Ok, so here we go for the explanations about the new gameplay concepts & rules introduced by TE2009.
They will be detailed in the full documentation with the final version release, but hopefully, players will be able to guess by themselves more or less what they are.
Mainly, there are 3 important new concepts:
1) Strike precision
2) Ball difficulty
3) Strike sweet spot
Type of strikes:
TE2009 has a lot of different strikes; some are normally safe, some are a bit risky, and others are quite risky.
Here the lists of strike ordered by risk:
Safer than average: safe strike, slice, defense lob
Normally safe: normal & topspin strike, short strike
Risky: acceleration, attack lob, short strike when volleying
Very risky: short acceleration, drop shot
Strike precision:
Depending of many factors, your strike will be more or less accurate; ie: it will go more or less closely of the location you aimed on left/right while you prepared your strike, and farer/closer on the direction axis.
Here the main factors:
- First, the precision is determined by your strike skills ; for example, for the forehand, the more the forehand precision is above the forehand power, the more accurate your forehand will be
- After, the longer you prepare your strike, the more precise it will be. Preparing your strike during 0.6 second will give you 2 times more precision than no preparation at all. You’re preparing your strike while you’re pressing the buttons + up or down ; if you change of buttons combination, you’ll lose all your accumulated precision
- Harder strikes have less precision than easier strikes; ie: short accelerations & drop shots will need more preparation time to achieve the same level of precision than the normal strike
- And finally, the more the ball will be difficult to play, the more precision you will lose
Here the additional secondary factors:
- The farther you send the ball, the more precision you will lose
- The more top spin you’ll put into the ball, the more precision you will get on the direction axis
Ball Difficulty:
The ball difficulty mainly depends of these parameters:
- ball vertical speed : if the ball is going quickly up or down, it’ll be much harder
- ball horizontal speed : if the ball is coming fast at you, it’ll be harder
- ball height : if the ball is above your shoulders, and below your waist, it’ll be harder
- if the ball has just rebounded when doing a rally strike, or just be stricken when doing a volley, it’ll be harder
- if you run when you strike the ball, it’ll be harder, although you’ll get a small power bonus for your strike
In addition, the more risky the strike you want to do is, the more it’ll raise the ball difficulty. Ie: a short acceleration will increase a lot the ball difficulty.
Moreover, all risky shots require you to hit the ball with your racket sweet spot, if you fail to do so, it’ll raise the ball difficulty.
Once the ball difficulty is determined, it’s compared to your strike consistency; if it’s slightly above, you’ll only lose precision when striking the ball, but which could still lead to play a ball too long, and if it’s a lot above, it’ll make you completely miss the ball, either sending it in the net, or too long, or falling at your feet.
And lastly, the ball difficulty will lower the speed of your acceleration; if the ball is very hard to play, but still not missed, then you could be hitting your acceleration at a lower speed than playing the standard normal strike..!
The optional “Danger Zone” visual helper appearing after the ball impact preview will help you to know the zone where it’s safe to hit the ball, and where it’s dangerous to play it.
The red zone is to avoid absolutely; in the orange zone, you should be able to play normal strikes if you have a good consistency skill for them, but probably not risky strikes; in the green zone, as well as a bit after the “Danger Zone” marker, it is safe to hit all kind of strikes.
Strike sweet spot:
For all risky shots and for all volleys, you’ll need to hit the ball with the racket sweet spot, which is the middle of the cords.
If you’re not well positioned, so you don’t hit the ball with the racket sweet spot, it’ll increase the ball difficulty, the farer from the sweet spot, the harder.
When you’re preparing your strike, your player will move by itself to reach the best position to hit the ball with the racket sweet spot, but he’s doing that very slowly, so if you don’t give him enough time, it’s better that you move by yourself to the ideal position before you start to prepare your strike.
Your player will also move a bit forward if you’re really too far from the ball rebound.
Additional concepts:
- ball speed control : if you want to hit a strike with low speed (ie: drop shot & lobs), you’ll need the ball to not be too fast to succeed your shot; if the ball is too fast (ie: on a service return or a smash), you’ll lose control of it, and it’ll go too fast, too far. The higher your strike consistency is, the faster the ball you can control.
- If you pick the counter style of play, you have an unlimited number of regular accelerations (but not the short ones), but you hit the ball less strongly, and you need to hit a fast ball to return it fast as well; the ball speed will also depend of the your Counter skill
- If you hit the ball while running, you’ll get a little power bonus on the normal strike
- Depending of your Counter skill, you’ll get also a little power bonus on the normal strike when you hit very fast ball after the rebound
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If there's something you don't understand, or want more precision, feel free to ask !
I also take all comments about the quality & the properness of the concepts. If you think it's good or bad, or need some corrections, let me know..!
