NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

[Barncore]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Bit late here but here's my impressions of the article.

I love that 2K is getting so advanced that Scott and Czar have to write huge articles with video examples to help people understand. It's a great sign that 2K is heading in the right direction.

When a player catches the ball in a spot-up situation in NBA 2K18 we first look to determine if the pass was caught in mid-range or three-point territory. Then we compare the shot and drive tendency to determine if this player is likely to drive or shoot in this situation.

What about pass? Where does that option come into play? That's what the Spurs offense is all about for Spurs players as soon as they catch the ball: make a split-second decision whether you shoot, dribble or pass. The speed of which they make their decision/move is why that offense is so good.
*(Edit: i just saw you already answered a question about this. pass to open man tendency. got it)

Random thought: maybe that could be a good way to distinguish bad/young players from good/experienced players -- how quickly they make their move/decision. I.e. an experienced guy will either shoot,dribble,pass quickly, but an inexperienced guy might have a split second delay between catching the ball and making his move. Maybe a "Decision Speed" tendency or attribute?? Something that reflects how ingrained their mental abilities are.

While scouting the league this past year I noticed something I wanted to replicate in our game.

^ THIS IS WHY WE LOVE YOU CZAR! Doin' god's work my man

So this year we introduced new isolation tendencies that measure the AI players aggressiveness in relation to the quality of the defender.

This is essentially code that allows the AI to stare at your digital bench and yell to your coach, “They are going to need some help tonight. They can NOT guard me!”

At any step of our choosing during a play or freelance action, we can run a check for the current ball-handlers tendency to isolate. This value is determined by comparing the offensive players scoring ability against the defenders ability to guard him.

This is great.

Can't wait to give Dion Waiters a high "iso vs elite defenders" tendency
If you are a person who loves the X’s and O’s of basketball like I do, then Flow Tech will easily be the most exciting information in this blog. My main AI Engineer and I have had a vision we’ve been trying to replicate since I first arrived at 2K. Each year we continued to add the technical pieces that were necessary to one day get us to this point.

That's pretty exciting.
Can't wait to experience it for myself in a few weeks

[Barncore]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

One thing that I wanted to include in the blog but it just slipped my mind was another new tendency called play-discipline.

Depending on the tempo setting each AI team has a time range where they stop just moving the ball and the begin to look for a shot. A player with a low play discipline tendency will disregard the coaches tempo desires and look to score when they have the ball.

Neat little addition that I think we can expand upon in the future.

I absolutely love this

[Barncore]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Now one of several things we didn't talk about in the blog our freelance player archetype system was cleaned up in a major way this year. Out side of plays each player is ID'd based on his ratings and tendencies on what type of player he is in freelance.

This is separate from freelance offenses and their branches etc ok.

These are freelance player archetypes.
Iso,
Scorer
Pnr
Cutter
High post
Low post
Screener
Ball mover.

Each player on the floor identifies as UP TO FOUR of these archetypes and this is a hidden system it has been there for a few years but it is for the AI so that as they are moving the ball the game knows what type of player this is outside of his play-types.

No Spotup shooter ID? Did you forget to type it out or are spotup guys included in the "cutter" ID?

Regardless i really loved what i read there. It's good to know the game has a good self-awareness of what players can do on the court based on their attributes and tendencies, because then you know that when players develop over the years in MyLeague mode the computer will dynamically recognise and use them in appropriate ways. It makes player development a really fun concept.

[Armor and Sword]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Simply blown away DA Czar.

My goodness. This is what sports gaming is all about.

SIMULATION!!!!!!!

[DC]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

But "they" say 2K gives us the same game year after year, right?

Czar, question for you.

Will we manually have the ability to edit a player's tendency to Iso vs.

Poor
Average
Good
Elite

Defenders?

I already have plans for my digital Nick Young and Dion Waiters.

Also, can you please put back in the "Da Czar" dunk from 2K12?

[Da_Czar]

NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Indeed! I've been in this forum since the late 90's (99), and I see these young cats that are pseudo challenging the developer, trying to play the gotcha game, makes me smh. This is a gift, Big Czar, Ronyell, DC, WTF, all of us now these dudes are working hard, and to have one of our own come back answer questions from nearly each poster is a gift!

Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk

Respect fam. I'm just trying to do what I truly believe any of us from the OS glory days would have done had you had the opportunity. Man that drives me everyday. No days off because I am trying to build THAT game that we always wanted to play.

People don't remember that the hoop knowledge in the forums was so deep that I read a long time before ever posting because the knowledge level was so high here. Not just in basketball but the history of sports video-games.

I grew out of that. I am a byproduct of all of our conversations, discussions and arguments over all these years.

I just wish the old heads would post more LOL. It gets lonely in here sometimes.

This is the reason I try to answer every question in a thread like this because I remember how it felt when my question got skipped by a dev. LOL Obviously I can't do that all year long but I try to be as available as i can.




Sent from my iPad using Operation Sports

[DC]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

My fault,

I just thought of another question.

Are we able to edit team's out of bounds plays?

Still waiting on that Create a Play Feature from you too man. You gotta get me one of these years man.

#TwizzlerGang

[DC]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

I just wish the old heads would post more LOL. It gets lonely in here sometimes.





Sent from my iPad using Operation Sports

Just for you.

Ronyell called me soft the other day and said I am too Politically Correct these days.

I will put OS:2K as my homepage again, like I had it back in the day.

After a while though, I get tired of seeing these little kids crying about fingernail polish of the MyPlayers, so I stay away alot these days

[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Ohhhh, I like the sound of that. Follow up question on that front:

If the AI happened to roll out five of the same archtype, would a secondary archtype kick in for one (or some or all) of the players? For instance, five ball movers are out there on the floor -- the AI (hopefully) wouldn't pass the ball around until the shot clock ran out.

I'm going to assume that, if five ball movers are out on the floor, even if their inclination is to pass, one of their tendencies would kick in if an opening presented itself and they'll take a shot if they're open.

Unrelated question: is the Day 1 patch on Day 1 the game is playable, 9/15 (Early tip-off) or Day 1 it's technically releasing for everyone 9/19?

Ah forgot that last question. That is a great question. I hope so lol. But I can't say for sure. I hope it is deployed before anyone can play the game.


Sent from my iPad using Operation Sports

[BasketballGHS]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Simply blown away DA Czar.

My goodness. This is what sports gaming is all about.

SIMULATION!!!!!!!

So do a Superstar set this year and buy the game

[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

I would say that the individual players tendency would take precedence -- players play, coaches coach, and players got to buy in.

On the second question, ideally, a slower player like Deron Williams wouldn't be playing in a fast paced system that required him to bring the ball up -- Williams' system proficiency in such a scheme would be low, so the coach would deploy him differently/vary the system if he were playing.

I don't think the system proficiency feature is even close to grasping that kind of detail yet, but in the future you wouldn't see someone like Williams running a run and gun system as a first option -- the coach wouldn't start him in that and the AI GM wouldn't sign Williams for that.

Nice. So, having the system proficiency score directly influence a players playing time ? That's hot. Yeah we are no where close to that at the moment but we got it system built, so now we can expand it.

As a devils advocate what if Deron was a better overall player but the other guard option scores higher for the system. How should the AI handle those situations ?

Would an AI still look smart starting Hornacek over Jordan because Hornacek is a better fit in the system ?


Sent from my iPad using Operation Sports

[trekfan]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Ah forgot that last question. That is a great question. I hope so lol. But I can't say for sure. I hope it is deployed before anyone can play the game.


Sent from my iPad using Operation Sports

Thanks for the response. I hope so, too![emoji1360]

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

[BasketballGHS]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

Czar are the min rotation screen the same as last year where you could place guy's in certain minutes situations?

I set that up for CPU, but it would still not do it 100 percent of the time

And it took this 36 year old a few tries to figure the whole thing out

[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

stepbacks and pullips look like they've been toned down a bit, czar. stepbacks don t appear to cover as much ground as they used to, and pullups look a bit weak on the vertical, or maybe it's just the type of pullup. that's not necessarily a bad thing, as challenges from defender s look to be toned down as well.

ugh, maybe im just trippin.

At the community feedback event they complained about what they called the "loading" of a shot on pull-ups and momentum jumpers ( IIRC I could be wrong) but they may be having some effect on what you are seeing here.


Sent from my iPad using Operation Sports

[Da_Czar]

Re: NBA 2K18 Offensive Tendencies, AI Execution & Motion Blog From Da_Czar

btw, i'd love to hear about the improved triple threat mechanic, if u could. I remember in past years the cpu would never shoot from a tt even with their tendency maxed. it would always end in an exaggerated dribble into drive.

Zach really did a nice job on unifying our triple threat game and post game.

Jabs are tighter.

in the post Zach did a TON of work on allowing you guys to pump fake and then use the stick to pivot to 8 different locations he calls hubs and then he has shots out of each of those hubs, as well as fakes.

He really should have made a video on this because the system is really done well. Your going to see some nice stuff from users who take the time to master it.

As with everything there is still room for improvement but for a single dev cycle he put a tremendous amount of work into this. definitely worth the time to try it out.


Sent from my iPad using Operation Sports