Feedback for Manutoo [More realistic gameplay values]

General discussions about the 3rd edition of Tennis Elbow

Feedback for Manutoo [More realistic gameplay values]

Postby lreese » 02 Jul 2014, 14:19

Hello Manutoo!

I'm returning to this game after a long absence and I'm glad to see there has been substantial improvements since the 2011 version I played. I do have some comments that I'd like to share, from the perspective of a person who actually plays tennis at a decently high level. You have the ambition to create a realistic tennis simulator, so I thought I'd point out things that, IMHO is still not very realistic. Some of these I and others have pointed out in the past as well.

Below I also list a series of mods to the tennis.ini file that produces much more realistic tennis in my opinion.

First, though, I would like to say that this is a great tennis game and only Topspin 3 can rival it for a realistic simulation of the sport. I don't want to come off as a complainer. OK., that being said, things that aren't realistic:

1) Backhand smash. Too powerful and too accurate. The Backhand smash is more or less an emergency stroke you play when no other alternative is viable. The normal way is to to try to run around the backhand smash and hit a normal smash. The cpu doesn't do this, the player doesn't have to since the backhand smash is just as good as the forhand smash in the game.

2) When a vollyers get a shot at the body, they take it with a backhand volley, not a forehand volley like the player and cpu does in the game. it looks weird and would in real life trap the player and he would make an error or at the very least hit a very weak reply because he can't get his body out of the way quick enough. I linked a video of this way, waaaaay back.

3) Not enough errors from the CPU, both forced and unforced. The tennis is always perfect, even when the cpu dips it's way to high quality level compared to real tennis. This applies in general rallies, vollyes (not so much maybe, more unforced and forced errors here), and particularly service returns. Nearly all serves come back with high quality shots, wheras is real tennis powersful serves produce errors all the time.

3) Not enough "weak replies". Related to errors, these are weak shots forced by being out of position, but which still land within bounds. Floaters, mishits etc.

4) And the old chesnut: Too much power in the ground strokes and the players run too fast. Related to the above, they are always in position and can hit back everything with power. No floaters, very few errors, the errors that do show are the cpu taking risks with accelerations and slightly missing the lines. No floaters, no mishits etc. The maximum power level is probaly ok, but the average is way too high.

Now, most of this things are fixable with a little tinkering. Try this:

Set Pro 10
AiSlowerReturner to 0.08
MtRun at 0.85
Sweetspot scale to 5.0
SpeedConversion to 0.90
Reduce power levels to about half for the ground strokes (the rest is ok)

Do a CPU versus CPU. Alas, you really can't play the game with SweetSpotScale set to 5.0 (default is 0.05, I belive) It's too hard, but I'm sure this can worked around. Set elite controls in the help screen (don't know if this matters in cpu vs. cpu but I do it)

Voila! Weak replies, mishits, floaters, missed returns, occalsional lobs that go over the head of the cpu, but also a good mix of winners and powerful, but realistic tennis. Like watching real tennis. Some things are still kind of funny in cpu versus cpu but hey, it's a game meant to be played by a player, so it doesn't really matter.

I realize that people might not want to have the game ultra realistic. It will certainly become hard to play, but maybe you can make it an optional feature.

Other things:

I know you're trying to get it on Steam and I would love to see it getting the recognition it deserves, but alas, I believe the game needs better graphics to gain wider recognition. I know forum members always yell "gameplay matters the most" but in the end, it doesn't. People want to be amazed at how real things look when they see movies and play games, and at this point Tennis Elbow is lacking here. An HD texture replacement package to produce more true to life visual would go a long way. Many of the animations are pretty good (volleys are still not so good, alas).

That's it. I hope you find the feedback constructive and useful.


Thanks
Lreese
Try it and s
lreese
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby manutoo » 03 Jul 2014, 04:24

Hello,

1) the BH smash is at least 5km/h slower than the FH smash, and up to 15km/h, so it's already enough to favor the FH smash ; the precision isn't changed, though. And the CPU slightly favors the FH smash.

5) I tried your settings ; if by "Reduce power levels to about half for the ground strokes", you meant to set power to 50% for FH & BH, then the result isn't much convincing as the ball speed is just too low ; I watched 3 games and got 0 winners when both players were around their baseline.

6) The current default SpeedConversion is 0.5 ; if you want more realism, you have to lower it a bit (around 0.25-0.40)

7) other settings are interesting... TEM2 & TE4 will probably go more or less in that direction
ManuTOO
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby lreese » 03 Jul 2014, 10:09

Hey!

1) Not enough, IMO. Backhand smashes are usually low powered and angled off for a winner and most of the time nowhere near as powerful as a FH smash in real tennis. It's more like a very high BH volley than a smash. In real tennis, the BH smash is hit something like once for every 10 FH smash or even less than that. It's stroke you want to avoid if you can. But it's your game. :-)

2) No that's not what I meant. Cut the power by about in half in PlayersATP.ini. That would mean someone like Agassi would till be 60%-70% Maybe half is a bit too much for modern tennis but for 1990 it works fine when many players didn't hit that many winners from the baseline. but something like that. 5.0 in sweetspotscale probaly also killed the pace a bit too much. 3.0 seems to make a better balance. Alas, if the setting creeps over 0.08 or so I, at least, start to have real difficulties playing the game with elite controls.

3) Lower means more difficult to turn, or less difficult to turn? I meant to make it a bit more difficult.

I tried to get more weak returns by using AIslowerReturner, but it seems mostly to produce more aces if you go too high. SweetSpotscale is the key here, I believe. It also produces weak replies in rallies etc.

I just thought I saw some very intersting things with these settings. Returns sailing long, or being dump into the net, sometimes without any pace. The puncher started to run around his backhand more because he had time to do it after movinf the opponent into a weak reply. The volleyer hit weak and floating volleys off hard and low returns etc and attacked with a backhand slice off low paced floating shots etc. The cpu couldn't hit hard, offensive shots directly off smashes (which happens all the time in the game, but almost never in real tennis). It needs tweaking and tuning for sure, but I think this is something you'd want to achieve for coming versions.

Keep at it. A lot of things are fixed since I played back in 2011-2012. Forward movement for the volleyer is much better, half-volleys seem to work now and generally the realism has gone up bit by bit. It really is very impressive that the game can already be manipluated to work this way. It speaks to the strength of the engine.

Thanks for your time.
Lreese
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby lreese » 03 Jul 2014, 10:18

Also, remember, there aren't that many clean winners in real tennis. A clear majority of points end on an error. Forced or unforced. 3 games without a winner is not unrealistic. :-) It might not work for a game, though. You should at least have different levels of reality for players who wants more arcade style gaing rather than a simulator.
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby Rafa15 » 04 Jul 2014, 00:07

lreese wrote:Hey![...]
Thanks for your time.
Lreese


very very good ideas. thats ideas are very amazing, that would be a perfect tennis simulation :applause: manuto, you have to think about the ideas and to test with the diffferent values, but the key points are awesome :applause: :dance:
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby manutoo » 04 Jul 2014, 04:17

lreese,
1) when I created the BH smash, I didn't want to make it too weak, coz when you have to smash, you have very little time to do so, and you have to use some of this time to aim, thus I didn't want to penalize the players too much (the CPU could do both though)

2) Ok, I tried with 65% and it was better... ;)

3) Lower Speedconversion = slower to change the run to the opposite direction = harder

If you're around here next year, try to catch the Beta of TEM2. As one of its main goals will be to get most possible realistic CPU vs CPU matches, your feedback will be useful ! :yes:
ManuTOO
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby Rafa15 » 05 Jul 2014, 01:27

hey manutoo,

will you change the values to get a extrem realistic gameplay in next time? When you don't, which values I have to change and how can I change them? The game is at the moment the best simulation ever and really amazing and much realistic, but the players are moving much too fast and the players hit too much winners and are getting too much balls back under big pressure. Besides there are too less weak returns. :D
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby manutoo » 05 Jul 2014, 04:04

Rafa15,
all answers to all your questions are in the messages above in this topic... :unsure:
ManuTOO
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby Rafa15 » 05 Jul 2014, 11:43

manutoo wrote:lreese,
If you're around here next year, try to catch the Beta of TEM2. As one of its main goals will be to get most possible realistic CPU vs CPU matches, your feedback will be useful ! :yes:



what is TEM2? for sure it should be something with tennis elbow but what excatly?
Rafa15
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby Rafa15 » 05 Jul 2014, 14:08

manutoo wrote:Rafa15,
all answers to all your questions are in the messages above in this topic... :unsure:


you dont told me how to change the sweetspotscale, the playerspeed and and the groundstroke power. the change of direction is also much too fast. Where and how can I change these values?
Rafa15
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby manutoo » 06 Jul 2014, 04:03

Rafa15,
TEM2 = Tennis Elbow Manager 2 => topic11-6128.php

All the values changed by lreese are in the Tennis.ini ; do a search on the forum to get details about each parameters, if you need to.
ManuTOO
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby Rafa15 » 06 Jul 2014, 19:23

thanks, manutoo is there a possibility to replace the Sams patch player stats/values with the one of the ITST patch? playing SAM patch with settings of itst mod?
Rafa15
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby Rafa15 » 06 Jul 2014, 20:15

manutoo wrote:Rafa15,
TEM2 = Tennis Elbow Manager 2 => topic11-6128.php

All the values changed by lreese are in the Tennis.ini ; do a search on the forum to get details about each parameters, if you need to.


where can I find tennis.ini? sweetspotscale is in gamesys.ini?
Rafa15
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby spinoliver » 06 Jul 2014, 22:13

Rafa,

Tennis.ini is in your Tennis Elbow folder. You can't miss it. Nevertheless, if you have created a profile in your game, go to Profile/[nameofyourprofile].ini

sweet.spotscale parameter is in the second paragraph.
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Re: Feedback for Manutoo

Postby lreese » 06 Jul 2014, 23:10

Manutoo,

I'll probably be around :-)

Lreese
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