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Re: Rex Dickson on The Sim Perspective NOW
Here's the entire transcript (somewhat paraphrased) enjoy. Could a mod add this to the OP please?
Rex's opening statement "We're going after sim were going after a realistic representation of the sport and away from the herky jerky twitchy arcadey type experience. That game has been fun for millions of people but were going after realistic representation. We're not there yet, but with next gen we are putting a stake in the ground to let people know this is where we're headed."
Q: Will weather be a factor at all in Madden 25 next gen with the Ignite Engine and Living Worlds?
Rex: That is something that would be more of a graphics department question, not really my department, but from my time with the game, the new snow looks amazing and individual footprints stick around, in rain games different parts of the field get muddy and it looks really cool. That's something we have on our list with weather affecting gameplay, but that is something that isn't a priority until we nail all the fundamentals of core gameplay. Once we get those in place, then we can get to some more of the "fun stuff."
Q: Will we see a difference between a bigger back and a smaller back based on speed and agility?
Rex: For sure, obviously your strategy is going to differ using those two styles. Although I think the vision for what you're asking me really is that separation of different styles where they actually look different and their running styles are different. It's definitely something we're passionate about, but if you think about Madden and the state of where it's at right now, I think we have a lot more work to do in terms of the animation quality in our game. Even though step locomotion fixes some of the pops and skating and things like that, there's still a lot of stuff going on that represents that core animation quality and I think we will spend a lot of time really nailing that before we work on and started exploring individual based styles for different running backs. One other thing, we are working very heavily on our physics system and specifically on momentum and center of gravity, and organic outcomes that happen based on a players mass and momentum. We're trying to figure out all those formulas, they used to all be ratings based, but now they are taking into account organic physics with all these size and mass ratings. Our physics team is 80% focused on that specific problem right now.
Q: How does player sense affect the secondary play?
Rex: Yeah there's going to be one major thing that changes and it's our rail tracks technology, FIFA uses it. Sum it up, it's the way an AI or player projects a path of where he wants to be, predicting where the ball is going to be or where the ball carrier will go. Now that they can make so many more calculations, those paths can become more granular, and what you're going to see is guys taking ridiculously effective paths to the ball and the ball carrier. As soon as ball leaves QB's hand, if the DB is in zone and basically looking into the backfield, have to see the ball to be able to break on it, those DB's will break on the ball in ways that you have never seen before. There reaction to the ball coming out of the QB's hand is like nothing you have ever seen before. The coverage is so different, it forces you to adapt your play style. Deep balls and lob balls are not very effective anymore, have to utilize your drag routes and check downs now, complemented by the new pass rush tuning, made to be more realistic in time that you have before the pocket will collapse. If the defense sends more blitzers than you have blockers they will get through and get through quickly now because blocking is based on real prinicples not playing by video game rules anymore. As you can imagine all of these different elements create a much more realistic game under the hood.
Q: What is Living Worlds about?
Rex: Trailer should be coming out soon, but what you're going to get is 3d characters, no more cards, for the crowds or sidelines, fully rendered 80,000 plus people in the stands, phenomenal sweeping shots of the crowds from time to time, sidelines are interactive, if you run out of bounds you'll get reactions there. I think we had grand aspirations for Living Worlds and what we did is got a solid foundation in place. What I want people to take from this, is the huge tech investment and as a result all we really achieved is just the foundation of where we want to go with it. This is just the tip of the iceberg, when you see what we have in store for the future of living worlds will blow you away.
Q: How important is it to have guys on the dev team that actually played college and pro football?
Rex: It's huge, and you start with Cam Weber on down, there's a whole mentality of teamwork and bringing passion to it and wanting to be a champion in your career. We read the OS forums and Pasta Padre articles and take it personally, we are holding ourselves to a high standard and not going to give them the material that they use to attack us anymore. We take a lot of pride in our work. We make a lot of sacrifices because everyone knows how big this mountain is that we're trying to climb and we make sacrifices to get the game that you guys are wanting faster. The other thing is the football knowledge brought to the team, especially this year with what Clint Oldenburg has been able to bring to us. If there's one feature to look at as to what having football players on the dev team means, it's the war in the trenches feature.
Q: When it comes to animations are you guys looking at going away from stock animations and moving towards letting the game happen organically on the fly?
Rex: I think if I were to go into detail about how this system works, you would understand that that's not really even a factor. What happens is, it's that the animations are always running and it's the degree to which and the times at which that we choose to let physics take over and do it's thing. A completely organic game is almost impossible and I think it would fall short of the kind of outcomes that we want. You have to understand, in order to really deliver on the personality and great motion of the players, it's all about animation, you gotta have great animation. The future for us, is that that animation has to coexist with AI and physics. Those 3 things have to work together well and we don't do a great job of that yet right now. Over the years we will turn up the dial on physics more and more but our first priority is great animation quality, the combination of physics and AI. If we're not knocking all 3, animations, physics, and AI out of the park, we're not doing our job well. That's the first step, getting to what I would say 90 quality on those 3 things and then we'll move towards loosing up physics and doing more with physics. That's not to say that we're not going to implement big physics features probably every year, we will.
Q: As far as the trenches this year, will size and weight and mass matter?
Rex: It does, it all matters, there's so much going on in there it's crazy. I think awareness is a big part of it, the ability to sense what's going on around them. Pass block footwork, run block, all really important. Their awareness is the ability to judge blitzers coming and switch assignments stuff like that. Speed and footwork is their ability to get off double teams and pick up incoming guys. Once the interaction starts, that's when the mass and weight and also pass block rating vs pass rushers block shed rating takes effect. There's just so much more that they do now, like one move speed rushes that beat the tackles to the outside. There's so much new content in the trenches that it will be months of people discovering new interactions in the trenches that they've never seen before.
Q: With Living Worlds will there be a HFA element in the game?
Rex: I'm not familiar if that feature is actually in Madden or not. When I first started here, one of the things I championed is working more to align some of the features in NCAA with Madden. I know one thing that Madden is really interested in is NCAA's true to clock feature, we created a document of all the features from NCAA that we thought we should migrate but I don't believe any of them are going to be on Madden 25 next gen, but some of the best features from NCAA we're working on getting in Madden 15 that we're planning now. They may not look the same, but functionality should be similar. I don't know if that answers your question, my guess would be that HFA would work the same as it has this year, but it will be something that will migrate over from NCAA.
Q: Will each stadium feel different, the way it looks, sounds, and feels?
Rex: Definitely the way it looks, the stadiums look better than ever on next gen. The crowds dress the part based on who the home team is. I really can't judge the stadium sounds because I always play with the volume off because me and the game designers are always discussing all the different gameplay fixes and tuning when we play. I can't speak to how different the sounds will be on next gen.
Q: Is it possible to include a coordinator cam in Madden?
Rex: Yes it is possible, but it's not going to be in this year. However for next year, we're discussing a big investment in Madden cameras. Now how deep that goes I don't know yet, but I would expect in 15 a bigger investment in lots of different camera views and migrating some of the cameras from NCAA over.
Q: How much code from the old engine and current gen tech is being ported over and is still being used in Ignite?
Rex: Ignite is basically a full representation of a concept EA started thinking about back in 2008 to start sharing technologies amongst the franchises instead of each franchise having separate technology. Anytime you invest in a new code and technology you're looking at a 3-4 year window before content developers can begin to work on it. Each element of Ignite is developed separately, crowd tech, locomotion, and AI. 2-3 years ago we started thinking about how to create better step locomotion and our engineers about a year ago split from them and started working on how to implement this into football, while they started working on soccer content obviously. It's shared technologies working across all EA Sports games we're leveraging our resources so we don't have the 5 different studios building the same technology just different ways.
Q: Will the framework for Ignite allow flexibility for future code design changes and how will that be?
Rex: One of the core pieces of Ignite that's under the hood is our ANT animation system and that technology is actually shared with the team at Battlefield and Visceral and there's big central investments being made. Like future prototypes, almost like the concept like skunkworks. We don't have any plans to for it in the next year or two, but we already know where we're going for 2-3 years from now. They're already setting the ground work for that by delivering big technology pieces. One example and I know people have been wondering for years, when are we going to bring back gang tackles and have multiple defenders hanging onto a ball carrier? Obviously that's a high priority target of mine, that requires a technology that's too big for us to build ourselves with the gameplay team, it costs too much. This feature team is working towards that goal though. They are setting us up for the future and that is what this shared technology is all about. We're not the only game that wants to have these multiple character interactions occur. Obviously FIFA has a need for that as well as other groups. Yes, there's much room for flexibility and we know where we're going and already have our feature plan for the next 3-5 years and we know where the franchise is headed and are already making the investments in technology to help us get there.
Q: In general, how will the Ignite engine change the way you play Madden?
Rex: The first thing is the step based locomotion system. It changes the way you move completely. I know one of you guys(Sim Standard) made a video about swerve running and I used to show that video in executive reviews about like how this is our locomotion system now, and then present my own video showing where we are going. I'm very proud that we were able to get this system in place in the first two years of Cam and I running gameplay.
Rex on the criticism and 2k bashing:" We do read the websites and the reviews, I have a sheet I use to track what the most talked about topics are and what's hot and the next big thing that people want us to fix. One thing I want to get across and this is important. The people who are out there just constantly badgering about 2k over and over, it really gets in the way and kind of annoys us. So here it is, we are the only NFL videogame maker in town and that's probably the way it is going to be for a long time. You have two choices, you can either complain about it, or you can be involved in fixing it. I personally made a career choice to say that I'm going to take responsibility to fix this game and I will take full responsiblity for the state it's in right now, even though I've only been there for two years. What I'm trying to impress upon you is be constructive, tell us what you don't like and what you want to see. If you're spending all your time talking about 2k or how much we suck or how much we do this wrong, it is not helpful to the process and makes us not want to go on the forums and read about what you guys want us to do. It is of upmost importance that people understand the more constructive you are on your feedback and the more you express the things that you want to see in the game, the greater the chances that we will actually work on them and do them. The more it turns into EA vs 2k bashing, we're more likely to just turn our heads and say we're done listening to this from the community and we don't want it to come to that. We're trying really hard to reengage the community and embrace the community, but there's a lot of individuals who make that hard. Police yourselves, if people are on a Madden forum talking about 2k, politely tell them to go to a 2k forum, because 2k is the only people who can listen to their pleas. There's nothing I can do to make a 2k football game and hear their pleas.
Q: It was said by Andrew Wilson that with Ignite, players will be able to grab the jerseys of another player, will we ever see that in Madden?
Rex: You will see that, I just can't tell you when. Remember that question about the future technologies of Ignite? I will impress upon you that very much, cloth and cloth deformation and jersey pulling is very much part of Ignite, we're just not there yet with Madden. We have some unique complications in our system, kind of different from what you would want with FIFA and NBA with the more baggy kind of shirts. The tight jerseys represent a different model for us so we have some unique needs in that space. We'll definitely be getting to that, like I say with a lot of things it's on the list, so you can be expecting it in years to come.
Q: Can you explain how this development cycle works going into next gen and having to also develop NCAA 14, Madden 25 current gen?
Rex:I wouldn't think of this year as a short cycle, this was a long one. With us in gameplay we also have to develop for NCAA. This is my second year as Creative Director, but my first full year as Creative Director so this is like my first year of my full vision that the team started working on. We basically worked on NCAA and Madden simultaneously but our main focus was on NCAA up until we got it out of the way, then we move into bug fixing on NCAA and then focus solely on Madden for the last few months. We finished up Madden in July and we had been working on next gen throughout the entire cycle, but it was only once Madden gen 3 was released that we started fully working on Madden on gen 4. There were a large number of people who had been working on gen 4 before us, but for us exclusively on gameplay since we have to serve all 3 of those titles, it was focus on NCAA get that out the door, focus on Madden gen 3, get it out the door and then focus on gen 4. While all of this was going on, I also had to get the plan for 15 in place, because the one thing we knew was true, was that by the time we were done with Madden gen 4, it was going to be November and we would have lost 2-3 months off of our normal dev cycle, so it's really 15 where we're going to have a shorter dev cycle because we're coming full bore off Madden 25 on gen 4, much later than we normally would. It's been a very long cycle, we had a lot to do, but I'm pretty proud with the results, especially with the gen 4 title.
Q: Will we ever see in CFM a 2k like "My Player" mode?
Rex: I will tell you this, Mike Young Creative Director of our Madden game team is super passionate about delivering a epic fully cinematic blown out Superstar mode. It's the same kind of idea we've been talking about all night. We talk about blowing out Superstar mode, but you have to ask yourself is that more of a CFM kind of mode issue or is it more of a presentation/gameplay issue? I think the latter is true and also if it is a presentation problem, we know that we have a lot of things we have to do in presentation to get us to the kind of quality level that we want to be at. That's core presentation, core delivery, commentary, UI support, getting the cameras right, the cuts right. We have a lot of big plans in that space, huge plans actually about how to take presentation to the next level. I think what we'll focus on is nailing that core presentation level first, and then once we're comfortable with that, move on to something like blowing out Superstar presentation out.
Q: What kind of things are able to be achieved with the new space and power that weren't before?
Rex: There's two separate questions, one is the horsepower, which is performance and the other is memory, kind of like system memory. Memory affords us animation, we were capped out on animations in gen 3, so if we wanted to add something like a catch animation, we had to pull something else out, so we were pulling some things out to add something back in, which would leave holes in animations. What that means, is in a situation where the system is looking to match an animation based on a sequence and it can't find variety then you see the same thing playing out and get the same animation playing at the same frame at the same time on two different characters. It doesn't happen a lot but when it does it looks bad. Essentially we can make that problem go away now, we can just throw a lot of animation variety at these different outcome situations. The other thing, on gen 3 because of all these animations, we had to compress the animations which means we take the quality of our animation, like you would on a Youtube video, you shoot it in HD and in order to put it on Youtube you compress it down and lose quality. You do the same with animations on gen 3, you compress it down when you start running out of memory and give yourself room to add more animations. On gen 4 all animations are completely uncompressed which means you get higher quality and it's a better quality looking playback of the animation. On the performance side, that's all the reasons why we're able to build stuff like living worlds and all the sidelines stuff, and all the new graphics details that you'll see in replays. A whole lot more under the hood, one example that just popped into my head, is the secondary animation on the helmets, you now see the helmets move independently from the head. It's a subtle thing but it's just one of these little details of what the new horsepower got us.
Q: Will you see fans leave the game early if it's a blowout or will preseason attendance affect real life preseason games?
Rex: I believe dynamic attendance is not in this year, like some other things, it's very high on our list and I would expect it soon.
Q: Can you give us a nugget that you haven't given anyone else?
Rex: There is something that I want to say, but I really can't reveal it. Let's just say that each platform has some exclusive features, we haven't announced them all yet. There's some really neat surprises that we have in store for Xbox One and PS4. For those of you who pre ordered on PS4, and were upset about SmartGlass being Xbox One exclusive, trust me you have nothing to worry about, there's some really neat stuff coming your way.
Last edited by jpdavis82; 10-23-2013 at 11:56 AM.
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10-23-2013, 10:06 AM
