Ashes Cricket 2013 General Discussion

[Mike Fegan]

Why did big ant cricket game made you have second thoughts on your game and why it was not a natural reaction in first place that your gameplay and features are not good enough? If ba cricket not been around you would have released ac13 21 june with no manual appealing, drs etc. Ba dropped the team career manager mode because it didn't met their own expectations.

In all honestly it wasn't Big Ant as I sure the game will sell well off the back of the Ashes licenses, marketing prowess of our publisher 505 Games and our reputation of making cricket games for Codemasters in the past. The decision to not release the game to make a short term gain was made by 505 Games because the game simply wasn't good enough. Personally, I just hope there is room for both games, one licensed and the other generic so you guys are the ultimate winners and you can get your hands on two cricket games for a change! Also competition is healthy as it keeps everyone on their toes and the really cool thing is both games are coming out of independent Aussie game studios which has to be good for the local industry!

 

[balkeet]

Thanks for replying, hope you guys get shot animations right with right transfer of weight in strokes and not unrealistic, awkward shots.

 

[MattW]

and the really cool thing is both games are coming out of independent Aussie game studios which has to be good for the local industry!

Speaking of Trickstar as a studio - are you developing any titles of the scale of Ashes Cricket or have any in your pipeline to support the ongoing viability of Trickstar as a whole?

Additionally - how much ownership of the code/assets do you have this time around? Or is everything centred in 505?

Or another way - you had promised DLC for the game months after the first release. Can you now promise patches/updates to the game after the November release to fix issues found?

The Transmission collapse/Ashes Cricket 2009 Patch situation, and the silence after the release of International Cricket 2010 are also the legacies of the Codemasters releases.

 

[Mike Fegan]

Thanks for replying, hope you guys get shot animations right with right transfer of weight in strokes and not unrealistic, awkward shots.

We are working hard on it and a bunch of other stuff too.

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Speaking of Trickstar as a studio - are you developing any titles of the scale of Ashes Cricket or have any in your pipeline to support the ongoing viability of Trickstar as a whole?

Additionally - how much ownership of the code/assets do you have this time around? Or is everything centred in 505?

Or another way - you had promised DLC for the game months after the first release. Can you now promise patches/updates to the game after the November release to fix issues found?

The Transmission collapse/Ashes Cricket 2009 Patch situation, and the silence after the release of International Cricket 2010 are also the legacies of the Codemasters releases.

Hi Matt, I can't really divulge commercially sensitive information about our contractual arrangements with our publisher. All I can say is that we are happy working with 505 Games and they have been very supportive and more than patient with us.

We have an obligation to our publisher and the people buying our games to support them after release with patch or update if required so I can promise that we will do our utmost to do what is required from a game code if called upon by 505 Games.

I have never really spoken about Transmission Games being shut as it was a very painful personal experience and I would not wish it on anybody. Post GFC in 2009 we hit the "perfect storm" we had three games in development were one publisher went bankrupt, another publisher bank imploded and the third hadn't paid for 7 months despite us carry on development to honour the contract (call me naive). Also we were at contract for US$10M+ production when someone leaked confidential information on the deal breaching our confidentially agreement and the publisher cut us off cold. With all this hitting at the same time we had no choice but to close but that was 4 years ago and when you get knocked down you get back up.

I really enjoyed working with Codemasters and we ended up doing 5 games for them in 7 years so I hope the feeling was mutual. I don't understand the silence after IC2010 question as we have always being open about our games and sales/marketing/PR is quite rightly handled by the publisher leaving the game developer to focus on what we all hope is a great game. I have been on both side of this fence and I can tell you both parties have their challenges in a fast moving market so I have great respect for both publishers and independent developers. Sorry to waffle on but just wanted to set the record straight here.

 

[MattW]

I don't understand the silence after IC2010 question as we have always being open about our games and sales/marketing/PR is quite rightly handled by the publisher leaving the game developer to focus on what we all hope is a great game.

The broken online play never being fixed. I think I managed to finish one game of IC2010 online. It's basically all that's discussed about IC2010 - http://www.planetcricket.org/forums/online/quitters-disconnections-problem-67544.html

While pre-release engagement with the community is great - it's post release that matters far more.

 

[hamza10]

Have u worked for EA Mike?

 

[Haynes123]

I lost my faith in this game as I was an ardent supporter in the beginning, however, I think what I have heard from you I will not cancel my pre-order and get this game because there is almost nothing that hard work, commitment, and honesty can't achieve. Mike, I must take my hat of for you, this could not have been easy especially with your honesty. I really hope this game can be a success, you have got hard work ahead of you but this is clearly not your first innings. I really hope you get a break or two as clearly the ball has not been bouncing in your favour recently, Good luck to you Mike

 

[Meet]

You may have convinced us(people in contact with you here or at fb) but how will you be able to convince a large number of potential buyers(who are not aware of all this happenings) who pre ordered the game but cancelled it due to couple of delays? How would they know that this game was not good enough to release, which leaded to delay? I don't think they will risk in pre ordering it again after the debacle as they do not know the truth actually.

 

[jaraarrow]

Mike

Mike will my pc run this game?
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Central Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
User Name Valued Customer
Graphics
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Video Memory 512.00 MB
Screen Resolution 1024 x 768
Storage
Total Memory 3.25 GB
Free Memory 1.97 GB
Total Hard disk 922.23 GB
Free Hard disk 800.81 GB

 

[haider12]

mike i have core 2 dou 2.93ghz can i run it

 

[79cricket]

Thanks again mike the last few days have been well good on ashes forum for once. PS When I talk fields I do mean the ai not when I am bowling, I have only thought bowling in all cricket games was just ok for a short period of time.

I love to bat and maybe this will change with these 2 games or stay the same, I guess there is a huge reason way every cricket game has had sim overs in it. Thanks.

 

[cricket_online]

I will pass on your comments to our tech director and networking programming guys who are a lot smarter than I. Thanks for making these points and we will try to cover in this forum (& Facebook) your comments over the next 12 weeks.

I hope you pass the feedback regarding manual/user field settings and online gameplay to your team and I look forward to hearing from you how you handled the issue.

 

[Punk_Sk8r]

Realistic Stroke Bounce

This is a thing I really liked about patching the EA game's you could really make the ball bounce after playing a stroke, will this be the case in your game? Because pre-patch in all of the EA games the ball would always roll 100% on the pitch which made finding the gaps hard.

Here's an example; Sachin Tendulkar's 100th Century Highlights - YouTube

 

[Biggs]

Mike, do you like movies with Gladiators?

Seriously though, why have Australia been such a bummer in the Ashes? Also, who got the dunce hat in the office for releasing images with the bat stickers on backwards? Finally, can the PC guys go back and tweak Agar's batting stats for you please? I think we may have got that'un wrong...

 

[barmyarmy]

Judgement 46? Finesse 33?
What we got wrong was the rest of the Australian "batsmen".