Mana Games

[Nicky Gi.]

1. Force Sun in the Back

This setting is generally useful. If it’s turned off, the game becomes darker whenever you switch ends, making the ball harder to see, especially during daytime matches. However, when it’s enabled, some stadiums at certain times of day have inconsistent court shadows: one end has shadows, but when you switch ends, the shadows disappear entirely. After switching back again later, the shadows reappear. This happens in the default Side Court created by Mana.

2. Sound Cracks and Missing Crowd Applause

I’ve noticed frequent audio crackling in the menus, especially when switching hairstyles, clothing, and other customization items. Sound cracks also occur before entering a match.
During rallies, the crowd’s applause sometimes doesn’t play at all, you just see them clapping without any sound.

3. No Umpire Calls During Tiebreaks

The umpire remains completely silent during tiebreaks.

4. Lobs Can Only Be Defended With a Smash

If your opponent lobs you, or you lob them, the point ends immediately if the player misses the smash. The character cannot run back to chase the ball or return it with something like a tweener. I’m not expecting a tweener animation to be added, but at least allow players to defend lobs with something other than a smash. Run at the back, chase the ball and return it. This can’t happen now.

5. Crowd Animations

This seems fixable but needs optimization. Many players have pointed it out, but it would be great if crowd animations didn’t drop the frame rate below 60 fps on powerful machines like a high end PC or a PS5. I’ve found a few workarounds to keep the frame rate stable: disabling sun rotation, turning off autosave after each rally, and setting far crowd density to Lower.

6. Multiple Outfit Presets per Player

It would be great if each player could have 2–3 outfit presets saved. Before each match, you could simply choose which preset to use. Right now, every player only has one outfit, and you must manually change it before each match—which is frustrating, because the menu lags heavily when changing shirts, shorts, headbands, etc.

7. Hawkeye Would Be a Nice Addition

This would be an excellent feature to add in the future.

8. Player Can Step Over the Service Line on the Left Side While Serving

When serving from the left side, moving the player to the right allows them to cross over the service line.

9. Occasional Animation Bugs

During rallies, player animations can still glitch at times. It doesn’t happen often, only a few times per match, but the animation transitions could use a bit more smoothing.

Conclusion: This is easily the best tennis simulator currently available on PlayStation. I’m genuinely glad it finally released on the platform. I’ve been a tennis gaming fan since childhood, and for the past 15 years I’ve been waiting for a truly good tennis game. Recent AAA tennis titles have been hugely disappointing, so this one feels like a real breath of fresh air.

[manutoo]

Hello,

1) some stadiums aren't symmetrical and thus the shadows can't be the same side from both sides.

2) the cracks only happen on PlayStation : this is a Unity bug, so I can't do anything about it...
For the missing crowd sounds, it's likely coz of a Mod that has too long (but silent) ball bounce sounds.

4) it's possible to catch some lob afterwards, but it's uncommon like in real tennis.

5) It should be better in the next update (but framedrop is inevitable, it'll just be less harsh).

6) Modders can create a different outfit for each tournament (HowTo => topic29-17866.php )

8) It's coz of Modded animations not respecting the base position


Thanks for the praise and I'm glad you enjoy the game !

[anrox335]

4) it's possible to catch some lob afterwards, but it's uncommon like in real tennis

One of the main issues is that the automatic shot happens randomly during the backward run. It would be great if it could be turned off for backward runs.

[Jira]

You can actually hit on the run backwards without the automatic shot tho, I've done it before but it requires very precise timing. you have to run straight into the ball and when you're about to get to it, do a diagonal step so you get the correct distance laterally from the ball and then tap a shot button and aim at the same time. I've done some crazy passing shots like that but is more luck than anything if the ball goes very close to a line or not, the skilled part is doing the timing right

[Thomas]

How can this game generate framedrops when an uniform crowd cheers? It's not Cyberpunk...

[Nicky Gi.]

Yeah, but the ball when I turn off Force Sun At The Back is too dark and I have a hard time keeping track of it. What can I do? I don’t want stadium shadows to change whenever I switch ends.

I would want an option to have the same lighting as having Force Sun In The Back enabled, but the shadows do not change when I swap ends.

[manutoo]

Nicky Gi.,
there's no option for that.

[Nicky Gi.]

Okay, but I think it would be something very easy to implement. Force Sun At The Back turned off keeps the same shadows from both ends. So just add an option to Hidden Settings so we can set ForceSunInTheBack to 3 for example and when switching ends shadows stay the same and exposure and lighting stay the same as well.

Or let us specifically change the exposure of when the sun is not at the back of the player.

Or let us increase the brightness of the ball when the sun is not at the back.

I am sure there is something that can be done.

[anrox335]

You can actually hit on the run backwards without the automatic shot tho, I've done it before but it requires very precise timing. you have to run straight into the ball and when you're about to get to it, do a diagonal step so you get the correct distance laterally from the ball and then tap a shot button and aim at the same time. I've done some crazy passing shots like that but is more luck than anything if the ball goes very close to a line or not, the skilled part is doing the timing right

I don't think the avoiding the automatic shot should involve some timing of the run. This should be instinctive. The skill should be pressing the shot button at the right time when we reach the ball. It would be great if the automatic shot can either be turned off for the volleys or removed altogether.

[Jira]

You're literally describing the same thing I said tho. "The skill should be pressing the shot button at the right time when we reach the ball" = Timing

[anrox335]

Yeah, but the automatic shot shouldn't hinder this, which is an issue right now

[Jira]

if you time it right it doesn't bother at all, it can't be easy to do that shot either since irl players normally don't produce a high quality shot when running backwards, only what you see on ESPN highlights but that's not what happens most of the time

[anrox335]

Timing the run to avoid the automatic shot is not intuitive to me