Not sure if you guys saw this post of his in the "running animations thread"... GREAT READ...I bolded the important comments.
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...post2039474903
wow... some harshness in here.
OK first off, we don't phone it in, so comments like "take some pride in my work" make me want to leave the boards (and is often the reason I go 6 months between visits, and why some people around the halls of EA think that letting the community set priority isn't the best way to go, since "no matter what we do they will hate on us for something").
Locomotion got dropped in priority this year for a number of reasons but marketability has NOTHING to do with it.
1. We introduced new movement group system last year
2. We introduced footplant last year
3. We introduced a totally new ball carrier last year
4. added procedural lean to our locomotion controller
5. improved strafing, and strafing behavior to eliminate the jerking and popping from 08.
6. The complaints last year were around things we can (and did) tune, turn rates, accel/decel rates, leans.
This was months and months of work, we had to rework most of our animation cycles - and it was well-received (See locomotion blog from last year and the comments we got).
there was very little (none I remember) harsh feedback directly focused on our locomotion cycles last year (I would love for someone to find a thread about locomotions after madden 09), so when I wanted to totally replace our locomotion engine this year, it got low priority because Ian sets our priority based on community feedback.. things that you guys asked for last year got bumped up. That is how we are honestly setting our priority (marketing has nothing to do with it). The priority was based on volume of complaints from the community.
We did do a lot of tuning work around locomotion believability in accel/decel, turn rates, leans, etc... Ian has spent a ton of time tuning locomotions for realism, and the work continues on that and will continue until they make us stop... but priorities were set on feedback from the community.
1. Gang Tackling (the most harsh criticisms we got from the community last year were around a lack of gang tackling after the tackles blogs (feel free to find and read those threads)). This new system allows offensive players to push the pile, defensive players to turn and push the pile, hitsticking the pile, hitsticking an existing tackle, breaking out of gang tackles (hard to do but possible), adding on even as the tackle is falling to move that last inch, and pile ups with up to 9 players... Playing defense has never been this involved. And we did it because THIS BOARD asked for it, and the tackle engine I designed was a 2 year plan to do it. It also improves contact on ALL tackles, handoffs, blocks etc...
2. Presentation - TONS of cut scenes, chain gangs, refs on the field, props, injuries, injury cart, cameras to create that authentic football feel.
3. New blocking animations and pocket formation, better block movement..
4. QB throw styles and movement, and to eliminate the ball being pulled back in when throwing and getting sacked (throw out of sack, which you can see in the video.. did you notice?).
5. Facial Animation - we got a totally new facial system (not in the video, not in the fallon build, but on now and looking very cool).
I put some emphasis on getting our replay to work like 2K8 (remember my threads on this last year?), and we did that.. so the replay videos you see with stupidly stiff movements, will look 10 times better this year because we are no longer dropping frames out in replay. To be honest the animation team has been annoyed forever that our quality is judged and compared based on videos ripped out of our old replay system (seen once in this thread) that drops 50% of our animation to start with, and continues to drop frames the longer it gets, resulting in animation that is robotic as hell and no where near the quality of actual gameplay.
We have a large team of very talented and very dedicated animators. We can take all the constructive criticism you dish out, but keep it to criticism about the animation. Personal attacks don't make us listen to you one bit, they make us realize you have no idea how hard we work and no matter what we do you will find some way to be on offensive. This team is very passionate and working very hard to make the best game we can. Comments like "take pride in your work", make them want to say "you guys have no idea how hard we work and no matter how much we listen you will never be happy so why bother listening at all". I'll take all the comments and suggestion you guys want to dish out, but don't attack the animation team or their pride in their work, you have no idea how passionate these guys are about what they do and how hard they fight to do the best animation they can in this game.
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OK first off, we don't phone it in, so comments like "take some pride in my work" make me want to leave the boards (and is often the reason I go 6 months between visits, and why some people around the halls of EA think that letting the community set priority isn't the best way to go, since "no matter what we do they will hate on us for something").
Locomotion got dropped in priority this year for a number of reasons but marketability has NOTHING to do with it.
1. We introduced new movement group system last year
2. We introduced footplant last year
3. We introduced a totally new ball carrier last year
4. added procedural lean to our locomotion controller
5. improved strafing, and strafing behavior to eliminate the jerking and popping from 08.
6. The complaints last year were around things we can (and did) tune, turn rates, accel/decel rates, leans.
This was months and months of work, we had to rework most of our animation cycles - and it was well-received (See locomotion blog from last year and the comments we got).
there was very little (none I remember) harsh feedback directly focused on our locomotion cycles last year (I would love for someone to find a thread about locomotions after madden 09), so when I wanted to totally replace our locomotion engine this year, it got low priority because Ian sets our priority based on community feedback.. things that you guys asked for last year got bumped up. That is how we are honestly setting our priority (marketing has nothing to do with it). The priority was based on volume of complaints from the community.
We did do a lot of tuning work around locomotion believability in accel/decel, turn rates, leans, etc... Ian has spent a ton of time tuning locomotions for realism, and the work continues on that and will continue until they make us stop... but priorities were set on feedback from the community.
1. Gang Tackling (the most harsh criticisms we got from the community last year were around a lack of gang tackling after the tackles blogs (feel free to find and read those threads)). This new system allows offensive players to push the pile, defensive players to turn and push the pile, hitsticking the pile, hitsticking an existing tackle, breaking out of gang tackles (hard to do but possible), adding on even as the tackle is falling to move that last inch, and pile ups with up to 9 players... Playing defense has never been this involved. And we did it because THIS BOARD asked for it, and the tackle engine I designed was a 2 year plan to do it. It also improves contact on ALL tackles, handoffs, blocks etc...
2. Presentation - TONS of cut scenes, chain gangs, refs on the field, props, injuries, injury cart, cameras to create that authentic football feel.
3. New blocking animations and pocket formation, better block movement..
4. QB throw styles and movement, and to eliminate the ball being pulled back in when throwing and getting sacked (throw out of sack, which you can see in the video.. did you notice?).
5. Facial Animation - we got a totally new facial system (not in the video, not in the fallon build, but on now and looking very cool).
I put some emphasis on getting our replay to work like 2K8 (remember my threads on this last year?), and we did that.. so the replay videos you see with stupidly stiff movements, will look 10 times better this year because we are no longer dropping frames out in replay. To be honest the animation team has been annoyed forever that our quality is judged and compared based on videos ripped out of our old replay system (seen once in this thread) that drops 50% of our animation to start with, and continues to drop frames the longer it gets, resulting in animation that is robotic as hell and no where near the quality of actual gameplay.
We have a large team of very talented and very dedicated animators. We can take all the constructive criticism you dish out, but keep it to criticism about the animation. Personal attacks don't make us listen to you one bit, they make us realize you have no idea how hard we work and no matter what we do you will find some way to be on offensive. This team is very passionate and working very hard to make the best game we can. Comments like "take pride in your work", make them want to say "you guys have no idea how hard we work and no matter how much we listen you will never be happy so why bother listening at all". I'll take all the comments and suggestion you guys want to dish out, but don't attack the animation team or their pride in their work, you have no idea how passionate these guys are about what they do and how hard they fight to do the best animation they can in this game.
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i know first hand! hahaha... but his post was verrrry informative, so yeah, we'd love to have him post more often!
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