Mana Games

The game play of your game is very good and I'm really enjoying playing it. The only problem I can see with the CPU AI and gameplay is that sometimes when you think you've hit a shot that will be difficult for them to return they seem to strike the ball as accurately and powerfully as any other shot and still be ready to receive another return instantly. Instead a real player would maybe stretch and miss hit or at least hit a weaker, slower, lofted shot back and struggle to recover. Is this something that will change for 2007? I hope so as this could be the icing on a very tasty cake!

A good example would be in Virtua Tennis when a player will stumble almost to reach a wide shot, returning it poorly and take longer to recover for the next shot. Of course your game has numerous advantages over the arcade style VT.

Hello,

actually, CPU is already sometimes a bit in difficulty in these kind of situation. But it's not often, and really not obvious enough. (the main thing is that AI is less likely to hit an acceleration)

So yup, I hope to improve this in TE2007, along many other little things to make the game even more realistic.
One thing amongst another : I'll make AI players hit the ball after the highest point of the curve, and not above the head height, so on clay, they'll have to go very far after the baseline to handle top spin balls, just like in real life...

That sounds great! Can't wait. Another suggestion would be for the AI players to mix up serve and volleying with staying back sometimes. Even the best S & V's won't come in on every point, especially on clay. I find when playing against the S & V's in the game, points can sometimes follow a familar pattern.

How is developmentf of TE 2007 going by the way? Any other insights into the game you can give us at this time?

Keep up the good work!

yup, serve & volley will be changed in TE2007 as well, to reflect how it is in real life...

Volleyers won't serve & volley on the 2nd serve every time.
Varied players won't serve & volley systematically on 1st serve.
And both will serve & volley a lot less on clay..!

TE2007 development didn't begin so far (except the 3D player that is almost done).

Right now, I'm working on the Tennis Manager...

i hope the game will not loose is escence

i hope it wont become just a another tennis game

Drop shots are a little too easy to execute at the moment. Its a great tactic to hit a drop shot off an opponents first serve forcing them to the net and into a mistake. In real life it would be practically impossible to perform a near perfect drop shot off a 120 mph serve! Maybe this can be addressed in a future update?

Hello Rajaka,

don't worry, I think it'll be still Tennis Elbow, just even a bit more realistic, but still with a fast gameplay, easy at 1st, but with even deeper possibilities...

2 more planned things :
- the short acceleration
- the necessity to position yourself in good way to do successful accelerations

if you have some comments, don't hesitate to tell them...
Anyway, I'll do some alpha version to conduct gameplay test, and be sure Tennis Elbow's fans will still like TE2007 !

to Guest:

yup, drop shot will need 2 more things to be successful :
- same as acceleration, it'll need to have a good position from the ball
- it will be almost impossible to do it on very fast ball (ie: smash & service)

you sure do reply to posts quickly!

Another suggestion might be to make it so that on training days you can only allocate a certain number of points to each area. At the moment if you have a number of points to use you can suddenly turn your serve for example into the best serve in world tennis instantly! Where as in real life such immediate improvements are not possible and take time.
to develope.

This is perhaps something you have already planned for TE 2007 as it will be incorporated in the tennis manager game. I think the training is something that could be improved in TE 2007 so do you plan to incorporate elements of Tennis Manager into TE 2007? I hope so.

Thanks for a great game!

All these changes sound really good! Looking forward to TE2007.

Hello,

rigth now, there's no change planned for the training or the World Tour in a general way...
I want to keep them simple and easy to play for people who just want to play tennis but not care about management.

It wouldn't need to be a massive change to the way training works, Just make it so that you couldnt put all your training points on to one catergory meaning you had to build up your stats. gradually.

I'll think about it.
Maybe I'll will lower less the skills, but give less skill points instead, in the higher difficulty levels.

How about a more detailed history screen which will list how you got on in every tournmant, so you have a complete record of your achivements or failures go back many years on the tour