NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

[Tha_Kid]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Did the footplanting/physics issue ever get ironed out?

[Haval93]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Did the footplanting/physics issue ever get ironed out?

^ This...

Probably one of the biggest issues I see coming if they didn't. Here comes a rant, we can have tons of feel for the game but if the looks aren't up to par with the feel of the game then it will kill the game quite a bit. With looks I mean visual flaws such as ball looking light, clipping, foot planting, and so on. I don't expect it to be perfect but to a point where it doesn't kill the game.

[dirtypuppet]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Well, seeing as rEAnimator is back on the forum and the games almost finished, I figure I'll put in a request for him to pass on the the EA art team.

Since the Atlanta Hawks changed their uniforms (4 seasons ago) the game has continued to feature 'Harry the Hawk' (mascot) in the old team uniform. Surely it can't be hard to update the textures for this (I even noticed in the NBA JAM videos they've got it wrong).

Now this seems petty, but it has frustrated me for the last few years because I play 90% of my games with the Hawks. I've posted this on here for the last 3 dev cycles of NBA Live and had responses from Dev's in the past and it's never been fixed.

The only reason I'm so adamant about a small change is because How hard can it be? The only reason I can think it's been so long is possibly because of a licensing issue, but I wouldn't have thought so.

Lastly, I sincerely hope that players with Hair Geometry (Robin Lopez, Zaza Pachulia, Andrew Bogut etc.) don't have the same glitch on the PS3 that we had last year. I have to say that was a massive flaw/oversight from the port last year.

Thanks, hope this gets seen.

[Tha_Kid]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Not to piggyback on the art post but..

Kwame Brown has a short haircut now. Don't give him braids.

[kingpnp]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Though I can appreciate the idea of being responsible for making my own shots, if I developed the ability to consistently hit 3's w/Rondo how would the represent Rondo? I now have a generic player w/a difficult shot release, do I not?

I thought this was supposed to be an NBA games with representations of REAL players. If so then why not have the real limitations that the real players have? By the way there aren't multiple releases for each player only varying margins of error. A perfect straight release hits no matter how large the sweet spot or small the margin of error.

That isn't even my major concern though. I've been wondering over the last few weeks when was the last improvement in this series made to TEAM play, meaning actual gameplay improvements to make the game more realistically reflect real life challenges of playing in the NBA? Please don't say last year! Though last year was an improvement on the series, it was simply made more challenging across the board (a lot of which was through CPU cheats) and not really reflective of the actual challenge of NBA play. Pretty much every game had the same challenge whether it was the Clippers or the Celtics.

i get your point but as some have stated. you guys dont get it.

RONDO= Rondo because of his god given talent + how he chose to work on that talent and perfect certain aspects(dribbling/steals/passing) of it and not others(Ft's, Jumpshooting). Yes Rondo will start off with certain stats/ratings. but now You are inside of Rondos head. you can choose to exploit rondos FT's and jumpshooting. while not exploiting his passing(which will be easy to do because of his high pass rating like real life).

the ratings make it EASIER for you to maninuplate that portion of the players game. its not supposed to be 100% CPU generated based on ratings. cause even if you did that, it would not be realistict like the game. there is a randomness in real life that is not in computers and a formula. this is where real time physics and the stick stuff comes in.

now you have rondos God given abilities, and his weakness. you can CHOOSE to just use his strengths with ease if you practice a little bit. or you can work really hard on the tough stuff(jumper, Ft's) and have an all around rondo. or you can work overtime like kobe on everything rondo can and cant do. and end up being a kobe. 100% all around assassin.

no true weakness in your game. but thats up to the user. if you want to practice that much, thats on you. then you deserve if you practice perfectly. then practice will make perfect. so the more you practice the more you will be rewarded on the court on offense and defense.

thats REAL LIFE folks. if you just want to push a button and allow the cpu to decide for you based on a formula and nothing more. then you might as well play basketball like they play Final Fantasy and those type of games. where you choose POtion and you put the controls down and watch your character throw potion at the enemy.


if you're to afraid of being left out because you're stuck on buttons. OH WELL. get use to it. if you want realisim thats the trade off my friends. if you dont want improvement in this area. i dont know what to tell you. cause once EA does it. 2k will have to do it to survive after awhile.

so you wont have a choice.
oh and lastly

about the shooting sweet spots. Ray allen wont have just one sweet spot as far as how straight you keep the stick. its a cross. one line moving from left to right to show direction of the ball assuming the rim is directly in the middle. left or right of the rim. even if you get that perfect EVERYTIME. you will also have to get the trajectory perfect. and guess what. the trajectory will change depending on the distance and possibly the strength of the player.

for instance if they make it right. Shaq can easily throw a 3pt shot over the rim because he's so strong. that means lets say from bottom to top of the trajectory line its from 0-100(being the most powerful shot). so in order for shaq to hit the rim from the 3 pt line his trajectory would need to be at 50%. so now you have to get the direction part right in the middle. then the trajectory part perfectly on 50%. to make continuous PERFECT SHOTS. Direction has to = between 49 and 51 (0 to 49)= left of the rim 51 to 100)= right of the rim. 50 is the middle of the rim. so Shaqs direction perfect shot would have to be around 49 to about 51, extremly small 3pt size green space to be money.
shaqs trajectory =50%. now do that over and over every time to make a glitch out of it. then as the EA guy stated they can retune the accuracy. with relative ease even in a PATCH.

now ray allen will have a much larger sweet space (40 - 60) for the direction portion of the jumper. but his trajector 0-100. from the 3pt line. would be something like 70% power=perfect swish. so in order to hit rays shot.

if 70% = a perfect swish for ray and 50% = a perfect swish for shaq. then that means 75% for rayray may be the backboard(shot to hard, to much power for rayray). it still may bank in with real time physics, but how often would that work? not often from distance.) it also means a too short front rim grazing shot could be approx 68% for ray ray.


- 0 to 49 = left side of rim / 50 = middle of Rim/ 51 to 100 = Right side of the rim

the T bar
|||||||||
0.. 50. 100

100= Full power with shaq(strongest player in the nba) = x amt of feet shaq could shoot the ball with 2 hands. so if shaqs strength ias at 90. that means ray allens is at approx 60. so that means 60 is the strongest for ray. so a 60 strong shot for ray with two hands actually = 60% distance of shaqs 90 rating. so lets say shaqs 90 rating strength shootin 2 hands = 100 FEET distance. then Ray allens FUll power shot (ray's full strength is 60)=60feet.

-100 Feet(shaqs fulls strength 2 handed shot)
-
-
-
-50
-
-
-
-0

[rEAnimator]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Did the footplanting/physics issue ever get ironed out?

The worst case of it definitely was. For example, Kobe doing the spin move on Ray Allen (I think) in the last quick clip where Ray Alan slid a lot when he came into contact with Kobe. That has been fixed.

There were also a very, very large number of smaller, targeted fixes that were made to specific animation blends that fixed sliding.

I'm not going to say all the sliding is gone because that would be a lie, but we definitely fixed the glaring problems from the previous videos.

[Boilerbuzz]

I have a couple of issues with some of the comments:

1. Bullcrap to the premise people only care about the company making the game instead of the game itself. Sure, some will blindly defend their game of choice, but that loyalty starts with the game.
2. There is NOTHING Elite is doing that is revolutionary. I'm sorry. As a matter of fact, they are taking a VERY simple approach to the game and mechanics. It remains to be seen how it goes.
3. I see a lot of leveraging of the NHL title. Too much. This is not the NHL team doing this game. It's not the Fifa team (a better team than NHL) fixing this game. Because they are on the same campus using the same tools does NOT make the games equal. By that logic, Live should have good five years ago. It's like saying every game should be good because they are all done in C++.

In no way am I saying the game won't be good. Not at all. I just have a problem with the methods folks are using to convince people it's true. Big props to them for acknowledging their mistakes. It's just sad that failure was the catalyst and not their fans. For the record, I don't like the fact that they decided to reset AFTER making so much progress with Live 10.

[Boilerbuzz]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

I'm still on vacation, but I swung by the office today to check out the game and see where it's at.

This is pretty much the last week of development on the game, and the guys are working really, really hard to finish things off.

No offense man, but this sounds strange to me. I would think you would still be burning the midnight oil until the game was done, done. Again, not implying anything. It just caught me off guard.

[Jano]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

3. I see a lot of leveraging of the NHL title. Too much. This is not the NHL team doing this game. It's not the Fifa team (a better team than NHL) fixing this game. Because they are on the same campus using the same tools does NOT make the games equal. By that logic, Live should have good five years ago. It's like saying every game should be good because they are all done in C++.

Actually some of the guys from the other EA dev teams are working on this game. And the engines (ANT, RTP, Real-AI) the devs are using on Elite are a lot better then the ones they have previously used imo.

RTP allowed the game to finally have features 2K's had for years like the ability to go for steals while moving. Or enable the ball to be "live" so contact with the it actually matters. RTP also got rid of canned animations so we can finally do some basic things like block shots off the backboard.

It also added in some much needed physicality to the game and it effects the game everywhere from the post to the perimeter. We will finally be able to see a difference between Lebron and CP3 when they are charging down the lane. The ANT technology gets rid of the ball warping on the rebounds.

Real-AI will actually cause players use moves they would in real life. This could potentially be the end of Bynum doing euro steps, or Shaq shooting fadeaways.

These new engines are adding in some MUCH needed improvements to this basketball series. And its doing it at a much faster rate then they would have using the old engine.

So your right it probably doesn't make the games equal but it definitely puts them on the same playing field though. Because now the tech is similar so things you see in one game could be possible in the other.

[tedus]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

No offense man, but this sounds strange to me. I would think you would still be burning the midnight oil until the game was done, done. Again, not implying anything. It just caught me off guard.

what' wrong ?!! dude!!

he already said he finished most part of his work and the rest ones divided to others!!

you work all year!! Don't you want to go on a vocation??

BTＷ
appreciate your hard work rEAnimator!!
a question!!

I asked you before!! you said the dev team did not dicussions yet at that time!!

Q:How about the hustle play!! can we control it or not??!!

[B-Ball Life]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Most of my stuff was done ( I had fixed a really bad physcis bug on the Saturday before I left), but there was still some bug fixing and tuning that needed to happen while I was away.

So we split my features up amongst 3 other engineers on the team who were familiar with my features, or were working on similar features. They knew they'd be taking over so we had time to discuss details before I left.

I was also available on email in case of an emergency, but it was never needed. Everything worked out well.

Man Am I Excited for this game.

And i Qoute the post because "I Know Where I Wanna Take My Talents"(Lebron Reference) when i graduate college. lol:wink: (Hoping Anyway)

[B-Ball Life]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Most of my stuff was done ( I had fixed a really bad physcis bug on the Saturday before I left), but there was still some bug fixing and tuning that needed to happen while I was away.

So we split my features up amongst 3 other engineers on the team who were familiar with my features, or were working on similar features. They knew they'd be taking over so we had time to discuss details before I left.

I was also available on email in case of an emergency, but it was never needed. Everything worked out well.

Man Am I Excited for this game.

And i Quoted the post because "I Know Where I Wanna Take My Talents"(Lebron Reference) when i graduate college. lol:wink: (Hoping Anyway)

[Boilerbuzz]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

Actually some of the guys from the other EA dev teams are working on this game. And the engines (ANT, RTP, Real-AI) the devs are using on Elite are a lot better then the ones they have previously used imo.

I'm sure there are. But what does that really mean? Does that means there's a bunch of hockey heads working on a basketball game? That doesn't sound too good. Who's working on NHL? Why disrupt a team that's got it going? I don't know if I buy how much "better" the toolkit is now. ANT has been hyped up since the start of the current console generation. It's not like it generates animations. It just manages the animation blends.

RTP allowed the game to finally have features 2K's had for years like the ability to go for steals while moving. Or enable the ball to be "live" so contact with the it actually matters. RTP also got rid of canned animations so we can finally do some basic things like block shots off the backboard.

So, are you calling "canned" animation the animations that included the ball? Animations that FORCE the ball into a state that lines up animation and that now, those are gone. If so, I can buy that they are using fewer animations that take control of the ball. That's cool. If that's what RTP gives then that's a significant upgrade to the series.

It also added in some much needed physicality to the game and it effects the game everywhere from the post to the perimeter. We will finally be able to see a difference between Lebron and CP3 when they are charging down the lane. The ANT technology gets rid of the ball warping on the rebounds.

That's been my interpretation of the work they've been doing and that's all great. No problem here.

Real-AI will actually cause players use moves they would in real life. This could potentially be the end of Bynum doing euro steps, or Shaq shooting fadeaways.

But wasn't DNA supposed to do all of this already? Does that mean DNA came and went? And, not to compare the GAMES, but why does this sound like VIP? I still have nightmares of the thought of playing Steve O's VIP in NFL2K5... Ugh! VIP is cool because it's more than that. But trying to draw me in with the "playing the celebrity" angle is a no-go. Anyway, I digress.

These new engines are adding in some MUCH needed improvements to this basketball series. And its doing it at a much faster rate then they would have using the old engine.

But there is no new engine man. Not really. They've had ANT in the game for a long while now. RTP isn't a physics engine per se. It's a system of methods and procedures that govern interactions between systems. Same with "Real-AI".

So your right it probably doesn't make the games equal but it definitely puts them on the same playing field though. Because now the tech is similar so things you see in one game could be possible in the other.

Just so it's clear, my primary point was that using NHL procedures as a panacea for NBA's ills feels kinda iffy to me. And using the reputation of NHL to hype up Elite feels iffy as well. When it's all said and done, if I'm buying elite because of NHL and Jam, then something smells rotten in Vancouver... It just makes me a bit apprehensive and unfortunately, I haven't seen anything that makes me feel less apprehension. That's all I'm saying. I want to see to full on 5on5 videos. There's no reason why we shouldn't be seeing something.

[Boilerbuzz]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

what' wrong ?!! dude!!

he already said he finished most part of his work and the rest ones divided to others!!

I responded to his original post. I didn't see the followup and I didn't NEED to see it because he doesn't have to explain anything to anybody. I just expressed the fact that it really shocked me. End of story.

[Jano]

Re: NBA Elite 11 Interview with Creative Director David Littman

But wasn't DNA supposed to do all of this already? Does that mean DNA came and went? And, not to compare the GAMES, but why does this sound like VIP? I still have nightmares of the thought of playing Steve O's VIP in NFL2K5... Ugh! VIP is cool because it's more than that. But trying to draw me in with the "playing the celebrity" angle is a no-go. Anyway, I digress.

But there is no new engine man. Not really. They've had ANT in the game for a long while now. RTP isn't a physics engine per se. It's a system of methods and procedures that govern interactions between systems. Same with "Real-AI".

DNA and the Real AI are working at the same time in the game according to the devs. So the system should be pretty dynamic, two of the devs have went in depth on the feature in the real-AI thread.

And the new engines being used here are new to this basketball series, none of this stuff was in Live 10. If they had been using ANT last year I don't remember them ever mentioning it.

And I already know RTP and "real AI" definitely weren't in because none of that was stuff a lot of that stuff wasn't possible last year.

I'm sure there are. But what does that really mean? Does that means there's a bunch of hockey heads working on a basketball game? That doesn't sound too good. Who's working on NHL? Why disrupt a team that's got it going? I don't know if I buy how much "better" the toolkit is now. ANT has been hyped up since the start of the current console generation. It's not like it generates animations. It just manages the animation blends.

To clarify the reason why I said the guys from other EA dev teams are working on this game is experience. They have experience with the ANT and Real AI engines so the system wasn't just dumped on the Live 10 team. Its in the hands of some guys that have experience with the stuff also.

And even if ANT is only improving animation blends that was also another area Live 10 needed improvement in. All of these improvements won't sound like much to people that have been playing 2K over Live. But for someone who enjoyed Live 10, like myself, they are some much needed upgrades.

They will bring Elite a lot closer to the level of basketball that has been featured in 2K for years and thats all I've been asking for since Live 07. I want an EA basketball game to finally be able to compete with 2K on all levels of gameplay and it looks like these new engines are going to be able to do just that.