocap a few new animations and loose others because of disc space or maybe even memory limitations (IDK). Add to that the jerkiness of the animations when the players interact or otherwise branch in animation sequence and you have what we see here... for a company that's been making this game so long and alone on this gen you just expect more, at least I expect more, but maybe my expectation exceed their ability.

[The_Balm]

They need a new animation system so bad and I really hope they have a new one in the works for next gen. The movement and interaction of players should have nothing to do with the animations, the animations should change and be generated for the circumstance not the other way around.

This would make the game look and play so much better, it would remove suction tackles, suction blocking and get rid of the really ugly overrides of the physics engine where a guy is going down but he gets tackled and the animation moves him up a foot for a split-second and then he gets put down into the ground, it really looks weird and makes all contact between players look really jerky.

[N51_rob]

Quote: Originally Posted by kingsofthevalley

I dont know folks, weren't these same big hit animations in Madden/NCAA 13? Did those hits happen often?

That's not the problem. The problem is that EA is hyping that feature and EA never hypes a feature and then implements it subtlety. If they introduce and/or hype a feature it is done over the top. Remember hit-stick in madden 05? Ray Lewis almost caused a fumble on every tackle. How about precesion passing last year. Your QB could change a route and the WR would instantly know and change his route on the fly, while the defense was left running to nowhere.

So now EA is hyping some other new features like the stumble recover and as the Raider clip shows, you can recover from a stumble even when you have no feet on the ground and are falling forward. So for anyone to assume that EA will tone down, limit or minimize the effect of any new features would be IMO making a naive assumption.

[Trick13]

Quote: Originally Posted by TreFacTor

I don't remember what video I watched ... for a company that's been making this game so long and alone on this gen you just expect more, at least I expect more, but maybe my expectation exceed their ability.

As far as "mo-cap" is concerned, I wonder why they still use it??? The show on ESPN - Sports Science - manages to calculate angles, centrifugal acceleration, velocities, downward force on cuts, and all kinds of other measurements just from regular "footage" - i saw one where they calculated a NBA shot in terms of force, angle of release and yada yada all from the broadcast camera.

Considering their deal with the NFL, would it not be fairly easy for EA to use game film and hire one of these super smart "geeks" (deep respect) to calculate these things and utilize them to "create" animations with the real world data???

[The_Balm]

Quote: Originally Posted by Trick13

As far as "mo-cap" is concerned, I wonder why they still use it??? The show on ESPN - Sports Science - manages to calculate angles, centrifugal acceleration, velocities, downward force on cuts, and all kinds of other measurements just from regular "footage" - i saw one where they calculated a NBA shot in terms of force, angle of release and yada yada all from the broadcast camera. Considering their deal with the NFL, would it not be fairly easy for EA to use game film and hire one of these super smart "geeks" (deep respect) to calculate these things and utilize them to "create" animations with the real world data???

This would be great, but this is the team that has the "ratings czar" who crunches everybody into the top third of the scale, but that's another topic. I would love more real-world data for animations and/or ratings.

[TreFacTor]

Quote: Originally Posted by Trick13

As far as "mo-cap" is concerned, I wonder why they still use it??? The show on ESPN - Sports Science - manages to calculate angles, centrifugal acceleration, velocities, downward force on cuts, and all kinds of other measurements just from regular "footage" - i saw one where they calculated a NBA shot in terms of force, angle of release and yada yada all from the broadcast camera. Considering their deal with the NFL, would it not be fairly easy for EA to use game film and hire one of these super smart "geeks" (deep respect) to calculate these things and utilize them to "create" animations with the real world data???

They are supposed to already have all of that information and more. There was an article about it in december about just that....but we all know EA's not going to do anything with it.

http://www.polygon.com/2012/12/28/38...madden-ratings

Of all the things mentioned so far about Madden 25, I haven't heard anything that would convince me they are using the information and tape they have to it's full advantage. It's darn sure not represented in the run free video. The devs need to stop making football moments happen and make a simulation football game.