Mana Games

[manutoo]

n3n3ss,
1) I'll try to update the cross at some point. For the Danger Zone, it works well for the purpose of learning the game, however I was thinking about doing a more discrete version for experienced users.

2) If you see a dropshot ending in the crowd, please send me a Bug Report (HowTo => topic5-31732.php )

3) I gave a lot of thoughts about the consequences of the Motivation skill during the matches and I concluded it didn't have many, except by pushing our limits when getting tired. It's relatively rare to see a player not playing his best because he gave up mentality (I'd say that when we see that in a match, it's 90% of the times because the player is actually physically injured).
So it'd be nice to have animations for the body language when the player loses badly, but in terms of gameplay, it'd not have consequences. And this is clearly out of my budget, both in time & money.

[n3n3ss]

Hi Manutoo,

personally I use the cross to get a more realistic repair in space to be as close to A.I behavior as possible, and I'm sometimes fustrated by its aesthetic, but it's not very important. I like everything else.

About dropshots, the ball does not end in the crowd sorry for this exaggeration, but often ends far away from the court. I feel the left/right button is very sensitive. I'll send some pictures or videos to show it, maybe it comes from my joypad.

And about the mood factor, first of course I don't ask any animation about body language I even think a gauge is better because of different nuances it can bring. I was thinking about events I interpret when I see some losses in the real world. Sometimes we feel some confidence crisis in some player's behavior, that different factors can provide : H2H, a recent big loss (a GC final for ex.) or a set just lost that he/she had to win... (I hope what I say is understandable) But it may be some debate like there are on tennis social medias, maybe we make to much interpretations.
Sometimes in TE4 I feel, when I make a big comeback in a match, that it brings like a failure in the A.I's confidence as it starts making lot of faults. This may be due to the "mental strength" factor that is specific to the A.I.
But I just talk about factors, not animations I woudn't make such a demand.

I see great progress in the game, I really like the new animations of the ball and the players you brought recently, with hardly catchable shots (the ball bouncing on the racket's edge, the player distorded on the side) because it gives a new sensation in the cadence of a point, and a new feel of the opponent strength.
The game at the net is huge, and now I often go at the net to finish a point (with or without success) or to change strategy, something I did more rarely before.

Thanks for your answers Manutoo, all the best to continue the alpha version in these hard times.

[Burned]

I even think a gauge is better because of different nuances it can bring. I was thinking about events I interpret when I see some losses in the real world. Sometimes we feel some confidence crisis in some player's behavior, that different factors can provide : H2H, a recent big loss (a GC final for ex.) or a set just lost that he/she had to win... (I hope what I say is understandable) But it may be some debate like there are on tennis social medias, maybe we make to much interpretations.

Totally agree

[antimouse]

First of all, I'm testing the most recent version of TE4 these days and it superb! In my opinion, the game never felt so realistic as it is now. I'm playing with the Elite controls for the first time and it is awesome (I always thought the Simulation controls were the most based on real-life, because of the name "simulation").

There is one thing, though, that bothered me a bit. I started a new career and the initial matches, when you have low stats and play against similar opponents, are very slow. I think this reduces the sense of realism in the game, because professional players won't be that slow and weak, even low-ranked ones. So I thought that maybe it could be interesting if some attributes, like speed and power, were more or less stable, based on the physical constitution of the player. Then the attribute points could be used to enhance all the rest. You could start with very low accuracy and precision in your shots, for example, and build upon these stats as you grow in your career. Of course it could have improvements in speed and power too, but nothing too extreme as it is now. Now you go from being turtle to being as fast as Usain Bolt

Anyway, I know this probably would mean a big change to how things are structured right now, but maybe it is something to consider in the future.

And congratulations again for all the work done, Manu!

[JaNeZoKu]

^ Agree. Mostly precision, especially in longer rallies should be improving, and the depth of shots. So precision and consistency should be improving significantly over the years, whereas speed and power not as much. Volleying skills could have a medium-level improvement over the years.

Still hoping that there's a chance of a general attributes improvements for all the players as years go by from the 80s into 90s into 00s to reflect the real-life improvement in phisical aspects of the game.

[manutoo]

antimouse,
yes, that would be kinda complicated to make it work ; plus that would remove a part of the empowering process (ie: from turtle to tennis god ) ; and also the lower global speed makes it easier on newcomers.

JaNeZoKu,
I'll likely do gameplay changes depending on the current decade, but not before a very long time.

[anrox335]

Will it be possible to aim for deeper shots in the future updates? I feel adding a modifier button to hit deeper shots will be nice.

[manutoo]

anrox335,
to do (a bit) deeper shots you have to prepare earlier. The average length of the shots & the ratio of long shots are already pretty realistic : viewtopic.php?p=267234#p267234 .

[JaNeZoKu]

It would be good to be able to load a player from the training club into the world tour once you edit their parameters. This would be convinient as in the training club you can do tests of cpu vs cpu matches to fine-balance players. Or just be able to edit player parameters in the world tour and run cpu vs cpu test matches before starting the career mode. Basically anything to speed up the process of editing parameters and running test cpu vs cpu matches to edit players.

The process at the moment (edit parameters in text editor and save -> run game -> save a player from world tour to training club -> run test matches) just seems too much work. I did that for TE2013, but I don't have the mental strength to do it again for TE4.

[manutoo]

JaNeZoKu,
it's not possible to "load" a player from the Training Club to the World Tour (except if you turn off the normalization).
However, I'd like to add a menu in the Training Club to more easily load any player from any year from the World Tour base.

[JaNeZoKu]

Well yeah, my goal was to somehow make it easier to fine-tune players that are in the world tour, not in the training club. For example, right now, if I edit them in the .ini files using a text editor, then I need to save them from the world tour to the training club and run test matches. Then, if I feel like I need to change some attributes to better balance players, I need to go back to the .ini file, edit it and save it, run the game and go to world tour to see how attributes from the .ini file changed due to applied normalization (and hope that I got it right cause you can't quite perfectly predict how normalized skills are going to turn out), once again save the player with updated attributes from the world tour to the training club and run test matches.

Ability to edit player attributes in the world tour itself would make life much easier.

[HotWingsFTW]

Hey Manu,

I'm liking the commentary so far! Only suggestion I have would be to space out the commentary to only happen every few points. Kind of weird that he's saying something after every single point. Or, if possible, maybe add an option so people can choose how often the commentary lines play? After every point / Once every few points / Once every few games / No commentary, or something like that.

Also agree with antimouse on the early career stats. Would be nice if the players moved around a bit faster and were a little stronger at the beginning, but it's not a big deal. Rest of the game is great I haven't started a career yet though because I want to wait until the game is more complete, so I'm just doing one-off matches for now.

As far as the animations go, the bending and reaching animations aren't bad. However, it would be great if they could be...smoother? Like my character is standing straight up and then just bends out of nowhere. I'd like if there was a slower, more seamless transition between standing and crouching/bending.

Speaking of animations, do you have any updates on the sliding/reaching animations for when players are running towards balls? That's one of the things I'm most excited for I didn't see anything about it in the dev blog but still wanted to ask here just in case you'd started taking a look at it.

[manutoo]

HotWingsFTW,
1) The commentary flow will change a lot, but if it feels it's still too much when it's done, I'll add an option to lower its rate.

2) Actually, you can easily raise the lower player strength in GamSys.ini's [WT_SkillNormAtp] section, from :
LowNorm = 0.05
to, for example :
LowNorm = 0.25
But it'll affect Junior player as well.

3) I'll work again on the animations at some point next year.

[manutoo]

HotWingsFTW,
moved to its own topic => topic29-33027.php

[JaNeZoKu]

What about an option to set players' playing style for each surface separately? For example, on clay he/she plays 'Counter' style, and on grass they switch to 'Varied'...