Madden 09: Tackling Engine Blog & Video
 

EA Sports have updated their Madden NFL 09 blog with tackling engine details and a video clip.

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Looks pretty good, can't wait to crack someone with Bob Sanders.

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very nice...but watch people start to complain and nit pick give ut about 10min.lol

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Wow. Just wow. And he did this at his desk he says? The guys is one heck of a video editor as well....Anyway, this is now the official moment I look forward to this franchise since it came onto the 360 scene. Looks verrrryyyy good.

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For real lol. We're getting a pretty good amount of info considering the time of year.

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Sign me up. It sounds great how we can manually break tackles. Why couldn't they put this in NCAA as well!?!?!? I'm still not feeling the WWE style tackles(shoulder charges, clothes lines ect....), but the wrap tackles look good. 1 thing is for sure, the graphics are SICKKKKKKKKKK this year. Wow.

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my hats off to EA for hiring this guy and at least making the efforts to upgrade their engine to give us the the things weve been asking for. even though madden and ncaa 08 still werent where i wanted them to be, i must admit EA is realy starting to focus their efforts on the things weve been asking them to. im actually looking forward to trying maddan and NCAA this year

by the way ive been one of EA's bigest critics the last few years

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Wow...Im impressed.

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My favorite part of the entire article:

We have also eliminated the "explosion" phenomenon when the game couldn't find a tackle animation in time and characters bang off each other and both fall down.

YES!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!

And I just watched the video - dang, it does look great, this could be the most responsive Madden in a long time from looking at those clips. No suction either from those clips, hopefully the whole game is like that (esp. on defense too).

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yup and im loving it.......i hope the line and db wr interaction then we will be golden

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YES!!!! hopefully that includes the exploding elbow tackle also

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dunno....Couldnt tell the difference between that and 08.....

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Amen. The vid looked, dare I say it, NFL 2k-esque.

It took a while, but it seems like this is the year Madden truly becomes a next-gen title.

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perhaps because you haven't played 08 much? i dunno, i could def. tell a huge difference.

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That looks pretty damn good. He alluded to no suction tackling so here's hoping that there is no suction blocking either.

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I got a huge smile on my face when I read that.

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Yea 08 looked nowhere near as good as that. The running, the tackling, the jukes,the graphics,player models, all looked way better.

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If that is the case I know you will be like a hog in mud heaven cuz that's been your pet peeve for years Lbz.

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If LB likes it, then it's money.

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WOW. If anyone tries to complain about this and say it doesn't look amazing they are getting 10 infractions lol ;)

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:lolabove:

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i saw at least two face mask tackles in that vid i hope they call those this year....i cant stop watching......i love it

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i played 08 daily...

I will watch the video again at work on a better PC because my home PC was laggin the video..lol

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That was great. The finally got the look of the game right. Good player models, good lighting, good textures and stadiums. Definitely the best looking football game to date.

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Well if there is no suction blocking that means I can finally take my place in the middle of the D rather than playing Safety and yeah I'd be a hog in mud heaven if I can have fun playing in there.

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Are the 'camera shakes' in the game, or did he add those for emphasis? they actually make a considerable impact IMO and without them the video wouldn't be the same.

I'm not meaning to be negative but I'm not seeing the differences very easily. Can someone sum them up? At slightly after half way through, Andre Carter tackles Vince Young with that ball strip attempt/potential 15y face mask penalty tackle that has been in the series since Madden 05 or so. How is this different now? and if it isn't, why is it in this video?

All the animations are nice, but I see nothing there that tells me this is a different animation system. I see little to no real gang tackles. I see absolutely no example of the engine handling momentum and velocity like a true engine should. I see no rag doll. I still see defenders bounce off tackles (e.g. Brandon Jacobs vs Pats about a quarter through). Every animation there could have been pre-rendered. For all we know, they just made a whole heap of new pre-determined animations and improved the system to load more suitable ones, as well as break animations when a new one is trying to be instigated. This is fine, but it isn't an ideal tackling engine.

When EA can happily proclaim "never see the same tackle twice" in Madden, then I'll be impressed. That marketing line is the true calling card of a proper animation system by today's gaming standards and funnily enough is starting to emmerge in most EA games that actually have competition.

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Co-sign..thats what im saying....

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Here comes the complaining give it a rest you dont like it dont look at it or buy it enjoy the video they improved a system in one year give credit where its due no video game will ever be perfect......live in the now wooooooooosaaaaaaaa

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I was about to say the same thing. Thanks goodness to the end of players falling like bowling pins.

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Looks beter than 08 for sure. I still see a few "shoulder tackles" in the video but overall it looks better :)

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But did they improve the system? I want to believe it, I'm just not seeing it. Can you identify the improvements for me?

It seems to me they just added a bunch of new animations *shrug*. They look good, but the guy is acting like Madden 08 didn't have procedural animations, which it did. So what is new about the system?

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"And here come the pretzels. A barrage of pretzels downing Whitey Ford." If anyone can tell me what thats from and who said it, they get a poster of the week award!

Man I cant stop watching this vid......

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It looks real good, but I'm not getting my hopes up just yet. The two full gameplay vids have been lackluster so I have to see more on that front. But this could be a big step in the right direction.

One little nitpicky thing. The football is a little bit too big and it makes the ball carrier look a little unnatural looking.

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my opinion is based on the videos ive seen thus far in conjunction with the blog, it just seems less scripted and more open from the vids seems like more stuff is happening on the fly as opposed to: players meet +animation triggered = play over. im with holding judment till i play em , but it just seems as though EA is making the efforts to to take it next gen ( or i should i say catch up to current gen LOL )

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Maybe in 1 on 1 situations, but the video clearly shows the phenomena remains in 2 or more vs 1 situations. About a quarter through, Jacobs is down the sideline and a Pats defender takes out his legs, while the other is knocked over like a bowling pin.

Hey, it can happen in real life. But what also happens in real life is the 2nd defender hits the free falling body in mid air and changes its direction with a collision. Sorry guys, but until that is a reality in Madden I won't be impressed. When you're fully aware of what animation systems are out there, it's hard to be impressed by anything still based on primitive physics engines.

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i saw at least 4 differnt wrap tackles not including the ones that the runners broke out of......plus its may 15th relax breath you cant act like the people at ea arnt working there tails off every week your getting at least two updates .take the vid for what it is showing off more responsive animations

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That's cool, but those improvements could be achieved by simply improving the system the blog author mentions was already in Madden. He talks about how, with their 300 or so tackle animations, the best one was chosen for the situation and sometimes this just wasn't good enough.

So you change the system, right? well, maybe not. You could just add 100's of more animations to enhance the probability a better one is chosen, and improve the code to instigate animations at closer range. Add in break points in animations to exit the full animation early and you have pretty much what Madden is now. Is this really a "new system"? A new system would be a pure physics engine.

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Right, I'm not saying the video didn't look good (still want to know about the camera shakes though) or even it wasn't an improvement over 08 in the animation department, I just question the claims it is a "new system", or an "all new tackling engine".

It may seem trivial, but I think it's important to question if we ever want to see truly advanced tackling in Madden. I would hate for EA to proclaim it's a new engine and then fail to push towards the next big tackling animation advancement (i.e. true physics) because "we already made a new tackling engine in 09".

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The Simpsons...technically the Announcer is saying that, but Marge was in charge of the pretzels :)