Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

[lolfalconsbeatu]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Yea but itd be nice to be able to use it on special teams(ps2 version) so your starters dont have to cover kickoffs and your kick returner trying to block fgs

loll that would be nice. Tony Gonzalez, a HOF about to retire like next year is on kickoff loll and I cant do anything about it

[huskerwr38]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

"In previous years we have seen some situations where a receiver tries to make a catch near the sideline without making any attempt to get both feet inbounds."

How about EVERY situations.

Anyways, about the video. Yes I won't believe it until I see it. Why did they have to put up a video of the bad catches of which we have all seen a million frustrating times?

[Hova57]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

i guess they are making a change to the blog so the page is frozen till they are done. did someone say there was a video but it looked like the wrong video, maybe it was and they are fixing it.

[jvaccaro]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

I'm very excited about this blog because of three reasons.

1. The general field position (sideline/endzone/1st down) awareness by the AI has been one of the biggest issues for many years. Hope this works like they say.

2. Madden has always had great catch animations, but they've always seemed to innappropriately play at the worst possible times. Now that should finally be better.

3. If this is just the first bit of info for m11, and supposodly a minor one compared to the blogs to come, the game should be very good!



Actually, I'm really hoping they don't try to introduce any new major features this year. Rather, just spend the dev cycle working on things like this blog and continue tweaking the game to really get it to play smoothly.

[lolfalconsbeatu]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

"In previous years we have seen some situations where a receiver tries to make a catch near the sideline without making any attempt to get both feet inbounds."

How about EVERY situations.

Anyways, about the video. Yes I won't believe it until I see it. Why did they have to put up a video of the bad catches of which we have all seen a million frustrating times?

just to let you know that they get it...but yeah hopefully we get some footage soon. Good marketing on their behalf though. I guarantee you will be toned in next week in anticipation for a video loll (so will I)

[jvaccaro]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

here's an interesting little tidbit from the m11 photo in the catch tuning blog...



...just noticed the variable sock height.

I'm really a gameplay guy, and some people will certainly say 'big deal' but others realize how these little things matter too.

hopefully there's new cut scenes with players pulling their socks back up and whatnot. this is what players are really doing 95% of the time between plays -- as well as fixing shoulder pads, putting mouth pieces in and out, and unbuttoning/buttoning of the chin strap.

[huskerwr38]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Although kind of disappointing that next week's blog will still again be about the catch tuning.

[roadman]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Although kind of disappointing that next week's blog will still again be about the catch tuning.

That is a chat, not a blog.

Don't know when the next blog will roll out.

[huskerwr38]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

"That is a chat, not a blog.

Don't know when the next blog will roll out. "

Oh so SORRY,.....chat excuse me.

[lolfalconsbeatu]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

"That is a chat, not a blog.

Don't know when the next blog will roll out. "

Oh so SORRY,.....chat excuse me.

lol

[roadman]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

"That is a chat, not a blog.

Don't know when the next blog will roll out. "

Oh so SORRY,.....chat excuse me.

Oh so SORRY..... wasn't aware you knew.

[splff3000]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

i guess they are making a change to the blog so the page is frozen till they are done. did someone say there was a video but it looked like the wrong video, maybe it was and they are fixing it.

Nope, everything is working fine in firefox. They aren't changing anything as far as I can tell.

[da bucs gm]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

can someone just copy n paste the blog plz?

[Hova57]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

well everything that has to do with this blog i can't see. this sucks cheesenuts.

on first page on this thread i only see marktg intial post then nothing til i go to page 2 and the freaking link don't work could someone if its legal just post the blog in this thread plez

[splff3000]

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Here ya go,

Catch Tuning
by Ian Cummings 03/24/10 10:37 AM

Well it’s hard to believe, but Madden NFL 11 will be here before you know it! The development team here at EA Sports Tiburon in sunny Orlando, FL has been hard at work trying to put together the best football game in history (our goal each year). We started off the season with a video blog introducing you to some of the team members, along with their whiteboards. Since then, we have been focusing on many different areas in the game from presentation to franchise to online, but this week we wanted to talk about everyone’s favorite aspect of Madden NFL – Gameplay. More specifically, catching.

Please note: This is the first of many blogs we will release in anticipation of launch. In addition, our first major release announcement will come closer to the NFL Draft so stay tuned.

As developers, catching has always been one of the hardest and most frustrating areas of our game to tune because of the sheer amount of possibilities. When you start to try to account for all the different angles a pass could be coming in to a receiver along with the difference in his body position, it is always a difficult problem to solve. In years past, fixing catch problems has taken countless development hours to try to track down and address the issues. With that in mind, one of the first tasks we started addressing after we shipped Madden NFL 10 was to create a more user friendly catch ‘debugging’ tool. One of our talented software engineers, Kasey Keltner, created this tool which allows us to figure out why certain catches triggered, what other catches could have triggered, why some catches play more frequently than others, and helps identify angles where no animation is available. This tool has already helped us enormously by being able to see why certain things happen in Madden NFL 10.

One of the first catch issues we addressed was to force receivers to run through particular passes instead of triggering jumping catches. This was often seen on deeper passes like Streaks, Corners, and Deep Posts. Instead of slowing down and jumping up to catch a pass, a receiver in open space will try and catch the ball in stride now. These types of catches will only trigger, however, if there is not a defender in the path of the route or in a position to make a play on the ball. We want the Larry Fitzgerald/Calvin Johnson type receivers to really go up and fight for the ball and come down with spectacular catches if there is a crowd of defenders around them.

Another area of focus we have been working on is tuning the frequency for when “aggressive” types of catches can trigger. In previous years there have been situations where you could sometimes see a receiver playing a catch where he runs back towards the ball. These could sometimes be seen on Curl/Hitch/Smash type routes as well as Screen routes behind the line of scrimmage. There is nothing more frustrating than calling a 5-yard route on 3rd and 4 and having the receiver catch it moving towards the QB and get tackled for a 2-yard gain.

Well, this year, the receiver won’t play those types of catches (unless of course there is a defender between him and the ball). If you are running a 10-Yard Curl and the defender is behind you, the receiver will always be forced to match a ‘standing’ catch so he can try to backpedal into the defender for extra yardage. Also, we eliminated the likelihood that a receiver that is behind the line of scrimmage (e.g. WR or HB Screen play) would play a running, aggressive style catch if he is in open space.

Finally, we have gotten sideline and back of the endzone catches to trigger in the appropriate situations. In previous years we have seen some situations where a receiver tries to make a catch near the sideline without making any attempt to get both feet inbounds. This was most commonly seen on flat and out breaking type routes.



For Madden NFL 11, with the help of the Catch Debugging Tool, we have corrected all of our sideline / back of the end zone catches. You no longer have to be afraid of trying to squeeze that Deep Out or Goalline fade inbounds, as now the receivers have much more advanced AI to get both feet in.

Along with all of this work, we have added several new catch animations to the game from recent motion capture shoots with the goal of adding more variety and creating more authentic animations to match what you see on Sundays.

Boldin

That’s all for this week folks. Join us next week for our live chat on Madden NFL 11 Catching Improvements. We look forward to answering any questions you all may have and don’t forget, more information about Madden NFL 11 to come.

Looks like I can't get the vid or the pic to work. The vid is just a bunch of the old sideline animations, or lack thereof, anyway.