Created by and for tennis fans, Tennis Elbow 4, the sequel to Tennis Elbow 2013, is a realistic and engaging tennis simulation, with exceptional gameplay depth.
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if you don't meet the requirements of the Fair or Realistic modes, the game engine will automatically adjust your skills.
Examples of Skill Remapping:
| Initial Skill Value | 0% | 30% | 50% | 70% | 100% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Result for Skills in Realistic Mode | 30% | 48% | 60% | 72% | 90% |
| Result for Service, Forehand & Backhand Skills in Fair Play Mode | 20% | 35% | 45% | 55% | 70% |
| Result for Other Skills in Fair Play Mode | 25% | 40% | 50% | 60% | 75% |
Skill Remapping formulas:
Once you have created a game and are waiting for a player to join, you can switch to another application. Tennis Elbow will play a warning sound when a player joins your game.
On the next screen you will need to set the 'Delay'. If you're not sure how to do this, set it to 'Auto', wait about 5 seconds and then click 'Play'.
The Delay is the latency that Tennis Elbow adds between the time you use your controller (keyboard, gamepad, etc...) to move your player, and the time that information is actually processed to make your player move. This allows both PCs to remain synchronised. In short, the higher the delay, the more latency there is between the time you give a command and the time your player responds.
The delay is an internal latency that allows Tennis Elbow to run in parallel on your PC and your opponent's PC. There's a target dead time that lasts half the delay, just before you hit the ball. During this time, the game considers you to be pressing left (or right) if you pressed left (or right) just before the start of this dead time; on the other hand, the game considers you to be pressing nothing if you didn't press anything just before the start of the dead time. This means that if you press left to aim to the left and release left just before you hit the ball, your aim won't come back to the centre as it would if you were playing against the computer. You must therefore prepare your aim at the right moment, as you won't be able to correct an over-aim at the last moment, especially if you play with a high Delay. Note that this is also the recommended method when playing against the computer, in order to have a consistent aim.
In short, when the delay is high, the game won't recognise your shot selection and aiming if you don't prepare your shot early enough.
For the game to run at normal speed, the Delay must be at least half the ping. For example, if you normally have a maximum ping of 100ms with your opponent, you need to set the Delay to 50ms or more.
When you join a game, all you have to do is wait for the host to set the delay and start the game. To find out the delay set by the host, you can press F4 during the game to see the game statistics: the delay is displayed on the bottom right.
Users who have purchased the full version of the game will have their online nickname protected. If someone else tries to use their nickname, it will be prefixed with "[Fake]".
The ELO rating is an approximation of your playing level compared to all other players. Its purpose is to help you find other players who are more or less as good as you, so that you can play more interesting matches. Its purpose is not to determine who's the best Tennis Elbow player, because that's too much of an approximation. You need to play around 50-100 matches to get a sufficiently accurate score.
The better the player you beat, and the fewer matches you lose, the more ELO points you will get; this ELO-type score can go up if you lose to a better player than you, if you win a lot of games (example: 6/7), and can go down if you win to a weaker player than you, if you lose a lot of games (example: 7/6).
If you abandon before the end of the match, you'll receive a 3% penalty to your ELO rating. However, if your opponent switches to another application, stays in the menus or watches the replay for more than 1 minute, you can abandon without penalty if you have spent that minute in the game without opening the menus, switching to another application or watching the replay.
Sometimes when you're playing online, you'll see a message saying "Desynchronisation detected". This means that your game and your opponent's game are out of sync, and different things have happened on your computer and their computer. In this case, the games will be resynchronised and you'll have to replay the point.
If you have a lot of desynchronisations (i.e. more than 1 every 5 points), it probably means that you and/or your opponent have installed a Mod that changes the way the game engine works, or that your game installation has been corrupted. In this case, you and/or your opponent will need to remove any installed Mod & restart Tennis Elbow, or uninstall and reinstall Tennis Elbow to be able to play online normally again.
On Service :
At end of the point, you can do a gesture by pressing the gesture button, and up, down, left or right ;
Notes:
If you are not pressing any buttons, move the joystick (or the arrow keys) in the direction you want to move.
If you press the buttons, your player will slowly move to the ideal position, and the more you press the joystick left (or right), the more the ball will move left (or right).
==>> You must keep the button(s) pressed when you hit the ball !
If you don't specify a direction, the ball will go to the centre of the opposite side.
The closer you are to the net, the faster you'll aim to the left or right. So, if you're standing at the net, you'll only need a fraction of a second to send the ball down the line, whereas if you're standing a few metres from the baseline, you'll need two or three times as long.
If the ball is too far away from your player at the net, press the button to make him jump towards the ball.
The earlier you press the button, the more accurate your shot will be. In fact, if you press the button at the very last moment, your ball could go into a very wide zone, but if you press 1 second earlier, the zone will be very noticeably smaller.
You can see the Aiming & Accuracy Zone if your "Preview" is set to "All + Danger Zone + Aiming". In this case, you'll see in real time the spot you're aiming at, as well as the zone where the ball has at least 50% chance to can go ; usually, it's much higher than 50%, but if the Aiming zone gets big, it'll be closer to 50%.
The more you prepare early, the more:
But if you don't center the ball, or if you're mispositioned, your short shots will be longer, and your other shots will be shorter.
Moreover, to hit an acceleration as fast as possible, you need to hit the ball at the top of its bounce, when it's barely moving up or down.
In tennis, when the ball is rising just after the bounce, it's harder to hit it, especially if it's fast. The zone where it's dangerous to hit the ball is displayed when your "Preview" is set to "All + Danger Zone" or higher.
If you hit the ball while standing in the red part of the "Danger Zone", you may lose control of the ball and send it either into the net or too long.
If you're standing in the orange part, you might lose accuracy of your shot and you'll see the target zone get bigger (if you've set the "Preview" to "All + Danger Zone + Aiming").
Also, standing in the red or orange part will cause you to lose some power on your shot, especially when you try to do accelerations.
In tennis, it's very important to hit the ball with the center of the strings on the side of your body. If you try to hit the ball when it's coming towards your body, it's much harder to make a good shot.
For this reason, when you want to make an acceleration, a drop shot or a volley, you have to be very careful with your positioning, otherwise you could lose control of the ball or lose some accuracy, depending on the size of your positioning error, exactly the same as when you position yourself in the red part of the "Danger Zone".
But being off-center also gives you some handicaps on other shots: usually it will make you hit a shorter shot when you're trying to hit a normal shot, and a longer shot when you're trying to hit a short shot. You can also lose some power in your shot, especially if you make an acceleration.
If you miss a shot, send the ball out or into the net, an icon of a player hitting the ball will appear in one corner of the screen to indicate whether or not you hit the ball off-center:
The lob and the drop shot are performed in the same way as the other shots, but if you try to do them on a ball that's coming in too fast, you'll send the ball further than expected.
Also, if you lob while running too fast, you will send the ball in the same direction as your run.
By default, the controls are in simulation mode, but if you feel that the game is too hard, that you are making too many random mistakes, you can switch the controls to arcade mode by clicking the icon in your player's Character Sheet. In this case, the power & accuracy losses due to positioning mistakes in the "danger zone" and off-center ball strikes are divided by 2. Also, the rate at which the target zone decreases is doubled, so after half a second of strike preparation in Arcade mode, you'll get the same accuracy as after one second in Simulation mode. Enabling Arcade mode for your player doesn't apply it to the CPU player(s).
On the contrary, if the game is too easy for you, or if you want to have more mistakes, you can switch to Elite mode. In this mode, the effects of the Danger Zone are stronger and the precision of the Aiming Zone is lowered. If you turn this on for your player, it will also apply to the CPU player(s), so you'll have a fair match.
The service is executed in the same way as the other shots, with one slight difference: regardless of the button combination, a push up causes a slice and a push down causes a top spin effect. You can move your player to the left or right to find a special angle for your service.
You can also release your button(s) just before hitting the ball on your serve ; if you are serving & volleying, this technique will allow you to reach the net a little easier ; to use this function, release the button(s) pressed down, then release the direction (if necessary) and then push forward (+ left/right if necessary) ; it also works for walking backwards, but in this case the effectiveness is quite reduced.
Player 1's score is written in the top slots of the scoreboard, and Player 2's score is written in the bottom slots. If the small ball is in the top slot, player 1 serves, otherwise it's player 2.
If "Preview" is set to "Service" or higher on the character sheet, the ball's impact marker will be displayed early during the service to help you.
If "Preview" is set to "Service + Rally" or higher, the ball's impact marker will be shown early during rallies to help you.
If you make an acceleration when the ball is around your shoulder height, you get an extra speed bonus to your shot. This bonus is more or less big depending on:
If your character sheet has "Tiredness" turned off, your player will only get tired from his acceleration hits.
You have a limited number of good accelerations per point, depending on your stamina percentage. Once you have used them all, your accelerations will become less accurate and less powerful every time you try to perform another one. When you hit your last good acceleration and the next ones, some smoke will escape from your bat to indicate it.
If "Tiredness" is turned on in your character sheet, your player will get tired from hitting & running.
During the match, you'll see 3 bars on the screen to help you track your fatigue:
Note : in the World Tour, there's also the Long Term Form which takes days to recover.
The basic behavior is:
You lose energy when:
The more your Breath bar drops below 20%, the more:
The more your Energy bar goes below 50%, the more:
You get energy back:
When your Breath is below 25%, you get some back during rally if you stand still, but it goes up very slowly.
Notes:
Each player is defined by 4 kinds of attributes:
When starting a new game, you will have to make several choices, including the playing style of your main player. This choice is very important as it will define the main comportment of your player, and on what surfaces his game will be the most efficient. There are 9 styles:
Depending on the playing style, some skills will be more important than others :
Playing style |
Technical skills |
Physical skills |
|---|---|---|
| Defender | rally skills, especially the forehand and backhand consistencies, passing | speed, stamina, muscle tone, reflexes |
| Power baseliner | rally skills, especially the forehand power and backhand consistency (or the opposite) | -- |
| Puncher | rally skills, especially the forehand power and backhand consistency (or the opposite) | -- |
| All-court Attacker | -- |
-- |
| Volleyer | volley skills | -- |
| Counter | rally consistencies, passing, counter | speed |
| Counter Puncher | rally consistencies | speed |
| All-rounder | -- |
-- |
| Bulldog | rally consistencies, plus one powerful side (forehand or backhand) | speed, stamina |
The less the player will be at the volley, the less he needs to have good volley skills.
You'll get different bonuses and handicaps depending on your chosen play style.
Note: when Tiredness is on, the extra acceleration bonus means your accelerations are less tiring ; also Counter style acceleration is tiring as a normal strike.
Compared to the 1-handed forehand & backhand, the 2-handed backhand & forehand are:
The smaller you are, the quicker you accelerate your run. But this bonus is very small, just big enough to compensate the difference of wingspan with taller players, so that it doesn't give a handicap to play with a smaller player.
The weight has only a cosmetic influence.
Each talent gives some little bonus to the player:
The skill percentages show the different level of abilities of the players.
Some skills will be more effective and/or useful on fast surfaces, like service and volleys, and others will be more effective and/or useful on slower surface, like forehand/backhand powers and consistencies, and stamina.
If you don't train them, most skills will lower over time ; the higher they are, the faster they'll drop off.
| Technical Skills | Explanations | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Precision vs Power | The precision skills for the Service, Forehand & Backhand are relative to their respective Power skill. This means if your player has 20% in both Forehand Power & Precision then he'll have the same precision as if he has 40% in both of them. In other words, if you have 20% in both skills and you raise only your power to 40%, you'll lose some precision, and to get it back, you'll have to also raise the precision to 40%. And if you raise the precision skill above the power skill, the strike will get more accurate. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Forehand & Backhand Consistencies | The consistency is the ability to handle difficult balls, to lower the chances to do a fault on them. It can be seen as depending on your opponents power: to handle an opponent with 40% power on an average speed surface, you need 40% consistency. A better consistency will also allow doing deeper normal strikes, and shorter short strikes. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Service | The speed of your serve depends on your power ; in addition you get a small speed bonus on your 2nd serve when your consistency is above your power (and vice versa). With a Strong serve, if your power is equal to your consistency, then you have 70% chances of success on your 1st serve ; If your power is above your consistency, then you have less than 70% chance of success, and in the opposite case, you have more than 70% chance of success. With a Safe serve, you have 100% chances of success ; the speed of your serve depends of your power, and the difference between your power and your consistency. With a Normal serve, you do a serve between the Safe & Strong ones. If your power and your consistency are equals, then you have 85% chances of success. The average maximal speed of your serve depends mainly of your power:
To simulate stress, if you try to do a Strong serve on your 2nd serve, the chance of success will be lowered by 10% and the precision of your aiming zone by 25%, plus the serve will be tiring as doing an acceleration strike. If you try to do a Normal serve on your 2nd serve, the chance of success will be lowered by 4% and the precision of your aiming zone by 20%. |
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| Topspin | Topspin is a really special skill, as it's the only skill you can train to lower it in addition to raise it. So basically, if you have a volleyer playing on a fast surface, you'll prefer to have a low topspin, and if you have a defender playing on clay, you'll prefer to have a high topspin. |
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| Volley & Smash | Depending on the strike done, the Net Presence skill is combined with the volley forehand, volley backhand or smash skill, to define the precision and the consistency of the strike. The power doesn't depend on the Net Presence, only on the base skill. Except that, the volleys & smashes work like the forehands and backhands from the baseline. Moreover, the higher the Net Presence is, the more your player can run while volleying the ball without getting any handicap. |
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| Return | The faculty to read and return the opponents serve | ||||||||||||||||||
| Lob & Drop Shot | The Lob and Drop Shot Skills define your ability to lob and drop shot, but each skill is balanced with the Forehand or Backhand Skills, depending on whether you're playing a forehand or backhand. The higher this weighted skill is, the more you'll be able to control fast incoming balls and perform your shot normally without sending the ball too far. |
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| Counter | The counter skill is the ability to use the incoming ball speed to send it back faster. So the counter skill gives you a speed bonus of up to 7.5 km/h on your normal and topspin strikes when the ball is coming really fast. Moreover, the higher your counter skill is, the less you are constrained by fast incoming balls, but the slow incoming balls are also a bit less easy for you. |
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| Surface Skills | Explanations | ||||||||||||||||||
| The surface skills don't show the players innate abilities to play on each kind of surface. They only show if he's currently used to play on each different type of surface: they raise and drop quickly, depending on what surface the player is currently playing or training on. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Phyiscal Skills | Explanations | ||||||||||||||||||
| Speed & Muscle Tone | The speed determines the maximum speed and the "(speed + muscle tone) / 2" determines the running acceleration. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Stamina | Stamina is relative to "(Speed + Muscle Tone) / 2"; e.g. if your player has 50% in all 3 skills, he'll get tired from running at the same rate as if he had 60% in all 3 skills. If the Stamina is higher, your player will tire less quickly, and vice versa. It also determines the maximum number of accelerations you can do before you lose accuracy and power due to fatigue:
|
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| Strength | A low strength will limit the potential of the service, forehand & backhand powers. Moreover, if your forehand or backhand power is above your strength, you'll get more tired from hitting the ball (and vice versa). | ||||||||||||||||||
| Short & Long Term Forms | See Tiredness in the Training Section below | ||||||||||||||||||
| Mental Skills | Explanations | ||||||||||||||||||
| Concentration | Defines the frequency at which your player will have a bad day, with low energy, making him play less efficient; the higher it is, the less frequent it will happen. However, each bad day has a 10% chance to become a good day, where your player will play more efficient than usual. |
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| Constancy | Defines how much the player's energy can lower or raise, on a bad or good day. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Focus | The Focus is your players ability to focus on the ball to prepare his strike quickly enough. It's relative to "(speed + muscle tone) / 2", so if the Focus is above that, your player will prepare his strikes faster, leading to more accuracy and depth, as well as a better chance to attack the ball when needed ; if it's under, it'll be the opposite. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cold Blood | Defines the frequency at which a player will be stressed in important matches & moments, and when playing against a weaker opponent: in this case, his level will lower a bit, but only to his opponent's level, at worst. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Tactic | Allows taking advantage of your opponents weaknesses and play smarter tennis overall | ||||||||||||||||||
| Positioning | Allows to wait for your opponent's next strike in the place with the widest reach possible, and to hit the ball from the most efficient place (ie: not too high, nor too low) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Self-Confidence | Allows playing closer to the lines, without raising the risk. The Self-Confidence raises with each match won and lowers with each loss. Moreover when it is low, it raises when training. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Doubles Spirit | Alter most of your player skills while playing doubles. This skill raises with each doubles match played. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Motivation | Your player's motivation slightly goes up when you win, and goes down when
you lose. It gets a noticeable boost when you win a tournament. A high motivation will lower the handicap from playing while tired, and a low motivation will raise it. A high motivation also gives a little bonus on all the training efficiency. |
These set the overall strength of the CPU. The SubLevel allows you to fine-tune the strength between 2 levels. If you set the SubLevel to 1, it will be just a little bit stronger than if you play at the level below with the SubLevel set to 10.
On Beginner, Club & Junior levels the CPU has a handicap on its skills. On Pro & Master levels, its skills work exactly like yours. At the Incredible level, the CPU has a bonus to its skills.
The Pro level is designed to be the most realistic. However, you should choose the level that gives you the most fun.
When you exit TE4 by clicking on the "Exit" button, your game is automatically saved, and you will go on from where you stopped the next time you launch the game.
Moreover, your game is automatically saved over the past 3 weeks of play, over 3 different slots ; therefore, in case of problem (ie: if the game crashes or hangs for a reason or another), you will still have the possibility to restart from a recent saved game.
when you play in windowed mode, and you exit the game by clicking on the little cross on top right of its window, your current game will be also automatically saved if you are in a menu with the "Exit" button ; but if this button isn't there, it's possible that your game won't be saved ; in this case, you will lose all your progress since the last automatically saved game.
when you start a new game, you have the choice between 3 modes:
The first 2 modes are very similar, but the Seasons mode contains 3 major differences:
The Unique Tournament mode lets you choose one tournament and play it directly.
In Full Career, before each tournament, the Training screen will pop up; this screen allows you to distribute the experience points you won during your previous matches.
For each available day between 2 tournaments, you can do 6 hours of training. Depending of the difficulty level, the training hours are more or less effective. Moreover, it needs 2 times more hours and experience points to train most of your skills between 60% & 89%, and 3 times more hours and experience points when they are between 90% & 99%.
In main draws, for each match won, you earn about 10~20 experience points; for each match lost, you earn 25 experience points, because defeats teach more than victories..! In qualification draw, these numbers of points are divided by 2. Moreover, in easiest levels (ie: Beginner & Club), you'll earn more points, and in hardest levels (ie: Master & Incredible), you'll earn less points.
But beware, every week, you lose a few points in your characteristics: if you don't practice, you'll regress inexorably. The higher a characteristic is, the faster it'll drop.
The topspin is a special skill, because it's the only one you can choose to lower. Indeed, on fast surface the topspin isn't much useful, and so it can be interesting to play a volleyer with a very low topspin.
End of year bonus: if you don't play during the last week of December (warning: this excludes the qualifications of tournaments happening on 1st week of the next year!), you'll get a small experience bonus, depending of the number of days you didn't play, up to 50 ( = from mid-November), for a total of ~35-45 experience points, depending of the difficulty level.
Note: if you win a tournament, it's always on Sunday. And if you start a new tournament the following week, often it'll be on Monday: you won't have any free day for training, so that's why you'll see 0 available day & hour in the training screen.
Junior Training: if you're a junior player, it's slightly different as you'll get less XP from your matches, won or lost, but to compensate you'll get some XP every week whether you play or not, but your skills are capped. The cap slowly increases until it reaches 100% when you're 19.
| Tournament type | Normal Rounds / Final |
|---|---|
| Qualifications | 3 |
| Challenger & Future | 3 / 3 |
| TET250 & TET500 | 3 / 3 |
| Masters Series | 3 / 3 |
| Grand Slam | 5 / 5 |
Note: women never play more than best of 3 sets.
You'll automatically participate in the Masters
if you are in the 8 best players when this tournament begins, or if
you won a Grand Slam tournament. If not, you won't play it.
Its planning is a bit special: there are 2 groups of 4 players,
and every player plays 3 matches. The 2 best players of each group will
play semifinals, afterwards the 2 semifinal winners will meet in the
final.
These are team tournaments, each team representing a country. There are 4 singles matches and 1 doubles match per encounter. Each match victory earns 1 point and the 1st team to reach 3 points wins the encounter and can progress to the next Cup's round.
First 2 singles occur on a Friday ; doubles is on a Saturday; the last 2 singles are on a Sunday.
There are 2 leagues. Main league is composed of the 16 best countries competing over 4 rounds to win the Cup. The Qualies league is composed of 32 countries ; they play 2 rounds between them. Then the 8 first round losers from the main league will meet the 8 2-round winnners from the Qualies league to do the playoffs. The winners of the playoffs will be in the Main league the following (delete "next") year, and losers will be in the Qualies league.
When your player is accepted in a round, he'll get a motivation bonus, one for each competition he is playing ; he'll also get a 10% experience bonus from his matches.
When you look at other players' character sheet, you can see the "Favorite Partner" button (2 rackets, the symbol for Doubles), on bottom left of the screen: if you click on it, the player will be added to the doubles partner selection list (available from the "Planning" tab of the "Coached Players" menu), but only when he's free and doesn't already have a partner ranked better than him, and when you're ranked well enough for him (you can have only 1 "Favorite Partner" at the same time).
Rule 1. Opponents stand on opposite sides of the court. The player who delivers the ball to start the point is called the server. The player who stands opposite and cross-court from the server is the receiver.
Rule 2. The server shall stand behind the baseline within the boundaries of the singles court. All even points are served from the right part of the server court to the left service box on the opponent's court, and odd number points are served from the left part of the server court to the right service box on the opponent's court.
Rule 3. If the ball does not land in the service box, it is deemed a fault and a 2nd serve is given. If the server misses his target on 2nd serve, he loses the point. If the ball hits the net and goes in the correct service box, another serve is granted.
Rule 4. The receiver can stand where he likes, after the service line, but must let the ball bounce in the service box.
Rule 5. The server always calls his score first. The 1st point gives a score of 15. The second point is called 30. The third point is called 40 and game is won on the 4th point. If the score is 40-40, also known as deuce, one side must win by 2 points. The 1st of these 2 points is called Advantage. If the 2nd point isn't won by the same team, the score goes back to 40-40.
Rule 6. After the game, the opponents serve. Games equal 1. The first to win 6 games, by two, wins the set. The first to win 2 sets wins the match (3 sets in men Grand Slams and Davis Cup). If the score is 6-6, a tie-breaker is played. This is scored by one's. The 1st server serves once, then each team serves twice in turn. The first team to score 7 points winning by two wins the set.
Rule 7. If the ball goes into the net, or outside the boundaries of the court, the player who hits that ball loses the point. If the ball hits the net during the point and goes into the opponents court, the ball is in play.
Rule 8. A ball that lands on the line is good, even if it just partly touches it.
More details about rules & tennis glossary on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis .
Ok, but use them wisely!
