Mana Games

[Sekir]

1) It would be great to throw a coin before the match.
2) Before the match, warm up on an empty court to get used to the surface
3) After the match, shaking hands with the opponent + the umpire
4) All cups are displayed in the player's characteristics

Sorry for my English.

[manutoo]

scarecrow,
1) Incoming in the next update => viewtopic.php?p=271254#p271254


Rob92,
0) In a general way, I really don't want to add a skill or a talent if it's not really very needed, to not clog the Character Sheet and keep it relatively friendly to newcomers and casual tennis fans.

1) Yes, I might add some talents ; I'd like to have at least 5 or 6 more.

2) The FH slice almost doesn't exist (ie: no one uses it on a constant basis except on stretching defense, ie: the Squash sot), so putting a talent for it doesn't make much sense. However, I'm strongly considering adding a defensive stretch talent, which would cover both sides (so the Squash shot as well), to represent what Djokovic (and a few others) can do much better than other players.

I'm thinking about reworking the slice talent which right now increases the spin & the speed. The spin bonus is ok, but the speed bonus doesn't make much sense, so instead I could possibly increase its consistency which would give a result close of you'd like to see.

3) You can already serve & volley without a pause => https://www.managames.com/tennis/doc/Te ... ml#serving

4) I confirm you the animation selection when rushing the net is currently even more problematic than in TE2013.


Sekir,
3) I'm hoping to add such kind of cutscenes at some point.

4) I'd like to add a trophy room as well with all our thropies in it.

[Rob92]

I agree with you about the FH slice being an uncommon shot, it's usually a reaching defensive shot (squash shot) and sometimes used for a net approach shot (was more common in the past than today, but TE World Tour mode can start in the past ). This is largely the reason I thought seperating it into different talents would make sense, or maybe even only apply it to the backhand slice.

Having "Slice mastery" apply to both sides means the player gets a boost to their forehand slice too, when that player could almost never use it in real life and is a weak shot for them. In the case of a Karlovic type player, his BH would be given a much lower precision/consistency/power than the FH to control the effectiveness of his topspin strokes, but with slice mastery applying the same bonus to both sides, his BH slice would end up being worse (slower, less consistent) than his FH slice when the opposite would be true in real life.

Hope this makes sense and you understand what I mean I also thought the speed bonus on slices was a bit high at the moment, but I hope you still keep in the ability to modify this slice speed between players - if these changes to slices can be done in talents, maybe they could be in attributes to give more freedom to choose slice abilities etc. Also maybe some talents could have a slider to choose the % skill or bonus rather than being an on/off switch that gives the same bonus to all.

In mods like the ITST mod where characters are designed to have variation in play style and balanced abilities, the more freedom over modifying all aspects of the player skills the better. Perhaps in order to keep the character sheet friendly to newcomer/casual players while allowing such finetuning for competitive play, you could have the current simple view as the default and an option to turn on advanced/dev mode for deeper/hidden options like in some other menus of the game.

On #3, thanks for the info about serve & volley - I've played this game for probably 1000+ hours and always held the key to serve until the ball contact, I thought releasing the key would do a b2 service in the middle of the box, I'll try this next time I play TE13 . The other part of my suggestion regarding doing the same for groundstrokes could be more tricky to implement, but it's basically being able to approach the net using a hop/carioca step to maintain forward momentum to the net through the stroke.

[noname1988]

3) I'm hoping to add such kind of cutscenes at some point.

Never understood why do people need it in games? I've always appreciated TE for not having all that stupid stuff, just focusing on what's most important.

[manutoo]

Rob92,
1) Actually, the Slice Mastery is only effective at 33% on the FH side. It's enough to make it noticeable, but not enough to make it a real big change like on the BH side.

2) The slice cannot be a skill because it wouldn't make any sense to train it like other skills (quick reminder there are at least 10 times more people playing the game offline in the World Tour than online..!) ; in other words, a 5% increase in the topspin skill is at least 5 or 6 times more important than a 5% increase in the slice skill. Same for the talents, each star in the Slice Mastery must be more or less balanced against other talents else no one will want to pick it except for a change of feelings. And online, it's still very true as well : for the users playing the unmodded game, it'd be really counter-productive to spend your points in the slice skills or in a slice talent split in too many stars (except maybe for a pure volleyer build).

Anyway, in a Mod, you can assign any value to each talent, so they already work as a skill. Just you'll see some fraction of a star, but there the Modders can even easily change the display to a percentage if they want to.

3) Actually, it's already possible to do it a bit on the rally strikes as well. I just tried a dozen of these ; it's not easy to get the hang on, so I guess only the most skilled players would be able to do them constantly, but the trick is that your player always advances a bit after each strike, so if you release your strike button right when you hit the ball (but not before !), then you can use that little inertia to get 1 early step to rush the net.
Maybe it could still use the context action button to do that more easily though. I'd rather not add a button dedicated to only that, though.

noname1988,
it's not very high on my priority list, but this kind of cutscenes is nice for the atmosphere and a good way to show off the 3D stadiums that are otherwise mostly invisible (except if playing with the 1st or 3rd person camera modes ).
But don't worry, if I ever do them, I'll add an option to turn them off, as I hate to have to constantly press the button to skip them in other tennis games...

[noname1988]

cutescenes on 2d mode

[Rob92]

Thanks for the explanation - it's good to know slice mastery applies less to to the FH and that the talents can be set as a fraction. It's understandable considering how World Tour mode works with skill points not to want too many stats and the talents system will already allow for much greater player variety than TE3.

Regarding the net approach - I think I already perform that movement after the shot when possible, but due to autopositioning it's generally done from a standing start, especially the more time you have to charge your shot. For an extreme example of being able to maintain momentum through a stroke, you could run through the ball to the net without pressing anything to do a safe strike. I know this isn't realistic as you can't just sprint through a stroke without proper footwork, but it's just an example - on many approach shots in real life, the footwork through the ball doesn't slow down as much as you see in TE. Anyway, it's just a suggestion not a demand so I'm not arguing this function needs to be there, but it could be nice .

Some ideas for the "What would you like to see here?" box in the character sheet;

• Skill hexagon/rating - Like in PES where players have a skill rating for each category to show their strengths.
• Outfit selection - Save multiple outfits for a player, and cycle through them easily here.
• Player bio - Like the panel on the right on a player's Wikipedia page. Nationality/age/turned pro/retired/achievements etc.

After some more time in the alpha, I noticed that the movement speed isn't analog - any small movement seems to still accelerate the player to full speed. Movement direction being analog is nice though . Another thing is that the D-pad didn't navigate the menus, only the analog stick (Xbox One controller).

[manutoo]

noname1988,
cutscenes might not be available with the 2D Backgrounds...

Rob92,
1) I meant your player does a little step forward on each strike (and a bigger step on acceleration), which helps a tiny bit to rush the net if you release the strike button right after have struck the ball.

2) 3 things :
- the acceleration is analog but the minimal acceleration is already 40% of the max acceleration (ie: not 0%)
- there was a bug so the actual minimal acceleration was 47% instead of 40%
- the missing thing was to lower the maximum speed ; this is done for the next update, thanks to your feedback

[Rob92]

Nice to hear analog movement speed is included, I may switch to gamepad for this version - I always played TE3 with keyboard .

Some general suggestions;

Ball tracking/heat maps - It could be cool if you could analyse a replay file to see a heat map of your positioning, ball contact points, average shot speeds, serve placement, winner placement etc... This kind of data is used a lot in tennis analysis and could be interesting to break down online matches. Maybe you could even show some stats and/or hawkeye type graphics on pop-ups during the game or at change of ends/sets during matches.

Disable online gestures - Some players use the gestures in online matches in annoying ways, like celebrating errors or net cords. There could be a shortcut to disable gestures like you can disable chat. When they try to use a gesture it could just tell them "Gestures disabled". Sometimes people run towards the net at the end of every point as well.

Save/resume online matches - if a player disconnects or quits an online match, you could have the option to save the progress in the same screen you can choose to cancel their Elo penalty. Sometimes due to connection problems, incorrect delay or other interruptions it may be required to exit a match. Currently to continue from the same moment of the set, you have to give points until you get there, and you can't get the correct tiredness levels.

[Rob92]

Related to the shoulder angle point I made in the Alpha thread, I think that the sidespin on strokes could be influenced by this and the ball height, as the natural motion of the stroke at different heights affects the spin on the ball in real life.

For example, a "banana shot" is performed with much more spin when the ball is very low, the shoulders are angled down and the player is running towards the ball. If you pause at contact, you can see the body/racquet angle;



And to show the opposite effect, inside-out forehands are usually performed on a higher ball with a much more level or even opposite shoulder/racquet angle which causes the ball to spin the other way and "fade" in the opposite direction through the air, especially if the momentum of the player's body is still moving away from the ball at impact;



I don't want crazy side spin shots like an arcade game, but some small variation based on the technique of the shot and player momentum could make the physics feel bit more natural.

It seems some of this kind of variation is already applied on slices, where the height of the ball and direction of the shot influence the amount of sidespin .

P.S. - I know there is a button combo to perform a "banana shot" in TE, but I think IRL these are mostly a natural consequence of the technique required for the shot, rather than the player deliberately thinking of doing a banana shot, although of course it is possible to exaggerate the motion for more side spin.

P.S.2 - The videos are of Federer, and I realise this is one of if not the greatest player of all time and with his racquet head speed the spin is more extreme than most players, but the same principles apply to all players, it's just easier to find videos with many examples of these types of shots by Federer/Nadal.

[manutoo]

Rob92,
it'd look nice to have this kind of spinning, but it's not too trivial to do, so it'd be for a distant future....

[MrPotato666]

I think it would be nice to implement a deep-shot mechanic, that has to be perfectly timed to be executed in a propper way. The way of TE2013 is a bit random and I think deep shots are really one of the most important things in tennis. You are creating a great game, keep it up!

[Barca11910]

Hello. I buy Tennis Elbow 4 Alpha version yesterday.

How i can download player models like Nadal, Federer etc on this game?
If is possible right now. That is only alpha version but is best tennis game what i play ever

Tennis elbow youtube chanel content is so similar like this game.

Sorry my bad english.

[manutoo]

Barca11910,
you'll find these players in the World Tour, but they don't look like their real counterpart. Their skills are realistic enough, though.
You can export them to Traning Club from their Character Sheet ; there's a little button on the bottom right to do that.

[n3n3ss]

Hi,
after hours and hours of playing TE4, some suggestions / comments :

1 what about a yellow cross instead of the grey one (which I find a bit ugly, sorry...) ?
In TEM2 I put one witch looked like this :


I also tried to customize ball targets..:


(missing a green zone or stroke on the elipse in the last picture)

Maybe it could even convince to use them, especially the cross.

2 I think the dropshot gameplay is to severe to use compared to the classic slice. Missing drop-shots : ok, not everybody make them like Gaston :7) but having a bad touch in drop shots doesn't mean sending the ball in the crowd...

3 What about a mood (le "moral" en français) gauge with or instead the "stress" one, which could depend on H2H before a match for exemple, or jetlag, etc. just to compensate the body language we dont have... but maybe everything is already in the "stress" bar !
... the "mood" word/concept looks important to me. I know it's already exploited for years in TE.