Mana Games

[Gust]

Hey,

What can I say, a simply excellent game! Recently purchased it and the World Tour mode is every bit as good as I thought it would be. I simply can't understand how this game has so far escaped being reviewed by a major site, especially since there's a previous version dating from 2004. To be honest that was the only thing really holding me back from a purchase at first, since I always prefer having third-party reviews of a product, no matter how good the demo appears to be. Glad I took the risk!

Anyway, I have a few quick questions:

1. When editing players in the Players.ini file, what sort of behavior should one expect in the event of data errors? For instance, accidentally setting Smash to "y" instead of a number, or setting Form to 101 when the maximum is 100. Assuming this doesn't cause a catastrophic crash, will one always see error messages in such cases, and what is the offending value generally set to (if anything)?

2. If you make changes through Edit Player Bank does this mean that these changes remain for all future World Tours, or are they only applicable to the current World Tour?

3. How are the entrants decided for each tournament? Does each and every AI player make semi-random choices as to which tournament to enter each week, or do the same players generally always enter the same tournament every year?

4. What determines which AI players pair up for doubles and for how long this pairing stays together? Is it just random or is there an element of "never change a winning team" ideology in some cases?

Anyway, once more congrats on a great product, look forward to the next release!

[manutoo]

Hello,

0. thanks for the praises..!
The only serious enough mini-reviews available on the Net of Tennis Elbow are for the 2005 version, by Game Tunnel :
http://www.gametunnel.com/html/section- ... e-132.html

1. most errors won't be reported...
For example, "y" will be treated as "0", and values will be capped to [0; 100] .
Some errors will generate an error message in the "System.log" file.
Some of nastiest errors will lead to crash (especially when you mess up with the number of players)
Else, you can set almost anything to the players' attributes without leading to crash, but some will have annoying consequences ; main case : if you put a wrong player number, then when on the court, you'll see only a white rectangle instead of a player, and the AI won't be able to serve...

2. the in-game Player editor changes the Players.ini, and thus, modifying all future World Tour games as well ; it's same than manually modifying the Players.ini .

3. It's done by semi-random choices, depending of the current ranking, so from one year to another, from one game to another, the draws will be different (99.9% of the time )

4. at 1st, it's done mostly by random, but with more chances when double ranks are close, and when from same country ; then after, the team will split up if one partner wants to play double when the other one is busy, or if not much successful; but the next time a player will split up from his new partner, he'll try to get back his older partner, if he's available, and if they had good results together...

And many improvements had been done with Tennis Elbow Manager, and they'll be all included in TE2008..!

[Guest]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I checked that link on Game Tunnel, and it now refers to a different product... furthermore I checked in Sports - General and Sports - Tennis and no sign of Tennis Elbow either See what I mean? If I ever start a games site this will be the first one I review!

As for editing, yeah looks indeed like it's better to just use the program, especially since it's equivalent to manually editing Players.ini anyway, and on top of that has added safety built in!

Your answer to question 4 is just what I wanted to hear It's great that you put so much work into creating that added realism for AI doubles pairing even though the majority of users probably wouldn't even care that much...

Sorry for all the questions but I have a few more:

1. When is TE2008 expected out? I hope all the nifty little features (like being able to switch your player to AI control on the World Tour) will still be there!

2. Do you have some kind of affiliate program in place for your products? Since I certainly won't exclude the possibility of starting a game review site in the near future!

3. Out of curiosity, are you able to earn enough money from your products to work on this full-time or are you forced to juggle all this with a day job as well?

[Guest]

And one more (hopefully very last) question if that's okay

4. Let's say you do a radical edit on the player bank, with several new nationalities. How does it all work with the Davis Cup? Is there a minimum number of players necessary to generate a new team or are the teams pre-set? And do old existing teams vanish if after the new edit there aren't enough players any more?

---

P.S. Hope you had a good Christmas!

[manutoo]

Hello,

0. scroll down the link, you'll find the mini-reviews of TE2005 after a few other mini-reviews...

1. I hope around Roland Garros, but I guess it'll be more for July or August... (it'll depend if it goes easily or not, and if I can keep my motivation up all the time or not)

2. Yes, you'll find my games in the www.BmtMicro.com & www.Plimus.com 's catalogs

3. I'm 100% on my games, but I could surely not live in Paris, or any other expensive big city...

4. The Davis Cup nations are listed in the Data\Tour.ini file. If a nation has less than 2 players, the game will crash without much warning (I'd have to change that one day ), and if you do any change touching from far or close about the Davis Cup (ie: players' nationalities, numbering, etc...), then you should start a new game before to enjoy the modifications...