ANT middleware

[cree ross]

I've recently watched the Battlefield 3 gameplay trailer & also the leaked gameplay. What's so astonishing to me is the realistic movement of the soldiers . I read in game informer that the middleware used for the animations is called ANT . It's also used in Fifa 11. Why is the Madden engine not using this middleware?

[Hova57]

they do its the basis for madden and ncaa I think all of EA uses it. I think the major problem they have is old code from ps2 games and turning it around to current standards. Not only that but the other middleware and apps they use have to all jive. when ever there is a glitch that can't be fixed by patch somewhere down the line one of the middlewares glitched up or didn't jive the way it originally did. Go to Ian arena and check out his blogs he did one on the engines .

[guaps]

Quote: Originally Posted by cree ross

I've recently watched the Battlefield 3 gameplay trailer & also the leaked gameplay. What's so astonishing to me is the realistic movement of the soldiers . I read in game informer that the middleware used for the animations is called ANT . It's also used in Fifa 11. Why is the Madden engine not using this middleware?

As Hova57 mentions, Madden already use it. It is used in almost all of EA's sports games, and also in Crysis 2, Medal of Honor and the upcoming Battlefield 3.
ANT is an ANimation Toolkit that allows more fluidness between the various animation states and more natural-looking movements. However, as advanced as the ANT toolkit might be it is still limited by the animations available, because it cannot draw animations on the fly to react to real-time interaction like NaturalMotion's Euphoria.

[cree ross]

with the fluidity that I seen battlefield 3 ,I thought it was new tech. maybe it was because it was on a high-end PC

[ClevelandinDistress]

I don't think its necessarily the ANT animation system which drives the fluidity and natural looking animations. You still have to write the code and record the animations for those actions. So even if BF3 and Madden 12 both run off of ANT, its up to the programmers to individually write and record the running animations for both games. That's why the BF3 running animations are significantly better than what Madden has to offer.

Cheers!