Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

[KushGamer]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Kush, if your in the mood to answer Q's, I have another one for you:

There has always been one animation that bugs me more than any other and that is the pitcher making a running, barehanded (or gloved) play on a slow roller or bunt down the 3rd baseline and then turning, jumping and making a perfect throw on a line to first to nail a speedy runner over and over again.

Has this animation still included, has it been fixed/deleted, etc?

There are maybe 2 or 3 pitchers who are athletic enough to make this play in real life (and probably only about 10% of the time).

In the game, it kind of hindered hopes of small ball, because a perfect opportunity to drop down a bunt would be squashed by the over athletic AI.

Thanks in advance!

This has been addressed. Hope you like it.

[sask3m]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

hopefully its been addressed by having the 3rd baseman field some of those.

[Sedihawk2K5]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

I'm not gonna say the framerate is perfect all of the time, but it was definitely THE emphasis for the graphics guys this year.

Any amount of compression is going to lose frames and detail. There was a large .wmv format movie posted somewhere. That one was the most accurate. Any other format compresses the data, so you shouldn't draw any framerate conclusions from that.

Kush, there's some panic starting to form among the fans here because we haven't seen a demo yet and the marketing hasn't been great. The Show demo has muddied things as well. There appears to be a whole lot new to this year's game, but fans feel left in the dark. Some are even going on baseless speculation that not much was done to this year's game and the reason for the quiet is because 2K isn't happy with the product. What can you say to address claims like that? Or can you even say a thing now that you are out of the company?

[KushGamer]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Kush, there's some panic starting to form among the fans here because we haven't seen a demo yet and the marketing hasn't been great. The Show demo has muddied things as well. There appears to be a whole lot new to this year's game, but fans feel left in the dark. Some are even going on baseless speculation that not much was done to this year's game and the reason for the quiet is because 2K isn't happy with the product. What can you say to address claims like that? Or can you even say a thing now that you are out of the company?

As someone pointed out in another thread, the demo for 2K7 was released the day before the full game. I'm hopeful that it will be out a little earlier than that this year. But to say 2K is trying to hide the product because they are not confident is ridiculous. If anything, that would push them to market it more, to try to garner more sales based on marketing alone, since the game wouldn't sell itself. Anyway, we were obviously proud of the leap the game made from 2K6 to 2K7, yet the demo was released the day before it shipped. So speculation is nothing but speculation by uninformed pessimists.

[Tomba]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

As someone pointed out in another thread, the demo for 2K7 was released the day before the full game. I'm hopeful that it will be out a little earlier than that this year. But to say 2K is trying to hide the product because they are not confident is ridiculous. If anything, that would push them to market it more, to try to garner more sales based on marketing alone, since the game wouldn't sell itself. Anyway, we were obviously proud of the leap the game made from 2K6 to 2K7, yet the demo was released the day before it shipped. So speculation is nothing but speculation by uninformed pessimists.

gameplay is my main concern. i love pro yakuu spirits and admire The show last year was my first REAL leap into 2k baseball. i liked the pitched A LOT myself though i thought the hitting was very uninspiring. I thought that meter wise the game needed to follow more the cursor model and rely more on button presses along with matching up stuff the way the pitching did. This year you guys decided to go with thumbstick control,so i'm hoping it's something that might actually have MORE fun with. One thing i do not like in the next gen games IS the lack of polish. lack of smooth playing games and games that seem to hiccup or struggle to run the way a computer struggles if the computer doesn't have a strong enough graphics card. though visually last year 2k7 was great amazing at times I despised the lag(lag that was EVEN present in pro yakyuu, so i am not bias) This lag was in cutscences in animations(as if the branching wasn't done remininscent of NBA Live 08/07) in rain games in stadiums with ceratin lighting etc etc. I SERIOUSLY will call out the games producers if this still is in there. I've heard that there were graphical comprimises to get the framerate "better" which i really hope it has. A demo will solidify my purchase. heck WE can all afford the game it's justa matter if it's worth it...

[KushGamer]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Yeah man. I want the demo to come out too. I haven't been able to bear playing 2K7 since about a month after it was released. And now that I've been out of the 2K offices for a few weeks I am really jonesin to play some baseball. There's only so much Madden I can take and I just cant seem to get gung-ho about BioShock. NBA's not doin it for me either, I NEED BASEBALL!!

[MizzouRah]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Yeah man. I want the demo to come out too. I haven't been able to bear playing 2K7 since about a month after it was released. And now that I've been out of the 2K offices for a few weeks I am really jonesin to play some baseball. There's only so much Madden I can take and I just cant seem to get gung-ho about BioShock. NBA's not doin it for me either, I NEED BASEBALL!!

Warm weather here in the midwest would help.

[StormJH1]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Yeah man. I want the demo to come out too. I haven't been able to bear playing 2K7 since about a month after it was released. And now that I've been out of the 2K offices for a few weeks I am really jonesin to play some baseball. There's only so much Madden I can take and I just cant seem to get gung-ho about BioShock. NBA's not doin it for me either, I NEED BASEBALL!!

Agreed. I just think it's funny that people are asking questions about all these little things (like does it get darker outside with the progression of time, does fatigue carry over from game to game in online mode), and meanwhile, the hitting was broken last year, the fielding was poorly presented and glitchy, and the ratings out of the box were a complete disaster.

I want this game to be good so badly, but everything in my head tells me that won't be the case. Not when you had to start swinging in 2k7 BEFORE the ball left the pitcher's hand, which means you can't realistically take pitches or even adjust the timing to the type of pitch.

They can throw out all the beautiful screenshots they want, but if the batter/pitcher duel isn't fixed, and if you still can't even see the ball once it's hit into play this year, why does it matter?

[Blitzburgh]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Kush, When I'm batting, IMO the home plate is not lined up straight towards the mound (camera angle?) when a right hand batter is facing a right handed pitcher and it really drives me crazy! haha

When a lefty comes up to bat facing a right handed pitcher them the camera angle is perfectly straight to the pitcher. Has this been corrected or was it done on purpose?

One more, I heard mentioned early on about a new defensive camera? Is that true? Can we field the ball from a 3rd person view? I have been wanting that since All Star baseball died.

Thank you!
Blitzburgh

[KushGamer]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Kush, When I'm batting, IMO the home plate is not lined up straight towards the mound (camera angle?) when a right hand batter is facing a right handed pitcher and it really drives me crazy! haha

When a lefty comes up to bat facing a right handed pitcher them the camera angle is perfectly straight to the pitcher. Has this been corrected or was it done on purpose?

One more, I heard mentioned early on about a new defensive camera? Is that true? Can we field the ball from a 3rd person view? I have been wanting that since All Star baseball died.

Thank you!
Blitzburgh

That camera angle is intentional. On certain stance / delivery matchups with same-handed players, the batter's elbow would sometimes block most of the flight of the pitch. So the slight offset was put in to correct this.

No 3rd-person "behind the back" cam. We added a more aerial camera option this year.

[CMH]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

He says all of that after the game is released. Get off your soapbox.

Sorry, didn't realize that if you asked Sony about their product they wouldn't say it's the best game in the market.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

[Blitzburgh]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

That camera angle is intentional. On certain stance / delivery matchups with same-handed players, the batter's elbow would sometimes block most of the flight of the pitch. So the slight offset was put in to correct this.

No 3rd-person "behind the back" cam. We added a more aerial camera option this year.

Thanks Kush I appreciate it.

[Blitzburgh]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Kush, one more before I have to get going for an appointment...

I know the pitching mechanics have changed but has the physics on the ball being pitched changed? There is something about the ball physics when pitching that just does't seem right to me. Maybe it's because I feel that the behind the pitcher camera needs to be a bit further away from the batter or something.

I don't own a PS3 so I have never played the show but both the Show and MVP seemed to have the pitching physics seem very realistic. Any thoughts?

Thanks again.
Blitzburgh

[KushGamer]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

Kush, one more before I have to get going for an appointment...

I know the pitching mechanics have changed but has the physics on the ball being pitched changed? There is something about the ball physics when pitching that just does't seem right to me. Maybe it's because I feel that the behind the pitcher camera needs to be a bit further away from the batter or something.

I don't own a PS3 so I have never played the show but both the Show and MVP seemed to have the pitching physics seem very realistic. Any thoughts?

Thanks again.
Blitzburgh

We did do some work on the pitched ball physics. I think its still not quite right, but it is certainly more accurate to actual physics than it was before.

We also moved the default camera a little farther back for better depth perception, but kept in last year's camera, and also added another camera that's even further back, similar to The Bigs.

[Blitzburgh]

Re: Ben Brinkman is about to answer some real questions

We did do some work on the pitched ball physics. I think its still not quite right, but it is certainly more accurate to actual physics than it was before.

We also moved the default camera a little farther back for better depth perception, but kept in last year's camera, and also added another camera that's even further back, similar to The Bigs.

Great! That seems promising. Gotta run and thanks for answering.